How Offence Culture Stifles Progress | Jess Butcher MBE & Claire Fox | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

Eclair thank you so much for joining me I've been really excited about this conversation because it's something that I have definitely tuned into a lot over the last year or two I read your book I found it if I'm honest terrifying depressing and then uplifting in turn but it does certainly seem like you can't open a paper now or social media page without seeing words like freedom of speech assault on freedom of speech no platforming you know abusive content you know don't agree do agree you know misogynist you know words that effectively are shutting down debates I would love to hear from you as to your some general perspective from the book I find that offensive as so what's going on here how would you sort of describe this movement and what's happening in society today but I noticed about five years ago I do a lot of speeches at universities and at schools in my role at the academy of ideas that rather than people arguing back against me that more and more young people particularly were saying I find that offensive and they didn't mean to be sharing that with me they meant shut up I mean it was a chilling impact you know I find that offensive was don't carry on it's gonna be too hurtful and I looked into the eyes of many of the young people who said this and I realized that they didn't want to debate or discuss with me they wanted to close down debate by saying they personally had their feelings hurt by something they found offensive and I was worried that this would mean that they would get stuck in the rut of only hearing one side of an opinion and that also indicated and the theme of today a certain lack of resilience because if you're not able to hear lots of different opinions and argue back then actually you can posit yourself as quite a fragile person so you know there's daft and silly and egregious examples from university campuses that we're maybe you're familiar with the fact that a mexican-themed tequila party was closed down as racist at one university a situation where in u.s. women's france bande clapping and only allowed jazz hands because they said that laughing was going to trigger post-traumatic stress disorder so I and I started you know and there's and there's you know walking past the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University undoubtedly Cecil Rhodes a contentious we go and a pro colonialist with views at the time that we would consider racist today and so you might say that about the South Road strategy when students started organizing to take the statue down and saying that walking past it was an act of violence and was on a par with being enslaved I thought you know if young people feel that walking past the statues akin to slavery they're not going to stand a chance in the real world and so I started to investigate what has become known in a rather derogatory sense as generation snowflake generations snowflake is an insult if you look at Wikipedia it says that I am responsible for introducing the phrase but it's Wikipedia say that to believe that but I wrote a book that was addressed to and about a generational shift of young people being too thin-skinned and easily offended and why I thought that that was not going to do them any good because yeah well it was interesting about what you what I read was it it's it's not just the chest and down a debate by saying offense you actually you witness in these people that they are offended that words are actually hitting them to the core and that you have people at these debates practically in tears because they felt their religion was being undermined or or annihilated in some way you know this wasn't phowa fence it's genuine offense it appears to be happening but I think that there's a danger that we missed the point if we think that this is posturing student so that even that they'll grow out of it because what I realized and what I was interested in was how deeply felt since their and internalized this sense of young people feeling that they couldn't cope with hearing words or ideas that discomforted them that was a genuine thing and so one of the phenomenal cultural shifts of recent years is that University students now demand safe spaces demand a place where they can be safe not physically but from ideas which they find discomforting now I don't know about you but when I was 18 and when I went to university at the time or whether you went to work you know the last thing I wanted to do was to feel safe I mean I wanted to take risks be experimental push back boundaries not kind of cower in a safe space and and kind of say all no go away I mean this struck me as a big shift that was not allowing young people to really fly and and and you know enjoy being young but it's it seems I mean universities is an important part of this because it's obviously where people are learning to hone their ideologies and and the political thinking at that sort of age and also how to engage in debate but it's happening everywhere I mean I I've certainly experienced it for myself with a long feminist Alliance for example where you've got me too and it's very difficult to talk about any of the grayer questions in the middle of what becomes a very black and white debate without an immediate missile being thrown of misogynist rape apologist which is soon as that missiles thrown into that person's opinion is no longer valid and is excluded from the conversation it strikes me this is something that social media actually exacerbates in some way because of the short-form nature of the debate and you know is it we are we all snowflakes now is is that what you think is the important observation because on the one hand universities which now of course almost 50 percent of the cohort go to university says an awful lot of young people they're all based on the