Well, that didn’t take long. Barely had the ink dried on a lawyer’s letter from Joanna Cherry than The Stand comedy club performed a screeching U-turn on its decision to cancel an event featuring the SNP MP. Cherry had been due to appear in an ‘In conversation with…’ interview at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. However, The Stand nixed the function last week, saying ‘a number of The Stand’s key operational staff, including venue management and box office personnel, are unwilling to work on this event’. Cherry has become persona non grata among progressives for raising concerns about the interaction of legal gender reform and the rights of women and girls.
However, rather than accept her cancellation lying down, Cherry, a KC, threatened to take The Stand to court. After all, the Equality Act says a person cannot be discriminated against on the basis of their beliefs alone. The courts have already established that belief in the biological reality of sex or disbelief in gender identity ideology are protected in law. The Stand has this afternoon issued an apology to Cherry and admitted that ‘the previous decision that the event could not go ahead was unfair and constituted unlawful discrimination against Ms Cherry’. The venue now wishes to re-list the event and says that, should Cherry choose to go ahead with it, the club will donate its share of the profits to a local charity.
Victories for freedom of speech are rare and therefore worth acknowledging. Cherry is keen to see the event proceed, which is good news too. There are two opportunities created by this episode that, if taken with good will and an open mind, could be very beneficial. The first is the setting of an example for other organisations. Bowing to the clamour for cancellation and censorship may seem like the fastest route to an easy life but it is more likely to open you up to legal problems. You can’t discriminate against a woman for knowing what a woman is and being willing to say so out loud.
Political debate is sometimes uncomfortable. That’s the way of it in a free country. The way to deal with it is not to shut down discussion but to have more and better discussion. Ideas, values, disagreements: these are not threats to a liberal society, they are its very lifeblood.
The other opportunity that arises from this is one for Joanna Cherry’s critics. There is a demographic out there that has convinced itself that Cherry is a froth-flecked, beyond-the-pale bigot, a conclusion most of them seem to have reached without ever hearing a word she has said. We can be sure of this because however hard you strain to hear the worst in Cherry’s contribution to the women’s rights and gender identity debate, you will pick up nothing more than an old-fashioned feminist of the liberal-left.
But Cherry, like so many other women who hold her views, has been Rowlinged: an entire vocabulary of hatred has been put in her mouth that she has never spoken. Ask one of her detractors to quote a single example of her expressing or encouraging hatred, as those terms are generally understood, and you will be met with suspicion, then frustration and finally inarticulate rage. Cherry is vilified not for anything she has said but because of what her critics say about her. A postmodern ideology of feels and vibes cannot withstand the demanding precision of reasoned debate.
So the opportunity here is for Cherry’s disparagers: go along to her event, hear what she has to say, ask her a question if the chance is given. Do this especially if you are trans and have been told that Cherry despises you and wants terrible things to happen to you. I suspect you’ll come away struggling to reconcile this image of demonic prejudice with the reality of a lefty Edinburgh advocate talking through the difficulties in balancing rights and interests in a rapidly developing area of the law. You may still disagree fiercely with Cherry and resent her unwillingness to affirm your idea of yourself. But you will see that her ideas are as sincerely held as yours and articulated calmly and with compassion.
It’s comforting to caricature and dismiss your opponents, to protect yourself from the seeds of doubt they threaten to sow in your thoughts. Approach them instead with an open mind, a tolerant ear and a graceful heart and they might just surprise you.
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