Cancel Culture and the Harper's Letter

The point was precisely that we shouldn’t have one here. I think it was pretty clear in context that I was defending Rushdie, not Khomeini.

MOBS

Well, I’ve read newspapers.

Come the fuck on, he said kneeling (a form of protest) was disrespecting the flag but it’s not. Also he wasn’t cancelled or anything like that, just mildly criticized in public because what he said was dumb as shit

I do remember the time you were harsh of the terrible effect of cancel culture towards the Alabama public transit system. Or that misguided cancellation of South Africa by the AAM mob.

Rivaldo, I wanted to respectfully address this as I believe you are misidentifying exactly who are those people that are using trans people as culture war fodder, and also to share a perspective on the struggle for trans rights that you or others may want to incorporate into how they view the issue.

Because I am a straight, white, cis, male who formerly was transphobic and homophobic; you may wonder, who is he to speak on this topic. Candidly, there are better resources for gaining improved understanding rather than listening to me. My perspective is influenced by the activism that I’ve done over the past decade, which has been mainly with LGBTQ organizations full of people who were far more accepting of me than I had previously been of them.

Currently trans people are culture war fodder because of those opposed to their equal rights, not because of those fighting for their rights. Full stop.

When we look at the historic struggles for civil rights in the USA, whether it be for the rights of women, indigenous people, Black people, LGBTQ, etc. we will see common methods of opposition. Examples of this can be seen in opposition to women’s “crazy” demand to have the right to vote, or criticism of MLK’s being an “outsider” or his tactics.

The opponents of equal rights will attempt to frame the struggle and the demands of activists as:

  1. crazy/hysteric

  2. counter to god’s law or “natural rights”

  3. and they will clutch their pearls about activists’ tone and/or tactics

Consider how the opponents of trans rights try to redirect our focus away from the rampant discrimination and violence(much of it institutionalized) that trans people face in their lives, and try to get us to focus on something like transgender participation in athletics. Or they try to decry “cancel culture” as running amok, because people are calling out transphobic language, actions, and support of discriminatory policies.

I am not claiming that I am an expert in how best to be inclusive of trans people when it comes to athletics. I do know that we don’t need to have fully resolved how to best be inclusive of trans people in sports prior to taking action that ameliorates the violence and discrimination that trans people face right now in their daily lives. I am confident that even if you and I could magically produce a coherent system for including trans people in sports, there would still be transphobic people opposed to equal rights to trans people outside of athletics.

So, when someone like Joe Rogan opines on trans rights by focusing on athletics, he is(intentionally or otherwise) using his platform in a way that negatively impacts how his audience considers the issue of trans rights. He could focus on the glaring and obvious violence and discrimination trans people face and the need for civil rights for all people, but he doesn’t. Ask yourself, would someone after listening to Rogan be more likely to think “I should stand in solidarity with trans people!” or “Trans people are ruining sports. Why are trans rights activists so crazy”. Then ask yourself how different the actions of people would be in the future if what Rogan spoke about made them think the former rather than the latter.

If someone, such as Joe Rogan, with a ratio of minutes spent in dialogue with the likes of Ben Shapiro vs minutes spent in dialogue with an expert on trans rights of approximately 1,000:0 decides to approach the topic of trans rights the way Rogan does, I believe he is acting with reckless indifference, and the president of the Human Rights Campaign is correct for calling him out.

10 Likes

Compare that tweet to Ted Cruz encouraging boycotts of the NFL. Yeah he’s so worried about “cancel culture”

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/785978910093680641?s=21

1 Like

I really don’t know what most of the signatories are thinking. Bari Weiss and JK Rowling clearly have an axe to grind. I’m not exactly filled with sympathy for someone who shows their ass and then begs “free speech” when folks are mean to them on Twitter. So, fuck you to whomever signed the letter for utilitarian purposes rather than principle.
Like Yuv said, the letter never actually mentions “cancel culture” and the title of the Daily Beast article is pretty unfortunate. But there’s pretty clearly a generational divide between Weiss and, say, Martin Amis. Also between the two of us. I’m not going to scroll through my above comments to figure out when I wrote “cancel culture” when I ought to have written “free speech,” but I imagine there lies some of the confusion, and I apologize for that.

