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BEWARE OF THE MANOSPHERE? MISOGYNY AND TOXIC MASCULINITY
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/beware-the-manosphere-misogyny-and-toxic-masculinity/

Netflix’s hit series Adolescence seemed to capture the current anxiety surrounding young men and what they might be getting up to online. The show tells the story of a teenage boy who, seemingly out of the blue, stabs and kills his female classmate after she calls him an ‘incel’ online. The message of the show points to influencers like Andrew Tate and the so-called ‘manosphere’ as the cause for the boy’s violent tendencies.

For the uninitiated, the manosphere is a term which incapsulates the various YouTube channels, chat forums and other corners of the internet where men can get advice on everything from parenting skills to relationship advice – often with a sexist twist. Many took the message of Adolescence and ran with it. The UN has ‘sounded the alarm over online misogyny’. Politicians even argued that the show should be compulsory viewing for school-age children.

But others are worried that the Adolescence effect has caused something of a moral panic. Figures like Tate might enjoy online popularity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that young men are all turning into misogynists. In fact, the finger-pointing around discussions about toxic masculinity and what boys should and shouldn’t do has, some argue, pushed young men into the hands of Tate and his contemporaries who preach pride instead of shame about being a man.

As one person interviewed by the Manchester Evening News put it, some kids have never heard the word ‘masculinity’ without the word ‘toxic’ added to it. Critics also argue that relationships between men and women have, in many ways, never been better. Sexism used to be the social norm for our mothers and grandmothers, but is increasingly becoming an anomaly.

Do we need to reassess what we mean by misogyny and toxic masculinity? Are we in danger of writing off all young men and boys as having a problem with women that needs fixing? Or is the new world of identity politics and online content influencing men to behave in a way that is unacceptable, whatever you term it? What is really going on with how men feel about women in the real world, away from laptop screens? And if we’ve failed to succeed up until now, how can we change how we talk to our sons about what kind of men we want them to be?

Speakers
Julie Bindel
journalist; author, Lesbians: Where are we now?; feminist campaigner; podcast host, Julie in Genderland

Dr Az Hakeem
consultant psychiatrist and medical director, Psyche Clinic; author, Trans and Detrans

Nina Power
writer and philosopher; author, What Do Men Want? Masculinity and its Discontents

Dr Stuart Waiton
senior lecturer, sociology and criminology, Abertay University; author, Scared of the Kids: curfews, crime and the regulation of young people; chair, Scottish Union for Education

Dr Joanna Williams
academic; author, How Woke Won and Women vs Feminism

Chair
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want

Beware of the Manosphere? Misogyny and Toxic Masculinity

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BALLOON DEBATE: WHAT'S THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH OF THE PAST 20 YEARS?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/balloon-debate-whats-the-greatest-scientific-or-medical-breakthrough-of-the-past-20-years/

The Battle of Ideas festival is 20 years old this year. As a festival that has always celebrated scientific progress, we’re marking this anniversary with this special Balloon Debate, which tackles the world’s greatest scientific or medical breakthrough over the lifetime of the festival.

Six participants will argue for their choice in a light-hearted debate with a serious intent. Audience participation encourages you to agree, disagree, challenge, assess… and dismiss those arguments and the scientific or medical developments that you find unworthy to wear the crown.

The panel will have a few minutes only to convince you of their choice. Could it be CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology? How about Functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)? Maybe it’s the iPhone, artificial photosynthesis to create carbon-neutral fuels, AI and large language models (LLMs), artificial organs, the Higgs Boson discovery, weight-loss drugs or self-driving cars that will win your favour. This balloon debate will be informative and fun. There will be outrage as apparent frontrunners get knocked out and less-obvious challengers make a charge for the podium.

The discussion allows just three minutes for each panellist’s defence before you, the audience, takes them to task. You can challenge or reinforce their choice. The audience then votes to chuck three contenders out of the virtual balloon before the remaining candidates make a final plea for your vote.

You have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to determine the greatest scientific and medical breakthrough of this generation. Come along and make history.

Speakers
Dr Stuart Derbyshire
associate professor, deputy head of psychology, National University of Singapore

Dominic Frisby
writer; comedian; author, The Secret History of Gold: Myth, Money, Politics and Power

Rob Lyons
science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Economy Forum; author, Panic on a Plate

Sebastian Moore
national organiser, Social Democratic Party

Simon Nash
environmentalist; speaker; activist and founder, Green Oil bicycle lubes; chair, Green Drinks London

Lauren Razavi
executive director, Plumia; author, Global Natives

Dr Paul Reeves
developer of manufacturing simulation technology

Host
Andy Shaw
co-founder and organiser, Comedy Unleashed

Balloon debate: what's the greatest scientific breakthrough of the past 20 years?

