Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
1mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for September 4, 2025
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Notes -
Generally only if you do it in a way which contravenes another law. To demonstrate, If you stand outside a convicted rapists house and yell over and over Bob Smith is a rapist for days on end you might be charged with harrassment. The truth value of your statement isn't what the law is taking issue with. They agree with you hes a rapist, but how, when and how often you say it is the issue.
The trans part isn't really the issue, its just the UK in general is less bothered about restrictions of free speech than the US, especially when it comes to maintaining the peace (charitably put, not rocking the boat if less so) so our harrassment and other speech statutes are fairly broad.
As an anecdote I was back home recently and at a public event a man was (as my mum put it) carrying on about the Good Friday Agreement. He wasn't being threatening, but the police rolled up and hauled him away anyway, with the assistance and full support of the public. Were his free speech rights abrogated? Probably. But it made the event a lot more enjoyable.
But that's not what is happening. I mean yes, if you stand near someone house and yell anything for days on end, that'd be harassment, even if you yell the multiplication table. But nobody camps under trans people homes and yells for days. At least not any of the prominent prosecuted cases did that. The prosecution clearly is done for the contents of the message, not for the form it's expressed in. People get arrested for tweets, and not even for directed tweets. That's about the easiest form of speech to ignore of all possible forms. You can't say it's about "how" - it's all about precluding the possibility of discussing certain topics.
I, of course, exaggerated a bit when I pretended it makes no sense. It makes a lot of sense, if only you let go of the premise that the government is the representative of the people and wants to do what's best for them (or at least wants to align in the general direction of interests of the people). If you face the reality - that the government is a parasite which seeks control over the population and is hostile to anything that threatens this control - then it all makes perfect sense. It doesn't matter whether the government agrees with you or not on the truth value - the mere fact that it told you not to speak that and you did is what must be shut down (you rocked the boat!). That's why in Russia people who say Putin goes too easy on Ukrainians can get jailed as much as people who oppose the war - the problem with both is that they allow themselves to think something Putin didn't think first. That's the offense. UK is not there yet, but they are already on the rails that lead there.
I know. UK never had freedom of speech, not even before the Great Awokening, though the abuses usually concentrated along the lines of sleazy lawyers exploiting the system, not governmental censorship per se. Now the government is leading it, hard. Of course they claim it's for "maintaining the peace", though how it makes more peaceful to allow Hamas banners but jail people for English banners, it's a bit hard to understand, unless in the terms of most base cowardice. It's not that rocking the boat is not allowed, it's that some people are allowed to rock the boat, and some aren't.
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