How arrogant are you to think that you deserve to go through life with no one ever saying anything that you don't agree with or like?
I want people to stop saying, "that joke's offensive." I want them to start saying, "I found it offensive." Because that's all it is. You're just telling me how you feel about it. There's nothing intrinsically offensive about this joke. It's trying to make "I'm offended" sound important. It's no different to saying "I've got a pain in my leg." I believe you, but it's nothing to do with me.
"Yeah, but you shouldn't hurt people's feelings." Well, you can if their feelings are wrong. You know, if you don't like the facts, don't change the facts, change the feelings.
You don't have to pave the jungle. You can just grow a pair and have a laugh about it.
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Offense culture is competitive, so not only will they never be satisfied but there will always be someone eager to find something more "problematic" than anyone else.
So, you should never even try to make them happy. They never will be.
Queen's University Belfast has issued the warning to undergraduates studying a module called Further Adventures in Shakespeare on its BA Eng
By: Chris Hastings
Published: Jun 25, 2023
Is this a case of crazy wokery I see before me? Actors ridicule university trigger warnings over blood in Macbeth
Queen University Belfast has issued a warning to students studying Shakespeare
It stressed Macbeth 'could cause offence' due to its depictions of 'bloodshed'
Similar warnings have been applied to the Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus
It is Shakespeare's most violent play – a bloody saga packed with stabbing, strangling and poisoning that reaches a grisly climax with a beheading.
And for more than 400 years audiences have been enthralled – if a little disturbed – by the butchery of Macbeth.
But now one of the UK's top universities stands accused of 'infantilising' students after it warned them they might be 'offended' by the 'bloodshed' in the play.
Queen's University Belfast has issued the warning to undergraduates studying a module called Further Adventures in Shakespeare on its BA English course.
'You are advised that this play could cause offence as it references and / or deals with issues and depictions relating to bloodshed,' the warning, a copy of which has been obtained by this newspaper under Freedom of Information laws, states.
The university has also applied similar warnings to the Bard's Richard III, Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus.
Some of Britain's biggest theatrical stars last night branded the warnings counterproductive and unnecessary. They point out that Macbeth, which was first performed in 1606, is particularly popular with schoolchildren.
Sir Ian McKellen, who starred opposite Dame Judi Dench in Sir Trevor Nunn's landmark 1976 RSC production, said warnings such as this could undermine the dramatic impact of the piece.
He said: 'My sister (a teacher) used to show Sir Trevor Nunn's TV version of the 1976 Macbeth to her teenage students.
'She'd pull down the blinds, start the video and then leave the classroom and count the minutes till she heard the first scream from within. Had the youngsters had trigger warnings in advance, the effect of the play would have been considerably diminished.'
He added: 'I remember talking to a priest who saw a number of performances of the stage production at the Stratford Other Place.
'He would hold out his crucifix throughout the performance, to protect the audience from the devilry conjured by the cast. I suppose these triggers are something similar.'
Call The Midwife star Jenny Agutter, who has acted in Shakespeare's The Tempest, King Lear and Love's Labour's Lost, said: 'I don't understand why anyone should feel warnings are necessary for Shakespeare's plays. Unless we need to be constantly warned that depicting human nature might cause offence.'
Sir Richard Eyre, the former Director of the National Theatre who has directed productions of Hamlet, Richard III and King Lear, said: 'It's completely fatuous and totalitarian to try to police people's minds with these absurd warnings. Ridiculous, contemptible, infantilising.
Presumably the people putting out the trigger warnings feel they are able to cope with the content of these plays, but weaker, younger, less intelligent people aren't.' Doctor Who star David Tennant and The Good Wife actress Cush Jumbo are due to star in a new production of Macbeth which opens in London in December. It is one of four major productions of the play set to open in the UK.
Queen's Belfast's trigger warning for Twelfth Night centres on what it calls the 'depictions relating to sexuality or gender. Warnings for Richard III and Titus Andronicus relate to depictions of disability in the former and 'race and or racism' in the latter. A spokesperson for Queen's University Belfast declined to comment.