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BOOKSHOP BARNIE: BIJAN OMRANI ON GOD IS AN ENGLISHMAN
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/meet-the-author-bijan-omrani-on-god-is-an-englishman/

Bijan Omrani’s latest book, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England, is an exploration of how religion has been part of our island story for almost 2,000 years. Amongst other things, he explores the foundational impact of the church on the language, laws, education, government and morality of England. He contrasts this with the contemporary decline of Christianity in England, and asks what this means for government, civil society and established mechanisms of authority, as well as for our understanding of history, creativity, belief and truth.

Historian Simon Heffer lays the blame for the collapse of Christianity squarely on the shoulders of twenty-first-century abuses by the Church of England. Omrani identifies the 1960s as the source of the decline. Author John Milbank argues that the rot set in with the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

The Critic magazine review says: ‘The purpose of Omrani’s book is not so much to uncover anything new but rather, at a time when it is desperately needed, to reassert things which were once self-evident.’

With the prime minister an avowed atheist, the leader of the opposition declaring her agnosticism and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, expressing doubts about the existence of God, is it time to hang up the cassock? Is Christianity’s time over? Or is a faith in God essential to renewing our faith in humanity?

Speaker
Dr Bijan Omrani
historian, University of Exeter; columnist; author, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England

Host
Austin Williams
director, Future Cities Project; honorary research fellow, XJTLU, Suzhou, China; author, China’s Urban Revolution

Bookshop Barnie: Bijan Omrani on God is an Englishman

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ARE THE OLD POLITICAL PARTIES OVER?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/are-the-old-political-parties-over/

Are the mainstream parties facing extinction or can they bounce back by the time of the next General Election in 2029? Can the Tories recover from 14 years of misrule? Will the Labour Party survive from its current economic woes? Will the political vacuum be filled by Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats or the ‘challenger’ parties like Reform or the Greens?

Take the Conservative Party: the oldest party in the world currently looks as if it is facing electoral wipeout. In a recent survey, 42 per cent of Conservative voters in the 2024 General Election said that even they wouldn’t vote for them. The party that squandered Brexit is desperately looking around for a purpose. Some Tories believe that Robert Jenrick poses a more credible alternative than the current leader, Kemi Badenoch.

But are they both fighting for a hopeless cause? Jenrick’s crime-fighting TikTok videos and Badenoch’s recent support of oil exploration got lots of media coverage, but Net Zero and the current failed model of policing were both introduced on their watch. Are they going back to their roots – if they can remember what those roots are – or are they simply mimicking Trump and Farage’s agendas from the sidelines?

Meanwhile, Labour seems to be imploding. A recent Ipsos poll ranked the current UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, as the most unpopular leader in modern times. In July 2024, his government won almost two-thirds of all seats, with a 174 majority in the Commons, yet a year later it is collapsing in the polls. The government has presided over cuts and tax rises, strikes and bailouts, two-tier justice and a zero-growth economy. The idea that if you pinned a red rosette on a donkey in Wales, it’d get elected no longer holds true.

Far from ‘smashing the gangs’, the immigration scandal that Labour inherited from the Tories means it is haemorrhaging support in Red Wall seats. Preferring Davos over Westminster, Starmer seems to prefer hob-nobbing with world leaders while taking British democracy for granted.

Yet the death of both Labour and the Conservatives has been declared numerous times before, only for them to revive. Is it too soon to count them out? Is Britain’s political map being redrawn, or torn up? Might proportional representation reinvigorate the mainstream parties? Must we wait for four more years? We’ll take a vote on it.

Speakers
Rosie Duffield MP
member of parliament for Canterbury

Dr Richard Johnson
writer; senior lecturer in politics, Queen Mary University of London; co-author, Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922

Mark Littlewood
director, Popular Conservatism; broadcaster, columnist, the Telegraph and the Mail

Tim Montgomerie
conservative journalist; founder, ConservativeHome, UnHerd and Centre for Social Justice

Graham Stringer MP
member of parliament, Blackley and Middleton South

Chair
Bruno Waterfield
Brussels correspondent, The Times

Are the old political parties over?

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LETTERS ON LIBERTY: ABORTION AND THE FREEDOM TO FORE OUR OWN FATE
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/letters-on-liberty-abortion-and-the-freedom-to-forge-our-own-fate/

Since 2020, the Academy of Ideas has published Letters on Liberty – a radical pamphlet series aimed at reimagining arguments for freedom today and inspiring rowdy, good-natured disagreement.

In her Letter – Abortion and the Freedom to Forge Our Own Fate – Ann Furedi, an author and former chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, argues that debates about abortion often focus on when human life begins in the womb. Instead, she argues that it is important to consider a different human life – that of the woman.

