Harper's Letter spurs debate about free speech and open debate

Signed by several scholars I respect ...

It is offensive. "Free Speech" is a freeper idea. Cancel Harpers.

Do shut up r2. The adults are speaking

Free speech is OK but Pay-per Speech is where the money’s at!

Signed by some rather liberal types

But also by Bari Weiss and JK Rowling, the transperson's delight!

The trans activists were scanning the signatories, trying to decide if it was an anti-trans commentary, but were failed because some of the signatories like Margaret Atwood said some pro-trans things lately. However I'm sure there's some screeds on Twitter already from people because JK Rowling signed it and posted it too.

Everyone seems to be taking offense to it in their own way because everyone has been using cancellations instead of debate for too long, they've convinced themselves it's a legitimate way to handle everything.

I was surprised to see Katha Pollitt on that list. I agree with the letter.

Laura Kipnis is someone I would expect to see sign this.....she's an academic who has been a bit of a shitstirrer. Like Paglia but less of a cunt.

The letter is bullshit signed by professional bullshit artists and some idiot leftists who didn't know what they were signing but will do anything for media prominence.

BY FAR the biggest example of cancel culture in the last 50 years is the Israel anti-BDS bill that was floating around congress LAST YEAR. For those who don't know the bill would have made it illegal for federal employees or contractors to boycott Israeli made goods due to their occupation of Palestine. That bill, aggresively supported by Bari Weiss and at least half the other signatories of the letter would have given cancel culture the strength of law. It was also brazenly unconstitutional, but they wanted to vote for it anyway! Just to make the point! Entire companies would have gone out of business if they couldn't prove none their employees were boycotting Israeli goods, an stance a bunch of conservatives just don't like. There is no possible way to support that bill and sign this letter in good faith.

Most of the right wing signatories just don't personally mind racism against non-Jewish people or transphobia. So they just want those specific things protected. It's not the case that they just don't support canceling people.

Like I said, everyone seems to have something to hate about this letter, for their own reasons.

This is basically a generational divide. These people are mostly very old, worn out liberals who scorn progressives for being too far left to succeed in this country's political scene. There are only a few people in this list I still respect - most of them live in comfortable houses with thousands of books and constant phone calls with their professional peers as they review each other's books with delight and scorn anyone who thinks that new ideas are important.

Luckily, in a decade or so, they'll all be senile. Some of them are already there.

This letter is very important.

I find it terrifying how quickly we've moved into a new McCarthy era, this time coming from the left. Somewhere in hell Roy Cohn must be laughing at the irony of the havoc his fool of a protege Donald Trump has been able to wreak, so many years after Cohn himself died in self-loathing and shame.

R12 You have to be truly fucking retarded beyond measure to compare the McCarthy era, where random people were called INTO CONGRESS for hearings on whether or not they held communist sympathies to the modern era where if you say something overtly racist, teenagers and millennials will harrass you on twitter

My mistake, R13--I guess this is totally different and people aren't losing the careers and reputations they've spent a lifetime building? You know, LIKE THE LETTER SAYS?

r11 This is VERY wrong, as should be so obvious to everyone that I don't even really need to write this. Free speech and the principles of adversarial debate belong to every generation who counts itself an intellectual heir to the enlightenment. These ideas have been around a lot longer than any of us and will probably persist in human culture until the very last of us. LOL at "those ideas are just for boomers!!11"

R14 Who has lost their career? Every single person who signed the letter has UNLIMITED access to the op-ed pages of the NYTimes, Washington Post and every other paper of stature of the country. Every single one of them would be booked on cable news tomorrow if they requested it.

And reputation?? No one has a right to any specific reputation. People will like you if you do and say things they think are good and dislike you if you do and say things they think are bad. That is the only society has ever worked. There is no such thing as a reputation that should remain unchanged even as wide swaths of your peers say they loathe you. If you don't want to lose your reputation, don't say loathsome things

Not a generational gap at all. The only gap is intellectual. Coleman Hughes, who is only 24, did not sign the letter but retweeted & supports it. The people who signed it, people as brilliant & forward as John McWhorter, have history, perspective, practicality & reason in their favor. Their opponents, the far-leftists, have whimpering sentiment & raging supposition. The biggest factor they seem to neglect is that they may potentially have to exist under the messes they created--cancel culture, revisionist history, macro-insecure leadership, peers who exist in such flawed nuances, ego-based rage disguised as confidence, the list goes on. The people who oppose the premise of this letter & those who signed are too ignorant to realise that its intent is to save them from themselves.

Bari Weiss being a signatory is just one of many red flags that this is a load of hot garbage. She has a long track record to the present of trying to get people fired for saying things she doesn't like. The #2 red flag is complaining about the firing of the NYT editor who let through Tom Cotton's "opinion" piece that was full of lies WITHOUT BOTHERING TO READ LET ALONE FACT CHECK IT.

This is a circle jerk whinefest of emotionally stunted people with very large platforms who can't take the corresponding criticism that comes with it.

Vox staffer feels unsafe because Vox’s Matt Yglesias signed the letter.

R11 Yeah it is like McCarthyism, people's lives are ruined. Often viciously and based on little more than rumor or small transgressions, which is pretty much just what happened back then. It's not just the government that can do harm. The mob can too.

Round them up. They're not too old for the camps!

It's interesting how the people on this thread attacking the letter are the ones calling names at and cursing whoever disagrees with them.

[quote] Who has lost their career?

Talk to JK Rowling and Woody Allen. They have these little cancel culture Nazis walking out of their jobs and holding the companies hostage. They demand that people be shut up and banned.

Fresh meat for the congenitally offended.

Being criticised online is not by any stretch "having your life ruined". Only right wing snowflakes try to equate the two.

All throughout US history different groups have boycotted and protested all kinds of figures. Anyone from Barry Goldwater to Martin Luther King. "Cancelling" people is not new. It is ahistorical nonsense to suggest people used to have a right to have widespread approval of their political views. Conservatives in the modern era have just taken to whining about it constantly.

JK Rowling is wealthier by a factor of 100 than anyone on this thread will ever be. Everyday she shares her views with her millions of followers.

R23 thank you for proving my point that all right wingers are mad about is that they are being criticised online. The signatories on this letter lead fabulous lives of comfort.

And btw Woody Allen is a pedophile and you hurt your case by trying to bring him into this

R25 is an idiot.

These little commies want art banned and no public discourse allowed on college campuses. The left has turned into the right of the 80s and 90s.

I'm not going to engage in a debate with someone (R13, and perhaps R16 as well) who thinks it's appropriate to use "retarded" as a slur while decrying those who say racist things on Twitter. It doesn't seem to me like you've even read the letter; that's not really what this is about.

I agree with r13 and support their use of retarded.

R9 masturbates to photos of Goerring.

[quote]I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company.

[quote]The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry. - Jennifer Finney Boylan

[quote] the McCarthy era, where random people were called INTO CONGRESS for hearings on whether or not they held communist sympathies to the modern era where if you say something overtly racist, teenagers and millennials will harrass you on twitter

Plenty of people were blacklisted in that era without ever being called to Congress. All that needed to happen was for their name to appear on a list. A list that you could stay off of, usually by paying money to the organization compiling the list. Just like today when you can buy your way out of being cancelled by giving money to BLM or some trans organization and making an apology.

Why is Jennifer Finney Boylan begging forgiveness at r32?

R34, I’m thinking because Rowling was a signer.

JFB is a transgender activist, r34.

[quote] who scorn progressives for being too far left to succeed in this country's political scene.

Actually, here on Planet Reality we see them as thinly veiled Maoists who want to annihilate everyone who doesn’t nod and chant amen to every absurd, purposefully extreme position they take.

Wokesters are our Trumpkins.

And she’s trans.

Parker Molloy is whining about this on twitter. One of the signers Jesse singal pointed out that molloy tried to get singal fired for writing an article about trans kids that wasn’t 100% favorable.

Parker has been accused of sexual assault by DL fave Sophia banks and was let go from the advocate for being homophobic. Like her fellow Trans grifter Charlotte clymer she has reinvented herself as an activist.

[quote]ANYWAY remember that time Bari Weiss tried to get me fired from my freelance gigs because I swear on twitter and then she signed an open letter in Harper's saying she was deeply concerned about the trend of people getting fired for saying things people don't like on the internet? - Erin Biba

Fantastic letter, I would have signed it if I wasnt a completely insignificant nonentity

A lot of old privileged people whining about the fact they no longer control the narrative.

Meanwhile:

"These little commies want art banned and no public discourse allowed on college campuses. The left has turned into the right of the 80s and 90s."

You're the twerp who name-checked the Chinese Cultural Revolution in another thread, aren't you?

You're still an uninformed idiot.

Are you getting all your ideas from some 60 year old John Birch pamphlet? No. You're clearly a Breitshart who is too stupid for even their dumbed down rhetoric.

Congratulations.

Your prize is the coronavirus.

Some responses from leftist twitter:

[quote]The Harpers letter should inspire the hell out of younger writers/journalists: the people “above” you are dumb and boring. Be brave, be creative, and steal their audiences with better shit.

[quote]Just catching up with this Harpers nonsense. I see why they didn't name names -- because their argument only works in abstract. The moment you cite specifics, you realize they're supporting mass dehumanization, historical revisionism, and any number of fascist principles.

[quote]As a trans woman, I was feeling a lot of heartache over the letter. Like somehow a lot of prominent people agreeing with coded transphobic language that is meant to treat you as a theoretical debate has a way of hurting you, despite knowing their full of BS.

[quote]It's clear that the editors at Harper's did some real sneaky shit when asking people to sign this and, though people need to be accountable for their choice to sign it not knowing all the players, Harper's has to answer for their lack of transparency in how this came together.

The outrage by by the trans cult over free speech should be a wake up call to anyone still trying to play nice with them.

[quote]That Harper’s letter never should’ve been written. It makes everybody involved seem oblivious to the harm some of the signatories have caused. And I’m going to be withering towards any coworkers who put their names on it.

[quote]The thing blowing me about that Harpers letter is that it is the whiniest passive voice thing I have ever seen & the signatories are frankly more interesting than the content. Why would you sign something that sounds like a third grade tattletale wrote it? Why?

[quote]my open letter to all the harpers signatories is: fuck off. please feel free to add your signature below

[quote]Haven't read the Harper's letter. Won't read the Harper's letter. But it sounds like it came from a lot of people who never got punched in the face. Which is to say that their never having been punched in the face is a disservice to us all.

What I find fascinating is that some signatories "recanted" when they found out who else had singed the letter.

I mean, you either support the letter's content, or you don't. Who else supports it should be immaterial -- in fact, that attitude seems antithetical to the letter's content, doesn't it?

I wonder if they underestimated the Twitter backlash.

*signed

[quote] Yeah it is like McCarthyism, people's lives are ruined. Often viciously and based on little more than rumor or small transgressions, which is pretty much just what happened back then.

That's not "pretty much what happened back then" and you're a goddamned fool if you truly think it is.

But I don't think you do, I think you're just trying to spin it that way. This reeks of rightwing "leftist and liberals are the real evil" propaganda.

[quote]I mean, you either support the letter's content, or you don't. Who else supports it should be immaterial

Not when the text is provided by someone you trust, then turns out to be incorrect or misleading.

Many surely believed Harper's when they said "a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed study" and thought that wasn't right. Turned out the letter was referring to a student who was using a Michigan State U study to say there was no racial bias in police shootings, when the study only said that the police who shot suspects were of various races, not always white.

She was misrepresenting the study and lost her job at the college newspaper because of it. That's all. And that's not cancel culture, that's what happens when you write something misleading in the school paper. And most signatories had no idea that's what Harper's was referring to.

Yeah, they should have checked it out and they're idiots for not doing so, but Harper's was being misleading on purpose.

From the letter:

[quote]Editors are fired for running controversial pieces;

Nothing here to explain if the controversial pieces were controversial or outright false. And is this somehow a change from how the press behaved before? Were editors rarely or never fired for running controversial op-eds until recently?

[quote]books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity;

No publishing house is legally or morally obligated to publish a book with authenticity issues.

[quote]journalists are barred from writing on certain topics;

I don't recall Harper's having a problem with news outlets being unable to write about certain topics because their corporate overlords wouldn't allow it.

[quote]professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class;

Who are they talking about here? Professors who used the n-word while reading aloud? The guy at University of Texas who would read old Greek philosophical writings as part of his class on why pederasty was okay? It kind of makes a difference. Odd that they don't differentiate.

[quote]heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.

Again, this isn't new, but who exactly are they talking about?

This is so vague, I'm actually kind of embarrassed for the people who signed it, they can't have all been so dumb as to not realize it was a bad idea to put their name to something like this.

Trans activists are just lobbyists for Big Pharma. They've been brainwashed by a Body Hate movement that encourages all of their fetishes, homophobia and misogyny. Also, they're anti-science morons.

r54 if they had an issue with the letter's content -- as you (and they?) claim -- then they could have done their own research before signing onto it. It's on them, frankly.

I said exactly the same thing myself, R57. Twice.

Can anyone imagine actual controversial thinkers throughout history, Plato, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Karl Marx, etc writing a letter to Harper's whining about criticism they recieved after sharing their views? It's absurd. We live in an age of snowflakes to be sure. But they aren't millennials, they are boomers unable to handle being challenged in anyway.

Bari Weiss and JK Rowling truly seem to believe that their views must be lauded and private companies like the NYT have some moral obligation to spread them. During the American Revolution, when there were lots of truly controversial ideas floating around, do you know what writers did if a paper refused to run their piece? They bought or leased a printing press and published it themselves. In this day and age with the interent and social media, writers have unlimited access to self publish their views in a way they never have before, but still some whine that it MUST be the most prestgious papers in the world and neither the editors of the paper nor the readers are allowed to deny them any opportunity for exposure.

The people calling themselves "intellectuals" today are a joke. They aren't worthy of the giants whose shoulders they stand on.

[quote] You're the twerp who name-checked the Chinese Cultural Revolution in another thread, aren't you? You're still an uninformed idiot.

No. You can sit down and eat your food, shit for brains.

[quote] Can anyone imagine actual controversial thinkers throughout history, Plato, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Karl Marx, etc writing a letter to Harper's whining about criticism they recieved after sharing their views? It's absurd. We live in an age of snowflakes to be sure. But they aren't millennials, they are boomers unable to handle being challenged in anyway.

You truly have no idea what’s going on in the real world.

R41:

The far Left is made up of nothing but Jew-haters and homophobes. They will gladly invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to their universities but a professor who won’t use the proper pronouns must be removed.

R61 If you have an example, name it. And we can debate it. But you haven't named any for the same reason the Harper letter didn't. There is no "ruining of lives" to speak off. The only thing these people have to complain about is mean twitter comments.

R64, when college students start burning down campuses over a speaker they don’t agree with and they get up and leave their jobs holding companies hostage because they dare publish something by an author they don’t agree with, there is a big, BIG problem. These idiots want everything banned. They truly are communists. That’s not a slur, that’s what the call themselves. Try having a conversation with them. They tout the likes of Che Guevara. They will tell you all the wonders of communism and the evils of capitalism. Don’t even get them started on Zionists and Jews.

To say that Rowling is whining about not being given write ups in the New York Times given the vitriol she has faced for writing a considered and thoughtful essay. (There's plenty about it I don't agree with.) She says she has received death and rape threats on Twitter, which is entirely believably, frankly. I thought they were considered a bad thing? It's fine now, apparently.

Someone mentioned Woody Allen above, and while I think he's disgusting and I believe Dylan Farrow's allegations, I think putting pressure on his publishers is wrong unless it relates to something defamatory.

R65, there are no communists except in your fevered imagination.

New York Times has a decent write-up on the controversy. It's funny how they have a photo of the author of the letter (who is clearly black) and the people disagreeing from the letter look insane. The link to the book reviewers board debacle is interesting too.

...

The killing of George Floyd has brought an intense moment of racial reckoning in the United States. As protests spread across the country, they have been accompanied by open letters calling for — and promising — change at white-dominated institutions across the arts and academia.

But on Tuesday, a different type of letter appeared online. Titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” and signed by 153 prominent artists and intellectuals, it began with an acknowledgment of “powerful protests for racial and social justice” before pivoting to a warning against an “intolerant climate” engulfing the culture.

“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter declared, citing “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

“We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other,” it continues. “As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes.”

The letter, which was published by Harper’s Magazine and will also appear in several leading international publications, surfaces a debate that has been going on privately in newsrooms, universities and publishing houses that have been navigating demands for diversity and inclusion, while also asking which demands — and the social media dynamics that propel them — go too far.

And on social media, the reaction was swift, with some heaping ridicule on the letter’s signatories — who include cultural luminaries like Margaret Atwood, Bill T. Jones and Wynton Marsalis, along with journalists and academics — for thin-skinnedness, privilege and, as one person put it, fear of loss of “relevance.”

“Okay, I did not sign THE LETTER when I was asked 9 days ago,” Richard Kim, the enterprise director of HuffPost, said on Twitter, “because I could see in 90 seconds that it was fatuous, self-important drivel that would only troll the people it allegedly was trying to reach — and I said as much.”

The debate over diversity, free expression and the limits of acceptable opinion is a long-burning one. But the letter, which was spearheaded by the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, began taking shape about a month ago, as part of a long-running conversation about these issues with a small group of writers including the historian David Greenberg, the writer Mark Lilla and the journalists Robert Worth and George Packer.

Mr. Williams, a columnist for Harper’s and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, said that initially, there was concern over timing.

“We didn’t want to be seen as reacting to the protests we believe are in response to egregious abuses by the police,” he said. “But for some time, there’s been a mood all of us have been quite concerned with.”

He said there wasn’t one particular incident that provoked the letter. But he did cite several recent ones, including the resignation of more than half the board of the National Book Critics Circle over its statement supporting Black Lives Matter, a similar blowup at the Poetry Foundation, and the case of David Shor, a data analyst at a consulting firm who was fired after he tweeted about academic research linking looting and vandalism by protesters to Richard Nixon’s 1968 electoral victory.

Such incidents, Mr. Williams said, both fueled and echoed what he called the far greater and more dangerous “illiberalism” of President Trump.

“Donald Trump is the Canceler in Chief,” he said. “But the correction of Trump’s abuses cannot become an overcorrection that stifles the principles we believe in.”

(More at the link)

The comments on r67 are worth reading. One of the letter's signatories (Diana Senechal) left a comment as well:

I am proud to have signed the letter, and I stand by every word of it. Thank you for this article.

It is difficult to single out one part as more important than the rest. But this deserves close attention: "We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought."

Debate, and argument more generally, can be lively, angry, fierce, calm, considered, prickly, funny. It need not be limited to two sides. But its focus should be on the subject matter at hand, not on the people articulating the views. Such debate informs all participants and illuminates the possibilities for action.

John Stuart Mill wrote the following about the importance of hearing unpopular opinions (I have truncated it to stay within the character limit):

"First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

"Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth...."

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds."

[quote] She says she has received death and rape threats on Twitter, which is entirely believably, frankly

There is no woman in public life who does not get rape and death threats. Reporters, politcians, actresses have all said this happens to them. Every trans activist mentioned on this thread gets as many or more as Rowling does. I am not defending it, just pointing out that it has nothing to do with her specific views. Any woman who writes any op-ed that gains prominence will experience the same thing she did. And she has experienced it before. From Evangelical Christians who thought Harry Potter was indoctrinating children. So really those threats have nothing to do with this discussion, unfortunate as they are

[quote] given the vitriol she has faced for writing a considered and thoughtful essay

All of you (or maybe it's just one of you) keep talking about "lives ruined" and people being silenced... and then all you actually can give as an example is criticism of a piece you personally agree. If you cannot handle some people vehemently and yes, often rudely, disagreeing with you, you aren't cut out to be a writer. As recently as the 60s, there were people who had their houses burned down, or were beaten to death in the streets for their ideas, like civil rights activists. NOTHING remotely like that is happening today. Now if you say something controversial about race, you get mean tweets. It's not fun to get mean tweets, but if these people can't take it they are in the wrong career

I love how the cancel cultute apologists like r69 always try to boil down people getting rape, murder, porn, death threats sent to them, as well as getting harassed online and off, doxxed, their businesses being targeted, their bosses and co-workers being harassed, sending scary things to their house, and made to feel generally unsafe even walking down the street - to " a few mean tweets".