2 Likes

Speaking of cancel culture

2 Likes

This is Salman Rushdie all over again

2 Likes

Why can’t their racist, homophobic, and sexist comments be discussed openly in a fair debate? Maybe we should consider their argument rationally and perhaps he can be given an academic appointment.

2 Likes

I genuinely don’t understand the people who believe bad ideas are only beaten by debating them. That never happens! Anyone who has spent 10 minutes in a comment section or forum online knows this.

3 Likes

counterpoint: drew brees is a piece of shit. and this most recent anti-blm kneeling thing wasn’t the first evidence of that.

2 Likes

Yeah. I’m not interested in being an expert on a lot of things, and neither are many other people. Studying how to most tactfully navigate this modern world, with all the vociferous special interests, is not an activity near the top of virtually anyone’s hierarchy of priority. And it probably shouldn’t be. Sounds like an exercise in large-scale immiseration.

I don’t mean to be callous and disagreeable(though that’s my well-earned reputation here), but this forum is about ideas and this uncomfortable world we inhabit, not about conformity and absolutism.

2 Likes

Damn, he probably figured he worked at the one place that would be fine.

https://dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/articles/Blake-neff-tucker-carlson

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/date-labhe-is-a-proud-trump-supporter-she-was-not-turned-off/2017/09/19/c5ae318e-8387-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html

image

Craziest takeaway from the CNN business is apparently there’s a site called AutoAdmit, which at some point was for lawyers and law students, that’s full-blown stormfront with threads with uncensored N-world in the title. That’s a full level or two worse than Chiefsplanet even.

Makes you wonder how many freaking sites like that are there? And how did that site morph into what it was?

On May 27, Neff wrote that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib — known collectively as “The Squad” — want to “MAKE YOUR COUNTRY A DUMPING GROUND FOR PEOPLE FROM THIRD WORLD SHITHOLES.” Responding to a thread on June 27 about whether “whites fear what’s going to happen to them in 10-20 yrs,” Neff wrote that he has “no plans to stay” in the country “that long.” In December 2019, he said that “once Democrats have the majorities to go full FK WHITEY, things are going to get really wacky really quickly." He argued at the time that there is a "large minority of whites who are fully supportive of a Fk Whitey agenda” and that “there’s a suicidal impulse to Western peoples that honestly feels almost biological in origin.”

When not making his own bigoted comments, Neff has shown a willingness to respond to others who were, without expressing any hesitation, much less disgust, about what they’ve said. For instance, in 2016 he replied to a thread with the title, “Mary Poppins getting raped by a pack of wild nirs at the park; kids watching." That same year, he commented on a thread titled, "DIKES get wrong CUM at CUMBANK. N*R pops out.” Just last month, Neff replied to a comment on the thread that said, “And the n**s are always honor students or some bullshit.” (The language on both posts was not censored on the forum.)

It’s crazy that I can’t wait to get out of this country because of the racism, and these guys can wait to get out because it’s not racist enough. Just blows my mind.

I also lol at the idea of CNN business trying to go though my 92k posts on 22, 20k on Chiefsplanet, and however many here - looking for something to nail me on. It might be in there but good luck. You’ll figure out I’ve done a lot of drugs in my life but that’s about it.

1 Like

I think I’m understanding what your saying. At least in part.

Regardless, I will say this though. If you value non-conformity, I gotta tell ya…the trans people I know are the most nonconforming people I’ve ever met. And not just when it comes to gender. You’d dig them.

So yeah autoadmit still up, still tons of threads with N-word, kike, etc. right in the title.

The first reply to the thread about Blake Neff is just the N-word 6 times. Such bold free speech absolutists!

JFC

Yeah. It’s almost like we’re the shithole country

There’s a site that’s like a lite version of that for Econ PhDs

1 Like