Well ok then. I did not know that.

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019

Please, tell us more about how terrified men are of women:

Two women say they were subjected to a homophobic attack and left covered in blood after refusing to kiss on a bus.

Melania Geymonat, 28, said the attack on her and her partner Chris happened on the top deck of a London night bus as they were travelling to Camden Town.

A group of young men began harassing them when they discovered the women were together, asking them to kiss while making sexual gestures.

Four male teenagers aged between 15 and 18 have been arrested.

They are being questioned on suspicion of robbery and aggravated grievous bodily harm.

How grievous? This grievous:

https://twitter.com/sophwilkinson/status/1137033059931500544

Ms Geymonat said: “They surrounded us and started saying really aggressive stuff, things about sexual positions, lesbians and claiming we could kiss so they could watch us.

“To ease the situation I tried to make some jokes, like Chris wasn’t understanding because she didn’t speak English.

“She even acted as if she was sick… but they started throwing coins. The next thing I know Chris is in the middle of the bus and they are punching her.

“So I immediately went there by impulse and tried to pull her out of there and they started punching me. I was really bleeding.”

Yes but cis privilege.

Guys who identify as women reeeeeeeeeeally need to stop saying this.

From the Telegraph:

Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female gender transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman. This week he tackles the controversial issue of transwomen using female-only toilets

You know how parents tell children who are scared by spiders, ‘It’s much more frightened of you than you are of it’? Well, the same thing applies to transwomen in female-only toilets. However frightened women may be by our presence, we are way, way more petrified by having to be there.

No.

No.

Men don’t get to say that.

First of all he doesn’t and can’t even know that.

Second there really is such a thing as men assaulting women in isolated places, including such places as female-only toilets.

Third look at yourself. If you have a male body then women have more to fear from you than you do from them. You don’t get to flip that around just because you have a fashionable idea that you “identify as” a woman. Identifying as a woman doesn’t give you the skeleton and musculature and lungs and heart of a woman.

Fourth look at the analogy. Children and spiders. Children really can squash spiders with one quick smack. The same is not true of women with regard to men. The analogy is fucking ridiculous and it just betrays how maddeningly narcissistically indifferent too many men are to the real risks that women have to deal with.

See also: this astounding comment at Daily Nous:

JT ·June 6, 2019 at 3:02 pm

What’s more, in making the empirical claim the GC crowd also never seems to want to acknowledge the very well documented violence that transwomen often face when forced to use men’s bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. The fact is that it is way more dangerous to be trans than it is to be a ciswoman. Conveniently, this inconvenient fact is never really acknowledge or discussed by the trans-exclusionary crowd.

Now Pink News feels misunderstood.

Mind you, three hours ago it was still all about the “nothing happened and she asked for it.”

The other speaker with her said Julie Bindel was “not physically hurt.” https://t.co/TlEAfBp6Ka

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

But I guess the responses finally got through to them.

Today we published a story about Julie Bindel. We wanted to clear up some misconceptions:

PinkNews looked into an alleged attack on Bindel by a trans person. Bindel tweeted she was “physically attacked,” but later said she was not physically harmed.

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

Alleged, we tell you, ALLEGED. By a trans person. Not by an enraged shouting man, but by a trans person. She said she was physically attacked but not physically harmed ohmygod how can this possibly be it must be an evil terfy plot.

PinkNews wrote a factual article about the incident based on several sources. This has been misrepresented as defending the trans person involved in the incident. Needless to say, we don’t condone violence or threatening behaviour towards anyone. We merely relayed the facts.

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

It’s not needless to say at all. The emphasis, the word order, the vocabulary, all of it was shaped to convey hostile incredulity toward Julie’s account and sympathy for the angry shouting man who charged at her.

What a pack of cowardly liars.

Damn, Pink News is horrible. It should just change its name to Trans News (which would be accurate in both senses).

Julie Bindel misgendered a trans woman who she claimed “physically attacked” her. https://t.co/TlEAfBp6Ka

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) June 7, 2019

That’s right, lead with the “misgendered” part, and also pretend not to believe the attack happened.

You can see it’s being ratioed, but Pink News won’t listen.

Let’s see how Lily Wakefield reports this story:

Radical feminist Julie Bindel claimed that she was “physically attacked” by a transgender woman after speaking at an event at Edinburgh University on Wednesday (June 5).

This is Pink News, yet Wakefield forgets to say that Julie is a lesbian. Too busy monstering her, it seems.

We get Julie’s tweet about the attack, and then

The person referred to is Cathy Brennan, a trans woman misgendered as “a man” by Bindel, who claims she “lost her s[hi]t” but that she did not touch Bindel. Bindel later told The Scotsman that she was “almost” punched.