You aren't arguing in good faith.

There's an easy solution to all this: set up a committee to decide what speech is acceptable. A diverse committee where every POC is represented.

r70 trans activists never argue in good faith. They can't because their entire agenda is based on lies.

R70 Do you or do you not acknowledge everything you described happens just as readily to pro-trans activists and liberal women?

Like almost anything else, this isn't spurring much debate, just tired exchanges of ad hominem "arguments".

It's just a few mean tweets! That's all! Look over there!

R74 it's spurring thoughtful commentary from intellectuals and artists. The "drunk on their own power" cancellers who argue using ad hominem attacks, pseudo-science, bullying, spam, circular arguments, strawmen, etc., are responding the way they do to everyone that tells them to stop.

They are not good people, regardless of how they pretend to be on the side of truth and justice. They do not argue in good faith.

[quote] cancellers who argue using ad hominem attacks, pseudo-science, bullying, spam, circular arguments, strawmen, etc.,

Wow look how far we've come from the "burning down buildings" and "destroying lives" nonsense you were spouting earlier. Yes, I call your complaints whining. And you framing "spam" and "circular arguments" as some kind of McCarthyist persecution is laughable hysteria. Well I certainly hope the sternly worded letter to the manager helped these 140 KArens feel better

The "Karen" reference undermines your argument, r77

I consider "Karen" behavior to be rage, hysteria, and persecution complexes at the world for not rushing to meet your immediate desires. I cannot think of a better way to summarize the Harper letter

[quote]All of you (or maybe it's just one of you) keep talking about "lives ruined" and people being silenced... and then all you actually can give as an example is criticism of a piece you personally agree

Please don't twist my argument to suit your own ends. I mentioned Rowling because someone boiled down her grievance to whining about not getting write ups in the NYT, which I mentioned in my post. It's irrelevant whether or not I agree with her. In fact, I'm not interested in her opinions in general. And that was my first post in the thread.

[quote][R70] Do you or do you not acknowledge everything you described happens just as readily to pro-trans activists and liberal women?

I'm not R70, but it does, of course. It shouldn't be acceptable.

[quote]It's not fun to get mean tweets, but if these people can't take it they are in the wrong career.

Women in particular are targeted for social media abuse. Are you going to tell them that they should step down and leave the field to their abusers? Should they just shut up because their houses aren't being burned down? What a reductionist argument.

[quote]Like almost anything else, this isn't spurring much debate, just tired exchanges of ad hominem "arguments".

The unfortunate fate of debate nowadays. Social media is a menace to society.

Everyone here who's posted against this letter has unwittingly used their own language & attitudes to demonstrate how necessary this letter actually is. Referring to anyone as "boomer" is juvenile, ignorant & dismissive on very self-serving terms. And stop bitching about this letter not providing facts, inferring that none exist. There are plenty. You all perpetually have your phones in hand & are ready to fire--put it to constructive use & do some simple research! Or am I correct in assuming that facts mean nothing to you in your attempts to gather factual information to build a truthful platform upon?

R77 I wasn't talking about burning down buildings. Perhaps you have me confused with one of the many other people who disagree with you.

[quote]Every trans activist mentioned on this thread gets as many or more as Rowling does.

Oh, come on. If you had a picnic with every trans activist their collective level of recognition wouldn't command a tenth of the recognition of Rowling. Or the vitriol directed against her.

Trans activists are mouth breathing, delusional, anti-science morons.

R79 Really? I consider people who salivate over "Karen" posts and calling people "Karens" to be misogynistic racist trash.

[quote][R77] I wasn't talking about burning down buildings. Perhaps you have me confused with one of the many other people who disagree with you.

R82, as I mentioned, I was replying to R69. Please stop trolling.

R81 facts mean nothing to them. They are not good people, they do not debate in good faith. They will say and do anything to get their way and to get others to back down. The facts are not on their side, which is why their comments are so full of fallacies and hyperbole.

R86 nice try but you were quoting me, therefore you were responding to me.

You can't even admit when you were wrong about something so minor.

"Karen" is just more misogynist garbage and it's aimed at white women because, with maddeningly few exceptions, white women are the only women in the Western world who have enough power to effect any change. It's meant to completely disempower women. And everyone continuing to fall for these idiotic and obvious social engineering tricks is contributing to the problem. Bravo, boys!

[quote] Please don't twist my argument to suit your own ends. I mentioned Rowling because someone boiled down her grievance to whining about not getting write ups in the NYT

Then give an actual example of someone whose life has been ruined or who has been silenced and no longer has a platform for their views instead of just asserting forcefully it happens. I mentioned Rowling because she signed the letter. No one who signed the letter has been persecuted in any way. What you are calling "cancel culture" is compeltely made up. Yes, it's true women do recieve abuse online. But that has nothing to do with their views, or the behavior of any one side. It's ubiquitous throughout our culture.

R83 Go read the messages Charlotte Clymer posts that she recieves from anti-trans bigots and tell me JK Rowling is the only one who gets vitriol directed at her. Charlotte continues being an activist anyone because its's worth it to her. JK Rowling has made that same choice.

R88, you're right and I forgot that I was replying to two different people. Sorry for accusing you of trolling.

I did not tell you that, R90. What I told you is you are making things up to back up your point of view. Which as an act of dishonesty, in addition to inaccuracy, explains why you're fighting a losing battle. Because you're a lousy and ineffective solider.

No one in the thread is even pretending we are in a new "McCarthy" era or that people have been "silenced" anymore. They just completely dropped those claims. Now it's just recycled Ben Shapiro monologues about how liberals argue unfairly.

The letter was pure hysteria

R92 Am I fighting a losing battle or are SJWs completely out of control, censoring media, and ruining lives? Please pick one

R90 read the New York Times article above. They mention several signatories of the letter who have been victims of cancelling. You keep having your statements proved wrong yet you continue to try to say you're right. I'm beginning to think you are not arguing in good faith.

r90 doesn't know how to make his point without threatening to "curb stomp a terf".

R95 I don't know how many times I can make the same request. NAME ONE. Say who they were, what views they shared, and what happened to them.

Everytime I name someone who shared views and was criticized but kept their platform and unlimited access to national media you say it's unfair to bring that person up or that they don't count. But you haven't given a single example. Thereare none because your only gripe is with people you like being critcised

To be honest, R94, I can't tell what you're arguing or fighting. You seem to be all over the map. You just asserted SJWs are completely out of control yet you argue against the idea Rowling's massive visibility somehow makes the threats against her at the same level of volume as people nobody's ever heard of.

Anyway, don't mind arguing with me, this whole debate will be forgotten by next year.

R97 read the NYT article, I'm not your personal research assistant.

JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among the signatories to a controversial open letter warning that the spread of “censoriousness” is leading to “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”.

Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her, said she was “proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech”.

Rowling compared the current climate to the McCarthy years, adding: “To quote the inimitable Lillian Hellman: ‘I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions’.”

Published in Harper’s Magazine, the letter is signed by more than 150 writers, academics and artists, also including major names such as Martin Amis, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell and Gloria Steinem.

Acknowledging that “powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society”, the letter goes on to decry what it calls “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity”.

Hitting out at how a “panicked damage control” is leading to the delivery of “hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms”, the letter criticises how “editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organisations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes”.

Its instigator, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, referenced incidents including the allegations of racism which led to resignations at US institutions like the National Book Critics Circle, and the Poetry Foundation, to the New York Times.

“Donald Trump is the Canceler in Chief,” Williams told the NYT. “But the correction of Trump’s abuses cannot become an overcorrection that stifles the principles we believe in.”

The letter ends with the writers asserting that “the way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away”.

[quote]It has been met with criticism online. “As is usually the case for people who manifest in favor of free and open debate and against repression, several of the people on this @Harpers Open Letter have behavior in their past that reflects the censorious mentality they’re condemning here,” tweeted the journalist and author Glenn Greenwald.

Of course Russian asset Glenn Greenwald is against it.

My postion has been pretty straightforward R98. There is no threat to free debate in our society. Debate is more open and free than it has ever been thanks to the advent of social media (like this very website). There are no gatekeepers to the public stage anymore.

What the people in the letter were complaining about amounts to public critcism of their views, something that everyone experiences. Look no further than this thread for evidence. I have been accused repeatedly on this thread of engaging in the behavior this letter is complaining about. Who have I "cancelled"? Who here has been deplatformed? What debate have I stifiled? All I have done is harshly criticize the people screaming about McCarthy and people here keep insisting that's unnacceptable, like the people in the letter. As if this entire website isn't just crticism of various people.

And that's not even starting to get into the hypocrisy of people like Bari Weiss who have made a career out of trying to keep people with views she doesn't agree with from getting or keeping jobs.

Steven Pinker @sapinker

Attackers of the free speech letter signed by Rowling, Chomsky et al miss the point: It’s not about us. It’s about the writers, scientists, & artists who are told ”NIce career you go there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it.”

Hmm, listen to r102, a Random Internet Person saying "this isn't happening!" or 150+ intellectuals and artists from all fields saying it is... Whom to believe.... Hmmm......

I was once the recipient of “cancelling” on Twitter as the result of being accused of sexually harassing female interns. There was no harassment, there were no interns claiming such, it was just someone starting trouble because they disagreed with something I wrote. When I asked an SJW colleague why this was fair, she replied that I should take it as an opportunity to understand how women feel about being slandered on Twitter. Fuck em.

Ah R104 now believes he isn't require to provide evidence of his assertions. He's right because JK Rowling agrees with him

R106 what evidence have you provided? There's been links and articles posted above that show your claims are invalid, yet you still continue to act righteous and like what you are saying has any meaning other than showing you to be disingenuous. You aren't arguing in good faith, you have lost the argument and now are resorting to strawmen and hyperbole.

I said good day!

R104 boils down 150 intellectuals and artists into "JK Rowling", because that's who he is really pissed at. The letter doesn't matter.

^ that is directed at r106, not r104, who is obviously correct in every way!

Avowed socialist Freddie de Boer:

Please, think for a minute and consider: what does it say when a completely generic endorsement of free speech and open debate is in and of itself immediately diagnosed as anti-progressive, as anti-left? There is literally no specific instance discussed in that open letter, no real-world incident about which there might be specific and tangible controversy. So how can someone object to an endorsement of free speech and open debate without being opposed to those things in and of themselves? You can’t. And people are objecting to it because social justice politics are plainly opposed to free speech. That is the most obvious political fact imaginable today. Of course Yelling Woke Twitter hates free speech! Of course social justice liberals would prevent expression they disagree with if they could! How could any honest person observe out political discourse for any length of time and come to any other conclusion?

You want to argue that free speech is bad, fine. You want to adopt a dominance politics that (you imagine) will result in you being the censor, fine. But just do that. Own that. Can we stop with this charade? Can we stop pretending? Can we just proceed by acknowledging what literally everyone quietly knows, which is that the dominant majority of progressive people simply don’t believe in the value of free speech anymore? Please. Let’s grow up and speak plainly, please. Let’s just grow up.

We're facing enormous crises from a rise in fascism and a spreading pandemic, and a couple hundred rich people want to whine in an open letter about "cancel culture"? Fuck them.

[quote]They mention several signatories of the letter who have been victims of cancelling.

Which ones? I read the list and saw none.

If you mean JKR, she hasn't been cancelled, she's just been criticized.

R111 don't let this letter distract you from your busy work of stopping fascism or the pandemic! Go now, take care of that, first! The letter will still be here when you return!

[quote] Can we just proceed by acknowledging what literally everyone quietly knows, which is that the dominant majority of progressive people simply don’t believe in the value of free speech anymore?

And that is what the letter was really about.

Interestingly, whether your call it Woke Twitter or social justice liberals or progressives, they don't disavow the claim and if they both to argue against the assertion they argue it by attacking those who assert it, with Trumpian distractions like gramps and boomer and privileged. But usually they just jump right to attacking the individual.

[quote]Everyone here who's posted against this letter has unwittingly used their own language & attitudes to demonstrate how necessary this letter actually is. Referring to anyone as "boomer" is juvenile, ignorant & dismissive on very self-serving terms.

And it's just as much free speech as anything these signatories have said. Being called a "Boomer" doesn't silence you, no matter how much foot-stamping you do to claim that it does.

Signatories include the leftist Noam Chomsky and the neoconservative Francis Fukuyama. There are also figures associated with the traditional defense of free speech, including Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as some outspoken critics of political correctness on campuses, including the linguist Steven Pinker and the psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

The signers also include some figures who have lost positions amid controversies, including Ian Buruma, the former editor of the New York Review of Books, and Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor who left his position as faculty dean of an undergraduate residence amid protests over his legal defense of Harvey Weinstein.

There are also some leading Black intellectuals, including the historian Nell Irvin Painter, the poets Reginald Dwayne Betts and Gregory Pardlo, and the linguist John McWhorter. And there are a number of journalists, including several opinion columnists for The New York Times.

Nicholas Lemann, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former dean of Columbia Journalism School, said that he rarely signs letters, but thought this one was important.

R107 my evidence that their free speech hasn't been stifled and they haven't been "canceled" is that they were able to write an open letter explaining their views in the one of the oldest and most prestigious magazines in America.

R114 wants you to believe those exact same people don't have free speech because they are being criticised

I object to spoiled rich brats who have not been silenced on any level demanding time, sympathy and attention from both the media and the public during a time when we have much larger things to worry about, R113.

We can worry about more than one thing at once; my issue here is that they have wholly invented something to worry about that isn't actually happening, and they want our time and energy to be devoted to what is basically theoretical arguments and hurt feelings.

Their claims that they have been silenced are false. Their examples are vague and misleading. Their actual involvement in any censorship is unverified, and the hand-wavy idea that they're just trying to support some unnamed professors or doctors or whatever is unconvincing.

R117, I don't want anyone to believe anything. That's irrational reflex is just your reaction to people who don't believe what you do. It can't be unfamiliar to you. Calm down, dear. Attack the ideas, not the person. Granted, that makes it harder for you I know, but you do seem determined to try to punch above your weight.

Williams defended the signatories on Twitter, writing, “I think many people misunderstand the purpose of an open letter.” He noted that signers of such a document are “endorsing the ideas articulated in that letter — not every idea held by every co-signatory at every stage of life.”

Ford, the Stanford law professor, echoed Williams’s comments in his email to The Post.

“I was not told who else had signed, but I’m not sure why that should matter,” he said. “I signed the letter; I did not sign a pact to endorse or defend everything everyone else who signed has said, written or done, nor would I imagine the other signatories have implicitly endorsed everything I’ve written.

“We agree on what the letter says but no doubt disagree about lots of other things,” he added.

R12 Thanks you so much for the understanding that criticizing the peoples who want fairness and justice for all races and others are just like the peoples who were going after bad communists in the America 1950s. The bad leftists of our good America are doing exactly the same things that the Senator McCarthy did, taking away jobs from the right minded peoples, tearing away their livelihoods, and destroying their lives. You are to be congratulated for seeing that the bad left in America is exactly like the McCarthy peoples!

[quote] Calm down, dear. Attack the ideas, not the person. Granted, that makes it harder for you I know

It's hilarious that you're scolding others for ad hominem attacks when that is all your post at R119 is.

[quote]He noted that signers of such a document are “endorsing the ideas articulated in that letter — not every idea held by every co-signatory at every stage of life.”

But that's how we roll so we can rule you out.

Just scolding you. And I doubt you find it hilarious. I suspect you find it infuriating. You are fun to play with, I'll say that.

R118 but it IS happening. It's happening in this very thread. You, yourself, are trying to silence them. You demand exact facts and then say they're false when they don't agree with your point of view.

R122, instead I'm going to give you that and restate:

I don't want anyone to believe anything. And you have no evidence to claim that.

No, R124 / R126, I'm not the person you were scolding. I didn't write R117.

R120 I don't think everyone who signed the letter is a bad person for doing so, but I disagree completely with that argument that you just look at the letter, not the cosigners.

If I wrote a letter with detailed criticisms of mainstream WW2 era German scholarship, it would very much matter if I co-signed the letter with an avowed Holocaust denier. It would absolutely reflect poorly on me and the letter. Even if some of my criticisms were valid. If I chose to co-sign with one, I would be responsible for the criticisms I got and the perception that the goal of my argument was to further Holocaust denial.

R125 the fact that you think people on this thread have been somehow been silenced because r118 disagrees with them is telling. You need to get over the fact that people will criticise ideas and people they think are wrong. That too is free speech

What "exact facts" did I demand to get, receive, and then disagree with? I don't even understand what you're saying.

This thread is turning into a hall of mirrors and a dull one at that.

The letter was necessary and valuable, just for debate it provoked and the closed minds it revealed. As I've said, from my point of view, they'll be back to being officially marginalized within a year. Their undemocratic tendencies can't hold a candle to COVID, the election, the economy or race.

Have a circular day...

[quote] they'll be back to being officially marginalized within a year.

R131 believes famous, wealthy writers, editors, and public intellectuals were marginalized up until Harper's published this letter.

Who do you mean by "they" r131? Honest question, I don't quite get your claim. Do you mean the signatories?

I read the letter as a plea for better discourse. Social media may not be the best place for nuanced debate, but neither should it be a place for threats of violence against someone you disagree with. Most of the people posting death and rape threats would never say those things to someone's face and we all know it. Instead, they cower behind their twitter handles to try to bully people.

I think there should be a conversation about whether you can truly "cancel" someone, and the fears that some feel about that. I can say there is real fear in academia about this. Even with disclaimers when tackling difficult material in the classroom, professors feel they have to constantly walk on eggshells. Some of that is good--professors should and in most cases do address controversial material with care, but should also be able to do so without fear that the students will attack them or that the administration will abandon them or worse at the first sign of controversy. The fact that the fear is out there in a variety of places, whether real or not, suggests we need a course correction when it comes to public debate on controversial topics.

Free speech isn't a free for all, of course. We are not free to say whatever comes into our heads and get a pass for it. Hate speech is real and should be called out for what it is. But differences of opinion should not immediately be labeled hate speech.

People seem to be missing the fact that the letter's signatories are largely speaking for those who are being canceled and who don't have a voice.

There are many Rebecca Tuvels out there in academia -- untenured young scholars who dislike toeing the party line but must for the sake of their careers.

That, in my opinion, is the antithesis of the environment academia should foster. It is not healthy for robust intellectual debate.

I think there's a major lack of nuance in the discussion of social media, in that people (like the signatories here) conflate trolls, the immature, and mentally ill people with the general populace.

For instance, when JKR got criticized for her comments, there was a lot of solid criticism that she ignored. Instead, she and her defenders spoke entirely about the trolls with 0 followers and usernames like ButtLicker420 who said "you should be raped, bitch." In doing so, they made it sound as though the majority replies she received were hateful threats trying to silence her. That is not at all the case.

The same can be said for Rebecca Tuvel that R135 brings up; she was criticized by peers who took their arguments to journals, articles, panels and blogs, and who made reasoned criticisms. The end result was not that Tuvel was forced to toe the SJW party line, and in fact some of the editors who apologized for publishing her article were forced to resign.

What she experienced was the exact kind of criticism she should have expected for an inflammatory academic article, and her lack of preparedness for it does not prove the existence of "cancel culture."

R133, I mean the woke brigade and the Twitter extremists and all the people unable to move into the next phase will be marginalized because they're just noisy and carrying on and that's what they want to do. They need Twitter, they need to provoke, that's their oxygen. And I concede to a degree they are necessary in creating change, but it won't be the change they're ranting about. They create enough noise around an issue that moderates emerge to take up it and find workable, achievable, realistic decisions. To me that's what the letter signalled... people capable of balance were stepping forward as we move to the next phase.

Ask yourself, who is likelier to achieve progress: someone with the temperament of Barak Obama or a Twitter warrior (or derivative.) Actual progress will require all parties to listen to each other with goodwill and mutual openness, in order to reach a compromise and something near consensus. It won't be achieved by throwing toys out of the pram. They won't disappear but they're rapidly delivering themselves to 'yes, dear' territory.

Sacked or silenced: academics say they are blocked from exploring trans issues

Universities are at a loss how to maintain free speech when both sides claim they feel unsafe

n the December morning that Jo Phoenix, professor of criminology at the Open University, was to give a lecture at Essex University on trans rights in prisons, Twitter roared into action, with several Essex staff and students tweeting allegations that a “transphobe” would be on campus.

