Hatred

• These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President.
• The Austrian is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, best known in the English-speaking world as a novelist.
• By the same token – and this is something Felski neglects to mention – his writing can be extremely funny.

A complex writer

• Through childhood and adolescence he was unhappy and suffered from a host of life-threatening lung ailments.
• Eventually, his tuberculous-damaged lungs put paid to his youthful musical aspirations of being an opera singer, so he turned to writing.
• Throughout his career, Bernhard’s feelings about his homeland were complex and fraught.
• He was repeatedly attacked for being a Nestbeschmutzer, which roughly translates as “one who fouls their own nest”.

The political landscape of 1975

The President was Bernhard’s response to the volatile political climate in Europe of the time. The president of Bernhard’s demanding play – a fascist dictator in all but name – has just survived an attempt on his life. Anarchists are responsible. There is a possibility the president’s son, who has disappeared, pulled the trigger.

• It was no coincidence the original production opened at the Stuttgart State Theatre on May 21 1975: the same date and city where the key members of the Red Army Faction went on trial.
• The Red Army Faction was also vocal and scathing about Germany’s unwillingness to properly confront its Nazi past.

‘Uncomfortable truths’

The creative team behind this version of The President clearly know their history. In his directorial program notes, Creed acknowledges the violent actions of the Red Army Faction would have loomed large in the imagination of audiences in 1975.

• Similarly, Weaving has spoken approvingly of Bernhard’s willingness to speak “a lot of uncomfortable truths to his own country”.
• In equal measure, however, both Creed and Weaving believe Bernhard’s historically timestamped play can tell us something about the here and now.

Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?
• In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial.
• Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times.

Vague and broad use policies

• Companies issue policies to set the rules for how people can use their models.
• With international human rights law as a benchmark, we found that companies’ misinformation and hate speech policies are too vague and expansive.
• Our analysis found that companies’ hate speech policies contain extremely broad prohibitions.
• To show how vague and broad use policies can affect users, we tested a range of prompts on controversial topics.
• More recently, India confronted Google after Gemini noted that some experts consider the policies of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to be fascist.

Free speech culture

• If they serve a global audience, they may want to avoid content that is offensive in any region.
• This means society has an interest in ensuring such policies adequately protect free speech.
• Even where a similar legal obligation does not apply to AI providers, we believe that the companies’ influence should require them to adopt a free speech culture.
• At least two of the companies we focused on – Google and Anthropic – have recognized as much.

Outright refusals

• Therefore, users’ exposure to hate speech and misinformation from generative AI will typically be limited unless they specifically seek it.
• This is unlike social media, where people have much less control over their own feeds.
• Stricter controls, including on AI-generated content, may be justified at the level of social media since they distribute content publicly.
• Refusals to generate content not only affect fundamental rights to free speech and access to information.

• The Future of Free Speech is a non-partisan, independent think tank that has received limited financial support from Google for specific projects.
• In all cases, The Future of Free Speech retains full independence and final authority for its work, including research pursuits, methodology, analysis, conclusions, and presentation.
• The Future of Free Speech is a non-partisan, independent think tank that has received limited financial support from Google for specific projects.

• People may think weight stigma only manifests as rude comments, is harmless or can even do some good.
• But the reality is that weight stigma is often insidious, and pervasively entrenched into our society and environment.

Fat microaggressions

• The impacts of microaggressions have been described as “death by a thousand cuts,” referring to how seemingly minor incidents, when repeated cumulatively, contribute to real harm.
• With combined input from reports of lived experiences, expert testimony and large studies with diverse samples, we identified four main types of fat microaggressions.

• Think fat jokes, unintelligent, gross, and/or unattractive fat characters on TV and in movies (like “Fat Monica” from Friends or Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal), and thin friends complaining they “feel fat” in front of a larger person and commenting on how much they hate their bodies.
• Our data confirm that indirect microaggressions are the type most experienced by fat people — they invade every aspect of daily life and remind fat people that they are not viewed as OK.

Clothing exclusion

• One type of direct microaggression that emerged as its own category in our analysis was clothing exclusion.
• It is also common to see clothing in stores with claims that “one size fits all,” that really don’t.
• Fat activists have also long recognized that clothing exclusion acts as a proxy for other societal forms of erasure, in that the more standard options fail you, the more you are likely facing other forms of everyday oppressions.

Benevolent weightism

• You would be hard-pressed to find a fat person who has not tried multiple weight-loss methods, only to end up unsuccessful and feeling worse about themselves than ever.
• Indeed, the most likely outcome of weight-loss attempts is weight regain, and usually, weight rebound above your initial starting point.
• Studies that show otherwise are often methodologically flawed and frequently misleading in their headline messaging.

Why fat microaggressions matter

• Across four studies, we established the prominence of fat microaggressions in the lives of fat people and linked experiencing fat microaggressions to poorer mental health, such as greater stress, anxiety and depression, and worse self-esteem.
• Fat microaggressions were even associated with discrimination-related trauma symptoms, including feeling on edge or constantly on guard, fearing embarrassment or feeling isolated from others.

How you can help

• Greater awareness and recognition of fat microaggressions is an important first step to confronting them.
• If you really are concerned about health, do not tell fat people they need fixing; these microaggressions make people’s health worse, not better.
• Challenging anti-fat attitudes when they manifest in these other ways is key to a more inclusive and less harmful world.

Angela Meadows has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Megan Lindloff and Rachel Calogero do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Thirty years ago, the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda senselessly took the lives of over a million innocent people in just 100 days.
• "On this sombre occasion, we stand with the people of Rwanda to honour the victims and the survivors of this genocide.
• "To those survivors who have chosen to make Canada their home, we stand with you always, especially throughout this painful period of commemoration.
• Together, let us reflect on how we can foster a better, more inclusive, and more peaceful world for future generations."