My whole problem with this abstract argument is that is tends to be a detail based question. What if I wanted to argue that the cranial features of blacks demonstrate that they are prone to criminality, or that God decreed that women should be subservient to their husbands, or that women are too intellectually infirm to vote. These were all very respectable arguments to make in 1880, they also render the above quote completely false. Hell, similar arguments have been used as the intellectual basis to enslave millions of people, and I don’t think we need to give people platforms to spread such views, much less accord them personal respect for their “bravery”. They are just assholes making the kind of dumb arguments that assholes make.
Anyway, we don’t, at least in the short term time horizon, live in a rational marketplace of ideas. We live in a nation that elected Trump.
Why propagate and sign a false letter? Why no just do a letter against ghosts if we’re going to make things up? Why not just host a show on Fox and complain about Antifa terrorists destroying our way of life?
What issues, specifically, are people being “silenced” from speaking about? Are people being silenced from reporting or communicating important information that isn’t along the lines of “black people are dumb, hur hur.”
Now, that said, J. K. Rowling got dragged pretty hard for saying that trans women aren’t women. I pretty much agree with her, and I guess my take is semi-controversial in 2020. I also think kpop sucks, and if I were a high profile person who shouted that in an online world full of kpop stans, then I would expect to be dragged by kpoppers. “But muh free speech,” says the weekly columnist. (Can’t even call black people the n-word anymore.)
I think that certainly follows with what I was saying, it’s the whole motivation for valuing free speech. What speech is going to be censored if speech is allowed to be censored. If the government is doing the censoring, it won’t censor the the speech of the powerful and well connected who want to perpetuate the status quo. If the elites are doing the censoring, using their control over platforms and publishing, it probably won’t be speech against their own interests. And if a majority of the population is using the power of their majority to not allow the debate of a minority, then again, that hurts those who lack power.
I just don’t see your reading that that passage means they’re saying there should never be consequences for vile speech.
A woman in the UK (Maya Forstater) lost her job for expressing exactly that opinion on her private Twitter account and had a judge rule against her in an unfair dismissal case. The last Rowling controversy entailed Rowling defending Forstater on Twitter.
It’s pretty gross imo for the left to respond to stuff like this with “well hey, opinions have consequences” because using people’s livelihoods as a threat to extract compliance from them is supposed to be what the left is foundationally against. If you attend the Charlottesville rally and wave a swastika around, that’s one thing, but the bar for getting people fired should be a high one.
Hopefully you mean that there’s differences between trans women and cis women. Like, a very high percentage of straight men say they would not consider dating a trans woman, which to me isn’t necessarily transphobic so much as acknowledging that there are differences between trans women and cis women. A cis man and a trans woman, for example, could never have children, which is a perfectly reasonable reason not to want to date a trans woman. But framing that viewpoint as “trans women aren’t really women” is kind of gross.
I should probably also note simplicitus that in his ruling the judge described that opinion, the one you hold, as “not worthy of respect in a democratic society”.
I find the whole idea of gender identity kind of a weird psychological/sociological phenomenon. I get how a particular “identity” is forced on women and minorities and typically internalized, often with the broader sexism/racism present in various culture constructions of gender or race.
It’s also forced on things like cops and school teachers. If you are a teacher and want to come out as a cop, because you always wanted to be one or feel like you are one, that’s fine, even if your job is as a teacher. If you’re in the cube next to me I may even salute you and act like you’re a cop. And, AFAIK, there may be reasons that in the complex psychological mismash of gender and identity (as historically conditioned and constructed in 2020 North America), that there is something “real” about your preference that I should acknowledge. (Which is what makes me somewhat ambivalent about the subject, as I suspect that might be the case).
However, until I have a better idea of what I that is, I’m mainly just treating you how you prefer to be treated rather then empathizing with your “choice.” Same way I would a Christian who does Ash Wednesday or an Orthodox Jew.
Yep. But we don’t have to play their game and get sucked into the equivalent of “but her emails” for endless cycles. That’s exactly the goal of all that BS. They’re laughing their asses off at us for actually caring.
There’s like 4 threads about out of control left or cancel culture on the old Politics and Shitposting forum. It’s their whole game.
400 years of systematic oppression of minorities and outright genocide of native americans. But the whip snaps back a tiny tiny bit to where a few white people face a possibly unfair consequence for generally abhorrent behavior, and it’s fucking ALL HANDS ON DECK.
When this shit doesn’t happen anymore, I’ll worry about cancel culture. If anyone actually reads this whole thing, then still feels like navel-gazing about cancel culture, well you probably don’t have empathy for people who don’t look like you.
Oh no, you lost your job for saying black people are inferior? Well this guy’s life is ruined by a racist cop and evil system - for having a small amount of medicinal MJ in his car in 20 fucking 16. Meanwhile Elon and Rogan and toking it up w/o a care in the world. Probably gonna rant about cancel culture after they get all high AF. Why can’t I say what I want? So unfair man!
Here’s my problem with “cancel culture” if you want to call it that: Healthcare is a basic right. Yes? How come people aren’t “cancelled” for disagreeing with M4A?
Questioning whether trans women should be allowed to participate in women’s sport, let’s say, does not cause more suffering in the world than the fact that millions of people are uninsured. There’s just no way you can argue that. So why is questioning trans orthodoxy a cancellable offence but questioning M4A is allowable policy discussion? As far as I can see, the answer is just moral disgust. People think that those who aren’t on board with orthodoxy on trans issues are disgusting people, the way conservatives think those with unusual sexual proclivities are disgusting. You can see this in the way the discourse goes, heterodox opinions are routinely called “disgusting”, “abhorrent”, “hateful” etc while only a few on the socialist left would ever use this language in a healthcare policy debate. Since this distaste for dissenters amounts to personal aesthetic preference, I don’t see why I should give a shit.
As I’ve said before, this is all a means of de-emphasising demands for actual, material economic change and burying the left in culture-war shit. It suits the ruling class for leftist identity to be organised around this stuff because it doesn’t require anyone to actually do anything other than employ staffers who will prep you on the correct opinions to express.
We roll our eyes at the sort of people on the right who are induced to vote against their self interest as simply as people yelling ABORTION ABORTION DEAD BABIES but the online left working itself into a lather anytime anyone expresses an opinion they don’t like on social issues is the exact same thing. In fact a hell of a lot worse, since people on the right at least imagine they’re dealing with issues of the life and death of hundreds of thousands of human beings, while the left is distracted from pursuing issues of substance by questions like whether a handful of people can compete at the Olympics or not.