By 10am Phoenix was warned by a member of university staff that some students were threatening to shut down her lecture, as they said LGBT+ staff and students wouldn’t feel safe if Phoenix gave her talk. At midday the university decided to cancel it because disruption looked inevitable, and proper academic discussion unlikely.

“I was furious,” Phoenix says. “It was very clear to me that those agitating were fundamentally anti-academic because they condemned me and my research without hearing what I had to say.”

Phoenix, who is adamant she is not transphobic, had given the same talk at the University of Newfoundland in Canada a month earlier, to an audience that included trans scholars, without controversy. “They all liked it. So there is something unique about what is going on in the UK,” she says.

The talk explored tensions around placing trans women in British prisons, and argued that there are problems with applying trans rights to criminal justice.

UK universities struggle to deal with ‘toxic’ trans rights row Read more Universities are negotiating a minefield, trying to maintain free speech while faced with two groups of people who both argue they are being made to feel unsafe.

The vice-chancellor of Essex, Anthony Forster, has promised a review into what happened in December, and says the university expects its community not to interfere with “the rights of others to express views with which they might disagree profoundly”. He adds that Essex has “an equally clear commitment to being an inclusive community”.

The transgender debate cuts across many academic disciplines, including law, education, gender studies, philosophy and history. So-called gender-critical feminists, who believe that gender is a social construct rather than innate, say they want to explore trans issues within their fields, but that they, and the debate as a whole, are being stifled in British universities.

However, academics such as Tam Blaxter, a historical linguist at Cambridge University, who is a trans woman, say these arguments make trans staff and students feel vulnerable. “Universities are communities of staff and students first and foremost,” she says. “They will always have a function of discussing difficult issues, but making minority members feel safe and welcomed must come first.”

Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at Sussex University and a gender-critical feminist, claims that last month Oxford University Press abandoned a book on female philosophers because her inclusion was deemed too controversial.

Stock, who insists she is not transphobic, is one of the most prominent advocates of gender-critical feminism, and has faced calls for Sussex to sack her. She says that one reason the American office of OUP gave in December for dropping the latest book in a series called Philosophy at 3am, was that she was involved and would attract negative attention. “I think that is terrible and cowardly,” she says.

Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor, Cardiff University Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor, Cardiff: ‘If you don’t have the debate, how are you going to resolve it?’ Photograph: Cardiff University A spokeswoman for the OUP said it would not comment on the review process for individual projects, but that it did not often publish collections of interviews and this was “a contributing factor to our decision not to pursue this project”.

Guardian article Part 2

Dr Kath Murray, a research associate in criminology at Edinburgh University, says there are many obstacles to organising gender-critical events on women’s rights. An event was cancelled at Edinburgh in December because of fears the speakers would face abuse.

Murray says one event that went ahead last year on sex-based rights required extensive security because of anticipated opposition. “There was a one-hour security briefing for speakers, seven security guards attending the event, a security sweep of the lecture theatre beforehand, and ID checks for all attendees,” she says.

In December, another event was due to take place, on schools and gender diversity. Dr Shereen Benjamin, senior lecturer in primary education at Edinburgh and the event organiser, says it was intended to show teachers both sides of the debate. “I wanted to bring together gender-critical speakers who see the increase in referral rates of children to gender identity clinics as problematic, and believe it has multiple social causes, with speakers from trans rights organisations who believe it is due to young people discovering their true identities at a younger age,” she says.

Benjamin says she was unable, however, to persuade any trans rights organisations to share the stage with gender-critical speakers, so the event was redesigned as a research seminar without teachers involved. However, when booking went live in December, the university’s staff pride network criticised it in an email to hundreds of staff, and on its blog, citing guest speakers “with a history of transphobia”.

With at least one academic urging opponents to protest, Benjamin cancelled, fearing speakers would face abuse. “It is now so risky and frightening for people to talk critically about gender identity on campus,” she says.

Schools pulled into row over helping transgender children Read more “We need universities to establish and maintain the boundaries of acceptable protest from within their communities, and to intervene quickly and decisively if there are any attempts at intimidation.”

Jonathan MacBride, co-chair of Edinburgh’s staff pride network, says his committee felt the event “would be upsetting and hurtful for anyone who is trans or an ally to the trans community”.

He says universities should not provide platforms for outspoken gender critics. “When someone has said publicly that they don’t believe trans women are women or, more harmfully, that trans women are men and should somehow be held accountable for the actions of a minority of predatory men in the world, that isn’t really a debate, it’s just hateful speech about an already marginalised minority.”

Universities say privately that they are finding the debate difficult to navigate, because their obligations under the Equality Act seem to clash with freedom of speech. But Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, a member of the elite Russell Group, says: “This is a divisive issue and rouses strong emotions, but if we don’t have the debate, how will we ever resolve it?”

Riordan faced down heated demands in 2015 for Germaine Greer, the celebrity feminist, to be banned from lecturing at Cardiff on the grounds that she had made transphobic comments. He says: “The way universities have to approach this, like other difficult issues, is to defend academic freedom and uphold free speech, as long as it is within the law.”

Sarah Honeychurch, a fellow at the University of Glasgow’s business school, says the problem extends beyond university management. She was sacked last summer as editor of the academic journal Hybrid Pedagogy, after signing a public letter by feminists questioning universities’ relationship with the LGBT+ charity Stonewall.

“Dr Kath Murray, a research associate in criminology at Edinburgh University, says there are many obstacles to organising gender-critical events on women’s rights. An event was cancelled at Edinburgh in December because of fears the speakers would face abuse.

Guardian article Part 3

Murray says one event that went ahead last year on sex-based rights required extensive security because of anticipated opposition. “There was a one-hour security briefing for speakers, seven security guards attending the event, a security sweep of the lecture theatre beforehand, and ID checks for all attendees,” she says.

In December, another event was due to take place, on schools and gender diversity. Dr Shereen Benjamin, senior lecturer in primary education at Edinburgh and the event organiser, says it was intended to show teachers both sides of the debate. “I wanted to bring together gender-critical speakers who see the increase in referral rates of children to gender identity clinics as problematic, and believe it has multiple social causes, with speakers from trans rights organisations who believe it is due to young people discovering their true identities at a younger age,” she says.

Benjamin says she was unable, however, to persuade any trans rights organisations to share the stage with gender-critical speakers, so the event was redesigned as a research seminar without teachers involved. However, when booking went live in December, the university’s staff pride network criticised it in an email to hundreds of staff, and on its blog, citing guest speakers “with a history of transphobia”.

With at least one academic urging opponents to protest, Benjamin cancelled, fearing speakers would face abuse. “It is now so risky and frightening for people to talk critically about gender identity on campus,” she says.

Schools pulled into row over helping transgender children Read more “We need universities to establish and maintain the boundaries of acceptable protest from within their communities, and to intervene quickly and decisively if there are any attempts at intimidation.”

Jonathan MacBride, co-chair of Edinburgh’s staff pride network, says his committee felt the event “would be upsetting and hurtful for anyone who is trans or an ally to the trans community”.

He says universities should not provide platforms for outspoken gender critics. “When someone has said publicly that they don’t believe trans women are women or, more harmfully, that trans women are men and should somehow be held accountable for the actions of a minority of predatory men in the world, that isn’t really a debate, it’s just hateful speech about an already marginalised minority.”

Universities say privately that they are finding the debate difficult to navigate, because their obligations under the Equality Act seem to clash with freedom of speech. But Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, a member of the elite Russell Group, says: “This is a divisive issue and rouses strong emotions, but if we don’t have the debate, how will we ever resolve it?”

Riordan faced down heated demands in 2015 for Germaine Greer, the celebrity feminist, to be banned from lecturing at Cardiff on the grounds that she had made transphobic comments. He says: “The way universities have to approach this, like other difficult issues, is to defend academic freedom and uphold free speech, as long as it is within the law.”

Sarah Honeychurch, a fellow at the University of Glasgow’s business school, says the problem extends beyond university management. She was sacked last summer as editor of the academic journal Hybrid Pedagogy, after signing a public letter by feminists questioning universities’ relationship with the LGBT+ charity Stonewall.

“One of the founding members of the journal said on Twitter that my position was at odds with values he considered to be central to education,” she says.

The journal managers blocked her from accessing any documents and have not spoken to her since, she says. “My background is philosophy. The idea that I can’t challenge anything is deeply troubling.”

l am an untenured academic in a humanities department.

There is absolutely no way I would ever publicly criticize any aspect of the current trans movement.

There is zero debate about the issue, at least in my little corner of the academy.

"For instance, when JKR got criticized for her comments, there was a lot of solid criticism that she ignored."

Care to give an example of this "solid criticism", r136?

[quote]I think there's a major lack of nuance in the discussion of social media

I think if we're being honest social media is not the place to have a serious discussion. It is one of those great ideas that failed to achieve its promise.

[quote] However, when booking went live in December, the university’s staff pride network criticised it in an email to hundreds of staff, and on its blog, citing guest speakers “with a history of transphobia”.

Over and over and over people share stories of people (mostly anti-trans people) being publicly criticised for their views. And over and over they call that "silencing". It's just not no matter how much you say it is.

Free speech works both ways. Anyone can say they don't believe trans people should be recognized as their chosen gender identity. Certainly no one has any way of stopping you. But then critics are allowed to call you transphobic if that's what they believe. It doesn't matter that you don't consider yourself transphobic. Your critics are entitled to their opinion. Being called names you don't like is not being sileneced

R143 I strongly disagree. Social media gave a voice to everyday people to interact with anyone else on the planet. It used to be that you could only share your views of you found someone with resources who agreed to publish them. Now anyone can share their views with any other person.

Some individual people choose to use it to troll and be negative but there's no way to have a huge group of people and not have some be assholes. Some people are just assholes online or offline. It's not really unique to any specific ideology.

[quote]Social media gave a voice to everyday people to interact with anyone else on the planet.

Revealing, in the process, depths of ignorance, hatred, bigotry, intolerance and cruelty previously unimagined. Before social media most people were contained in their small world. Now they're finding people just as bad as them. Tell me that made anything better.

R146 they found people like them before. How do you think groups like the KKK formed? Look at the intolerance and bigotry of the evangelical Christian network in this country.

Evil found plenty of ways to connect with itself long before the rise of social media. All it ever took was money. Now that kind of connection is open to everyone.

That's an unambiguously good thing

It's too long for me to care. I have the attention span of a flea

Responding to a criticism with ‘you just can’t handle criticism’ is a pretty stellar way of demonstrating you handle criticism even less well.

I disagree entirely, R147. It made it far too easy for bad people to connect. I'm not saying the clock could or even should be turned back, but I think it's a damned shame the price we've paid. We've all got a least a bit of darkness of some description in us... social magnified the opportunities for it to thrive and it's diminished human dignity. That is unambiguously not a good thing.

R149 notice how none of us are claiming we've been silenced or deplatformed though. We are just arguing against our critics. I feel zero need to write an open letter complaining about my plight as a Datalounger who has been criticised.

"Over and over and over people share stories of people (mostly anti-trans people) being publicly criticised for their views. And over and over they call that "silencing". It's just not no matter how much you say it is."

Over and over people shared stories about being fired, shunned, and boycotted for being communists and socialists (or in some cases just contributing to social justice causes that were supported by communists) during the 1950s.

Many people lost their jobs and other people in their industries were forced to denounce those who were accused -- but they were free to speak, so everything was fine by your standards, right?

Here! Here!

I'm taking a break from social media because I was too through with the political conversations as of late. And this is coming from people I actually agree with! Not enough people are coming to the table willing to learn. It's more about perpetuating group think. And if you don't agree with whatever narrow interpretation of "wokeness" you're cancelled. Or don't get it. Or aren't sufficiently progressive. It's dogma and it's dangerous.

R111, feel free to scoff at cancel culture as having little impact or relevance or feel free to dismiss it all together. But all keep in mind that, as I've stated on this site before, those who live by this cancel culture will also die by it. That has already occurred with the young lady who threatened to stab anyone who used AllLivesMatter in front of her. Regardless of her actual intent or insisted use of sarcasm it came for her, derailing her life without ever considering it being a possibility. As alanagous is PC culture, created by conservatives, only to have today's progressive leftists cry foul at virtually any conservative dialog referring to them. Perhaps it's too early for the importance of this letter's content to be intellectually comprehended by the people who should be doing so, but one day it will have to be.

R152 if any of the shit that was happening to people in the 50s was happening now, you'd have a point. But it's not. And again it's hyberbolic and not worth discussion if you can't tell the difference between the McCarthy hearing and people being called transphobic on Twitter.

I'm sure a lot of victims of those hearing would have been quite happy if all that happened to them was some teenagers sent them rude mail instead of their lives being turned upside down

R155 once again you try to boil down incredibly toxic and harmful actions into "a few mean tweets" (aka "rude mail").

You are just spouting shit.

You people have been telling me on this very thread calling people "boomers" is an incredibly toxic and harmful action and akin to silencing them.

These are the same people calling liberals of my generation snowflakes. Sorry, I'm not going to agree that criticizing people, even with insults, threatens their free speech. Because it doesn't

No one has lost their jobs? Academics and university lecturers are scared of saying things or providing instructions that may be considered racist by far-leftist ideology that has taken over student activism today. Like that UCLA accounting professor whose email reply to a student requesting easier grading for black students was deliberately misinterpreted as racist by another student who publicized it as racist. Next thing you know black student activists at UCLA managed to get that professor (over 25 years with UCLA) suspended and placed on active investigation for racism. Nothing he said in his email was racist, in fact the student whom he was replying to had thanked him for providing anti-racism resources. He was deemed racist because he refused to have a lower standard of grading for his black students. He said he didn’t even know which of his students are black as the class was online.

This wasn’t an isolated case on university campuses today. Today, college student who are activists or profess to be liberal have zero capability for processing nuances and complexities in thought. They are in fact anti-intellectual, the very thing that they accuse far-right of being, this is done without an ounce of irony. That’s the scary part, they cannot see themselves for who they resemble the most.

It’s why I have decided to not pursue a position teaching nursing at university level. A colleague (gay man who is supportive of BLM) of mine is currently teaching undergraduate nursing and he’s recently gotten into trouble over not allowing black and Latino students to skip scheduled clinical days in the week leading up to Kwanza. These students demanded to have days of reflection on BLM issues instead of going to their scheduled days at the hospital doing clinical hours with RN preceptors. When my friend refused their request, nicely and providing reasons such as not having enough contracted days with the hospital to allow students to make up missed clinical hours, he was reported to the dean of the nursing department for being racist.

He tried to appease the students by offering them opportunity for makeup, written assignment for missed clinical hours IF they insist on skipping mandatory clinical days. He told them they could write essay on the struggles that POC face. He stupidly included a sentence saying that students can write about racism and their own experience not just confining these reflections to be only about the black experience. He thought he was being inclusive but next day he got emails from black students accusing him of belittling racism that black people face. Needless to say my friend will not be going back as instructor next semester. He still supports BLM but even he says there’s a line you don’t cross and he’s had enough with these activist students.

The point of free speech, I always thought, was to be able to make one, R157. Tit for tat... that's been done.

[quote]I feel zero need to write an open letter complaining about my plight as a Datalounger who has been criticised.

Probably just as well. If your posts here are any indication no one would finish reading it anyway.

R160 wow that really hurt my feelings. According to your logic, you've just subjected me to McCarthyite abuse and the fate of our democracy is now at stake.

Gee I wonder when I'll be notified I've been fired from my job and can no longer go out in public.

Hopefully soon, if you work with a lot of other people.

Sorry not Kwanza, typed too fast and had brain fart, it was Juneteenth that my friend had his issues with activist students

There's something pretty hypocritical about R162 et al. complaining about a lack of civility on social media, after he's been attacking random people and making personal comments for hours.

That's the exact kind of thing that makes social media so toxic: knee-jerk reactions, paranoia, mistaken identity, personal attacks, grudges, etc. If you're going to complain about social media's deleterious effects on our culture, maybe try not to contribute to it yourself?

And let you have the field? I don't think so.

Charlotte clymer???!!! You are using her as an example. The same one who was drummed out of feminism because as a man he was harassing and trying to silence women? But now she’s trans so none of that is allowed to be brought up.

Let’s see people have been mistakenly doxxed on social media, a woman who isn’t a public figure lost her job because of a costume that mocking megyn Kelly’s blackface comments by two women who claim they were offended two years after the fact.

R157 actually the point was that you're immediately attacking the people, not their message, aka ad hominem fallacy. You're either obtuse or you are intentionally misinterpting what was said to create a strawman. Another fallacy.

I'd suggest you use facts instead of logical errors, but the facts aren't on your side.

They make the mistake of assuming the woke are interested in ideas and debate. They aren't. They are interested in control and power.

It is just so richly hypocritical to claim, with a straight face, that free speech is under attack while also asserting over and over others don't have a right to call you names

They are sadist, R168. Revolutionary behavior in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Cultural Revolution under Mao, Pol Pot, all indicate that people caught up in this were often sadistic in their behavior once empowered. Power translates into sadism.

[quote]It is just so richly hypocritical to claim, with a straight face, that free speech is under attack while also asserting over and over others don't have a right to call you names

Thankfully, there's no such assertion in the Harper's letter.

The only consequence JKR or Bari Weiss have face for their views has been needing called names.

Both of them are at the top of their careers otherwise. So yes dear, that's exactly what the letter is asserting

When I was at Lowe’s, I watched the Mexican workers parking their minivans and chattering away. It made me wonder if they’re happier because they probably don’t deal with any of this political BS. They just work as hard as they can and look forward to music, food, beer and sex on the weekends.

This forest for the trees argument is so annoying and weak. That plainly is not what they are arguing in Harper's. They are arguing (in parT) the intent and motives behind what we'll stipulate for brevity is 'name calling' and not that 'name calling' should be banned or prohibited but seen for what it is - an attempt to silence through intimidation rather than to undercut through reasoned debate.

This is what R172 is actually wired up about... from it's first post: For those who don't know the bill would have made it illegal for federal employees or contractors to boycott Israeli made goods due to their occupation of Palestine. That bill, aggresively supported by Bari Weiss and at least half the other signatories of the letter would have given cancel culture the strength of law.

"coded transphobic language" -- Um, what?

[quote] but seen for what it is - an attempt to silence through intimidation rather than to undercut through reasoned debate.

You may not like being insulted. But no it's not an attempt to silence to thought intimidation. That is absurdity. Insults are just that insults. I have been insulted plenty on this thread and don't feel one bit intimidated.

R175 yes the hypocrisy of those specific signatories of all people complaining about cancel culture is one of my key gripes.

I can give another example since that one bothers you so. Another group that was actually cancelled, not just called mean names but had their livelihood briefly threatened were the Dixie chicks. After they came out against the Iraq War 2003 (which was wildly popular then bit we all agree was a disaster now) they were blacklisted from thousands of country radio stations and venues.

None of the signatories of that letter, many of whom are conservatives who favored the war, had ANYTHING to say in support of the Dixie chicks because they didn't agree with their opinion. These people aren't standing on any principle. They believe they are above criticism and believe they can force us to stop it.

"It is just so richly hypocritical to claim, with a straight face, that free speech is under attack while also asserting over and over others don't have a right to call you names"

R169, calling others names is a way of silencing their right to speak. Vociferous debate is good. Slurring others as a way of delegitimising their positions is the entire strategy of the "cancel culture", though.

[quote] [R169], calling others names is a way of silencing their right to speak.

Yea people can post this 100 times and it will be false 100 times. No, calling people names is free speech. It doesn't matter if you don't like the names. I may face consequences for choosing to call you names, but in no way did I surpress your right to state your opinions.

You just can't tell the difference between things you don't like and things that threaten your rights.

If calling people names is fine then I'd like to call transwomen men, because that's what they are.

I don't care about names, but if someone criticizes some aspect of the trans agenda and your response is "TERF!!!" I'm going to assume you're not interested in a genuine exchange of ideas.

Similarly, women who dare to criticize the Karen meme as sexist are called "Karens". Again. No interest in genuine debate.

R181 you already do! And other people, using their free speech can call you a bigot and a transphobe because that's what you are. Both sides are free to say what they want.

