Cancel culture is ubiquitous in modern Britain. In this delusional campaign for moral purity, it is now commonplace to judge someone’s whole character on particular beliefs and opinions they hold. More than this, it is completely normal to demand that someone lose their job or be ostracised from society for voicing certain views, often views that are widely held. Malicious pile-ons and witch-hunts are fair game and there are no real consequences for being part of the mob — not even a sense of private shame or embarrassment.
Every week, we are treated to a litany of cancellations that spark different degrees of moral outrage; some banal, some egregious. The cancellation of SNP MP Joanna Cherry is of the latter kind and has, quite rightly, attracted a sensational amount of coverage.
The Stand, a comedy club and Fringe festival venue, cancelled an event that Joanna Cherry was invited to speak at as staff refused to work at it. In a statement of oblivious self-righteousness, the venue proclaimed: “Some of our staff have expressed their concerns about Ms Cherry’s views and said that they do not wish to be involved in promoting or staging this show.”
Quite apart from proving that The Stand’s staff are the last people in the world who should work at a comedy club, this statement represents potentially unlawful discrimination against Ms Cherry based on her beliefs.
As Dr. Michael Foran, a lecturer in public law at the University of Glasgow, explained in Holyrood: “Joanna Cherry has a protected belief: gender critical feminism.” Since Maya Forstater’s groundbreaking court case, maintaining the existence and importance of biological sex is a protected belief under the Equality Act. What this means is that the staff at The Stand are refusing to provide a service for someone because of that person’s protected characteristic, much like refusing to serve someone because they are a Muslim or atheist.
For what it’s worth, I think the staff should be free to withdraw their labour no matter how infantile or brittle. That’s a right that should not be trumped by protected characteristics. But the progressive worldview has been hoisted by its own petard with its blind insistence on the importance of protected characteristics. The idea that nothing is more important than protecting identity characteristics has become a fundamental tenet of the progressive worldview. Indeed, this belief has led to the expansion of protected characteristics and the incredible sensitivity to any slight perceived transgression of them.
But just as being trans is a protected characteristic, so too is the belief in the immutability and importance of biological sex. And so we tie ourselves in knots as we try to decide what protected characteristics take precedence over others and the law tells us almost nothing about what we should do. For it’s not hard to imagine staff members at The Stand claiming that Joanna Cherry’s gender-critical views discriminate against their protected belief, namely, that transgenderism is importantly immutable — and it would take a braver legal system than we currently have to say that wasn’t a protected belief. So, we have an impasse.
Kezia Dugdale’s article for The Courier, however, may show a way forward out of this mess. In it, she concludes that Cherry should find another venue with staff that won’t refuse their labour. This ignores the contagious nature of cancellation and leads to the conclusion that if no venue agreed to host an event then some people would have no platform to speak. Further, surely we should argue that a comedy venue should not deplatform someone for holding mainstream, widely held views. Whilst I accept that no one should be forced to host an event they do not want to and indeed, people should be allowed to withdraw their labour (and accept they may get the sack; that’s sometimes the price of principles), it is a worrying state of affairs if comedy venues cannot embrace freedom of expression for feminists.
We live in a world with protected characteristics. And this means we have to decide what beliefs should trump others. Dugdale says: “There are trans people who feel their very existence and identity are threatened by the words of people who share Ms Cherry’s outlook. They are not up for ‘debate’.” Not up for debate? I hate to break it to you Kezia, but subjective feelings and perceptions are always up for debate. Just because someone feels something doesn’t make it true. Feelings are not facts. Ms Cherry’s outlook is based on biological reality. I’m afraid we can’t give up on biological reality because it threatens some subjective perceptions, even if those perceptions are deeply held.
If your perception of yourself is incompatible with biological reality, then the perception must change — reality won’t.