oughout three years reporting on the gender wars. When the word “woman” is replaced with “menstruator”, “mother” with “birthing parent” so the specific language of female experience is unsayable, I remember the Ministry of Truth deleting seditious vocabulary: “a heretical thought . . . should be literally unthinkable at least so far as thought is dependent upon words”.
I think of Orwell when scientists cite the reproductive vagaries of clown fish or slugs to “prove” human biological sex is not a male-female binary, because they’re terrified of being targeted by activists who’ve stupidly tethered trans rights to science denial. Here is the very definition of Doublethink: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”
Almost every day I hear from Guardian journalists, principled, progressive writers, who are terrified of uttering what now counts as WrongSpeak. As the tram-tracks of left-wing discourse have narrowed, any critique of Black Lives Matter or conservative Islam or, worst of all, suggesting a humane balance must be reached between trans activist demands and women’s rights, can result in vicious censure from colleagues, even demands that they are sacked. Questions imply criticism: disagreement is hate-speech.
When journalists cannot address issues for fear of losing their jobs, a void is created in the public sphere. If moderate views are unprintable, they become unspeakable. Cancellation trickles down.
Harper’s signatory Salman Rushdie has survived far worse than rants from hipster bloggers, but the Scottish children’s author Gillian Philip, who defended JK Rowling, was sacked. Many others have written to me: feminist authors dumped by agents, who in turn are frightened for their own livelihoods. Female academics endure constant professional defamation, petitions to no-platform them, exclusion from publications, talks on subjects unrelated to gender aggressively picketed or cancelled. “I was disinvited from giving lectures on courses I’ve worked on for years,” one says sadly, “including courses I’ve helped to write”.
A corporate lawyer was reported to her chief executive just for following feminist accounts on Twitter; a teacher was shopped to her head by a student intern who’d overheard her criticise the trans child charity Mermaids. A charity worker faced a complaint to her board because she’d “liked” a JK Rowling tweet: “For days, I was utterly terrified for my future. I shouldn’t have to live like this because of the views I hold.” A copywriter who queried why “woman” must be replaced with “womxn’ but not man with “mxn”, says speaking out “results in fewer chances to work on projects or limits promotion”. These people are denied free speech for utterances that are within the law….
Unlike the woke left, George Orwell didn’t spend his life scrabbling to be on the “right side of history”: he believed that telling the truth is in itself a revolutionary act.
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