Post: #1

From the, "left eating its own tail department":

Stephen Fry, which child sexual abuse victim do you think changed their mind about trigger warnings when you told them to 'grow up'?

Quote:In an interview with Dave Rubin on the American talk show ‘Rubin Report’ yesterday, the writer, actor, presenter, and all round national treasure Stephen Fry decided that "self pity" by survivors of child sexual abuse was an appropriate target for his ire.

Fry’s argument focused on censorship and the “deep infantilism” he perceives in today’s society. Thee discussion included mentions of the unsuccessful Oxford University petition to remove a statue of colonialist Cecil Rhodes and the application of so-called "trigger warnings" to literature.

Fry remarked that many great plays contain scenes of rape and murder, including Shakespearian classics such as Titus Andronicus and Macbeth. "They’re terrible things and they have to be thought about, clearly," Fry said, "but if you say you can’t watch this play… [because] it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place, well I’m sorry.

"It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self pity gets none of my sympathy. Self pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity. Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. Just grow up."

The language Fry uses is so utterly patronizing that it strips his wider points, about the inability of some to engage with complex issues, of any real value. To belittle someone’s childhood experience of being abused by a family member and reduce it to ‘uncle touched you in a nasty place’ is deeply callous and irresponsible.

Fry is a well-respected public figure, an entertainer and an intellectual. For anyone who has suffered a sexual trauma, in childhood or adulthood, to hear him tell them to "grow up", that they are "unlikeable" if they have not come to terms with what happened to them, that their emotions are "ugly", is hugely damaging.

Survivors of sexual abuse aren’t waiting around hoping that Fry will feel sorry for them. They are trying to heal and get on with their lives, without being constantly reminded of the event. Which is why trigger warnings are sometimes useful.

Not everyone who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder or has been a victim of a crime such as rape feels that trigger warnings are necessary or helpful. That's because all people are different. Some feel that trigger warnings imply a sense of fragility and make subjects more difficult to broach; others, as the writer Laurie Penny stated in an essay for the New Statesman, describe trigger warnings as facilitating openness and debate, and allowing people to make adult decisions about what’s best for their mental wellbeing.

[...]

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/step...80546.html


Pot kettle black?

Post: #2

Thread Title of the Year

Post: #3

He might be a queer but he speaks a lot of sense about the culture of offense which is prevalent in today's society.

Stephen Fry Wrote:It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what?

Post: #4

Fuck Stephen Fry. Not only an outspoken buttfucker, but also went in demanding a boycott of the Sochi Olympics because they weren't sufficiently sensitive towards the LBGTABCXYZ crowd. He's a part of the continuing degeneracy of the West, but doesn't like it when that degeneracy turns against him. Just because he's temporarily singing from the same songsheet we do doesn't make him an ally or worthy of defence, any more than Germaine Greer deserves anything but contempt when she starts getting senile and saying she doesn't like where feminism's going.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #5

Quote:In a heartfelt email he told the New Day he is “incredibly sorry” for any upset he caused.

“It distresses me greatly to think that I have upset anyone in the course of the TV interview I had with David Rubin the other week,” he said.

“I of course apologise unreservedly for hurting feelings the way I did. That was never my purpose.

“There are few experiences more terrible, traumatic and horrifying than rape and abuse and if I gave the impression that I belittled those crimes and the effects they have on their victims then I am so so sorry.

“It seems I must have utterly failed to get across what I was actually trying to say and instead offended and upset people who didn’t deserve to be offended or upset.”

Post: #6

Yeah, knew he'd cave. Contemptible.

Like Ricky Gervais and Mark Gatiss and the rest of their brood, Stephen Fry has always struck me as a man with less courage than he thinks he has. He'll get up there and stir controversy and act like he doesn't care who he offends and crap all over religion and treat homosexuality as though it's an accomplishment, but at last his beloved retweeters got a whiff of Wrongthink and he turned into a stick of butter on a hot frying pan.

As with so many "progressives", strip away Fry's polemics and snark and all you're left with is a coward.

Post: #7

Stephen Fry might sound eloquent and classy but at the end of the day he is an attention whore who fucks young men up the arse. Or is he the bitch? He is a pompous twat with a too-high an opinion of himself.