Snowflakes falling

Morning, everyone. Or I suppose it could be evening, where you are. Or maybe you live in space, in which case who knows what the hell time it is?


Whatever the time, it's an odd time to be alive. For many reasons. Here's today's.

Yes, it's the Daily Mail again. But don't worry - I'm not here to specifically kick them in their nasty, lying, racist face. Well, not for long. I'm here because they've provided an excellent example of something which has been getting on my nerves for a while.


So. The top of the page is a follow up to a story from yesterday. See the picture of the two women, with their legs all plastered over in red? That's Theresa May - evil Queen of the Country Formerly Known as the UK - and Nicola Sturgeon - First Minister of Place We All Want to Run Away To And Where Midge Ure Comes From.


Yesterday the Mail ran that same picture on their front page, except without the red 'CENSORED' sign over it. They were very excited, you see, to find a picture of two women with legs. They giggled and squealed like tiny little boys might. They even thought of the awesome pun 'Legs-it'. Which sounds a bit like Brexit. Which is clever and funny.

A man opening the Daily Mail, yesterday.

Anyway, many people thought this was terrible and stupid and childish and sexist and the sort of thing only dickheads do. They thought it was demeaning and reductive to define two powerful women by their physical attributes. Especially in the context of it being 2017 and not, for example, one of those films where Robin Askwith climbed up a ladder to see a lady's bum.


The headline we see above is the Mail's reaction to this criticism. They've called it a "Legs-it storm". And they're attacking the people who complained. And it's this that bothers me.


There are two phrases here that have been chosen to attack the complainers. "Get a life" and "Censored by the left". I'm hearing phrases like these a lot recently, and it's no accident.

"Get a life" is a favoured tactic of the right to dismiss the concerns of dissenting voices. I've seen it a lot on comments boards, when discussing the recent protests against Trump, or debating the rise of racism in the UK. It suggests that the only reason you're complaining is because you're a pathetic individual without any friends. A sad, lonely obsessive who gets cross about pointless trivia.


It's part of the 'snowflake' narrative. You've seen that, I assume. The idea that anyone complaining about anything is a delicate, over-emotional weakling, who can't cope with the real world. That the supposed 'heat' of real issues causes them to melt, so they need to hide away from life.


That's why they've chosen the word 'censored', in that headline. They like that word. It suggests that freedom of expression, freedom of thought itself, is under threat from pathetic snowflakes like me. That I'm so afraid of being upset, I'll clamp down on your freedoms to make sure I stay safe.


That I don't like "Legs-it" because it offends me.



But here's the problem with that narrative. It is, as William Shakespeare said, total horseshit based on a false initial premise, and thus totally bloody worthless.

I'm not offended by the Daily Mail. Well, Ok, maybe I am a bit. But that's not why I object to their constant stream of unfiltered wankjizzle.

I object to them because they are morally wrong. Their actions are harmful. The things they say and do make the world worse. That's not being offended. That's having an intellectual opposition to their ideology.

Their emphasis on May and Sturgeon's legs is problematic because, like so much the Mail says, it furthers a narrative which objectifies women. It tells every woman reading it that it doesn't matter how powerful or successful you become, you will always basically be judged on your body. You are there to be commented upon, looked at, evaluated and, ultimately, either desired or rejected based on how well you conform with our idea of what it is to be attractive.

And it tells men pretty much the same. Women are not as good as you. They are not deserving of your respect. They are things. Objects.

It feeds into anorexia. It feeds into violence. It feeds into suicide. It feeds into the constant struggle for men and women to work out who the hell they are, and how to relate to each other.


We're not offended by your headlines, you parasitic worms. We're not crying because we think women's legs need censoring, as if we just got here on a coach party from Victorian England.


Being offended doesn't mean anything. People are offended by seeing breastfeeding in public. They used to get offended at finding a black person in their bathroom. Some still do. It doesn't mean anything. It's certainly not the basis for an argument.


What we've done - and this is what bothers you - is we've seen what you're doing and we think it's wrong. We have a calm, clear moral objection to you. We think your ideology is nasty, cowardly and self serving. We think you are run by old, white men who are terrified of change and will use all their power to stop it happening.


We've worked out that you love money more than reason. That you have no shame. That you are weak minded, timid anti-intellectuals who'd rather make things worse, on a daily basis, than face up to the fact that the world doesn't just belong to you.


That's not being offended. That's having used logical thought and come to a conclusion. You'd love it if we were offended, because that would suggest we hadn't really though it through and were just relying on gut instinct. What scares you is the idea that we have thought it through. Because when it comes down to it, you have no argument.


You are snowflakes. You are cry-babies, who scream "She's offended" every time someone calls you out on your bullshit. You are hypocrites, who pretend that every argument against you is born of emotion, yet spiral into a fits of anger if anyone dare criticise you.

I said I wasn't going to just attack the Mail, didn't I? Well, it's not just them. This is an epidemic, whereby everyone hides from criticism by playing the "Offensiveness doesn't matter" card. It's all over the internet, like a rash. People avoiding responsibility for their words and actions, because they revel in being 'offensive', and their freedom of speech. You don't like my racism? Stop being so easily offended!


And there's Trump and his followers, of course. The thin skinned, easily riled personification of stupidity and entitlement. Assuming that people are 'offended' by racism, sexism and disablism. Rather than, for example, genuinely concerned that such language and behaviour cause massive harm and make the world worse.


Finally, it bothers me because we play into it. By 'we' I mean sort of decent, reasonable people. People who would rather vomit on the Daily Mail than read the thing.  Sometimes we play into the hands of these idiots, giving them ammunition for their stupidity guns, by saying that their words and actions are offensive. We assume that 'being offensive' is inherently bad.


It's not. It's arbitrary, and cultural. Don't fight things you find offensive. Fight things you find morally wrong. Sometimes they'll be the same things, of course, but know why you're fighting. Fight them not because they outrage you, but because you can see that they do harm.


That's how we'll beat them. That's how they'll lose. And, most important of all, that's how we get to keep on being offensive ourselves. Because don't forget - we're kind of dicks a lot of the time, too.