In the past they would put a witches’ bridle on women who yapped too much. Any woman judged to be a gossip or a hysteric or just too darn opinionated risked having this iron muzzle attached to her head to keep her babbling tongue in place. That’d shut her up.
Today, more subtle methods of tongue-clamping are used on outspoken women. Who needs metal contraptions when women can be Twittershamed into silence? Public humiliation and the threat of social ostracism have replaced muzzling as the preferred method for taming shrews.
Cancel culture grows fatter and more crazed with every retraction it extracts
Just ask Róisín Murphy. The great Irish songstress, the queen of new disco, has been humbled by a misogynistic mob. Her offence? She expressed an opinion. Worse, she expressed an opinion on transgenderism. Surely she must have known that no woman is permitted to do that without first having her thoughts vetted by the mostly male guardians of correct gender thought?
It was on her personal Facebook page that she gave voice to her blasphemous beliefs.
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