notion of academic freedom and the possibilities of exploring intellectually new ideas and part of your intellectual development your academic development of course must be that you are discomforted you know your ideas are shaken up everything you've previously known is challenged and academic research which has given us everything from you know cures into of medicine through two great insights into the ancient world all of those things require no boundaries to what is explored but it's not just academic this is a broader culture of you can't say that and your point about the labeling of people indicates just how narrowly prescriptive the set of views are that one is allowed to pursue these days I mean you know it's not just a question of saying oh well this is a very enlightened situation where we call people racist when they're racist because you can be called a racist and as one young woman in America has been as hit social media recently because she wore a Chinese dress to a prom and she's not Chinese and she was called somebody who culturally appropriated Asian culture a racist and she because it was social media was piled on as they say by hundreds of thousands of people a 19 year old girl and that it seems to me is one of the problems as you say you can be accused of rape denial if you're worried about or you know a rapist apologist or if you say as I do that it's very important to defend the principle of innocent until proven guilty when it comes to sexual assault cases people will say your victim shaming how dare you you're suffering internalized misogyny so these labels are used very quickly to shut down debate and discussion so I don't know in that sense that that's an indication of we're all snowflakes but it does indicate that Society has become incredibly intolerant of views that don't fit into a very very narrow spectrum spectrum of what appeared to be progressive I mean I'm an anti-racist I was involved in women's liberation movement I'm not you know I'm a well-known kind of on the Left a person and yet when I hear somebody say you know as an anti racist and as a woman I find that offensive you just feel that the progressive arguments for equality of the past have almost become weaponized as a way of ensuring that only one version of the truth is heard that scares the life out of me hmm I know it's just going back to this sort of what's happening at universities from from reading the book you actually identify that it's starting at a much younger age which is something that I'm very interested in as a mother of three young children how do you think the way in which were bringing to up children these days might be might be playing a role in this well I was fascinated that first of all I was noticing this in schools but secondly that I thought that you know at 18 you suddenly didn't arrive at 18 and suddenly start saying I want to know platform this feminist or no platform or not hear that argument or what I want safety so and as I was somebody who taught for many years I started to think about some of the policies that might have started to chip away at young people's resilience pre-loading them with anxieties before they ever got to university making them scared of words and I realized that a lot of educational policies and a lot of parenting and popular parenting devices did two things either we kind of obsessively tell young people that safety that their safety is the most important thing we won't let them go and play outside there's a kind of culture of overprotection and cotton wool kids these days young people are constantly told to be fearful of pedophiles around every corner of any number of different things even eating chocolate and drinking sugary drinks is like a death threat hanging over them and so we kind of scare monger young people to imagine that round every corner something terrible is awaiting them and at the same time we also tell them that they're the most important people in the world you know we're constantly part of educators social and educational theory says that you know if we tell young people that maybe they're not as good as they think they are at something they were going to damage their self-esteem forever and we told young people through policies on bullying and anti-bullying which of course you know he wants to support bullying and but here we go and I I think that if you look at the way the concepts of bullying has been so broadened out it now can be name-calling it can be hostile gestures and my favorite one is exclusion from friendship group so if you're ten and your friends don't invite you to the pictures with them on a Friday night that is officially bullying in educational land and young people are told this and then they're told that if you're bullied when you're ten is going to damage you forever it's going to have long lasting psychological damage on everything so we wonder why 18 students go to university and somebody says something horrible to them and they go oh my god I'm going to be damaged forever right we told them that right so ironically generations snowflake with a sense of entitlement where they say my feelings of what count you know you can't say that because you're hurting me and we socialize them that way and in that sense I think we've got to take some responsibility yeah there's a there's a narcissism to it actually isn't that I know I've been thinking this with my own children Lee you ought to be nice to everyone the whole time people aren't gonna be nice to you the whole time when you went to the real world some people were like you some people won't and you just won't be prepared for that let alone the competitive cutthroat nature of many industries business politics media that many of these children will want to get into it's just you know they won't be prepared for that because they've got to play nicely so taking part that matters not the winning no exactly and guess