This is what Pink News focuses on – not the raging aggression by a male-bodied person against a lesbian feminist but the lesbian feminist’s “misgendering” her attacker.

Even if you think trans women should generally be called women, referred to as “she,” validated as women, I would think that occasions when trans women rely on their male bodies and voices and aggression to intimidate women would be an exception. Because that’s what was going on here. This is what makes me so furious about male displays of “losing their shit” at women – it’s their lack of inhibition in summoning their physical advantages to make the woman feel fear. I’ve known so many men who should know better but do this anyway. Joe “Cathy” Brennan wasn’t performing femininity in this incident, he was performing male rage, and he was doing that in aid of terrorizing a woman who makes him angry by…the ironies are infinite…not believing he’s literally a woman. “CALL ME A WOMAN YOU FUCKING CUNT.” Er, no.

But Lily Wakefield writes for Pink News, so none of that makes it into the story. What does make it into the story is the opposition to the panel.

The event was a panel discussion on “women’s sex-based rights.” The event page for the panel states that they planned to discuss “future ways forward for women’s rights in a world of complex sex and gender relations.”

Staff and students at Edinburgh University protested against the talk taking place, branding it “transphobic,” amassing more than 1,300 signatures on a petition against the event, holding a silent protest outside and organising a rally for later in the evening.

“Our view is that there is misinformation, misunderstanding, and fear-mongering presenting cisgender women’s rights as being opposed to trans and non-binary people’s rights,” said the school of social and political science student and staff collective who created the petition.

“We affirm that trans women’s rights are women’s rights and that cis and trans women should be standing together to combat gender oppression.”

When do trans women ever do that though? Apart from the ones who get called “truscum” for their pains. Trans women of the Joe “Cathy” Brennan type have zero interest in standing with “cis” women, they’re far too busy threatening and monstering women they call TERFs.

The Edinburgh University staff Pride network also spoke out against the event, and every member of the network’s committee has now resigned, claiming that the university censored their opposition.

Jonathan MacBride, co-chair of the network, told PinkNews: “Instead of supporting us, supporting our position, they chose to censor us, saying in future we had to ask permission before taking a stand on anything.”

He said of the silent protest: “Staff and students came together beforehand to give each other strength and to make placards and badges. The solidarity was a strong message of staff and students together, protesting an unbalanced, one-sided event.”

Subtext: Julie Bindel is on the Wrong Side and had it coming.

When asked to comment, Bindel declined to say whether she had filed a police report against Brennan but told PinkNews: “I despise your woman-hating, anti-lesbian rag, and would rather give Donald Trump a massage than speak to you.”

Bindel subsequently claimed on Twitter that PinkNews was “more-or-less calling me a liar” after reaching [we reached] out to her for the purposes of journalistic fact-checking and to offer a right of reply.

The state of that: a journalist who can’t even keep her subjects and verbs straight. She has Julie reaching out to herself.

A couple of responses to the tweet linking the article.

https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1137003907681570816

You really should be ashamed of yourself @lilylwakefield for such a disgraceful hatchet job on a real hero of the feminist and gay/lesbian movement.

You're an utter disgrace for writing something that lies so much. Shame on you.

— FireSalamander (@TallDaveSE11) June 7, 2019

Ok here’s a thing.

There are rainbow coloured signs all over the gay village in Manchester, put up by city authorities, which say ‘look fabulous, you’re on CCTV’.

This could be the title of a book on the 21st century state.

— Helen Dale (not on your team, but always fair) (@_HelenDale) June 6, 2019

Oh the puckish sense of humor of the security state.

Yes she does have the photo.

Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/sKV81Sqm92

— Helen Dale (not on your team, but always fair) (@_HelenDale) June 6, 2019

The Evening Standard says Julie Bindel had it coming.

CONTROVERSIAL feminist writer Julie Bindel says she was “lunged” at last night by an activist who had to be restrained by security guards. Bindel, co-founder of Justice For Women, was leaving a panel event at Edinburgh University when she was approached by activist Cathy Brennan, a trans woman whom Bindel mis-identifies as a man. “He ran right at me, was inches away from me. His fists were raised and his face was twisted with hatred and anger,” Bindel told The Londoner this morning.

Note the care to monster her with the very first word, which luckily is in all caps.

Then note that they see fit to say she “mis-identifed” as a man this large man who felt large and male and confident enough to lunge at her.