This very exchange is exactly what happened to JKR that she says silenced her. My guess is you will keep talking just like she did because in no way is easier of you silenced

Either* of you

LOL... those who invoke the word hypocrite are so high-minded in their debate, avoiding slurs as an example to us all:

And other people, using their free speech can call you a bigot and a transphobe [italic]because that's what you are. [/italic]

Evidence? He's just stating an opinion. A person can support the right of trans to be safe in life and free from workplace and other discrimination without agreeing with self-determined gender. You may disagree with him, you may interpret the remark in a certain way, but there is no evidence in his subjective opinion that he is bigoted or transphobic. He just doesn't think like you, hypocrite.

Lmao you obviously don't know what hypocritical means at no point in this discussion have I said it's wrong to criticise or insult people. That has been your lane. I have only called it free speech while you all hysterically insist it's McCarthyism.

But fine, I accept it's only my opinion that deliberately misgendering trans people means you're a bigot and transphobe if it makes you feel better.

r17 A brilliant brilliant post. It is only a matter of time before cancel culture and the accompanying authoritarianism, intolerance and unforgivingness is turned on and used against its supporters in parts of the left and those who think of themselves as woke and morally superior. They are too stupid to realise it.

Doesn't make me feel anything, but makes you look slightly less stupid so that's a step up for you, Palestine.

R170 It starts with academia and the conversion of youths, at least with Russia/ USSR and communist China during those early periods when their respective ideologies were being cemented into societal norms guiding behavior and thinking. Those repressive regimes relied upon educated, youthful class to engage in stifling, brutal clampdowns on free speech and thought. It started with denying career advancement, demotions, and terminations before advancing to criminalizing intellectualism as broadly defined by ruling ideologues.

Erosion of free speech isn’t one calamitous event but a series of corrosion on smaller scales that chip away at the meaning of free speech. That was what happened in recent history in those aforementioned regimes. People accepted the gradual destruction of free thinking and speech until it was too late to mount a battle fighting it. This letter is a positive step in taking a stance against the the far-left falsely reframing dissent and discourse as endangering equality in a just society. We need more people to speak out not less.

R143 Yes, I agree. I remember reading about the possibilities that Twitter represented in 2012, that the 140 limited characters would help people communicate in haiku. Oh, how far we have fallen. It breaks my heart.

Thank you for such a thoughtful response, r189 - one of the best on this thread

[quote] the far-left falsely reframing dissent and discourse as endangering equality in a just society.

Remember kids, if the right criticises the left it's valued dissent and discourse that must be protected at all costs.

If the left criticises the right though it's a threat to free speech everywhere

The issue isn't whether name-calling is free speech. The issue is that name-calling is a low intelligence response and immediately identifies the speaker as lacking critical thinking skills and even the most basic knowledge of the subject. It is the intellectual equivalent of knocking over the game board when one is losing the game.

Nice strawman, r192

Do you believe that the mainstream acceptance on Twitter of doxing people is "criticism" from the left to the right, R192? I'll be waiting for your response. I'm curious what you think.

R192 The tides ebb and flow. Right now it is the far-left that is mounting the very real threat to free speech, as evidenced by the emboldened cancel culture occupying the center stage spotlight of public discourse. But dominating that sphere of influence isn’t enough for far-left cancel culture, it now demands retribution at the very least for those who are deemed to be less than compliant with far-left ideology. Criminalizing is the next step once retributive efforts such as banning of free speech in the public sphere and career banishment are complete. I would be just as concerned if it is the far-right employing such authoritarian tactics. Like I say, these misguided yet dangerous movements ebb and flow between extremes of political persuasions.

Free speech is not an either/ or stipulation whereby those who are influential, powerful, or loud get to dictate the terms acceptable free speech/ thinking based upon their own ideologies. You can just as well find yourself on the wrong end of the totem pole when political winds change. Don’t forget that.

"History shows that suppression of speech breeds suppression of speech. If today I am permitted to silence those whose views I find distasteful, I have then opened the door to allow others down the road to silence me. The neutral principle, no suppression of ideas, protects us all."

-UChicago Law professor Geoffrey Stone

Congratulations! This thread proves conclusively that Putin's efforts haven't been wasted. Fracture the left and set the factions against each other -and over one of the most basic precepts of democracy: freedom of speech. Many posters here show themselves incapable of engaging in open debate -They are instantly reduced to name calling and arguing from the infallible logic of, "Because I said so!"

Attempts to enforce ideological purity will be the death of us all.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

A Doctor Who writer has been sacked over his trans-sceptical tweets.

The letter is EXTRAORDINARILY important, and the fact that it had to be written at all is in itself terrifying and a barometer of the slippery slope on which our culture, our society teeters right now. This cancel-culture horror is just a breath away from the Two-Minute Hate rallies in 1984 or the kind of totalitarian shadow under which composers and writers like Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn struggled for freedom of expression.

I'm fascinated and horrified by the response to my mention of the McCarthy era in R12, which I intended as a historical metaphor and not an assertion of literal equivalence to current events. Along the way I've been called "retarded" and referred to as "Boris," by those who simply can't debate in an analytical manner and instead must resort to name-calling, which they then ironically defend as free speech. (And speaking of irony, I find it astounding that Jennifer Finney Boylan now expresses regret over signing the letter because J.K. Rowling did as well, thus providing a textbook example of the very sort of cancel-culture mentality the letter is fighting to overcome.) In fact, I'm in nearly full agreement with the quote from Freddie deBoer posted in R110: "What does it say when a completely generic endorsement of free speech and open debate is in and of itself immediately diagnosed as anti-progressive, as anti-left?" He then makes his point quite clear--those who oppose this letter "want to adopt a dominance politics that (you imagine) will result in you being the censor...," which is a very dangerous path to head down. My only objection is that deBoer didn't put the term "progressive" in quotes at the end, when he states that "the dominant majority of progressive people simply don’t believe in the value of free speech anymore." I think genuinely progressive people see the urgent need for truly free speech if we ever hope to achieve "fairness and justice for all races," as R121 claims to support by insinuating (quite falsely) that I don't.

Sorry to say that Progressivism is now firmly associated with cancel culture, R202. I suggest you get a new moniker. The Progressives, for example, would you call you "Libertarian", at best.

No sign of R192? I'm still waiting!

And I suggest that we reclaim the term, R203, because censorship is anything but progressive.

R205 The word "Progressive" is forever tainted, so the idea of reclaiming it is nonsense. Just look at the N word, for example. Reclaimed, yet still considered racist when a white person says it because of its historical connotations. It is what it is.

[quote]The only consequence JKR or Bari Weiss have face for their views has been needing called names.

Employees of JKR's publisher refused to work on her book, not because it was a bad book, but because they disagreed with her views. A few bookstore owners have stated they will no longer sell her books. JKR is quite rich, so it's not as though she will be homeless now. But she has certainly faced consequences for her statements.

Everything R189 said.

The increasing number of a certain kind of public apology after supposed transgressions give me a chill. Halle Berry publicly stating "As a cisgender woman, I now understand that I should not have considered this role... I am grateful for the guidance and critical conversation over the past few days and will continue to listen, educate and learn from this mistake" is straight-up Stalinist/Maoist self-criticism. Where is all this headed?

[quote] the fact that it had to be written at all is in itself terrifying and a barometer of the slippery slope on which our culture

So true. And the fact that it's considered "controversial" is unsettling as well.

R207 There is truly nothing more superficially egotistical than sellers who refuse to let other people purchase something because THEY personally don't agree. It's simultaneously virtue signalling ego stroking and pathological social control.

Progressives are just reincarnated old church ladies from the 70s burning KISS records because it's devil music.

Of course DLers are praising and defending this reactionary piece of shit.

JK Rowling is no victim. She's only suffered the consequences of her own actions and nothing more.

Why is it a piece of shit, R212? Care to share?

R212 it's not DLers lol. It's one guy with multiple accounts talking to himself). When I logged on this morning at 6 I saw the comments attacking the left had 1 or 2 WWs same as comments from many other perspectives. In the half hour it took me to brush my teeth and get dressed someone have given some of the early right wing comments 17(!) more WWs each lmao. I highly doubt DL traffic skyrockets between 6 and 630 AM. These people are not subtle. It's likely the same guy that starts anti-trans threads, gives himself 15 WWs in the 2 minutes, and then you don't see the thread gain a single additional WW for days.

Please Google Occam's razor, r215

Happy to throw accusations at R215 yet no position on R195 and doxxing. Hmmm....

Who is r217 directed at?

R215 ^

Thanks r219

R217 I guess R192/R215 forgot about Ignore-dar.

As Coco Chanel wrote, “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”

And never more so than today.

Coco Chanel was a fucking Nazi! Christ, you conservatives are fucking dumb!

It's not stupidity r223. Most conservatives just don't think those things are wrong

Anything slightly right of far-left is NAZIS!1!1!!

[quote] someone have given some of the early right wing comments 17(!) more WWs each

And by "right wing comments", R215 means those that defend the Harper's letter and free speech.

This Fourth Reich is tearing us apart!

Was Coco really a Nazi sympathizer, or a shrewd businesswoman who thought she was on the winning team? People truly overestimate morality. Most people don't give a rat's ass about morals, only their bottom line. That's why we're in this fucking mess!

So r183 stating an actual fact is bigoted? Transwomen are biological men, they are not biological women. They may identify as women and claim gender is an identity and has nothing to do with biological sex, but then they get surgery and take hormones to acquire fake versions of the body parts biological women are born with or develop naturally. So, apparently a woman cannot be defined as a person of the female sex with natural breasts but as soon as a person of the male sex gets fake breasts in imitation of those that people of the female sex have naturally, then that biological male is 100% a woman and only bigots would ever doubt that.

You can call me a bigot and I can call you a fucking moron. But I don't mind if you call me a bigot if we're agreed on our right to express our opinion. So, carry on calling me a bigot as much as you like and I will carry on stating facts - transwomen are transwomen, transwomen are biological men, and transwomen have nothing in common in terms of what it means to be a woman with the biological females whose bodies they wish to emulate.

And, yes, I do say this, but only anonymously on the internet. It's practically impossible to say you don't think transwomen are the same as biological women publicly today or a simple statement of fact such as transwomen are biological men. In fact, even amongst groups of friends you have to be careful and can only whisper it in small groups where you know the others share your opinion and even then have to make sure you're not overheard. It's a fucking ridiculous situation.

Coco Chanel wasn't a Nazi, she just used her German officer boyfriends during the occupation of France to keep her nephew protected and help herself stay on top.

Chanel the company is owned by the descendants of her Jewish business partner whom she tried to screw over during the war, although both partnered together again after the war. So, support the Jews Coco Chanel tried to screw over by supporting Chanel the company.

[quote] Go read the messages Charlotte Clymer posts that she recieves from anti-trans bigots and tell me JK Rowling is the only one who gets vitriol directed at her. Charlotte continues being an activist anyone because its's worth it to her. JK Rowling has made that same choice.

Charles resigned from the HRC months ago. He’s no longer an activist.

He claims it is because he wants to go to grad school. The real reason is that there are some nasty stories in the pipeline about ol’ Chuck (which should surprise no one familiar with his pre-transition days) that the HRC is trying to put the lid on. Clymer resigning was an attempt to get ahead of them if/when the story actually breaks.

You are literally erasing her by calling him Charles!

I enjoyed reading the replies Emily VanDerWerff from Vox got for trying to sneakily get her co-worker fired for signing the letter. R19 posted the screenshot of VanDerWerff's post but here's a link to it with a lively discussion. In one of her posts Emily is trying to explain how she "wants his colleague to keep his job". I mean JFC, this fucking cunt was the only reason anyone even knew about it since she posted the diatribe attacking him on Twitter.

I'm so fucking GLAD she's getting dragged in the comments. It seems she's expecting anyone who dares to disagree with her be branded as transphobic and thus getting attacked by the online mob. What an ugly cunt, and I'm not even talking about her face.

“Emily” Van der Werff

Ending sentences and posts with "lol" and "lmao" is a sign of a disordered mind.

I liked the trannies better when all they did was shoplifting and sucking cock at the Holland Tunnel.

150000+ likes for this crap

[quote] Cancel culture: If you are “cancelled” but do not wish to be, you must WORK to EARN back people’s respect by owning up to the thing that cancelled you in the first place, LISTENING to others, EDUCATING yourself, and ADVOCATING on behalf of the people that you have offended/harmed

These fucking idiots don’t realise that being pious, puritanical, intolerant and illiberal are characteristics they share with the far right. And it’s the far right who are far more effective at getting into power and implementing censorship and punishment for wrongthink.

The anti-letter people are so incredibly myopic I don't even know where to start:

R238 that's insane and ridiculous.

It shows how sensitive they are about it because they know that it's wrong, somewhere deep down, so they take it personally, rather than seeing the broader picture. They KNOW they are "cancel culture" so they either deny it exists or they try to reframe the argument around something like "trans rights are human rights", that is, setting up a strawman.

I'm sure the nostrilly swamp troll who posted that will get thousands more likes and she will get the attention she wants.

She says this guy just didn't "get her joke". Uh, no bitch, that's exactly what you were showing with that:

The group we’re not able to talk about is ciswomen.

They smell and are a threat to gay men.

And as the trans-obsessed division troll has found this thread (see r242), a reminder that you should block, do not engage, because he is an insane lunatic who will sit on these threads for the entire day, commenting endlessly.

He will spam misogynistic things, bash women and lesbians, and flood the thread with awful divisive statements. His intent is to distract from anything that might affect trans negatively. He should have been banned or at least red-tagged months ago but Muriel seems to be dead.

Block and don't engage. Just ignore.

(Obviously that should be r241) ^

Charles "Richard Spencer in lipstick" Clymer

[quote] He will spam misogynistic things, bash women and lesbians

But, unlike you, I’m not homophobic.

Yikes! Look at that thing R244 calling themselves a woman!

....

The Identitarians don't even realize they've been played by social engineering the exact same way the MAGATs have been. What easy marks. What idiots.

Identitarians just want power.

They don't care what is destroyed in their quest to seize it.

Does anyone think this is so niche and so overblown that it won't just burn itself out in a year or two?

r250, they're changing laws. It's only going to get worse.

Look, the vast majority of people who get "cancelled" only have to post a decent apology on social media and then wait a few weeks for everything to die down.

Many of the examples of being cancelled aren't real examples, anyway. Like the lady who complained about a metro worker eating on the job, she claimed her book wasn't published because she was cancelled, and her publisher responded right back to her saying it WAS published and she'd even tweeted about it very recently. Or the academic who people claim has "now been forced to toe the SJW line" when that isn't the case at all. People said Woody Allen was silenced and his book was published immediately after one publishing house declined to publish it.

The list goes on.

The people who want to make political hay out of "leftist woke thought police cancelling everyone because they love power" are being manipulative, and none of you should forget that. They have an agenda and a reason for you to start believing that liberals, anti-racists, leftists and other progressives are the "real evil."

Let's also not pretend that many of these signatories would cancel you in a hot second if they wanted to. How many people has JKR threatened to sue into silence?

r252 is necrotic with lies

I think the most pernicious thing about cancel culture is the number of people -- many of them leftists, probably many classical liberals as well -- who are preemptively silenced. They know dissent is not tolerated.

This is why I consider this an issue mainly effecting those on the left and, to a lesser extent, moderates.

Of course conservatives aren't afraid to speak up, but that's not really my concern.

[quote]Look, the vast majority of people who get "cancelled" only have to post a decent apology on social media and then wait a few weeks for everything to die down.

[quote]The people who want to make political hay out of "leftist woke thought police cancelling everyone because they love power" are being manipulative, and none of you should forget that.

So it's OK that the people who drive the cancel culture should erupt because it's only an inconvenience to the targets, who don't really suffer anyway, and the chill effect is only brief. And anyway you're just being manipulated by people who don't want the the people who drive the cancel culture to be able to unleash it. And after all it's only an inconvenience to the targets, who don't really suffer anyway, and the chill effect is only brief. So really, you're saying this is just a big nothing to see here?

What a relief.

[quote]I think the most pernicious thing about cancel culture is the number of people -- many of them leftists, probably many classical liberals as well -- who are preemptively silenced. They know dissent is not tolerated.

I find myself self censoring even on here because of it and certainly in real life. I just haven't got the energy for the force of the irrational push back (though in fairness to the trans I would also say I can't deal with the Kamala supporters either, for exactly the same reason.)

My view on the trans issue is, like all people, they should have broad protections in place to left them live their lives in safety and dignity and because of their circumstances will need specific courses of action by government to provide for that. I disagree with the notion they've changed their sex to that with which they identify but there's really just a few places that belief might intersect with their interest (like I am very empathetic to women who don't want to share a bathroom or change room with them. And, bad news trans, most people are. You might want to find some compromise on that one.) I think that is a fair view. I am comfortable with it.

My view on the trans advocates is they are counterproductive and have warped their mission into a small army that inspires fear and acts, not in frequently, fearsomely. These are not good or fair people. Being feared is not who you want to be in society.

But in the real world I say none of this. It isn't worth the hassle. And so the degree to which I support the trans is also somewhat muted. They're too much fucking work.

Oh dear at r254 ...

*affecting

Everyone here pointing out JKR's hypocrisy for signing this letter have really missed the point & have revealed their own self-justified tactics to dismantle opposing points of view. While JKR has restored to logic, legitimacy, intellect & reason, those in the deluge against her stance on trans issues have used slander, threats, bullying & lies. Since any of that being included in the defense of freedom of speech is a slippery slope, you may want to reconsider your argument.

[quote] view. While JKR has restored to logic, legitimacy, intellect & reason, those in the deluge against her stance on trans issues have used slander, threats, bullying & lies

Who decides which is which?

It’s JK who has used threats. Not the people who disagree with her.

r256, more people really need to start speaking out in real life.

[quote]It’s JK who has used threats.

Link, please, r259

You are a tragedy, r261

R261, if you have been paying attention, you shouldn't need a link. The issue is false equivalency. JK threatened a lawsuit against someone who wrote something that was actually defamatory and legally actionable . This is part of the issue. If one defends oneself in a proper fashion, one is accused of being "no different".

R259 very simple...Logic, reason & intellect are factually verifiable. That's how we decided which is which, very easily.

The assertion of women's rights are only threatening to those trying to take them away.

Patrick Harrington, owner of nine Kindness Yoga studios in Denver, announced last week that he was closing them all after a handful of yoga teachers, including a Black woman and a transgender man, called out Kindness on social media for “performative activism” and “tokenization of Black and brown bodies.”

Though Kindness implemented such measures as gender-neutral bathrooms, person-of-color yoga nights where “white friends and allies” were asked to “respectfully refrain from attending," LGBTQ yoga workshops, and a donation-based payment model, some teachers took to social media to say their voices were not being heard and changes they wanted were not implemented.

Already weakened by the pandemic, a rash of membership cancellations forced the business to close. Teacher Davidia Turner took to social media to castigate Kindness' CEO and owner for expressing their sadness at the closing:

“The weaponizing of sadness and tears is infuriating,” Turner said in her viral video. “It is one of the more insidious factors of white supremacy and whiteness. And it is used as a tool and as a tactic to make me feel in this Black body that I have done something inherently wrong to bring this sadness upon you.”

These people are completely unbearable. I wish they'd all hurry up and commit suicide instead of just continuing to threaten it.

My free speech: JK’s face would benefit from being dunked in acid.

She should only be allowed speak when gay men allow her.

In other words, to have feelings and emotions is now verboten and cancel-able.

Oh, well, the only thing we've lost is our humanity.

[quote]While JKR has restored to logic, legitimacy, intellect & reason, those in the deluge against her stance on trans issues have used slander, threats, bullying & lies.

JKR repeatedly made errors in her lengthy letters and tweets, errors that many called out and which she never acknowledged, let alone corrected. A lot of people and organizations made very solid, coherent arguments and explanations in response to her open letter, and she ignored them all, because it wasn't what she wanted to hear.

Then people like you (who can barely compose a coherent sentence, despite patting yourself on the back for possessing a superior intellect) post some tweet from some nobody calling JKR a bitch and you claim every reply she received was a threat.

The examples in this letter were vague on purpose, I hope the sane amongst you know that.

Ask yourself why these people are claiming they want to help individual professors, academics, students, etc. when they haven't once named a single individual, or helped them in any way.