what is the winning and I think that the other thing is is that actually it's insulting to young people because you know one of the things that you have to realize is if you know I give many speeches that go to policy events and there's almost been a kind of de rigueur 16 year old that's kind of trotted out to speak on the stage and they get a standing ovation before they've said a word and it's the adults in the room are kind of going Oh 16 how marvelous you know I mean and then that kind of actually shows a real indifference and content to that young person you know if we tell young people that they're interesting the whole time actually it just means we're not listening to them because sometimes sometimes they're interesting sometimes they're not right and and they deserve to be taken more seriously it's calm sending to say that because they're young that they are by the very nature of it insightful and obviously by the very nature being young you're not that insightful so partly we as adults have a responsibility to encourage young people to recognize that in order to be taken seriously they have something to say this is interesting and therefore we've got to tell them when they're saying things that darlin anodyne and and so on and but the other thing is you know whether they can cope this is important isn't it because you know the National Union students did a survey of students last year I think it was where 78% of students self-reported that they'd have mental health problems the year before 78 percent now I worked in mental health Social Work for many years when I graduated and I understand the absolute horrors of mental illness but for people to pathologize and understand her feelings and the vicissitudes of life and exam stress and so on as a mental health problem it does indicate to me that they actually aren't coping and that in fact we really have got a problem that young people have internalized this sense of vulnerability and fragility to such an extent that they really do perceive themselves as ill and and you know needing protection needing intervention to look after them infantilizing them in fact and so again as I say we have a responsibility to say to young people you know this is not doing you any good this is why I was depressed it's that part of the book it does get better and so I mean coming on to I guess the more contentious nature of freedom of speech which is what ultimately what you're advocating I mean the argument which I think can be a strong one is that it's ultimately speech which incites greater acts of violence of oppression of discrimination how where is the spectrum there and and how do we think about speech when it comes to incitement where this freedom of speech and you know how do we teach people about those barriers so I first of all I'm a free speech absolutist no ifs no buts I think that we have to be very careful about suggesting that incitement is a straightforward matter because it takes responsibility for actions from the person who acts to something that they've heard so you can just say that well I went and heard the speaker and as a consequence I kind of launched a racist pogrom right I mean you know no you decided having heard the speak you know most of the audience heard the racist speaker and decided to become an anti-racist as a consequence I mean it's not as though we all straight well we're not like a TAC dogs you know I I can tell you what I think here today and you're all thinking different things I mean I can't just kind of keep saying listen to me and do what I say I mean if only it was so easy then education would be a doddle wouldn't it and you you you that is not the way it works and but I'm also nervous about things that we assume are incitement because if you look at legislation now that's increasingly coming in but certainly more informally the notion of hate crime or hate speech if you actually explore what that is first of all even the police say that you can call something a hate crime with no evidence just based on the subjective reports of it you'll then find that what people constitute hate crime might be wearing that Chinese dress or - well you know the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons right are we saying that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists incited barbaric acts in Paris because they said something which somebody considered hateful I think not and you might even think that they were racist and then the final thing I'd say is the idea that speeches harm you know je s mil one of my great heroes the great 19th century free speech philosopher said that you know we should have free speech in all instances unless there's a harm principle and let's it harmed someone he meant a very narrow sense of that now we have a broadened sense of harm which you psychological harm and that ends up basically being interpreted is saying words that hurts me or harm me because they upset me and that's where we end up with safe spaces and no platforming at universities so I think you can hear words that you that hurt you in the sense that you're upset I hear things that offend me all the time people say horrible things to me or if somebody says something this sexist and misogynist and vile and personal of course I don't mean you know I kind of go brush it off right but I have no entitlement to close it down and I need free speech to be able to argue back or to be able to have a campaign to kind of you know deal with that person all those ideas yeah it's the shutting down of debate I supposed that that that is perhaps the most damaging by pokes a lot of this do you think that it's contributing to some of today's political trends that we're observing I think that we've seen this phenomenon of first of all labeling people in a kind of a dominum way but also by using these you know transphobic Islamophobic and so on is a way of closing down debate I think