Much misidentify.

https://twitter.com/FranFaeFife/status/1136415300788903936

The Standard again:

Brennan posted on Twitter last night that she “lost my sh*t at Julie Bindel. She filmed me. I’m safe”. Brennan also claimed “the truth of the matter is that I did not raise a fist. I attempted to push past security so I could speak…with a person who has caused great harm to trans people.” The panel, entitled “Women’s Sex-Based Rights: what does (and should) the future hold?”, had already drawn anger last month after the Edinburgh University’s Students’ Association Liberation group accused the university of “stirring up transphobia” for hosting it.

The panel didn’t “draw” anger. Some students chose to get angry about it. Saying the panel “drew” anger shifts the responsibility.

H/t Josh

A further thought occurs to me, pondering this business of Justin Weinberg and his heightened (and in my view exaggerated) empathy for t philosopher (who claims to be a trans woman) along with his barely detectable empathy for women and other subordinated categories of people. Imagine being made to feel bad about yourself the way t philosopher is, he tells us. So I ponder what it is that makes t philosopher feel bad. According to tp it’s terfy women talking about sex and gender, but I was attempting to look behind that.

So I thought about the fact that academics have to stand up in front of groups of people, small groups or large or both, and lecture at them and/or discuss with them.

So, yes, I can see how that would be freighted for a trans person. (It’s freighted for others too though, of course. What is an academic supposed to look like? Oh, you know – corduroy jacket, beard, pipe, pallid skin.) One of the big hurdles for trans people is the voice, and academics have to use their voices a lot. In other words teaching is quite likely a very self-conscious activity for trans people, over and above the self-consciousness that can afflict anyone.

What would the ideal be? I guess that students and colleagues and everyone would just smoothly accept the trans teacher as her/his chosen gender, with no lapses of memory or any other kind of glitch.

But the difficulty there, it seems to me, is that people also and at the same time have to accept everyone else as her/his chosen gender, with no lapses of memory or any other kind of glitch. I’m thinking it’s not all that easy for human beings to do both of those things at once. We have to internalize a lot of cues to who is which sex starting in infancy, and we also have to learn to override all those cues in the case of a very few people.

Is that even possible? Can people internalize both sets of cues, that give opposite results, without ever getting confused or absent-minded?

If it’s not, the result is that the acceptance embrace etc of the trans person as her/his chosen gender is always a conscious overriding of lifelong cues…and the trans person knows this.

So…maybe, even if everyone agreed that trans people are the gender they say they are, end of story, trans people would still feel edgy and self-conscious about it, because they would know people were always having to override the cues.

I don’t know what to do with that thought. My ideal is a different one, in which trans people would be content to identify as her/his chosen gender and leave it at that, without any insistence on “validation” and the like from the rest of the world. I think that would go a long way to eliminate this “anguish” that Justin Weinberg talks about, because it would be so much easier on all parties. It would no longer matter all that much if students were thinking “not a man, a woman” or the reverse every minute of the class, because the trans academic would be at peace with knowing people can’t help seeing what they see and hearing what they hear.

I saw this.

"But most of us are fortunate enough never to have had our toughness tested in this way." You really don't have the first fucking clue about being a woman, do you Justin?

The comments are excellent though. Sliver of faith in my profession restored.https://t.co/B17DoSf5z4

— Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) June 6, 2019

So I followed the link and skim-read Justin Weinberg’s “won’t somebody please think of the trans women” piece. I was not overwhelmed by the reasoning therein. I was annoyed by bêtises like the one Jane points out. There are lots of them. The whole thing is written from the assumption that on the one hand there are cis people, lolling about on fluffy pillows of privilege, and on the other there are trans people, battling oppression and exclusion of a kind that we cis people can’t even begin to imagine.

For instance, right at the beginning:

Understanding t philosopher

Remember t philosopher? That’s the one who wrote that Medium piece full of hyperbolic self-pity and zero awareness of anyone else’s experiences with exclusion and oppression.

Reader, what do you do when you are confronted with the anguish of another person? I hope it is at least this: you try to understand. Sometimes it may be easy to understand, but sometimes, owing to qualities of the person suffering, or the kind of person you are and experiences you’ve had, or the circumstances you’re in, it may not be easy. You may not identify with their suffering, you may be puzzled by its depth, you may be put out by its expression, you may think it involves mistakes—but before responding in ways that don’t take someone’s suffering as seriously as the person undergoing it, you should try to understand it.

See? There it is already – the bizarre assumption that all of us reading are immune from exclusion, prejudice, mockery, insult, abuse – from, in fact, any kind of anguish.

There is also the now-familiar credulity, and not just credulity but insistence that we must all be credulous too. It apparently doesn’t even cross his mind that the “anguish” might be pumped up for effect, might be a political ploy, might be part of a larger picture of hyperbolic anguish that is brandished at women as a way to make them stop talking.