[quote]A lot of people and organizations made very solid, coherent arguments and explanations in response to her open letter, and she ignored them all, because it wasn't what she wanted to hear.

Definitely the first time that's happened in this "conversation."

Sorry, I forgot, some of us are only allowed to listen.

“The weaponizing of sadness and tears is infuriating,” Turner said in her viral video. “It is one of the more insidious factors of white supremacy and whiteness. And it is used as a tool and as a tactic to make me feel in this Black body that I have done something inherently wrong to bring this sadness upon you.” - Teacher Davidia Turner

Uh, this sounds nothing like "more insidious factors of white supremacy and whiteness", but more like the clever manipulation of politicized blackness. The weaponizing of sadness & tears is a tactic that fuels identity politics & inflates social movements, like BLM & trans, into hyped hashtag agenda intending to instigate progress through guilt & shame instead of actionable, practical policy. How shameful to pawn your own poor maneuver onto the entity you're so-called against.

I don't even know what Davidia Turner is saying.

I suppose driving English out of the conversation is another tactic. I just had to google performative activism.

R272 The initial reaponse to her post was a hastily-written 100-post Twitter thread that used many of the same fallacious techniques exhibited in this thread to try to say her argument was wrong. People who had never read what she wrote were retweeting that thread for days afterwards saying it debunked everything she wrote. I don't think most of them read the thread either.

A handful of thoughtpieces and outraged essays followed, which mostly began by immediately accusing her of transphobia, and then used the same fallacious arguing techniques, guilt, shaming, and pseudo-science to discount what she wrote. None of them actually listened to her and tried to understand what she was saying. It was a knee-jerk reaction and is a perfect example of what the letter is warning about.

Also:

[quote]How many people has JKR threatened to sue into silence?

Pray tell us, since you certainly aren't being hyperbolic with all of your statements! I know of one person directly, who accused her of being a pedophile with no justification, that she threatened. For good reason. People like you of course attacked her for that, saying she was silencing people with her vast fortune.

The silencing didn't seem to work though, because every tweet she posts has obsessed psychotics calling her a TERF, wishing her death, posting porn, or trying one of the various manipulation techniques to guilt or shame her into silence.

And none of this has anything to do with the letter, other than as a pure example of thought-free cancel culture that the letter was warning against. This has taken the place of reasoned debate.

R273 people like that should be retroactively aborted.

It's the Judith Butler school of writing. Using pseudo-scientific terms to add the sound of authority when in reality you're just talking out of your ass to suit your agenda.

I'm sure they think what they are saying actually means something.

R271 did you read the letter? I'm guessing not.

R276, did you link to the correct post? I don't see any "pseudo-scientific terms ".

R278 Terms like "tokenization", "performative" etc. The "black body" statement was old fashioned shame and guilt manipulation wrapped up in the veneer of intelligence by sounding like a woke 3rd year arts college student's essay. Postmodern writing like this borrows terms intended for specific uses and applies them outside their traditional context, where the meaning changes but the words still have the feel of authority from their original source.

Judith Butler was used as an example because she loads her paragraphs with this NLP-esque nonsense to make what she's saying appear to have deeper meaning and authority than it does.

r279 my favorite critique of Judith Butler's writing remains Martha Nussbaum's essay in the New Republic. In particular I like this part:

[quote]In this way obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on, some complexity of thought, where in reality there are often familiar or even shopworn notions, addressed too simply and too casually to add any new dimension of understanding. When the bullied readers of Butler's books muster the daring to think thus, they will see that the ideas in these books are thin. When Butler's notions are stated clearly and succinctly, one sees that, without a lot more distinctions and arguments, they don't go far, and they are not especially new. Thus obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument.

And this:

[quote]Butler gains prestige in the literary world by being a philosopher; many admirers associate her manner of writing with philosophical profundity. But one should ask whether it belongs to the philosophical tradition at all, rather than to the closely related but adversarial traditions of sophistry and rhetoric. Ever since Socrates distinguished philosophy from what the sophists and the rhetoricians were doing, it has been a discourse of equals who trade arguments and counter-arguments without any obscurantist sleight-of-hand. In that way, he claimed, philosophy showed respect for the soul, while the others' manipulative methods showed only disrespect. One afternoon, fatigued by Butler on a long plane trip, I turned to a draft of a student's dissertation on Hume's views of personal identity. I quickly felt my spirits reviving. Doesn't she write clearly, I thought with pleasure, and a tiny bit of pride. And Hume, what a fine, what a gracious spirit: how kindly he respects the reader's intelligence, even at the cost of exposing his own uncertainty.

Exactly r280. It's like H.P. Lovecraft's thoughts that the reader fills in the details with far more horror than he could ever put to the page, so he leaves it intentionally vague. People reading Butler's writing (or Davida's comments above) assume they mean more than they actually do because surely they must, right? and elevate what are otherwise basic comments into a whole new level, wrapped in this shield of "race" (instead of Butler's feminism).

[quote]philosophy showed respect for the soul, while the others' manipulative methods showed only disrespect

That's a very good comment too. Sophistry vs. philosophy.

r282 that's one of the things that bothers me about Butler's (and others, eg, Spivak's) writing. It takes such a long time to read and understand, time I feel is wasted. As an academic, I pride myself on producing clear, generally lucid prose: it does demonstrate a respect for the reader. I also think it demonstrates courage. It shows that one is willing to present their arguments in a straightforward fashion. I want my arguments to be very clear to my reader, but in turn, this means they are in a better position to challenge them. Opaque, overwrought writing betrays lack of confidence in one's argument.

JK Rowling made her bed; hell, changes the sheets and updates the duvet cover with every tweet. She revels in being the contrarian, like a lot of conservatives. It's the whole point, to play the oppressed victim because their own oppressive views aren't popular. It's the same "intolerant left" fallacy they always trot out. "You're intolerant of my intolerance!!" It's complete b.s., just like the letter itself.

R284 = Ad hominem attack and mind-reading instead of what she actually said.

Oh for fuck's sake, enough with the "JK Rowling is a conservative" nonsense

Free speech is JK writing her transphobic screed and liking homophobic tweeters.

Free speech is also people calling JK out for being a TERF cunt.

DL was better when the alt-right didn't recruit here.

From 2018:

J. K. Rowling achieved billionaire status because of her success with the Harry Potter series. However, she is no longer a billionaire because she has donated so much of her fortune to charity. In 2011, she donated 16 percent of her total net worth, equal to about $160 million.

One of Rowling’s novels, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, will be republished by Scholastic with the proceeds going to the charity Comic Relief and Rowling’s global charity, Lumos. Rowling will be adding a new foreword that is narrated by Newt Scamander and includes new details on the Wizarding World.

Within the past year, Rowling’s charities have donated more than £8 million to various causes. Volant Charitable Trust gave more than £3 million to causes like the Disasters Emergency Committee, Save the Children and Christian Aid. Rowling’s other charity, Lumos, gave more than £5.2 million to aid orphans and children in perilous situations worldwide.

Rowling’s charity, Lumos, is an international nonprofit organization whose main goal is to aid orphaned children in troubled situations in finding their families or otherwise provide them with a loving home. Over the past year, Lumos has helped to reunite more than 111 children in Haiti with their families.

I addition to her own foundations, Rowling supports 14 organizations. She has served as an ambassador for the charity Gingerbread, and now holds the title of honorary president. Gingerbread advocates for single parents by providing them with support and advice.

Rowling has shown her support for the charity Comic Relief, whose goal is to end poverty and social biases in the U.K., by writing two Harry Potter companion novels for the organization. The sales from Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them have raised more than £17 million for Comic Relief.

An additional charity Rowling fervently supports is the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, located at the University of Edinburgh. Rowling’s mother is the namesake for the clinic; she died in 1990 due to complications from multiple sclerosis.

Rowling is an avid humanitarian, and helps to support these organizations by providing personal donations and through her successful book sales.

Here's the 14 charities she contributes to:

JK Rowling has supported the following charities listed on this site:

Book Aid International

Catie Hoch Foundation

Children with AIDS

Dyslexia Action

Gingerbread

Haven Foundation

Heifer International

Lumos

Make A Child Smile Appeal

Multiple Sclerosis Society

PEN

Raisa Gorbachev Foundation

Women's Fund for Scotland

XP Support Group

And?

All well and good, R289/90, but she said a person with a penis is a man, so SHE MUST BE DESTROYED!

“'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. '

Yes, as evidenced by women’s attempts to erase ‘gay men’ as a term.

R293 exactly.

No group has a longer history of being gaslit than gay men.

"Rumor tells, Chiona, that you are a virgin, and that nothing is purer than your fleshy delights. Nevertheless, you do not bathe with the correct part covered: if you have the decency, move your panties onto your face." Book III, No. 87

And here is free speech advocate and classical liberal JK Rowling threatening to sue someone much poorer than her for making a joke on Twitter she doesn't like.

I'm sure the the right winger on this thread claiming he's worried about free speech will be aghast

R298, the second he called her terf it became apparent he's nothing but a shit-stirring troll. I can only imagine how many times that has happened to her. No wonder she got angry. IF it even happened, that is, it's easy to create whatever screenshot you want in a few minutes.

TERF mean ‘woman’. Trans activists are misogynists and homophobes. They are anti-science, they are fascist and they’re violent. The T needs to be broken off from the LGB.

There are twitter feeds misconstruing and taking out of context one of Rowling's tweets and claiming she is a pedo. LOL!

This is behavior we have come to expect from trans extremists. Deceit and hatred to the point of irrationality.

The nutty trans activists gray out every single thread on DLthat has anything to do with trans identity. this one wasn't even ABOUT trans identity originally but Rowling's signature made it such.

It's evident that many trans people do not want any other people to discuss anything even impinging on their political party line. it is their way or the highway. No wonder people who are not as wealthy as Rowling are terrified to address these questions publicly.

r301, they're all delusional. They don't even know what sex they are. They should be locked in psych wards.

r302, the trans movement is astroturfed just like the Bernie Bros, just like the MAGATs, to try to create the illusion of there being more supporters than there are. And guess what? That astroturfing is being run from the exact same bot farms because revoking gay and women's rights and sterilizing gay children and forbidding freedom of speech are exactly the kinds of things Putin supports. You couldn't dream up a more regressive, illiberal ideology if you tried.

“Trans women are women” is the cornerstone premise and mantra of the trans movement. All commentary is measured against what they see as this unshakable truth. Thus, if you say “women cannot produce sperm,” they say but transgender women CAN produce sperm, and since transgender women are women, wallah, women can produce sperm. If you say “transgender women AREN’T women,” they say “are too” and then dox you on social media. They have no argument, just dogma.

I don't believe either side of this so-called argument. The trolling is incredible! I've met quite a few trans people in my day. Their activism was always centered around being safe from physical harm, and the right to continue to live and work -and use the public bathroom that coincided with their stated gender. None of them demonstrated the least sign of being homophobic, or misogynistic. I don't believe that has really changed. Believing that biological sex is a real thing is not being transphobic! That is in illogical leap. Someone is stirring the pot here.

"The "Karen" reference undermines your argument, [R77]"

It doesn't.

You want it to because you don't have a cogent rebuttal.

Like the people who signed the letter you feel as if you are above criticism and no one should dare contradict you.

I'm guessing you've been coasting on a certain amount of privilege, and much to your horror you've seen challenges to that privilege come from some unexpected sources--even the conservative Supreme Court.

So now you're being a whiny little turd. But, oh noes! "Whiny little turd" undermines my argument.

But being an whiny little turd kind of undermines your existence. You just thought you would never have to be a better human being and your privilege would shield you from the consequences of your wretched life.

How's that working out for you? Still flogging the communist threat argument and lying about it. Still making any false equivalency, including the McCarthyism charge.

You're running out of bullshit comparisons meant to fluster others. You have reached the limits of trolling. It was bound to happen eventually and now you're panicking.

As you should.

I’m sorry r306, but the very belief of a man that he can simply will himself into being female or that being female is a feeling, is at its core misogynistic.

[quote] JK Rowling

Cunt!

[quote] JK Rowling

Fetid overrated author and facetious cunt!

r308, it's also completely delusional and an indication of psychosis.

r306, it has changed. You're just not looking. Check out Fred Sargeant's Twitter feed.

R298 LOL are you kidding with that bullshit? Notice how he cuts off the faux chat log with JK Rowling saying "listen up you dumb bitch". It's obviously a faked log.

It's cute how your argument is so lacking that you're reaching for obviously faked examples to gleefully try to justify your viewpoint. It's called confirmation bias, and all your little example did was show how dumb you are. You're not worth arguing with.

R306 your mistake is thinking there are two sides. There are not. There is the extreme trans dogma, which is described as *trans women are women* and everything following from that initial lie which is, ultimately, that there is no such thing as biology or sex. That is what has taken over and fills in for "trans thought".

People generally do not have any issues with trans people who pass using the bathrooms they feel safer in. The issue becomes when any man can say "I'm really a woman", and all women's sex-based spaces are opened up to this person. There are legitimate, scientifically-proven reasons for sex-based separation, and saying you're a different sex does not magically make you that sex. Science still applies.

The "just let us pee!" argument is fallacious.

R307 all your response is, is name-calling and insults. Way to prove the person's point that you are a sophist.

"The issue becomes when any man can say "I'm really a woman", and all women's sex-based spaces are opened up to this person. There are legitimate, scientifically-proven reasons for sex-based separation, and saying you're a different sex does not magically make you that sex. Science still applies."

Where to begin? Yes, the scientific definition of sex still applies as a tool for classification. At what point can that classification change? We'll agree (I hope) that it takes more than clothing. What about surgical alteration? Hormone treatments? If a post-op trans person could pass for their new gender in a locker room is that sufficient for you? Or does it come down to chromosomes?

I am confused about "sex-based spaces" as a concept. Bathrooms and locker rooms? Check. Changing rooms at a clothing store? Okay... I've never felt the need to climb up and peer over stall walls to verify the sex organs of the person next to me, so please bear with me. Fraternities and sororities?

Finally, what are "legitimate, scientifically-proven reasons for sex-based separation"?? Separation of the sexes is a cultural consideration, not a scientific one. How can science "prove" anything here? Yes, it can prove I am male or female. But it cannot prove that I should be with or separated from any others. I'm afraid that argument starts to sound like a lot of old arguments for racial separation...

r315 do you know what an autogynephile is?

[quote] R315, do you know what an autogynephile is?

No. It doesn't. It confusingly and embarrassingly conflates racial issues with sexual differences.

I think it's a Russian troll and not allowed to access IPs with info that explain autogynephilia.

Misogynist is a slur used by homophobes to silence gay men.

Jonathan Freedland: The reaction to the letter has shown the need for it

Any letter that carries the signatures of both the former George W Bush speechwriter David Frum – the man who coined the phrase “axis of evil” – and Noam Chomsky is bound to get attention. It takes some doing to get, say, New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and Bernie Sanders advocate Zephyr Teachout to join forces, and there are dozens of similarly unlikely ideological match-ups to be found among those who signed the letter published by Harper’s Magazine.

Endorsed by a bulging list of esteemed writers, artists and public intellectuals, this letter might well come to be seen as an inflection point in an argument that has been rumbling away, much of it on social media, for months if not years. And yet, the text hardly reads like some ground-breaking, revolutionary document. Luther’s 95 Theses, it ain’t.

Instead, as one signatory, Anne Applebaum, conceded on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, it consists of a series of statements that are, in themselves, quite “anodyne”. It’s not disparaging to say that the document, like many open letters, represents a lowest common denominator, a bare minimum that would be acceptable – indeed, obvious – to the likes of both Frum and Chomsky. The letter declares, for example, that: “The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.” Are there many who would disagree with those words, who would want to make out loud the case for wishing away what they don’t like?

And yet the statement has not been received as a boilerplate recitation of the case for free expression, but has become controversial. That’s partly because of the text itself – which some have read as brimming with thin-skinned privilege, seeing it as a coded attack on marginalised minorities for having the gall to criticise people with power and platforms – but also, as happens often with open letters, because of the names at the bottom. One name in particular has provoked fury: that of JK Rowling, because of her writings on trans rights and gender. At least two signatories have distanced themselves from the letter since its publication.

It’s clear that a number of people believe Rowling should not be included in such statements, that her views have placed her outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. As it happens, the letter speaks of this phenomenon when it describes “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism.” It seems the Harper’s letter might be a rare example of the reaction to a text making the text’s case rather better than the text itself.

Did David Duke sign?

R284, Rowling isn't a conservative. She's firmly on the left of British politics, just not the stupid woke left that has become obsessed with the trans. The last thing JK Rowling is is a supporter of the Conservative party.

What is truly conservative are the backwards, outdated gender stereotypes perpetuated by the trans or the idea that if you don't conform to some gender stereotype then there's something inherently wrong with you that needs "fixing" with medical treatment. Also conservative is the drowning out of opinions different from your own and the attempt to "crush" your opponent not through debate, the presentation of facts and the validity of your argument but by slandering them, setting the mob on them to tear them to pieces, shouting them down, making them out to be the worst person in the world.

[quote]She's firmly on the left of British politics, just not the stupid woke left that has become obsessed with the trans. The last thing JK Rowling is is a supporter of the Conservative party.

Is she?

She supported Blair, but she's been very critical of Labour over the last six years. Now that Boris has given her a win in dropping the planned trans rights bill she and her coven were whining about, I wouldn't be surprised if she's moved over to support them.

Has she made any *recent* statements?

"Believing that biological sex is a real thing is not being transphobic!"

Believing that biological sex is a real thing is certainly not being transphobic, r306, but that's unfortunately where we are today. Literally, all JK Rowling said is that biological sex is real and look at how all the crazed trans and their crazed allies are responding to that. The trans people you met were of the old school type who simply felt better living and acting as the opposite sex but didn't impose any overarching social theory along with it. Today, biological sex has been trumped by gender and gender has nothing to do with genitals but is about identity.

I have been involved in debates with biological female lesbians who have fully adopted this line of thinking and have tried to convince me that some lesbians have penises and I should get over it. When I ask them if they'd be willing to date one of those lesbians with penises, they can never give me a direct answer because of course they never would, and instead just mumble some stuff about gender or - funniest of all - call me a terf. But this really is what is becoming the current way of thinking - that sexuality is about gender identity not same-sex attraction, and that trying to make it about same-sex attraction is reducing everything to genitals (I'd love to hear them making the same kind of argument to heterosexuals, but I doubt they will). I don't think most people realise how prevalent this idea is, but the moment you say "transwomen are women" and also accept that being trans is nothing to do with the physical body but is simply an identity, then that is exactly the world we are living in.

The people who have been taken in by this kind of magical thinking are mostly the younger generations but it actually cuts across all age groups and many older people now believe this shit because no real debate has ever been had and they are PC and want to adopt whatever sounds like the latest woke thing - while many younger people see it for the shit it is. But it's hard to argue against this nonsense, because, first, you get immediately slammed as a terf, transphobe, etc. It's hard to debate the inconsistencies of the trans claims because they are now all wrapped up in the so-called "LGBTQIANB2S+++ community", where lesbians and gays are supposedly one and the same as the trans.

Then there is the big lie that trans women of colour initiated and led Stonewall - which is bs, but that is what is believed. This has now also merged with the BLM stuff, so if you say something like "I'm attracted to people of my own sex, I'm not so sure that transwomen are 100% women" then you are the worst of the worst because you're not just a terf transphobe but you're apparently also a racist too.

There is also an equally big lie that a lesbian started Stonewall. But TERFs like that lie.

A lesbian, r325? I thought it was a trans woman of color.

WORDS ARE LITERAL VIOLENCE!!!!!!

[quote] A lesbian, [R325]? I thought it was a trans woman of color.

Some lesbians try to claim it was a lesbian, despite that being untrue.

The point is they don't care about the truth, they care about what suits their agenda.

nuance;

Stonewall was a gay bar.

The uprising was led by predominately white gay men. They were political radicals.

There were no lesbians present.

Transgender people did exist at the time.

The snobbery in that article is not helpful and totally against the spirit of Stonewall.

[quote]The adults are speaking

You think? Elders, sure. Adults, hardly.

[quote]So tired of seeing this particular cliche on the Datalounge, of all places.

MARY! Why white me so stupid? Take you cak and graxy and die in a grease fire. No once around the garden for you!