Furedi argues that the future of a woman’s pregnancy should be for her alone to decide, and this decision ought to be regarded as personal and private. There is no clearer illustration of the way choice, agency and responsibility matters than the consequences of a woman’s decision about her pregnancy, she says. To prevent someone from exercising their own choice, in a personal and private matter, is to strip them of their dignity and their humanity. Most importantly, she argues, we cannot respect the principles of freedom without acknowledging the freedom of reproductive choice.

However, abortion is still regulated by law and legal limits, which can lead to a clash between an individual woman’s rights and policy priorities. This was vividly illustrated by the recent backlash after MPs voted to change abortion legislation to stop women in England and Wales being prosecuted for ending their pregnancy after 24 weeks. The landslide vote to decriminalise the procedure – considered the biggest change to abortion laws in England and Wales for nearly 60 years – was met with horror in some quarters and not confined to traditional anti-abortion circles. For example, even some feminists argued foetal viability creates a clash of rights. So, is abortion such a clear cut issue for women’s freedom?

Join Ann and respondents to discuss whether such controversies and public qualms might undermine UK abortion rights. How does a decision to continue or end a pregnancy relate to a woman’s freedom to shape her own life? With abortion regulation in many US states as well as other countries becoming more restrictive, does this reflect public sentiment? If not, how should we make the case for bodily autonomy in the twenty-first century?

Speakers
Dr Piers Benn
philosopher, author and lecturer

Ann Furedi
author, The Moral Case for Abortion; former chief executive, BPAS

Margo Martin
PhD student, Aberystwth University

Jacob Phillips
professor of systematic theology, St Mary’s University, Twickenham; author, Obedience is Freedom

Chair
Ella Whelan
co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want

Letters on Liberty: Abortion and the Freedom to Forge Our Own Fate

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INCITEMENT LAW: A TOOL FOR CENSORSHIP?
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/incitement-law-a-tool-of-censorship/

After riots that followed three fatal stabbings in Southport last year, over 30 people were arrested for social-media posts, and many subsequently convicted. Most prominently, Lucy Connolly was jailed 31 months for ‘stirring up racial hatred’ after tweeting ‘set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’. Andrew McIntyre received seven and a half years for posting on his Telegram channel a call for attacks on mosques and including maps. But since then, Labour councillor Ricky Jones has been acquitted of encouraging violent disorder when urging attendees at a London rally to cut the throats of far-right protesters. And punk duo Bob Vylan escaped police charges for chanting ‘death, death to the IDF’ to Glastonbury crowds and BBC viewers.

Such cases have reignited debate over the definition and purpose of the charge of ‘incitement’. Sitting at the murky intersection between speech and actions, even firm free-speech advocates draw differing conclusions. In respect of Lucy Connolly, Lord Sumption defended the conviction as consistent with the law. Others, such as Andrew Doyle and the Free Speech Union, said that Connolly’s words either fall short of true incitement or her punishment was disproportionate to the crime. What factors determine an offence of incitement, placing what is said beyond the realm of free speech within the law?

While liberal democracies traditionally drew a clear line between speech and action, this line is blurring. In Britain, ‘hate speech’ legislation can mean that emotional impact is conflated with intent, subjective offence with objective threat, and expressions deemed likely to incite hatred can be punished regardless of whether violence follows.

In the US, incitement is strictly defined by the Brandenburg test: speech must be intended to incite ‘imminent lawless action’ and likely to produce such action. Few cases have ever met this threshold. But growing criticism of a lack of regulations on ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’, and disapproval of Trump’s actions on free speech, mean that constitutional protections are being tested. Will incitement become an issue in America, too?

How should incitement be defined?  When does robust speech become criminal incitement and how should free speech be balanced with public order? Do we need a Brandenburg test in Britain, or is America’s approach dangerously lax? Is there a danger that protecting public safety is a pretext for silencing people, and that law becomes a tool of political policing, weaponising incitement law for ideological ends? And what counts – or should count – as free speech, even if it’s offensive to many?

Speakers
Albie Amankona
broadcaster; financial analyst; executive member, 2022 Group; champion, Next Gen Tories; general council, LGBT+ Conservatives; co-founder, Conservatives Against Racism.

Steven Barrett
barrister; broadcaster; writer on law, Spectator

Bryn Harris
Chief Legal Counsel, Free Speech Union

Dr Joanna Williams
academic; author, How Woke Won and Women vs Feminism

Chair
Luke Gittos
criminal lawyer; author, Human Rights – Illusory Freedom; director, Freedom Law Clinic

Incitement law: a tool of censorship?

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Beware of the Manosphere? Misogyny and Toxic Masculinity

Academy of Ideas

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