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'[A priest] would hold out his crucifix throughout the performance, to protect the audience from the devilry conjured by the cast. I suppose these triggers are something similar.'
Very apt. It's magical thinking. Especially considering they've not only been shown to not work, they've been shown to make things worse.
"If people are determined to be offended - if they will climb up on the ladder, balancing it precariously on their own toilet cistern to be upset by what they see through the neighbour's bathroom window - there is nothing you can do about that."
There has been understandable alarm throughout the country about recent events at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield. I share it. West Yo
By: Suella Braverman
Published: Mar 4, 2023
There has been understandable alarm throughout the country about recent events at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield. I share it. West Yorkshire police recorded a non-crime hate incident after a boy dropped a copy of the Quran, which appeared to have been scuffed. The mother of the boy has said he is autistic. Appallingly, he has received death threats and there has been considerable unrest.
I have already indicated my deep concern about this case and the way it has been handled, but it raises a number of broader issues.
The education sector and police have a duty to prioritise the physical safety of children over the hurt feelings of adults. Schools answer to pupils and parents. They do not have to answer to self-appointed community activists. I will work with the Department for Education to issue new guidance spelling this out.
Instead, a disturbing video showed a meeting — which looked more like a sharia law trial, inappropriately held at a mosque instead of a neutral setting, whereby the mother of one boy was made to account for his behaviour in front of an all-male crowd.
We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country. There is no right not to be offended. There is no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion. The lodestar of our democracy is freedom of speech. Nobody can demand respect for their belief system, even if it is a religion. People are legally entitled to reject — and to leave — any religion. There is no apostasy law in this country. The act of accusing someone of apostasy or blasphemy is effectively inciting violence upon that person.
Everyone who lives here has to accept this country’s pluralism and freedom of speech and belief. One person’s freedom to, for example, convert from Islam to Christianity is the same freedom that allows a Muslim to say that Jesus was a prophet but not God Incarnate.
This freedom is absolute. It doesn’t vary case by case. It can’t be disapplied at a local level. And no one living in this country can legitimately claim that this doesn’t apply to them because they belong to a different tradition.
All of this is typically understood. If I told a socialist they should politely endorse my sincerely held conservative beliefs, he or she would laugh in my face — and rightly so. Roman Catholics readily understand that people are going to criticise the Pope or mock the concept of transubstantiation.
Yet things are going in the wrong direction. We see that in the monstrous way that JK Rowling and others have been treated for daring to challenge radical gender ideology. And there is a particular issue with attitudes towards Islam.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims are tolerant, peaceful and embrace our values. But some Muslims and non-Muslims alike — as well as Islamist extremists — believe that Islam should enjoy a special status, protected from disrespect.
There is a long, ignoble history of that, which goes back at least as far as the furore over The Satanic Verses. It is rooted in a view — actually a bigoted one — that Muslims are uniquely incapable of controlling themselves if they feel provoked. And it has excused agitators using fear to force people to bend to their demands.
In June last year, a cinema chain cancelled all UK screenings of The Lady of Heaven after threatening behaviour by groups of Muslim men outside cinemas. A teacher from Batley who showed his students a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad is still living in hiding, following angry protests outside the school and online threats from local community leaders.
The way to ensure community cohesion and peace is not to cave into bullies, nor to demand that people aren’t “unnecessarily offensive”. The right approach is to defend our pluralist, free society very robustly indeed.
I am not happy with the way non-crime hate incidents are recorded and I will soon be announcing new guidance for police.
Timidity does not make us safer; it weakens us. A fear of being seen as “Islamophobic” led to the grooming gangs scandal. It led the Prevent counterterrorism programme to fail to recognise the scale of the threat of Islamist extremism, to deny the individual culpability of extremists, and actively to co-operate with extremist groups. It fails to protect people from the mob.
Enough. It is high time for leaders — real leaders, not self-appointed hot-heads — to stand up for our free society. It is this country’s sacred promise to everyone who lives here, whatever their background. Every organisation that answers to me as home secretary will be in no doubt of where I stand.
"Those who are determined to be offended will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the effort."