Oh look.

The transtapo is back.

sorry, r330, I gave it a skim before I posted, but it's been awhile since I first read it, I didn't mean to cause any hurt

[quote] Are there many who would disagree with those words, who would want to make out loud the case for wishing away what they don’t like?

Do you read Datalounge, R320?

The conflation of disagreement and debate with “harm” is why it’s gotten so ugly (although no one has been able to document harm of what kind and to whom). When the very fact that I would make that assertion is characterized as harm itself, disagreement is rendered impossible, which is the entire point of the claims of harm in the first place. Who taught them this was rational thinking?

The change began when women began to dominate higher education. And they declared disagreeing with them 'literal violence'.

Here is a good example of just how pervasive cancel culture is. I belong to an antique doll group. Someone posted a photo of a tiny doll with a postcard of a mansion as a background. Instead of focusing on the doll "woke" people tried to cancel the person who posted the doll because of the "offensive" image of "a plantation". It seriously went from zero-to-ugly in seconds. The joke is that the postcard was of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. When that was pointed out, the attacks of the owner of the doll redoubled. He was accused of being intentionally provocative and "Knowing exactly what he was doing." Their argument is any building with columns triggers images of slavery and must be suppressed. Mind you, this is in a doll group not Reddit.

We've seen that on Datalounge, as well, R338.

r338, was the crazy person kicked out of the group? Because the solution to this is kicking the crazy people out of groups, like kicking the T out of the LGB and the Wokesters out of the Left.

Ban women from higher education and allow them to become places of learning instead of activism.

No one is even attempting, any longer, to teach Rational Thinking anymore, r336. They are now 'teaching' whatever version of their subject that they think will keep them safe from the PC bombs and, if they ape Robin diAngelo, they can climb the greasy anti-academic pole, get treasured tenure, and maybe even, one day, like diAngelo, charge $6000.00 an HOUR.

Not for debate. No- diAngelo refuses to debate. She charges $6000.00 an hour just for a lecture.

R340, it wasn't a single person. There were about a dozen or so people. Granted, the group has nearly 6,000 members. We closed comments on the thread and deleted the inappropriate posts.

r341 = I know, I will end 'cancel culture' in higher education by cancelling an entire gender

Gtfo with that bullshit r341.

There are plenty of female academics who don't buy into the woke nonsense. Marjorie Perloff and Martha Nussbaum are two of my favorites.

Why has Yale not been cancelled yet?

Somebody please explain to me.

Triggered TERF at R345.

Don't respond to the misogynistic trans troll - he camps in these threads and tries to distract and derail them. Block and move on.

r341 = Putin

Thanks, r348, and noted.

I tend to get sucked into these arguments against my better judgment

Pretty interesting... it may be hard to digest given it involves an actress dating a Republican but the dynamics of the cancel culture and Twitter mob are well illustrated in this article.

Comer is cancelled because corners of her fanbase believe she cannot be a good person and date a Republican. Personal politics aside, the logic here is that because he is a Republican, he must be a racist, sexist and a homophobe, despite the fact we know nothing about the man or where he comes from, and that it's none of our business anyway. To date someone with these views, Comer – despite having always supported both the LGBTQ community and Black Lives Matter on social media – is assumed to have them herself.

“Jodie Comer if you’re reading this, you can’t play a gay character and call yourself an ally when you’re dating a Republican, you disgusting piece of s___”, read one Tweet, referring to Comer’s Killing Eve character Villanelle being gay. Another: “jodie comer actually scare me bc she’ll be the biggest advocate for gay/trans rights, anti racism and womens rights but then date a man who believes in nothing of the sort. is she okay?”

"No, actually, Jodie needs to check HERSELF! We made her career and we can easily take it out away by not supporting her because she's dating a whole RACIST... I don't know how that's hard to grasp. #jodiecomerisoverparty"

So funny!

You want to complain about how society has become all about feelings instead of facts until someone points out why.

It's not right-wing men who decided to promote #TWAW. It was left-wing ciswomen.

It's so funny seeing that come back to bite JK in the cunt.

Seriously, though. Yale was literally BUILT on slavery. Oxford wasn't. Cambridge wasn't. Harvard? Still a question.

But Yale DEFINITELY was built directly upon slavery.

Lines like this are always chilling:

[quote]We made her career and we can easily take it out away

I swear these people are toddlers.

Not toddlers. They're totalitarian fascists.

R350 it's one of the few people I have blocked because they are relentless and they go to any trans thread and spam it to wear people down. They should be banned but Muriel is apparently dead. If you block you'll see the massive amounts of posts they have made to this and any thread that has tangential trans in it.

R355 that would imply they have thought about this beyond their immediate wants. I think assigning them a political ideology is giving them more credit than they deserve. They definitely act that way though!

People boycotting JK's books are using their right to free speech.

R330/352(a good portion of this thread) hatred of women is classic “I hate women because I can’t be one”

R315, science comes into significant play when applied to female spaces in sports. Biological men & women perform in separate competitions because of scientifically proven biological differences. Where trans women have been permitted to compete against biological women they've broken records due to their biologically male strength & endurance. So yea, science does have something to do with it. This seems pretty obvious.

r359, so typical serial killer/trans 'woman' shit.

Why is Yale still standing?

There is no other single American institution more owing its success to the money derived from slavery.

[quote] “I hate women because I can’t be one”

That's a classic homophobic trope.

Go bathe in acid.

R362 Don't be stupid. No one is calling for Yale to stop operating. Not one single activist. At the very most some are calling for the name to be changed. And not even THAT many people are calling for that compared to how many are fighting for confederate statues to come down. The people talking about Yale at all are a pretty small subgroup.

R358, don't be silly. This is an anti-trans hate thread. You're not allowed say anything rational.

I notice most anti-trans don't reject the concept of 'hate speech' as a thing.

They just don't like that they can't decide what it is.

I am curious what the reaction would have been had Rowling NOT signed the letter.

Exactly R366. Upthread one of them tries very hard to argue "TERF" is somehow out of bounds speech. And he has a tantrum over the fact he just can't declare it so

I also agree with most of Noam Chomsky's previous comments of how 'free speech' operates as a concept.

JK's idea of free speech seems to be she gets to write whatever she wants, then, when people disagree, she threatens then to shut them up.

I'm not sure anyone in the larger debate is arguing that "TERF" is out of bounds.

But it's enlistment does betray the lack of rational argument among those who use it. They can only respond to their critics with name-calling. It's not a good look for trans activists.

8 sock puppets sitting in Veronica Ivy's be-penised lap...

*Its at r370

R367 Likely the same. It's not just her they are hating on.

Each group sees through their own myopic lens and assumes it's about them. Which is pretty telling.

[quote] I'm not sure anyone in the larger debate is arguing that "TERF" is out of bounds.

Yes, they are. They say it's 'hate speech'.

r373, yeah, not likely at all. You don't seem to have been paying any attention to what's been happening. Or you're just a liar.

Does all this come down to a generational divide? This new trans stuff? Millennial magical thinking 'saying somethin makes it real.' Thus culture, society must change , adapt to me. That's cool in twitter bubbles, on student campus. Remember Camille Paglia? She (or he, I think they identify as trans now) said real life is a jungle when it comes to sex and relationships. Human's are animals. You'll get hurt, you'll hurt others. There's no offside referee waiting to step in to fix things according to the rules in the Gender Studies handbook. Own your decisions etc.

Why face the facts, when you can just feel the feelings- Pet Shop Boys

r376, the people pushing trans are 60+ year old billionaire autogynephilic men with financial interests in bio-medical tech.

[quote]the people pushing trans are 60+ year old billionaire autogynephilic men with financial interests in bio-medical tech.

But I thought they never medically transitioned?

R376 it's not a generational divide at all. American voters have overwhelmingly said at the ballot they don't find trans people threatening and approve of them being enabled to lead happy lives.

In North Carolina, not a deep blue state by any stretch of the imagination, a governor who presided over an economic boom was voted out over his unhinged obsession with trans people using bathrooms. Referendums that sought to define gender as gender at birth failed in at the ballot box in several states.

The divide is between what is an increasingly small but vocal group of extremists and a comfortable majority of the country.

[quote] Millennial magical thinking 'saying somethin makes it real.' Thus culture, society must change , adapt to me.

Millennials did change society. You might not like the changes but that makes them no less substantial. At the time Trayvon Martin was shot, most white Americans said they did not believe systemic racism played a role in how the incident was handled by the justice system.

Now by overwhelming margins white Americans acknowledge systemic racism is real and does concrete harm to Black people.

The entire time you people have been shrieking on this website, you have lost major ground in the court of public opinion

Link didn't copy in right at r380

[R362] Don't be stupid. No one is calling for Yale to stop operating. Not one single activist.

R364, you call that poster stupid yet you seem to miss his entire point, which was the hypocrisy that Yale was built on slavery, but "not one single activist" is calling for it to be taken down.

R363=Rachel McKinnon still bitter he can’t feel anything with his “pleasant peanut clit”

r383 is literal violence.

R356 this must be the same TRA troll who got shredded by an equally relentless, and even more skilled, lesbian (or several) in the “Terrified Lesbian Writes Anonymous Letter ...” thread. God I loved that thread. (Wish I could remember how to link.)

Anyway, in the middle of that thread someone posted a delicious “performance review” of Rachael McKinnon/Veronica Ivy by the philosophy department dean of whatever third-tier uni McKinnon teaches at. (It had to have been a spoof document—I didn’t think deans even did performance reviews of faculty—but if it was, it was filled with delectable academic details.)

Oh, and some white knight joined the battle in support of JK Rowling, well reasoned. However, in so doing, she outed herself as a middle-aged straight woman, and was politely and decisively asked to leave. Great fun.

IIRC, that thread also contained a link to an interview of Fred Sargeant about the first night of Stonewall. Great footage.

r385, no, that was his real performance review. He shared it to a group while he was screaming about suing them and someone ganked it and reshared and then we posted it everywhere :)

^^^ as I said above. A small number of extremists talking to themselves about events no one else cares about or recognizes, deluding themselves into believing they are creating some sort of momentum against trans rights as they become more and more irrelevant in the real world.

Do any of you normal people know what they're talking about? No, it's nonsense they spend all day immersing themselves in on reddit and 4chan. They want VERY MUCH to turn this website into a new breeding ground for them and this thread and others are tantrums they throw that it's failed so spectacularly. Look through the thread here and see how much foot stomping there is over DL "censoring" their anti-trans stances just because we have long ago lost patience with their obsession and FF them, as is our right.

This letter is completely reasonable. What a joke our progressive society has become that we now live in a kind of North Korea and liberals feel the need to slavishly submit to a standard of supposed liberalism that's unreachable. The attitude is truly chilling: How much do YOU love the Dear Leader? Prove it!

The reaction to the letter reveals far more about the letter than the letter itself.

Which, I suspect, was largely the point.

First we were living through the new McCarthy era and now we are a kind of North Korea. Wow, things have sure escalated quickly over the last 4 days. I suppose America will be a post apocalyptic wasteland devoid of all life by sometime next week.

Hyperbole aside, r390, r189 has offered one of the best responses on this thread and it's worth repeating:

It starts with academia and the conversion of youths, at least with Russia/ USSR and communist China during those early periods when their respective ideologies were being cemented into societal norms guiding behavior and thinking. Those repressive regimes relied upon educated, youthful class to engage in stifling, brutal clampdowns on free speech and thought. It started with denying career advancement, demotions, and terminations before advancing to criminalizing intellectualism as broadly defined by ruling ideologues.

Erosion of free speech isn’t one calamitous event but a series of corrosion on smaller scales that chip away at the meaning of free speech. That was what happened in recent history in those aforementioned regimes. People accepted the gradual destruction of free thinking and speech until it was too late to mount a battle fighting it. This letter is a positive step in taking a stance against the the far-left falsely reframing dissent and discourse as endangering equality in a just society. We need more people to speak out not less.

This has nothing to do with free speech. What you're asking for is speech without consequences, speech where no one is allowed to complain or disagree. You want one group to be able to speak while the rest sit there in silence.

[quote]This has nothing to do with free speech.

How is the government preventing anyone from speaking in this situation, R393? You just want opinions you agree with heard, while everyone else can sit down and shut the fuck up.

r394 revealed her hand at r365.

Revealed what hand R395? I say what I think. This thread turned into an anti-trans hate thread almost immediately. I said it, I meant it, and I still mean it.

JK has the right to speak.

We have the right to choose not to read her books, to call her a bigot, to say we don't like her.

That's OUR right.

[quote]This thread turned into an anti-trans hate thread almost immediately.

No it didn't. You're either obtuse or disingenuous.

Or perhaps you only have a hammer, and everything is an anti-trans nail.

When the government criminalizes the use of pronouns, free speech is dead. When the government criminalizes objectivity in favor of subjectivity, free speech is dead.

The anti-trans obsessives are ludicrously claiming that people being called in for public hearings, arrested, imprisoned, beaten and murdered for dissent is the same thing as people choosing not to buy JKRs books because they believe she's a bigot.

It just doesn't hold up under serious scrutiny. Maybe on reddit people buy this nonsense from you but people on this site aren't that stupid.

[quote]When the government criminalizes the use of pronouns

No government has done that.

“Freedom of speech” is part of the First Amendment, and most US states' constitutions, but it’s more than that. As if that weren’t enough.

But the phrase free speech does not solely refer to what the government can do. Free speech means more than that.

Free speech is also part of a society's ethos of reasoned debate. Free speech is how democracy informs itself. Free speech is part of a social and historical tradition of free inquiry.

Do we want Medicare for all? Fine, let’s hear the pros and cons. Police defunding? Let’s explore what that means. Reparations? Go read all sides of that issue.

When debate is chilled, by technology’s ability to dox and broadcast even ancient statements someone's opponent has uttered, then free inquiry suffers.

Thank you, r402.

We can criticise people for statements they made today, yesterday, or 20 years ago if we so choose. That is free speech AS MUCH as the original statements are.

You envision some kind of special protection for conservative speech were it cannot be criticised. That protection does not exist and never will outside of your mind.

R390 doesn't seem to understand what a metaphor is.

R398, it started at R6 and built from there.

Someone really should have told the Dixie Chicks in 2003 that free speech means all deplorables in the South still had to buy their concert tickets and book them for appearances after they publicly denounced the George Bush and the Iraq War.

Shame on their manager for not knowing this special clause

I love that the Transtapo's response to a thread about free speech here has been to grey it out.

No more needs to be said.

R401, yes they have, though it is often done under the guise of "harassment".

I said this upthread, but for me, this really isn't about conservative speech. It's really about speech on the left and the conflict between progressivism and classical liberalism.

What's happened is that classical liberals are now lumped with "conservatives" by progressives. I think the reasons are twofold. First, thinkers on the right are actually more amenable to debate informed by classical liberalism than thinkers on the left (progressives); this is unfortunate. And second, progressives have adopted a very black and white, unnuanced way of thinking. "If you disagree with any aspect of our agenda, in any way, you are automatically an evil conservative."

This happens in academia a lot -- or at least, in my little corner of it. And to me, it is chilling.

R408 FFing the thread is free speech genius! You are not shielded from criticism no matter how much it hurts your feelings

Disingenuous, r404. The Harper's letter is not about mere “criticism” of statements people made. To quote part of it:

[quote]But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; [bold]professors are investigated for quoting works of literature[/bold] in class; a [bold]researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the [bold]heads of organizations are ousted[/bold] for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.

This is not just “criticism,” r404. The whole point of the Harpers letter is that back-and-forth debate is actually being impaired.

Let’s try that again. Formatting [bold]bold text[/bold] is hard!

Disingenuous, [R404]. The Harper's letter is not about mere “criticism” of statements people made. To quote part of it:

[quote]But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; [bold]books are withdrawn[/bold] for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; [bold]professors are investigated for quoting works of literature[/bold] in class; a [bold]researcher is fired[/bold] for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the [bold]heads of organizations are ousted[/bold] for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.

This is not just “criticism”. The whole point of the Harpers letter is that back-and-forth debate is actually being impaired.

YOU are the people trying to argue that us FFing you is somehow violating your free speech. You actually have the gall to come to our website, spread anti-trans bigotry, and tell us we aren't allowed to FF you for it.

You are full of shit. This isn't even a debate. It's you insisting over and over that I'm only allowed to agree with or praise your views.

[quote]It's you insisting over and over that I'm only allowed to agree with or praise your views.

And yet here you are, posting your views over and over (and over) again. Funny that.

He didn't say you had the power to keep him from speaking on DL, just the intention.

Here is an (in my opinion) excellent comment from Twitter:

[quote]It just validates the letter really. Trans activism here on Twitter has gone way beyond just caring about trans people. It's fetishizing the issue, making it a fundamentalist religion, a cult.

My eyes rolled so hard I hurt myself. That stream of tweets reads like nothing but a long screed about how awful liberals are. Total right-wing garbage.

[quote] He didn't say you had the power to keep him from speaking on DL, just the intention.

Yes DL. Remember, using the functionality of this website as intended is a McCarthyite tactic. FFing is something we used to only see in North Korea! Truly chilling to see it happen here. Who will sign on to my open letter to Muriel?

R414, pointing out that transwomen aren't women, they're simply transwomen, and that biological sex is real isn't "anti-trans bigotry", it's just stating facts. Not sure why you have so much trouble with facts.

You're a snooze, R419.

[quote] At the time Trayvon Martin was shot, most white Americans said they did not believe systemic racism played a role in how the incident was handled by the justice system.

How was this case handled improperly by the system? He was charged with an offense and he was tried. It just happened that at trial and under oath a number of disinterested witnesses, including POC, corroborated the defendant’s version of events along his timeline.

So citing one example with its own facts and circumstances does not support your argument. Maybe there are other facts that could support your theory but your inferential leap and incorrect assessment of the Trayvon Martin are not among them.

Well said R391. And R410, as well.

R392 [quote]This has nothing to do with free speech. What you're asking for is speech without consequences, speech where no one is allowed to complain or disagree. You want one group to be able to speak while the rest sit there in silence.

No. The definition of free speech is being able listen to ideas from all sides. If your speech threatens people's physical safety, then there is consequences. There are laws for that.

R396 [quote]Revealed what hand [R395]? I say what I think. This thread turned into an anti-trans hate thread almost immediately. I said it, I meant it, and I still mean it. Can you quote the posts that are anti-trans hate? Or do you think that stating a scientific fact "transwomen are biological men" is anti-trans hate?

R396

[quote]Revealed what hand R395? I say what I think. This thread turned into an anti-trans hate thread almost immediately. I said it, I meant it, and I still mean it.

Can you quote the posts that are anti-trans hate? Or do you think that stating a scientific fact "transwomen are biological men" is anti-trans hate?

R414 No one cares what you think. You're not interested in debate, your argument is pure sophistry.

[quote]JK has the right to speak.We have the right to choose not to read her books, to call her a bigot, to say we don't like her. That's OUR right.

That's all well and good. No one in this thread has ever said that you don't have a right to choose not to read her books, or call her a bigot. And yet, the rest of us also have a right to read her books, and to disagree with you from time to time, without being threatened and attacked ourselves. That is OUR right. You have rights, and I have rights. So what's your argument then?

The psychological projection in R414, and frankly in all of Progressivism and cancel culture, is absolutely stunning.

This whole thread is an irrational pit of bile and shit. There are some posters here who have tried to make reasonable, balanced arguments and assertions, but they have been shot down with ridiculous, illogical screed. Over and over again people reply to previous posts, assuming things that weren't actually stated. I will refer to [R360] as one of the very few who read a post here, and responded to what someone before him actually said -And replied with a good, clear example that was relevant and informative. He should sit at the grown-up table next Thanksgiving. (Are we still doing Thanksgiving??)

[quote](Are we still doing Thanksgiving??)

That patriarchal white person's celebration of indigenous land theft, female sublimation and animal torture?

[BOLD]CANCELLED![/bold]

TRAs don't do 'thankful'. Their whole trip is envy, greed, colonization, appropriation, bullying and assault. They're all Donald Trump in drag.

"This has nothing to do with free speech. What you're asking for is speech without consequences, speech where no one is allowed to complain or disagree. You want one group to be able to speak while the rest sit there in silence."

