Guest post: Many people even find these ideas “hateful”
Originally a comment by iknklast on They would do well to repudiate this embarrassment from the UK chapter.
The right to promote hateful ideas is not covered under the right to free speech.
Actually, it is. Otherwise, speech is anything but free. When Eugene Debs was jailed for speaking against the war, he was promoting “hateful” ideas. When Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated, he was promoting “hateful” ideas. When Giordano Bruno was burned, he was promoting “hateful” ideas. When the founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they were promoting “hateful” ideas. When the abolitionists spoke out against slavery, they were promoting “hateful” ideas. When the NAACP spoke out in favor of civil rights, they were promoting “hateful” ideas. When women demanded the vote, they were promoting “hateful” ideas.
The thing is, sooner or later you will probably say something that another person will not like or agree with. Many people even find these ideas “hateful”. No God? Hateful idea…if you believe in one. Women shouldn’t be put in sacks before they can go outdoors? Hateful idea…to many Muslims, and a lot of ‘woke’ people. Global warming? Hateful idea…if you are a business person who makes oodles of money pumping carbon into the atmosphere.
The idea of free speech works only if it supports “hateful” ideas, because otherwise, some individual or group gets to determine what constitutes a “hateful” idea and shut down all speech they don’t like. The idea of freedom of speech was not put into place to promote popular ideas; it is not needed for that.
For too many, however, the idea of free speech means “I get to say whatever I want because free speech; you get to say whatever I want, because free speech”. It means we get to call women horrible names, we get to shut women out of the discussion, we get to tell women to STFU, we get to tell women to make us a sandwich. Women aren’t supposed to answer, because if they tell us they don’t like or agree with what we are saying, that is a violation of our free speech. This last, totally illogical argument, seems to be the standard tactic – ‘my speech, and that of those who agree with me, are protected as free speech, neener neener. Your free speech is an attack on my free speech, because I don’t like it, so it isn’t covered under free speech”.
I agree that the ideas are not “hateful” ideas, they are discussions that are reasoned, rational, logical, and considered. It appears to me that the only answer the TRAs have is “shut up, that’s why” and whining that free speech means shutting down speech they find unpleasant. Shutting down the speech of another happens when you are unable to argue with them rationally.
Or as President Harry Truman had occasion to say: ‘If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”
None of us can have a right not to be offended. By anything. And none of us in a liberal democracy do have such a right.
But go to say, Pakistan, and stand in any street and yell out ‘down with Islam!’ even in English, and it will be a different story. For starters, the offended clerics will soon whip up a mob of supporters, and have you hung from the nearest lamp post..
Which is the main reason IMHO for Pakistan being such an economic basket case.
Yeah, where the Frozen Peaches Brigade gets it horribly, tragicomically wrong is when they equate the notion of ‘free speech’ with being free from criticism, rebuttal, mockery and yes, naked hostility to their repugnant views so thuggishly expressed.
It’s the allies and the recruitment of governmental and institutional support for trans privileges that distort things so much. Without the howling mob and official recognitions, TRAs would be a much smaller and less powerful minority. It’s this “powerful” and “privileged” part that they would themselves deny, but TRAsare getting their way much more easily and quickly than their own numbers would merit. Police sympathy and support? Who would have predicted THAT? Fiddling while Rome burns.
And here too, TRAs have greater success than their numbers, or the quality of their arguments (sorry, demands) would lead one to expect. They have been able to claim, without proof beyond assertion, that GC feminist views are “repugnant views, thuggishly expressed.” I think the use of plain, declarative stements like “Woman: adult human female,” “Lesbians don’t have penises” is very useful. They are clear. They are reasonable. They are true. Most people would agree to them without argument. TRAs claims that they constitute hate speech helps push more people to peak trans moments.
I wonder if part of the reason for their unexpected success is the fact that the number of transsexuals is statistically low. It’s much easier to frame a minority as persecuted I think if people see the group as vastly outnumbered. It also may be easier to provide what’s mostly mental support.
The social justice position might be that the cases iknklast cites are speaking truth to power, whereas the gender criticism (contra YNNB) does not. This itself may be a distinction without a difference.
Sastra,
I think the prime reason for their “success” is who they’re having it against.
In the big picture, I wouldn’t say trans rights are doing that great. As was pointed out in another thread, they’re going backwards legally under the Trump administration, and not getting a ton of press for it. When it comes to persuading religious conservatives, or getting lawmakers to do anything, their success is modest. Culturally, a lot of people may be on board with the idea that it’s obnoxious to call someone by a name or pronoun they’ve left behind, but try uttering the phrase “we just had a baby, and we can’t wait to someday let it tell us what gender it is,” and in all but the most woke circles I’m betting you’d be met with incredulous glances.
But picking on women’s groups? Easy peasy. Getting one group of left-leaning people to disown another group for being insufficiently woke? Non-gendered child’s play. There’s a reason you don’t see all of this tough, let’s-throw-a-brick, look-at-my-baseball-bat talk directed at right wingers. Or even just men.
^ Truth. Though I would just add about this part – “Getting one group of left-leaning people to disown another group for being insufficiently woke?” – that it specifically has to be women. It’s only women that left-leaning groups feel comfortable doing this to.
Hmm. Well, I can’t claim much experience with leftist groups, but my outsider’s impression has always been that the “circular firing squad” is a real thing. Or, to use a different reference, there’s lots of folks who have an easy time yelling “SPLITTERS!” at the People’s Front of Judea but who won’t say boo to the Romans.
Fair point. It is. But this sustained venomous shunning and hostility that’s an offspring of social media seems to me to be reserved for
witchesterfy women. Then again that’s bound to be influenced by which social media I see.It’s one thing to recognize the existance of arguement and complaint back and forth within the left, but in this case it’s resulting in male incursion into what were supposed to be female only spaces, female only sports, etc. Actual laws and policies, not just fighting over theoretical, ideological tablescraps outside the halls of institutional power.