Stephen Fry hits out at ‘self-pitying’ sexual assault victims trying to ‘censor’ culture
Stephen Fry has hit out a “self-pitying” culture of censorship around sexual assault in a controversial interview.
The actor, comedian and former QI host spoke to US TV host Dave Rubin for The Rubin Report.
He spoke out against a culture that has “systematically and deliberately pushed back” against the ideals of the Enlightenment, and warned about the censorship of culture.
Speaking about the way things are now considered ‘problematic’, Fry said: “There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape.
“If you say you can’t watch this play – you can’t read Titus Andronicus or you can’t watch Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because your uncle touched you in a nasty place, well… I’m sorry.
“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self pity gets none of my sympathy.
“Self pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.
“Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself.
“The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.”
He added: “Life is complicated and nobody wants to believe that life is complicated. I suppose you might call it the infantilism of our culture.”
“There is deep infantilism in the culture, in terms of what people wear and the films they see, and in terms of the way they think – they can’t bear complexity.
“That you have to think, there are gradations, nobody wants that: they want to be told and to say: ‘This is good, this is bad’.”