Nothing to do with free speech? "...no one is allowed to complain or disagree. You want one group to be able to speak while the rest sit there in silence." sounds like we are talking about free speech. Speech without consequences is another matter. The legal consequences have been defined for years and years. What's happening now is that the social consequences for our words have become far greater in this age of social media and insta-shaming.

In the past, if Johnny said something racist I could say, "Johnny is a fucking asshat," and there it died. Now when Johnny spouts off his stupidity, someone is there to film it, post it on six different social media platforms, and someone alerts Johnny's boss that he should be fired/cancelled. Of course Johnny is an evil prick. That's a given. But freedom of speech allows Johnny to say what he thinks. That is different from Johnny actually doing racist things. Or is thoughtcrime a real thing now? We who heard Johnny, are free to despise him. We can even tell our friends, "Johnny is a racist dick." Johnny's suffering is limited to the loss of respect from those who know him. But posting Johnny's bad words is an action -An action taken with the goal of not just broadcasting Johnny's words to amplify his message, but to punish Johnny by pointing out what an asshole he is to the rest of the world. The poster is not just availing their right to free speech -They are using their speech to attempt to bring harm to another person. The context for the original speech matters. Was Johnny speaking as a private individual, in a conversation with friends? Or was Johnny speaking at work in his capacity as a manager? Did Johnny write his words in a letter to his mother, or did he take out a full-page ad in the New York Times? Being private speech does not make it any less odious, but it should have a bearing on the consequences Johnny suffers. If I try to take away Johnny's right to private speech, or even public speech with which I disagree, what happens to my own right to speak out and share what I think or feel? It's an all-or-nothing game.

Don't you think too that half the time these firings aren't on principle, just make the storm pass.

As I’d posted before, the shutdown of free speech isn’t done in one swoop, it’s done incrementally and insidiously. People intimidated into accepting new norms that lead to the relinquishing of free speech. This authoritarian control is exerted by powerful and influential groups that aims to shape our sociopolitical climate. Basically they’re power-hungry ideologues. They rely on willing participants such as idealistic youths to act as social influencers and enforcers. Slowly our attitudes towards free speech are reshaped for the worse. This occurred on college campuses in the past decade or so, and now it has finally invaded all areas of society in the form of illiberal, cancel culture.

Cancel culture mobilized into momentum when non-liberal (or not liberal enough)speakers were labeled as dangerous. Public speeches sponsored by universities were protested into oblivion. Opposing, intellectual arguments were conflated with literal violence. Vocal groups of students and activists utilizing authoritarian tactics successfully cancelled dissenting viewpoints from being presented to a greater audience. Many of these students misguidedly equated intellectual discourse with the endangerment of a just society.

Free from being the sole domain of college campuses, cancel culture is now fully entrenched as an influential force in society today. Its members patrol the public sphere, be it real life or online, for evidence of individuals expressing ideas that are determined to be incompatible with hard-leftist , ideology. Their goalposts are conveniently evolving under the guide of equality and progress. In reality it is nothing more than transparent intimidation to silence opponents and those who merely inquire or question. This is skewed, fake liberalism espoused by authoritarian far-left. It has nothing in common with the classic liberalism that I and many true liberals support. We should not be too timid to speak up anymore. Enough.

^^^should say goalposts conveniently evolving under the guise of equality and progress.

It’s a video from Reason TV channel on YT, yes it’s a libertarian channel. But the video is well-presented and if nothing else watch the first 5 minutes for the Yale students going full brownshirt on the professor for vague thought crimes. Chilling.

r435 you are very percipient and I enjoy reading your writing.

r437 I think he signed the letter

The unedited video at r437 is revealing RE cancel culture

I just realized that Anthony Grafton signed the letter -- he's one of my favorite scholars and an absolutely brilliant man. For some reason, his signing makes me very happy.

My understanding of this is that Conservatives have a hard time understanding that freedom of speech has consequences. Free speech doesn’t mean everybody has to tolerate what you say. It means you have the freedom to speak and accept the consequences.

If you think this debate is really about conservatives, then you haven't been paying much attention r442

R438 Thank you. I’m fed up and have decided to not submit my resume for tenure track position at a major university (large, activist student body). I taught (non-tenured) undergrad and graduate nursing students a few years ago. I was a newbie to academia as an instructor and I had my ass handed to me by the end of the academic year. It’s very difficult to appease students while engaging them in relevant discourse.

I got in trouble when I taught healthcare ethics. I loved ethics courses during my nursing doctoral studies, so I volunteered to step in when the tenured professor took a leave of absence. Stupidly one day in class I had offered my views on genital mutilation and virginity tests that many females from paternalistic, Muslim societies are forced to undergo. Many remain subjected to these medically unnecessary and harmful procedures even after immigrating to more egalitarian societies in the West. My position was/ is in keeping with the position of all the physician and nursing professional organizations. There was nothing demeaning nor prejudicial in that espousing that position.

I merely answered a question asked of me by a student regarding native cultural norms that may be continued by certain immigrant groups, and how some of these practices may present ethical conflicts for healthcare providers. I thought nothing of it until I get a call from the dean wanting to get my side of the story in regards to accusations of making students feel unsafe. Long story short, a Muslim student had made a an embellished complaint against me for promoting anti-Muslim sentiments in class. If it wasn’t for another Muslim student (among other students) who came to my defense refuting those accusations, I probably would have been fired, a stain on my record and my first foray into academia.

That was the climate a few years ago and it has gotten worse today.

That's chilling R444. And it's a no win situation. Even If you had taken a neutral position on it, a power feminist student would've reported you for not condemning the procedure.

R433, like I said. You want freedom from consequences. Nazi, conservatives, and white nationalists using social media to call for the extermination of gays, trans, minorities and so on is just the exercise of free speech, but calling them out on it is "cancel culture"

Has the queen of cancel culture been canceled?

[quote]I’m leaving Sleeping Giants, but not because I want to

[quote]How my white male co-founder gaslighted me out of the movement we built together.

R446 so you've said, repeatedly. You can repeat it all you like, but it doesn't make it any truer. You're willfully ignoring what we have been saying in the thread and setting up the same tired strawman every time.

Sophist.

That was an interesting read, R447, you should start a new thread just on her. The best part are the comments where she is raked over the coals.

r448, cross-sex hormones lower the IQ, which may explain some of r446s problem. Also, anyone gullible enough to get sucked into a cult or lack a first grade understanding of the differences between the sexes can never be described as bright.

You don't have to be trans to see anti-trans bigotry for what it is.

Trans people? Go be trans! I'm all of it. You have an ally in me. And I mean that. So do most gays and lesbians. Just leave us alone. The more you constantly spew vitriol at us for no reason, the more we want nothing to do with you. Honey and vinegar and all that. If you want to hate everything? Do it amongst yourselves. It's super easy.

r452 has not been paying attention to what's been happening the last 5 years. And, no, LGB does not support the T, an inherently homophobic ideology, at all.

Not the trans I know, R453. They're nice normal humans trying to live their lives. The activists are nutjobs. Trust me, I know.

My cousin, decidedly NOT trans, is so far left she's right. She claims to be trans now and just berates anyone who says otherwise. So, yeah, I get it on a personal level. I just want them to leave us LGB alone.

JK has posted a letter for DL:

It’s nice that most of you boys know your place. Gay men exist to serve women. So thank you for standing up and defending me.

I am quite possibly the most silenced person in the world. You see, I have been cancelled. My Twitter is still raging, my books are still promoted on Amazon, I’m still getting daily articles on every news site, I still live in one of my huge mansions.

But somebody disagreed with me. This evens goes beyond censorship. This is literal violence against women.

I know you boys mostly just want to transition so you can rape me (I’m that irresistible) but until then just know that love and support the LBG community, so long as they work in women’s interests.

I was 30 when the Wall fell. I spent the first 30 years of my life in East Germany. It is appalling to me just how stupid everyone is on this issue. If the consequences of speech is to lose one's home, job, etc., then speech is not free. That is totalitarianism. This is all very similar to what I experienced in the DDR.

So true! I could lose my home at any moment and might be forced to move to my other one, or the other one, or the other one...

R458, That is a stupid comment. Invariably, the people who speak in difficult times are those with nothing to lose: either the disenfranchised, who have nothing to begin with, or those who are very secure. It is the middle ground who is at risk. JKR may not lose her house and she would probably be fine if the income of her books went to 0, but that is not true of teachers, medical professionals, most entertainers, people in the hospitality industries, etc. It is your kind of trivializing a serious matter that is so dangerous. Reductio ad absurdum (yes, your manipulation has a name.) is a tactic that was used in the DDR. It is not funny. It is quite dangerous.

Thst's not how it works here. We're allowed to speak up when we disagree with something, regardless. Saying I have to sit down and shut up is fascism.

Yes, it is so dangerous when people exercise their free speech to disagree with me.

Then I just threaten to sue them!

So now OP is lined out. DL tries to cancel a thread about free speech. Oh, the irony.

R461, again, Reductio ad absurdum. Free speech does not mean that there is no libel. This is an example of the hypocrisy. The woke want to say whatever they want without consequences, but impose dire consequences on others. If you want to argue that speech has consequences, then you have to accept that legal action is one of those consequences.

Yet it's still up.

It should be deleted because a troll is filling this thread with ENDLESS trans threads.

[quote] Free speech does not mean that there is no libel.

So true! Of course for it to be libel a court has to find it to be libel, but going to court takes money.

So I can shut them up with threat of bankruptcy.

I'm such an ardent defender of free speech.

Now, be quiet or you'll be hearing from my attorney.

My new pronouns for JK are cunt/cunt/cunt.

As concerning in all this is the reaction of the institutions in these situations. Look at R444's example. He/she probably would have been fired but for the intervention of the other student (still kind of surprised he/she wasn't fired.)

The point is so many institutions panic at the first whiff of this and side with the complainant, I fear out of expedience or ill reasoned dogma. That makes bad worse.

R463, you've got it exactly backwards. Conservatives are the ones demanding speech without consequences as we've seen in just this thread repeatedly.

Besides that, free speech doesn't cover libelous speech anyway.

The demand for safe space is unreasonable at best, infantile (self-infantilization) at worst. The world is an unsafe space. Life is an unsafe space. That's part of the point of it, part of the challenge of it, all of the reality of it. You get through it as best you can but there is no way to feasibly make it a safe space.

R468, you are not paying attention. Many who are defending the letter are liberal/left/progressive. Again this is a totalitarian tactic to label the dissenting party as something other than what it is. This isn't two sports teams on a playing field.

[quote]you are not paying attention.

No, we are and disagree with you.

Which is driving you wild.

You don't like free speech when people do that.

My free speech means I am free to say what I think, which includes my speaking my belief that trans women make better women than ciswomen.

[quote]My free speech means I am free to say what I think, which includes my speaking my belief that trans women make better women than ciswomen.

Which is like saying that axle grease makes a better sandwich spread than butter. You are free to say it, but we are free to consider you an idiot.

R469, who is demanding a safe space?

R470. I'm paying attention. You're just wrong.

Don't feed the misogynistic troll!

[quote]Conservatives are the ones demanding speech without consequences

You keep saying that - repeatedly - but it does not make it any more true. You aren't listening and you are trying to manipulate rather than debate. This isn't a conservative vs. liberal issue, no matter how hard you try to describe it as such.

You're either incredibly myopic or totally cynical.

The conservative anti-trans trolls always describe themselves as left-wing.

But they never are.

I think r476 has a list of things it copies and pastes on these threads.

Liberals and conservatives agree no one should be forced to shave your lady balls Jessica.

And no taxpayers should be forced to fund your womyn's refuges.

Is r478 on meth? He actually wrote that someone with a neo vag could have a baby.

The demand for safe space was in the Yale video about the Hallowe'en. It was part of the tantrum tirade against the professor. Just ridiculous on tape and unworkable in the real world... which young people are supposed to be preparing for.

Don't feed the misogynistic trans troll! Just block and ignore.

Mmhmm

[quote]The letter was pure hysteria

Well if anyone would know hysteria, Saliva Fouler, it would be you.

Really, a big girl like you turning off her authentication. Whatever for?

Lol after all that Bari Weiss quit the NYT. Does that count as canceling herself? Prepare for two weeks of cable media appearances about how she has no voice and has been silenced. Followed by a new career as an editor on the Daily Caller, Ben Shapiro's website.

I never knew who Bari Weiss was but she's resigned from the NYT and published her resignation letter... I don't know about the politics of her but she describes on page one the NYT I imagine.

It's a barn burner.

A conservative Zionist warning about tribalism, oh that's rich.

Just call a spade a spade R486.

Don't say conservative Zionist, just say Jew.

Don't hide your views.

No r486, not all Jewish people support the occupation of Palestine. In fact the largest anti-occupation group in the US, J Street, is Jewish. Ifnotnow is another major Jewish organization that does supports the exact opposite of what Bari wants. Most Jewish people in the US (around 70%) vote for democrats and hold liberal views on this and other issues.

Saying Jewish to refer to all Jewish people, instead of Zionist, referring to people who have a specific belief set about the Israel/Palestine conflict would be racist as well as incorrect. One of the biggest Zionists in American politics is Ted Cruz and he is not even a little Jewish.

But I'm not surprised you think races are monoliths. Most conservatives believe that about all non-whites

Bari in her letter voluntarily QUITS the NYT... while claiming she is being silenced and it's McCarthyism... while also faulting the NYT for not firing and silencing her co-workers who she says said mean things about her in Slack conversations she was not a part of.

Boy the knots you people have to tie yourselves in for this.

R488 was meant for r487

R487, I actually didn't know that she was Jewish. There are plenty of conservative Zionist Christians in the US. I've got nothing whatsoever against Jewish people. However, Israel interfered in our 2016 election and helped elect Trump, just like the Russians, so the state can go fuck itself.

[quote] Saying Jewish to refer to all Jewish people, instead of Zionist

R488, a Zionist is someone who believes in the State of Israel. Period. Why are you twisting it to mean something else? Is it so you can use it as a slur? Do you not recognize what you have done or are you just unaware of its real meaning? If so, then where have you been reading and getting these ideas?

The fact that 70% of Jewish Americans vote Democratic does not give you a statistic that they do not support Israel in its defense against those who desire to destroy it or its right to defend itself. Or where they stand on Israeli/Palestinian issues, of which there are many. It is not as simplistic as you would want others to believe.

You also need to educate yourself on what race/racist means. How in the hell are you using it in terms of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

Again you are twisting meanings and conflating them to suit your narrative. Maybe you should get a job at the NY Times.

This thread, like the letter itself, is a dumpster fire of bad takes.

It was a great letter. It sparked discussion. It exposed the ill intent of many. Granted, 3% of the discussion was actually useful by fair minded people but you can't have everything.

"[R307] all your response is, is name-calling and insults. Way to prove the person's point that you are a sophist."

Right back at you. You aren't doing anything different. You may be fooling yourself, but you're not fooling me.

BTW, I'm not the original poster. I agreed with them and added that your point of saying the so called "insults" negate their argument is the result of the fact that you did not have a cogent rebuttal and still don't.

"[R307] all your response is, is name-calling and insults. Way to prove the person's point that you are a sophist."

Right back at you. You aren't doing anything different. You may be fooling yourself, but you're not fooling me.

BTW, I'm not the original poster. I agreed with them and added that your point of saying the so called "insults" negate their argument is the result of the fact that you did not have a cogent rebuttal and still don't.

R495 thank you for your timely rebuttal. I'd look at the original post to see what was said, but it was 200 posts ago so no one cares. Shoo, now.

"[R495] thank you for your timely rebuttal. I'd look at the original post to see what was said, but it was 200 posts ago so no one cares."

Well, obviously, you're no one. Because no one cared enough to respond to my very untimely and uninteresting post except you.

Cue the sock puppets.

"Shoo, now."

As a fake bitch, that's not really an attitude you can really pull off.

But then, if you came from an authentic place, you couldn't be a troll.

“Dumpster fire of bad takes” is pure Twitter SJW for “I don’t actually understand what we’re arguing about but if I adopt a pose of superiority to the debate I’ll sound smart.”

Oh dear, it's the overcompensating poster at r498. Each new response and collection of various insults from him will get longer and longer and more and more unhinged, because he simply MUST have his say, even 200 posts later 🙄

"Twitter SJW" is pure Boris-on-a-vodka-bender for "NOT ONE OF US...NOT ONE OF US!!!"

What is r501 even supposed to mean?

I’m Russian, I guess? (The incorrect use of a question mark there PROVES my intimacy with Twitter SJW rhetoric.

"they're... they're talking back to us?? What could it mean??"

Oh dear, it's the overcompensating poster at [R500]. Each new response and collection of various insults from him will get longer and longer and more and more unhinged, because he simply MUST have his say, even 202 posts later 🙄

Not mentally disturbed at all! At least, that's what the voices in his head tell him.

Has anyone else been following the 'ex-black' writer Thomas Chatterton William's drama on the sidelines? The guy is too good not to be caricatured on DL. A full jorney from obvious racial insecurities and an inferiority complex (he's half white, half black, identifies as post-racial now), there have been several meltdowns on Twitter, including expulsion of a friend from his French chateau for daring criticise Bari Weiss.

Hahaha, OK I think this fraud is officially over.

Hope no DLers are involved in this.

One can hope, but I wouldn't be surprised.

R507, where did Williams actually say GG was left out because other signatories didn't like him, as opposed to they simply wanted a manageable 150 signatories and various names were suggested but they couldn't include every name because that would mean they'd have to get in touch with everyone and then get feedback off them, etc., etc. and then it would be a never-ending process?

R510, search Matt Taibbi and TCW on youtube (and fastforward through the bro humor). I watched the interview yesterday but can't remember the exact details. In any case it didn't seem like a big deal.

R511, I searched for what Williams himself said and didn't find him anywhere saying that GG was going to be invited but some other signatories said they wouldn't sign if he was (which is in any case logistically weird because presumably they'd ask everyone at the same time). I did find him saying that lots of names were mentioned but they wanted - quite reasonably - a cap of 150, otherwise the letter would never get sent out. Anyone can come out in support of the letter, so GG could express his agreement if he really wanted to.

Seems like this is just another case of the trans dictatorship trying to promote their lying, fake news again.

R511, I searched for what Williams himself said and didn't find him anywhere saying that GG was going to be invited but some other signatories said they wouldn't sign if he was (which is in any case logistically weird because presumably they'd ask everyone at the same time). I did find him saying that lots of names were mentioned but they wanted - quite reasonably - a cap of 150, otherwise the letter would never get sent out. Anyone can come out in support of the letter, so GG could express his agreement if he really wanted to.

Seems like this is just another case of the trans dictatorship trying to promote their lying, fake news again.

Here's the clip. Glenn was voted out. Cancelled.

Look Glenn Greenwald being refused entry because of his views (I don't like Greenwald but his views are hardly rare or extreme) combined with that signatory who kicked someone out of his house for criticising Bari Weiss and Bari Weiss herself getting multiple people fired for being pro-Palestine, it's clear the letter was just a bunch of hypocritical frauds declaring that no one is allowed to criticize them ever. None of these people believe that free speech is being eroded or that it's wrong not to accept every single view you come across. None of them practice that in their own lives. Several are among the most eager cancellers in media. This letter was a joke.

^ Exactly. I despise Greenwald, (he's a fraud) but "voting him out" of even being asked to sign such a letter just perfectly demonstrates the incrediblly bad intentions behind it. Even though I'm sure some of the signatories signed it in good faith.

Greenwald wasn't "voted out", Williams said he (Williams) was "outvoted" when they were discussing all the probably 100s of names of who to invite. That's not the same thing. Williams only appears to have proposed because he'd been tweeting with him, not for any other reason. There was a whole bunch of names, 150 were to be chosen, a selection was made, Greenwald didn't get enough support, as probably dozens of others didn't and that's nothing to do with their views. That's it, no one tried to block Greenwald because of his views, he just didn't make the final 150.

Are you all suggesting that every single name that was mentioned should have been asked to sign? There would never have been a letter then.

But, of course, the people who want to "cancel" this letter because they want to cancel JK Rowling because they want us all to believe that transwomen are women, even if they still have their penises, will latch on to one tiny detail, that they then twist, distort and lie about, because that will then obscure the wider debate as well as slur and damage their opponents, this being their only tactic since they can't win on facts, the strength of their argument or the actual level of support there is for them in society.

