Two Humanists of the Year retort
This happened:
I think there are some complications skipped over in the letter. I think “reason requires that a diverse range of ideas be expressed and debated openly, including ones that some people find unfamiliar or uncomfortable” is true in its way but it steps around some of those complications. I don’t think that reason requires diverse ideas such as “women are stupid” “Jews should be eradicated” “black people should be enslaved” “lesbians and gays are an abomination and should be stoned to death” to be expressed and debated openly. I think the claim is a little bit more limited than that. It’s difficult to spell it all out, but I think it’s a mistake to skip over it, especially in cases like this, precisely because the ideologues and enforcers of the trans dogma absolutely think “men are not women” belong in that category. I think they’re drastically wrong about that, but we can’t argue the point if we step around it instead of spelling it out.
That said, though, I’m glad they did this letter. I’m a huge fan of Rebecca’s, and have email-interviewed her a couple of times for B&W, here in 2005 and here in 2014.
If a non-negligible proportion of the population in a society believed “women are stupid,” “Jews should be eradicated,” “black people should be enslaved” and “lesbians and gays are an abomination and should be stoned to death,” then I think having an open and honest debate on those topics might be rather critical. More realistically, “women are statistically less intelligent than men,” “the Nation of Israel should be eradicated,” “black people were better off under slavery than welfare” and “lesbians and gays have deep-seated psychological problems” might be fair debate topics, in that advocates can make a case which needs addressing (and they might be interpreting these topics in interesting ways.)
TRAs try to shut down debate on gender identity theory because they’re claiming traumatized victim-status for transgender people. “Every time you say transwomen are a kind of man, and not a kind of woman, it’s like you’re stabbing my heart,” a TIM once told me. Argumentum ad Misercordium.
Absolutely. I’ll go a step further, though, and say that we should also be okay with having debates about propositions believed by a negligible portion of the population or by no one. For example, let’s debate the merits of eating babies as a way to reduce starvation and overpopulation. Or how about we consider killing all the poor?
To quote Stephen Hopkins in 1776, “Well, in all my years I ain’t never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell, yes! I’m for debatin’ anything. Rhode Island says yea.”
Well, maybe. I’m a big believer in being able to discuss things. But then, you get the things like James Damore’s screed, and it’s just “opening up debate”. If the ‘debate’ is undertaken for the sake of hurting people, and not for the sake of solving problems, then there is no legitimacy to the debate. I have been present at a number of ‘debates’ where the sole purpose was to make the women in the room uncomfortable knowing how much their male colleagues hated them. It wasn’t to solve any sort of problem, or resolve any sort of question. It was just putting shit out there to let us know we weren’t welcome.
So, yeah, debate maybe, but that isn’t often what’s happening on these topics. At least in my experience. I might be happy to actually debate any of those topics, if it was a fair set up with reasonable parameters, but it usually isn’t. It’s usually set up to intimidate and oppress. So I think I get what Ophelia is saying, and in that situation, yeah, I agree with her fully.
iknklast:
That sounds like shitty shit made of shit. Perhaps there is a distinction that should be made regarding intentionality, then. On the shitty hand, we have discussion as (functional) theater. On the clean hand, we have discussion as dialectic. I’d say that the latter should always be permissible, while the former is, even in its tamer incarnations, to be avoided. The former investigates ideas and aims at truth. The latter does not, instead aiming at entertainment (when benign), persuasion (when manipulative), or control (when abusive).
Would this be the memo you’re talking about? Not sure screed would be the first word I’d reach for when describing it. Maybe I’m just used to philosophy classes and having to argue as persuasively as possible any position at all, even and especially those with which I don’t agree. Like, if I had been asked to take the con- or Devil’s Advocate position for an assignment, I might have written something like that.
Null,
For some reason I read that as “Stephen Hawking” and my mind ignored the date. Now I really wish Hawking had said:
In his robotic voice.
It’s a sentiment I agree with in principle, but – like iknklast (and Ophelia) – not universally. I don’t think the issue is intent so much as venue. We should certainly be free to have such debates where they’re not likely to become – intentionally or otherwise – tools of oppression.
University buildings ought – I think – to be places that encourage rather than cancel them. They should defend the right of people to hold such debates on their campus, although they should also be free to denounce or support the subject matter if they want. Other people’s views differ on this, but those people are idiots. Discuss ;)
The workplace? Not so much. My problem with Damore’s memo and related behaviour was that he was an obnoxious sexist arsehole at work, not just as a hobby. The workplace isn’t the right venue to discuss whether or not girls smell and have fleas.
It can be tricky and the lines are as blurry as hell, but a lot less tricky than intent, I think. Or used to be.
Arguably, if universities re-grew their spines and started allowing (perhaps even promoting or hosting) unfashionable or objectionable debates as a fun evening of telling people off through reasoned argument, we might not have to tiptoe around the snowflakes quite so much. It used to feel (in the UK at least) that it was the responsibility and mission of universities to prepare young people in this way, not to protect them from it.
I’ll stop now before I start to sound like Jerry Coyne. Not that I disagree with him on everything.
Sanger is an easy target, eugenics is kryptonite for good reason, and she’s safely remote in time. Alice Walker’s crackpot enthusiasm and anti-Semitism are current and doing active harm.
latsot:
Ethics is always tricky. Intractably so, in my view.
Prohibitions on certain topics in certain places makes sense from a consequentialist perspective, simply as a matter of potential or likely results. Civilization itself relies on people’s not barking out every passing thought. What a nightmare that would be. So how about we try taking as our rule or maxim “the workplace is not the right venue to discuss contentious topics”? It seems unobjectionable …
However, prohibition per se can have deleterious outcomes; e.g., be oppressive. There’s a difference, I think, between ejaculating one’s opinions apropos of nothing, and responding to a situation one views as unreasonable or even intolerable. We saw an example earlier this week from Stanford. If my employer demanded that I attend genderist training sessions, refer to women as uterus-havers, or profess belief in magic gendersouls, you would be hard pressed to stop me from expressing my displeasure in great detail and at great length. My reaction would not change were it a demand to profess atheism or any other position to which I subscribe.
Our maxim wants amendment. How about “the workplace is not the right venue to discuss contentious topics, except when a particular position on such a topic is enforced”. Still needs more. “The workplace is not the right venue to discuss contentious topics, except when a particular position on such a topic is enforced, or when the topic is sufficiently important”. But important in what way? Enforced in what way? How important is sufficient? What counts as contentious? And so on and so forth.
Here we see one of the classic problems with Kantian deontology and rule consequentialism: maxims and rules begin short and general, but through endless casuistry they become indeterminately long and specific. Ultimately, the maxim or rule handles describes every possible case, collapsing into act consequentialism.
I think I wrote this better the first time, but the submit button ate everything, so I can’t be sure.
Sure, we make judgement calls. It’s tricky. I think we humans are a little better at evaluating hypotheticals in terms of place and time than by intent.
I see this in security work: people have a really difficult time imagining the actions and motives of a potential bad guy, but they’re a lot better at thinking about stuff that could be attacked.
Horses for courses.