that sadly we are in a situation where we are confining ourselves to echo chambers and you can see that although we might laugh at or think it's hilarious to see young people hiding away in their safe spaces and you know at universities with bubble wrap by the way is very popular and therapy dogs and to kind of deal with the stresses of life you know we think that's all kind of oh can you imagine how immature and yet actually you'll see people saying I'm blocking so-and-so on Twitter I'm getting rid of all of my Facebook friends he voted brexit I'm not having anything to do I don't want to hear you know I think it's why we was so blindsided by brexit and and Donald Trump's election in fact because people were kind of so busy talking to people who agreed with them and having their own views narcissistically focused back on them they didn't notice that you know millions and millions of people didn't agree with them the other thing that we're seeing more and more of as a political trend is identity Pollock and I find that the most divisive and dangerous aspect that people see themselves not as defined you know it's no longer what you say that matters but who is saying it so you will have people say you know as a you know you as a white person cannot comment on that because that is the preserve of black people talking about it it's kind of racializing in that way as somebody who's been involved in women's politics so many years I don't see women's liberation as something that women do I think it's a matter of equality that we should all be involved in so demonizing men and saying you've got no right to speak on that or saying that if you haven't suffered sexual abuse you're not allowed to talk about it I mean it kills off on capacity or great enlightenment breakthrough where we saw ourselves as rational objective people who could understand the world beyond simply having experienced it but instead what we do is confine ourselves in ghettos and boxes where we say no I'm entitled to speak on that you're not and so those broad political trends by the way we see them in politics all the time it's something that I'm watching and getting increasingly concerned about with women in business and technology because these are apparently such hard industries to be a woman in which I don't believe is the case I actually think it's a fantastic opportunity I am noticing women assuming that when they're not progressing or getting knocked back that it's because of a gender reason and possibly it could be actually on many of those occasions but it's still not the best way to approach that because it stops you self internalizing analyzing yourself and coming up with constructive ways in which you can circumvent the status quo and actually resilience building resilience to to climb your your barriers so it is something that I the victimhood mentality around identity it's the least interesting thing about us you know we all have so much more in common with those with the same values and outlook than we do with anyone because we share chromosomes skin color in it whatever else it may be and so it's certainly so just very quickly on the victim point I think that some is called identity politics were rather describe it rather well as the oppression Olympics and there's a there's a theory called intersectionality which is to kind of effectively you have more right to speak and the more you have been victimized historically over the years so you know what you find is is that first of all you start saying as a woman then you say as a black woman or then you say as a black disabled woman and so on and you kind of crew points of course if you're a white obsessed man you're out and we've got nowhere to go I mean you're just so privileged but it's it's the thing about that is it incites people to show their scars I mean what you end up doing is sort of in order to gain permission to speak you basically you know I I can basically give you my list of terrible things of happens my working-class background you know my family are Irish right the British cause the famine every bad thing that happened to me is because my ancestors suffered the famine how dare you disagree with me on I don't know brexit I mean you know what I mean it's like sort of like you you you end up in a situation where you you trot all this out you actually interestingly in order to accrue your victim points what's more is you kind of plunder the suffering the genuine suffering of one's ancestors very often and you then accrue points that's why you have things called microaggressions where you basically say very small things add up this is a campaign called everyday sexism and they say the most trivial things are all added up to the equivalence of kind of being abused as a woman but they don't they're trivial things and but it's a way of accruing victim points mm-hmm I'm conscious that we could talk all day and I don't have a clock so if anyone can wave at me to give me a sense and we can't see it but I'm determined that we don't leave things on such a depressing negative note come on Claire are you confident that any of these trends can be reversed and it's so I guess what do you see as some of some of the solutions on positive ways in which we can approach these challenges um first of all I absolutely think these trends can be reversed but it's not a cycle and it won't spontaneously you know there's nothing more dispiriting when one imagines it to think God middle-aged woman writes book moaning about modern youth I really thought I was kind of letting myself in for something one of the great things about it is the people who've absolutely hated my book educational psychologists sociologists and people my own age who have actually responsible for generation snowflake and gratifyingly many of the most enthusiastic people who've liked my book are young because the point about generations snowflake is it's a