Why doesn't the UK send JK Rowling to jail already for transphobia? (Quora)

In those parts of the world where it is still legal to express an opinion differing from the prevailing orthodoxy, there seem, these days, to be an awful lot of people who wish it were not.

Probably because they are incapable of answering criticism with rational argument, they readily resort to abuse. A very common form of abuse is labelling your critic with some neologism, usually ending in “-ist” or “-phobic”. This is intended to put an end to uncomfortable debate, by effectively declaring that people to whom such labels are attached have no right to an opinion and should be socially ostracised. Sadly, there is a reason why those employing this tactic find debate uncomfortable.

Intolerance of dissent is self-reinforcing, since unused faculties are liable to atrophy. Those who persistently refuse to engage in rational debate, and who only converse with people who agree with them, will come in time to be unable to engage in rational debate. They will declare themselves to possess a truth, but if challenged to prove it, they will have no reasons, only feelings.

In this particular case, I suspect that a very large proportion of those expressing condemnation of JKR have never troubled to read her original (widely publicised and carefully chosen) words, but rely on second-hand reports from others. Sadly, many of those others will fall into the same irrational, name-calling category as themselves, and their reports will spread a great deal more heat than light.

As mentioned above, there are plenty of places where freedom of speech is already forbidden. Before we allow our society to be numbered among them, perhaps we ought to give a little more thought to whether we really want all dissent suppressed.

Or one of these days, the voice being silenced will be our own.

The Paradox of Tolerance

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." -Karl Popper

There are many people today who are offended simply by other people having the nerve to disagree with them. In many cases the views they hold are so visceral that they themselves cannot entertain rational debate and seek every opportunity to close it down. In default of an argument they stigmatise opposition by abuse, as though to stereotype a particular view by lumping it together with some despised -ism should be sufficient to end all discussion.

The denial of platform movement which is sweeping UK universities (even Cambridge!) and is, I believe, present in an even more extreme form in the US where the desire to 'protect' people against being offended seems particularly censorious, is itself an egregious offence against freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is vital to civilised society.

John Stuart Mill made the limits of freedom of speech clear a century and a half ago in On Liberty. There exists absolutely NO right not to be offended. People who claim to be so offended by the peacefully-expressed views of other people that they demand such views be suppressed are themselves attacking a free society. People who claim the right to be offended on behalf of other people by the peacefully-expressed views of another person are on course to destroy free society.

Knowledge and understanding is only advanced when a challenge to received wisdom is not only permitted but rationally answered. Systems that allow no dissent or challenge in the end become hollow recitations of notions that even their adherents themselves cannot rationally justify. The unexamined becomes a dead letter, a meaningless mystical incantation.

How far backwards has humanity marched since Voltaire was able to disagree with what an opponent said but defend to the death his right to say it?

Since I am advancing this view peacefully and rationally I am within Mill's rules for freedom of speech. And if my view offends anyone, well that's just tough. I do NOT regret it.

By all means campaign for what you believe politically, artistically, religiously etc., but do it peacefully and do not destroy the good whilst in pursuit of the perfect.