Peer apologises after anorexia Twitter storm

As Sunday dawned, Joan Bakewell was on the front page of one of Britain’s most respected newspapers. By the day’s end, she had issued a grovelling apology on Twitter.

‘I am full of regret that my reported views have caused distress. I am deeply sorry.’

The peer, president of Birkbeck College at the University of London, had been interviewed by the Sunday Times. One subject had dominated the piece.

‘I am alarmed by anorexia among young people, which arises presumably because they are preoccupied with being beautiful, healthy and thin,’ she said. ‘Lots of young people worry about what shape they are; no one did when I was growing up.’

‘No one has anorexia in societies where there is not enough food. I think it’s possible anorexia could be about narcissism.’

The issue was pertinent. Last year, a record number of children were treated for psychological problems, and admissions in UK hospitals for eating disorders rose by 12%.

But experts responded with scepticism. One specialist said: ‘Anorexia is driven by a need for control, not by narcissism.’ A charity chief executive said eating disorders ‘arise from a complicated interplay of social, genetic and neurological factors’.

Meanwhile, Bakewell spent six hours answering angry tweets. One user called her ‘ignorant’ and ‘highly irresponsible’.

In the mid-20th century, the phrase ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ was popularised in the UK to describe people who sent outraged letters to newspapers. But controversial comments are received with louder indignation in the age of social media.

There were calls to ban and punish writer Germaine Greer last year over her view that transgender women ‘are not women’. Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt was sacked by his university after joking about the role of women in science. And in 2014, scientist Richard Dawkins was criticised for saying he would abort a foetus if he knew it had Down’s syndrome.

Shut up?

Good, say some. Remarks have consequences, and social media is allowing ordinary people to hold others to account for them. Bakewell waded into a debate which she did not understand — hence her word ‘presumably’ — and worsened a stereotype that anorexia sufferers are to blame for their illness. That view causes suffering and deaths.

That is censorious, respond others. Self-appointed guardians of the truth are trying to change the parameters of acceptable thought. Society’s problems will not be solved by making people scared to express their opinions. If Bakewell is mostly wrong, she may still help to find a solution to anorexia; even if she is completely wrong, the public need to know what she thinks.