No Answers, Many Doubts

I wish that the world was simple.


For example, I am a fan of Mary Beard - at least as a classicist and probably as a political thinker. I imagine that the things she said on Question Time probably accord with my own gentle liberalism. And I agree with her that the abuse directed towards her was misogynistic and was part of an online attitude that dispenses with common courtesy.

But it turns out that the website that hosted the abuse has been shut down. The owner gave a bit of an apology to Beard, and the closure is being blamed on an increased interest after a Jimmy Savile story. While I don't like the spirit of trolling that inhabits large parts of the internet (after I saw Do Not Feed The Trolls at Macrobert, the line between online and off-line bullying was clearer), I worry that any attempt to control it is a step towards censorship.

I can't say I am glad that the site has been closed. The next time I fancying reading abuse aimed at right-wing celebrity comedians, I am going to have to do a new search.

Before I go on, I want to re-iterate that I do not support the abuse of Mary Beard. I am especially offended by its naked misogyny, the threats of sexual violence and the deeply personal nature of the trolling.

However, Mary Beard got to put her opinion across on The Guardian website. The BBC has shown its support for her (quite rightly: she makes good TV). Most newspapers carried a column deploring the behaviour of those on the now defunct site - and Twitter. She had a very strong platform to retaliate from. While the tone of the abuse was, as she said, "playground bullying," it ended up being more like pupils mocking a teacher, who then holds a special assembly to condemn them.

Freedom of Speech is a pain. Defending it becomes an issue of allowing people to say things I find offensive. There's probably a sense in which some of those statements about Beard - especially the ones on Twitter, which could have been sent directly to her - come under hate-speech or even constitute a threat. Her willingness to speak out against it, and highlight a virulent strand of misogyny, is admirable.

But, assuming the site did shut because of the controversy, this is not a victory for freedom of speech.

In fact, the ability of the Internet to give these characters a platform has demonstrated how freedom of speech is "a good thing." Beard's intelligent, measured responses have brought to light the way that misogynist hate-speech still has a currency. It had created a debate around the representation of women on television. The opinions didn't come into being because of the Internet. It just allowed them to be put into the public domain. From there, they have been addressed.

One website closing makes little difference, and maybe it's just economics. Not being a huge fan of the free market (in this case, if Donald Trump had the "I Hate Female Classicists" site, it's unlikely the financial burden would cause him to shut down), I don't like the idea that a website can disappear just because the creator can't afford the bandwidth. And maybe it's good that social pressure can remove unpleasant comments from public space.