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What a brilliant piece this is by the gloriously provocative @Jameela Jamil and what struck me most reading it wasn't actually her view about Britain's history, important though that conversation clearly is and undeniable as the facts you've cited are. It was what happened when she as a woman publicly challenged a story that some people hold very tightly about themselves, their identity and their country. Somewhere along the way, the response stopped being about whether her argument was right or wrong and became about her as a person. Her historical observation became a personal attack in their mind, even though it clearly wasn't. Depraved. Dangerous. Cretin. Annoying. Go back to India and eventually the appalling threats of sexual and physical violence. I've been writing recently about what happens when someone challenges our behaviour and we experience it as though they're challenging who we are as a person. Once that shift happens, curiosity generally evaporates because we're no longer asking, "Is there anything here I should understand?" We're defending ourselves against something that feels deeply personal, even though it wasn't intended to be. However, there seems to be another layer to this when the person doing the challenging is a woman. Women have spent generations learning what happens when they make people uncomfortable so they soften it, phrase it carefully, remove the anger, avoid sounding difficult or aggressive. They make their point in a way that allows everybody listening to remain comfortable. They manage the reaction before they even open their mouth. The risk if they don't? Well, insecure men have a remarkably well stocked vocabulary ready for them: Difficult. Emotional. Aggressive. Bitter. Unlikeable. Annoying. Ball breaker. The list is embarrassingly long. What I find fascinating is how rarely we stop and examine the other side of that transaction. Instead of continually asking women to communicate uncomfortable truths in increasingly acceptable ways, perhaps we should start asking why the people with the greatest difficulty hearing them require so much emotional protection in the first place. Whether somebody agrees with everything Jameela wrote here or not, there's an enormous difference between challenging their argument and trying to make the woman making it so uncomfortable, frightened or personally diminished that she stops making it altogether. One is intellectual engagement whilst the other is silencing through fear. I particularly love her final line about annoying women! History is full of women who were considered deeply inconvenient by the people whose comfort depended upon them remaining quiet. Women who were called difficult because they wouldn't stay small. Women who were called aggressive because they wouldn't apologise for the truth. Perhaps we should stop asking why some women are so difficult to silence and start asking why men are still so uncomfortable when they refuse to be. Thank you for refusing.🥰