You just have to twist *everything* into an anti-trans rant don't you?

To heck with free speech. Let’s just cheat out our asses like the Republicans do.

R518, the main reason this letter is being attacked and attempts made to discredit it is because JK Rowling signed it. Regardless of that, this attempt to create some fake bs about Glenn Greenwald just shows how pathetic the cyber mob is.

I still don't understand why the McCarthy era blacklisting is considered to be a terrible moral crime but the current cancel culture is woke and progressive. Is it that you can only blacklist racists and republicans to be on the expected "right side of history"?

I'm not talking about the McCarthy hearings themselves or the jailing people for contempt of congress, but rather the blacklisting of people considered unrepentant "reds" in the 1950s. If that was the will of the public at that time (or at least a vocal portion of the public), who believed that communists and others who supported left-wing causes were unfit to entertain them, wasn't it fair for them to be fired and hounded out of their jobs?

The woke progressives are embracing the same tactics used by the anti-communists 70 years ago. If it was wrong then, then it's wrong now.

Because either

Has nobody punched that TERF JK yet?

R521, the McCarthy hearings were run by a literal government body. That's a legit 1st A violation. Similarly, the blacklisting was in direct response to the federal government targeting "communists," also a legit 1st A concern.

R517, why on earth would they not want as many signatories as possible? Where on earth are you getting this arbitrary maximum limit of 150 from?

The FACT is, the people behind this letter made a choice about who to include based on their criteria of whose views/platform was acceptable. The same kind of substantive choices viewers, readers, consumers, and commenters are making, only that gets derided as "cancel culture."

This whole "oh noes cancel culture!" outrage is an ouroboros. These people are trying to silence CRITICISM, not save the jobs they never lost.

No they didn't R523, it's perfectly reasonable to not just want a ton of people to sign the letter. For one thing they names would be listed, you want a reasonable amount because otherwise it just becomes a mess of names. 150 names is plenty. They could ask whoever they wanted to sign the letter, if people refused then they would probably have added other names until they got enough signatures for 150.

No one was trying to stop Greenwald from AGREEING with the content of the letter, who the hell cares if Greenwald signed or not. Frankly if Greenwald really believed in what the letter was saying and would have signed it, then Greenwald wouldn't be bitching about it now because it's perfectly reasonable to have a list of invites to keep the number of names reasonable. The very fact that you think "the more the merrier" shows you don't understand the reasoning behind the letter in the first place, which was NOT about being a popularity contest.

And frankly a mob of non-government people can be just as bad as a mob of government people. Hell half the reason for many of the laws we have is precisely to protect people FROM "The Mob"(and I don't mean the mafia). A mob of citizens can be even more dangerous than the government history has shown that many times.

Kama Sutra level contortions from R524 to avoid facing the hypocrisy behind the letter.

"150 is enough! How much MORE free speech do we need?!"

How was not inviting him to sign a letter impinging on his free speech R525? Was he not still free to endorse the letter afterwards? Plenty of people who did not sign have said they agree with the letter afterwards. No one was "cancelling" him for not signing it. No on was criticizing him for not signing the letter. No one got anything special for signing the letter and no one lost anything for not signing the letter.

That's like saying you have to invite every person you've ever spoken with on twitter to your birthday party or you are somehow impinging upon their rights to birthday cake. These people came up with an idea, they were discussing who they wanted to invite to read and if they chose to, sign it, had lots and lots of names and his was ultimately cut from the list just as many others were.

The only contortions I see are from those trying to act like the situations are somehow comparable.

R523 (among many others), is it the letter itself that you find so objectionable, or just the people who signed it? Do you actually disagree with the call for more tolerance of diverse opinions and viewpoints? I can't help but wonder what the overall reaction would have been if the letter had simply been left unsigned....

[quote]These people are trying to silence CRITICISM, not save the jobs they never lost.

No r523. (1) these people are using their prominence and relative security to speak ON BEHALF OF the rest of us, people who are too wary to speak, for fear that a misstep or wrong word choice, or even principled disagreement could lose us our jobs, careers, homes...

...because (2) mere “criticism” is not the problem—the problem is someone being doxxed, and then having their work mob-bombed, and them getting fired, and being unemployable in their career, as a result. Terrible erosion of the exercise of free speech in a supposedly open society.

This is the best reaction I've seen to that tone-deaf letter. 😂 😂 🤣

[quote]Look Glenn Greenwald being refused entry because of his views (I don't like Greenwald but his views are hardly rare or extreme) combined with that signatory who kicked someone out of his house for criticising Bari Weiss and Bari Weiss herself getting multiple people fired for being pro-Palestine, it's clear the letter was just a bunch of hypocritical frauds declaring that no one is allowed to criticize them ever. None of these people believe that free speech is being eroded or that it's wrong not to accept every single view you come across. None of them practice that in their own lives. Several are among the most eager cancellers in media. This letter was a joke.

Here's the Twitter thread where Glenn Greenwald reacts to the fact that he got cancelled from signing the letter despite being one of the best exemplifications of its purported principle. Recriminations, hurt feelings and lashing out. Claims he wouldn't have signed anyway. Some think Matt Taibbi wasn't asked as well for the same reason.

It's ironic that the protest outside of the Mccloskey's home was a result of people getting doxxed for their support for defunding the police. Despite the irony of violent protests making the case for additional funding and police, they and their supporters are the reason why people with more moderate views (especially those who have little job security) are being edged out and denied opportunities.

Noam Chomsky is pro Palestinian (and probably anti semetic) but he signed the letter. It's easy to see which side is more hypocritical.

Mine and others' objections to this bad faith stunt are well-detailed right here in this thread. Among other problems, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the letter makes vague references to incidents where people who faced consequences for not their job poorly, not for their opinions.

A NYTimes editor resigning after being criticized for 1) not reading and 2) definitely not fact-checking a shittastic op-ed wherein a sitting senator tries to normalize fascism is not a "free speech" problem. And no amount of contorting, whatabouting, or butbutbutting is going to make it so. And the people behind this stunt keep showing their asses all over the place, making fools of those of you desperate to defend them.

Am I alone in finding Glenn Greenwald tiresome, just in principle?

You don't need any excuses or impeccable behavior from those involved for supprting this letter. Cancel culture is a cancer, the woke mob is a desrtuctive force of evil and everybody bringing that up does a service to society.

[quote] that signatory who kicked someone out of his house for criticising Bari Weiss and Bari Weiss herself getting multiple people fired for being pro-Palestine

Andrew Sullivan has criticized the Israeli government but unlike many critics who are rightly branded anti semetic, he doesn't begin with the premise that the Jews are an illegitimate people.

[quote]Cancel culture is a cancer, the woke mob is a desrtuctive force of evil and everybody bringing that up does a service to society.

No. It’s just a privileged coterie of lily-livered self-important hacks enjoying unprecedented platforms hypocritically trying to insulate themselves from criticism and, ergo, consequences from a previously voiceless public. They’re trying to muzzle the public because they feel they shouldn’t have to play by the same rules as us plebs.

It all sluices into the same cesspool.

Wow, r536's reply. The arguments against this letter are fucking crazy. No one is stopping you from saying what the fuck you like r536. It's the"woke" cyber mob you represent that has got their grip on public discourse that won't allow dissent. Saying something as patently factual as only women menstruate or transwomen aren't women, they're men who want to be women is just not possible in public these days and, yes, you can be fired from your job for saying it

This cancerous cancel culture has made it so that it's impossible for us to say that we're attracted to our own sex anymore, we have to say we're attracted to our own "gender", which also means people of the opposite sex who think they're the same gender as us. Gay youth are being transed to stop them from being gay and we're forced to support this because we have to oppose "conversion therapy" for trans people, which is simply therapy and counselling for gay youth who hate being gay and are being pushed into transitioning. And try being a young butch lesbian in the so-called LGBTQ+ community today - in some LGBTQ circles, the peer pressure for those confused butch young lesbians to transition is overwhelming.

Wow, r536's reply. The arguments against this letter are fucking crazy. No one is stopping you from saying what the fuck you like r536. It's the"woke" cyber mob you represent that has got their grip on public discourse that won't allow dissent. Saying something as patently factual as only women menstruate or transwomen aren't women, they're men who want to be women is just not possible in public these days and, yes, you can be fired from your job for saying it

This cancerous cancel culture has made it so that it's impossible for us to say that we're attracted to our own sex anymore, we have to say we're attracted to our own "gender", which also means people of the opposite sex who think they're the same gender as us. Gay youth are being transed to stop them from being gay and we're forced to support this because we have to oppose "conversion therapy" for trans people, which is simply therapy and counselling for gay youth who hate being gay and are being pushed into transitioning. And try being a young butch lesbian in the so-called LGBTQ+ community today - in some LGBTQ circles, the peer pressure for those confused butch young lesbians to transition is overwhelming.

^ But who is stopping them from speaking out though? Say what you want if you believe it. But know that you won't be exempt from blowback if you say something stupid or offensive.

Come on r540, you must be living under a rock if you aren't aware of the impossibility of discussing the trans issue publicly. And why should there be "blowback"? Why can't there simply be "criticism"? And who is to decide what is "stupid" or "offensive"? The slightest comment is "cancelled" for supposedly being stupid or offensive, even though it actually isn't. Blowback against allegedly offensive comments is simply a tactic to silence different opinions.

For example, if you say "transwomen of colour did not start the Stonewall riots" then you are basically torn to pieces, even though this is factually correct.

[quote] For example, if you say "transwomen of colour did not start the Stonewall riots" then you are basically torn to pieces

This is what you need to get over. Never, at any point in our history, have people ever had any right that they couldn't be "torn to pieces" if people disagree with the things they say. Yes I think anti-trans people, especially the fanatical ones on this site are bigots. I call them bigots frequently. I am completely aware they don't like being called that. It doesn't matter; it's my right to say it and you need to accept that and move on with your life. We are a free society, you do not have the means nor the legal justification to stop anyone from criticising you. Even if you personally believe the criticism is unfair. Even if you think your arguments are better than theirs. I don't know what turned so many people of today into coddled children online that think anything they say must only be met with calm acceptance. But it's ridiculous and will never happen, and has never been the case.

John Lewis was beaten nearly to death for saying Black people should be able to vote. Edward Snowden had to flee the country for saying the NSA was involved in warrentless surveillance, something the NSA itself admitted after the facts came out. In Hong Kong, people who openly protest China's new "security laws" are just thrown in jail. Most will never find a place in mainstream society again because of China's social credit system.

These are people who can claim they aren't being given free speech. These are people who have been "cancelled". These are people who have faced consequences for initiating debates that are uncomfortable for society. I don't think you people complaining here are about rude Twitter comments and being FF'd on this website understand how absurd you look trying to compare yourselves to those I mentioned above. It would be funny if you all weren't so insistent upon harping on it day in and day out.

Defining "blown to pieces" to suit your argument has a certain charm but it falls flat in the face of reality and the truth facing those who speak truth unpopular in some quarters.

How is citing John Lewis helping your argument? Are you saying that was acceptable?

Snowden? Um, try again with something relevant.

This thread is the equivalent of two old people at the nursing home who can't get along but always get sat together in the sun room.

The Letter backfired.

Most of the people who signed that letter only signed so others would know that they're Important People. They don't really care about ideas as much as they care about their Career.

Bullshit argument r536. Everyone is aware that JKR in uncancellable as an author. Harry Potter books will be bought as long as human civilization remains. Salman Rushdie's career was made decades ago too, he doesn't have fear "criticism" from the screeching mob.

What about (if we wanna stay with the trans topic, it's not just about that of course) female athletes who don't appreciate giving all and pushing their body to extremes only to lose to males., every chance for world records taken from them? Every single one of them is easily replaceable. They have to swallow their tounges and keep on losing or they lose everything for being transphobes. What about college profs whose whole fucking life success story depends on keeping their poste until they find something better. And they can't even present the literature they specilaze in because it wounds. It's about silencing people.

And what about some somewhat successfull trans youtuber who could easily be over and forgotten iby next year, who might associate with people with problematic opinions?

[quote]These are people who have been "cancelled".

You are aware that the term "cancelled" comes from the cancellers, not the cancelees? So cancel culture is activly trying to do what China does so thouroughly and you think that's just swell?

What they mean by "marketplace of ideas:"

"Apologize or I'll sue you!"

[quote] Most will never find a place in mainstream society again because of China's social credit system.

They want to set that up here.

Black writers are trying to cancel one of the letter's crafters.

[quote][quote] For example, if you say "transwomen of colour did not start the Stonewall riots" then you are basically torn to pieces

This is what you need to get over. Never, at any point in our history, have people ever had any right that they couldn't be "torn to pieces" if people disagree with the things they say.

Oh dear r542, what happened at Stonewall is a matter of historical fact, it's not an opinion that can be agreed or disagreed with. Now in the so-called "LGBTQ+ community" (what you call "our community", but I don't want to be part of it) it is not possible to state historical FACTS about Stonewall. Instead, we are all forced to believe a lie, that transwomen of colour started the Stonewall riots, specifically Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Riveira, who weren't even there.

By the way r542, I definitely agree with being able to disagree. Unfortunately, that's not what the Transtapo and Wokerati believe. They want to destroy and suppress any alternative positions so that they are not heard and only their positions are heard and believed.

And there you go again, with the typical tactic of those who are trying to suppress dissent by giving examples of the most extreme cases of persecution for one's actions or thoughts and saying "stop complaining, things aren't like that for you". Maya Forstater lost her job for saying she doesn't believe that transwomen are the same as biological women. Feminist scholars have been "no platformed" and their invitations to speak at universities cancelled over the trans issue. An autistic youth in the UK was given a curfew and fined nearly £600 for asking if a trans community police officer was a boy or a girl. If hate crimes legislation makes it a crime to say that "transwomen are not women" then it will not be possible to express the opinion (actually, fact) that transwomen are not women or even to discuss a whole slew of issues around transgenderism and gender identity ideology, including putting young kids on medication that will transform their bodies irreversibly. It's also a fact that it's nigh impossible if you want a job in education, the arts, the care sector, the medical sector, the public sector, and a whole range of professions if you express the opinion (fact) that transwomen are not women.

“Cancellation” doesn’t mean “censorship.” It means “shunning,” extending disagreement with a person’s statement to include that whole person and refusing to listen to what they say on any topic. Thus, disagreement with Rowling on trans issues becomes refusing to buy or read her books, blocking her on Twitter, unfollowing anyone who follows her, heaping disdain on people who play Sorting Hat games, etc. Declaring cancellation means that you reject the whole person, not just whatever they’ve said or done in a particular instance.

The debate isn't about free speech.

[quote]Never, at any point in our history, have people ever had any right that they couldn't be "torn to pieces" if people disagree with the things they say.

But never, at any point in our history, has the capacity to tear to pieces been so extreme or immediate.

The capacity to criticize, especially in the extreme, is now a right that is accompanied by a heavy dose of responsibility, precisely because of the power of extremity and immediacy.

Leading right into:

[quote]“Cancellation” doesn’t mean “censorship.” It means “shunning,” extending disagreement with a person’s statement to include that whole person and refusing to listen to what they say on any topic. Thus, disagreement with Rowling on trans issues becomes refusing to buy or read her books, blocking her on Twitter, unfollowing anyone who follows her, heaping disdain on people who play Sorting Hat games, etc. Declaring cancellation means that you reject the whole person, not just whatever they’ve said or done in a particular instance.

Is not shunning of the whole a tactic for censorship? If shunning isn't, implicitly, an intensive effort to censor, I don't know what is. The threat of the mob has the potential to chill. (And I think it is a selective, incomplete and transparently minimalist description of cancelling.)

As an example and personally, I don't even take a view on the trans issue because I don't want the hassle. Which may have the effect of getting out of some advocates' way but may equally have the effect of denying some advocates support. And I vote. And voting on this matter may some day be important. Or maybe not. My point is the Salem quality on this and many other issues is at least as likely to stifle as it is to rally. It may even repel.

The hysteria and viciousness these days serves no one. Because of technology we've moved beyond letters to the editor from Disgusted in Tonbridge Wells and consumer boycotts. OK, times change. We are seeing the effect of the last, fifty or one hundred or four hundred years in many respects and are reaping what was sown. But people need to think seriously about the broader impacts of their tactics, because the world is a pendulum. It never swings only in one direction. And I believe the tactics don't reflect the very qualities on which many pride and rationalize their actions: progress, progressivism, fairness, justice, decent, compassion. Robespierre thought he was doing the right thing. Imagine the heads that would have rolled if he had Twitter.

r556 = hack who thinks he should be immune from criticism.

R557, throwing a tantrum.

At age 27.

Really? You think people in their position should be exempt from criticism and only be discussed on their terms? It doesn't work for like that.

Free speech for the signatories. The rest of us can sit down and shut up apparently.

No r560, you don’t get it. The signatories are secure enough, that they have chosen to exercise their freedom of speech on BEHALF OF the rest of us, who are marginally secure in our jobs and finances.

Many of these people are well-known or well-established or tenured, and therefore most are older, but not all. They have a cushion to protect against the risk they have taken. (Tenure nowadays is not even enough to protect younger academics, trust.)

If you haven’t seen the full list of signatories, here are a few: (see Wikipedia under Harper’s letter for full list)

Margaret Atwood

Jeffrey Eugenides

Salmon fucking Rushdie, who has lived under a fatwa since 1988, for writing The Satanic Verses

Wynton Marsalis

To name a few of the signatory authors, politicians, academics, journalists

No, R561, you don't get it. Regardless of who signed this letter, you don't get to pick who has the right to speak and who doesn't.

No one is talking about denying anyone the right to speak, r562. The letter is calling for a reduction in the disproportionate doxxing, outing, firing, deplatforming, and cancelling.

No, r563. That's the position they fell on when they got exposed for the out-of-touch, elitist ninnies, they are. It was about insulating their own hides and it backfired. Zionist Bari Weiss? "Ex-black" Thomas Chatterton "I beat my teenage girlfriend and it was hip-hop's fault" Williams? Come on.

As such a passionate free speech advocate, R564, do you denounce doxxing, outing, firing, deplatforming, cancelling or not?

Yes or no. The principle of it. Which do you support?

^As a matter of principle, of course. I would never actively participate in any of that myself. But understand the people who doxx, out, fire, deplatform and cancel others are exercising their own free expression as well and would never deny them that.

I don't give a damn who speaks. Any idiot can open their mouth and these days command some level of attention as a result.

What I'm interested in is the ethics of the how. How do you speak? What is right? What is just? What is fair? What is ethical?

Opening your mouth doesn't stop and start with opening your mouth. You've got some pretty curious ethics if one thing trumps all others. There are infinite ways to express yourself freely without raining destruction on someone with whom you disagree. And from a tactical perspective the point of arguing is to draw people toward your argument not drive them away from it.

Posted on another thread, but this is an excellent (non-adversarial) review of TCW's work which tells you what he's about. He'll be on Bill Maher tonight talking about cancel culture, btw.

No, R566, et al. That is not free speech. That is the exact opposite of what free speech stands for. That is what people who oppose free speech do to deny others free speech.

Damn, you need a basic course in the First Amendment. Your understanding is so lacking it's laughable. We have laws, we have regulations, we have court rulings, etc to ensure that someone can speak their mind - especially their political or religious or social beliefs mind - to prevent others from punishing those who do speak their minds. They're not all encompassing but they should give you a clue what is free speech and what is not.

You're the one who wants to censor others' right to free expression, r569.

Both Chatterton and Bari Weiss argued their viewpoints cogently and passionately on Maher's show. Lord love them and the rest of the Harper's signatories.

R571. Your views on Aaron Schock?

Good point.

I like the symbolism of the OP now greyed out. Pretty much sums it up.

I like the symbolism of the OP now greyed out. Pretty much sums it up.

The Harper’s 150 have pretty much won the war. They called out the witch-hunt and created the capacity to even discuss it. The fear of the righteous will correspondingly fade now. There’s room to talk again. Excess always gives way to the centre. It isn’t over yet but the woke neo McCarthy’s most influential days are now just behind them.

"Won the war" r576? You haven't been on Twitter and seen the mockery they've been subjected to.

Twitter is a for profit mental hospital in a bad neighbourhood. No one useful pays any attention to it, other than for amusement.

Harper's just published a response in their new issue.