generational trend but it's insulting to young people and many young people see and feel that they're in a trap and they're walking on eggshells even amongst their peers and they don't want that so what needs to happen is that those young people are and encouraged by us and given permission to kind of fight back in in terms of fighting for free speech I also think that grown-ups have got to behave like grown-ups and lock young people in the eye and tell them when they're talking nonsense have the confidence to say what you believe not back off and apologize at the mirrors tense of somebody calling you a horrible name and you know when people say I find that offensive I say fine and and I'm sorry you do but I'm going to explain what I'm talking about not back off think how many people apologize straight away I mean you're apologizing for you kind of finished the sentence so I I think that what my solutions are is that we need to both launch as a society an intellectual campaign in support of open free debate and discussion and and we need to encourage young people to think critically and to get out of safe spaces and echo chambers and I always say to young people you know read widely read everything right go and listen to speakers that you're gonna hate and if it confirms that you hate them more that's good because you'll have a better argument because you'll have heard their argument you'll know what their weaknesses are but you might just might have your mind changed too so of course there's hope because every generation even though it has it challenges has people who are brave enough to fight back and the academy of ideas and through our battle ideas festival through our debating competition for six film is debating matters meets young people all the time who say I am determined to not let this be the the main way that my generation is known and so we owe it to them as older people if you're young join that movement if you're if you're a bit older and then what we've got to do is to be brave and give a lead I respect by the fact that you need to sing some of the anti snowflakes I think you refer to them trying to fight fire with fire sometimes a fence with a fence and that that is an a productive way forward it's it should be one to listen cajole and actually bring the debate forward and the expression I always love is is to play the ball and not the player I blame social media and I'm younger than you so I I don't know whether that's going to be considered old-fashioned now as well yeah I mean I think social media does amplify these problems as you mentioned earlier and I think it's there are very dangerous twitch ants because I I don't want to be glib about this people are losing their jobs for misspeaking or saying something I don't know if you saw but the-- there's there's some life boatman who've just been sacked because they had a mug with them some rather sexist pictures on a naked woman with one of the lifeboat men's heads on it it was a Secret Santa gift and then the RNLI looked at their whatsapp messages private messages between two people and they were sacked right there were volunteers as well when I say they were sacked what he means is is that you earn no money but they are no longer saving lives on the Seas these are brave brave people right and what the oil I said was and you know these kind of banter and this kind of bullying atmosphere and this kind of attitude to women will not be tolerated we will not tolerate it and I think we need to get a sense of perspective and but the fact that some of these things get the twitch hunts lead to people losing their jobs Lita people been publicly shamed you know the disgrace that's a Tim hunt you know the great medical scientist was driven out of this country effectively lost his jobs at universities if you remember because he told her slightly off-color joke about girls crying in the labs when he was in Korea didn't doing a speech by time he got back off the plane into the UK there was an international scandal about him and he was being done as a misogynist by the way Tim Hunter dedicated his life to going around schools to encourage young people to study science he's not doing that now because he was driven out by a mob so in that sense social media amplifies and creates some of those problems but it's not to blame but we've got to believe in free speech that's the point we've got to rediscover what it was a free society represented for us you know we say that we're worried about authoritarian regimes in Syria in Turkey whether locking people up in universities for saying the wrong thing or closing down newspapers we worry about China you know and and and we we panic about the the the terrible way that you can arbitrarily be you know sacked in China for saying the wrong thing criticizing the government and then we sat people here because they give the wrong Secret Santa mug away to their mate right I mean this is this is as scary and authoritarian in insidious way and it's up to us to it's a we live in a free society we're not having this I absolutely agree I don't think we could have ended on a on a on a better night actually so Claire I thank you very very much and I wish you all the best with everything you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 207,632

Rating: 4.8246398 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Politics, Social Change

Id: -TqrahnSJCs

Length: 30min 55sec (1855 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/sandervansinte]

Sounds so similar to the middle ages but switching out religion with this SJW, intsectional feminism stuff

[u/Iszverg]

The eternally offended "call-out" culture is going to be dealt with very soon.

Their entire narrative is beginning to crumble and collapse in the non-Reddit/Tumblr/Twitter world. Adults are wisening up to this garbage and we're about to begin spanking these overgrown children & sending them to bed.