What do you call a woman who has two black eyes? Nothing. She’s already been told twice.
Do you find this joke funny? Never mind answering. What you or I think doesn’t matter because, by telling it, I’ve already committed an imprisonable offence. A crime, in other words.
It’s for exchanging such jokes on a private WhatsApp group that three Met officers are being tried at Westminster magistrates’ court. They are accused of sending “grossly racist, sexist, misogynistic” messages, sometimes when on duty.
One member of the group, PC Wayne Couzens, actually abducted, raped and murdered a woman, for which he is now serving a whole-life sentence. Personally, I’d have him strung up, but we’ll leave that aside for now.
Most people, even those who are less bloodthirsty than I, would agree that doing such things is a crime. However, all sensible people should realise than joking about them shouldn’t and – in a sane country – wouldn’t be criminalised.
But who has ever said we are living in a sane country? Or, for that matter, a sane world?
To give you a selection of the officers’ crimes, they referred to rape as “struggle snuggle”. They joked that victims of domestic violence “love it… that’s why they are repeated victims more than often.”
Describing three such incidents, one of the cops wrote: “I bet they all had one thing in common. Women that don’t listen.”
They also opined that all Muslims are terrorists and suggested that people with Down’s syndrome should be used for “target practice”. For fear of traumatising you for life, I’ll spare you any references to their racial and homophobic slurs. No one will be forced to read such filth, not on my watch.
The prosecuting QC said the public would be “grossly offended” by the comments. (Don’t you just love the subjunctive mood?) And there was no doubt that “each of the messages was plainly grossly offensive by any objective standard.”
Calling such standards objective suggests that the poor chap doesn’t even know what the word means. Thus neither I nor Penelope nor any of my friends would be “grossly offended” by any of those comments. Some of us would find them unfunny and tasteless. However, if bad taste were to be criminalised, I’d suggest we’d instantly fill every prison to the gunwales and then have to build hundreds more.
For example, the group mentioned in the previous paragraph would send down anyone sporting tattoos and facial metal. All attendees of pop concerts and raves. People who wear ‘brown in town’ (shoes, that is) or socks with sandals. Anyone wearing legible clothing of any kind, especially T-shirts. Anyone who has ever referred to the Earth as “our planet”. Anyone who thinks Greta Thunberg is right. Anyone who has ever used words like ‘homophobia’, ‘transphobia’ or ‘misogyny’. Anyone who thinks animals have rights.
So much for objectivity. For tastes can’t be objective. They can only be good or bad, and it takes subjective judgement to decide which is which. That, by the way, doesn’t mean that all subjective judgements are equal. They aren’t. But they are all indeed subjective.
I always hesitate to say that Britain is as bad as the Soviet Union of my youth, or, God forbid, even worse. On balance, it isn’t.
But the balance is definitely tipping that way. In my university days (1964-1970) one could be reprimanded for cracking a political joke or mocking one of the Soviet leaders, usually the eminently mockable Brezhnev. Repeat offenders could possibly be expelled, especially if they showed no remorse.
But they wouldn’t be arrested and imprisoned. In my parents’ generation, yes. A wrong sense of humour could easily earn the wag a one-way trip to Stalin’s death camps. But during the more vegetarian period of Soviet history, politically incorrect jokes weren’t treated as a capital offence.
On the evidence of the on-going trial, and many other such gross abuses of justice, Britain is currently somewhere between Brezhnev’s and Stalin’s USSR, but moving backwards towards the latter.
Now have you heard the one about women getting paid less than men? That’s because a woman’s work is never done.
Do you think I’ll get off with a suspended sentence?
I was raised believing that sticks and stones could break my bones but words would never hurt me. Underwritten by that wisdom I can attest that nothing anyone can say can hurt my feelings or insult me – without me giving permission to the sayer so I usually don’t. I’ve said many times that the culprit in these word wars is directly attributable to our elevating feelings over thinking. And so a brave woman in Norway dared to proclaim that a man could not be a lesbian and is now facing prison time. If you get arrested Alex, I’ll start a GoFundMe for you. 🙂
Thank you. But could you start it even if I don’t get arrested?
I’m confused. These people now believe in an “objective standard” for claiming offense – or that some *could* be offended – but they still claim there is no objective truth, right? How in the world do the reasonable people fight back, when some bad taste (who is deciding now on these “objective” standards?) can land one in prison?
With a crowbar, would be my preference. But that too is against the law.
” In my university days (1964-1970) one could be reprimanded for cracking a political joke or mocking one of the Soviet leaders, usually the eminently mockable Brezhnev.”
Joking in the old Soviet Union was an indication that a person was not serious about life or becoming the New Soviet Man?
It was the only way to stay sane.
In Russia they definitely won’t get you criminalised for such jokes, no way. But is it a sane country?
That’s a necessary condition, but, obviously, not a sufficient one.
The right to give offense (freedom of speech) has morphed into the right to take offence. There’s gold in them thar grievance hills ! I remember in the ’80’s here in Oz , a woman office worker was so traumatised by a furry toy, Phallic in nature that she got paid leave for a long time and her and her weasel husband were financially compensated , handsomely if I recall . The dawn of political correctness .