He goes on.

Do you love philosophy? Do you feel at home in this work? Do you think you wouldn’t be as fulfilled if you had a different kind of career? Many readers of Daily Nous will answer “yes” to these questions. This means that many readers will know where t philosopher is starting from.

Now imagine that when you take part in activities other professional philosophers do, unlike most of those other professional philosophers, you are made to feel quite bad. Yes, some philosophers may feel bad because they don’t think their work meets their own standards, or because of criticism by others, or because of stress to get work done, but this is different. It’s not about your work; rather, you are being made to feel bad—really bad—because of a characteristic of yours such as your race, or gender, or sexuality, or ethnicity, etc. In fact, it is so horrible that it is interfering with your mental and emotional well-being. Further, it is so unlike what most of your colleagues experience that most of them don’t understand it, and so fail to take it seriously, or think less of you for complaining about it, which of course makes it even worse. And now, unlike most other philosophers, you have to choose between doing what you love and preserving a minimally decent level of mental and emotional health.

Yes, imagine that, except many women and people of color don’t need to “imagine”; they know what it’s like from experience.

It’s as Jane says. He really doesn’t have the first fucking clue.

Updating to add a comment on Justin Weinberg’s post:

Also, trans-exclusive feminists complaining about violent messages and images clearly are not experts in the history of feminism or are willfully ignorant of the use of violent images in the history of women’s liberation. Trans women using violent imagery to promote their own liberation is only within the same historical millieu of all their feminist foremothers. Whining about “abuse” etc is just obfuscatory bad faith sophistry on the part of the trans-exclusive and used to engender sympathy from a public that is less plugged in to the discourse.

Some Twitter reactions.

Attn MPs + journalists. Even if you don't care about sex & gender (and you should), consider this: Julie Bindel, a journalist, has been physically attacked for expressing her opinions. This cannot stand. https://t.co/qgJI5CKI9X

— James Kirkup (@jameskirkup) June 6, 2019

This is Cathy. Cathy attacked a woman- Julie Bindel who has been instrumental in the fight for justice for female victims of the most horrific violence. Cathy then bragged about it on social media. Welcome to the Upside Down. pic.twitter.com/p9PcuWeNox

— Meri Williams (@albinodisco) June 6, 2019

"He was shouting and ranting and raving, 'you're a f***** c***, you're a f****** bitch, a f****** Terf' and the rest of it… he just lunged at me and almost punched me in the face, but a security guard pulled him away." https://t.co/ZCgEn0f88l

— Claire (@ClaireShrugged) June 6, 2019

I posted this 2 days ago in response to an editor @theskinnymag which published a piece by a person advocating violence against women and using the discredited, unacceptable term "TERFS". That writer attacked Julie Bindel as she exited a meeting on women's rights last night. https://t.co/qP2RQPejnN

— Magi Gibson (@MagiGibson) June 6, 2019

https://twitter.com/RIPx3Nutmeg/status/1136518984705224704

A hulking man physically attacked Julie Bindel last night.

Gina Davidson at The Scotsman (cool name for a paper – are women allowed to read it?) reports:

Julie Bindel, the keynote speaker at an Edinburgh University event which discussed the future of women’s sex-based rights, said she was verbally abused, “lunged at” and almost “punched in the face”, by a transwoman as she left the building.

She thanked university security staff for protecting her and said she was still considering whether to press charges.

Today Ms Bindel said: “I have been beaten up by men in the past but not for a long time, and I knew precisely what was coming when I saw the rage on his face, and I am just so sick of this.

“We had had a very positive meeting – I was speaking about male violence against women and never even mentioned transgender people – and when I came out this person was waiting.

“There had been a protest outside earlier, but that had gone so he was obviously waiting for me.

“He was shouting and ranting and raving, ‘you’re a f[ucking] c[unt], you’re a f[ucking] bitch, a f[ucking] Terf” and the rest of it. We were trying to walk to the cab to take us to the airport, and then he just lunged at me and almost punched me in the face, but a security guard pulled him away.

“I got my phone out to film him to get evidence and he went for me again. It took three security guys at the stage to deal with him.”

A male person. It doesn’t matter in this context how he “identifies”; he has a male body and he used it to intimidate and try to assault a woman. Tell us again how “deeply hurtful” it is when women say men are not women.

“I was with Professor Rosa Freedman and we got in the cab and left, but we were both very shaken by it. I haven’t decided yet what action to take.”

She added: “I think the lecturers and other staff who stoked the flames of this by calling women bigots and fascists and Nazis because we were holding an event to discuss women’s rights, should take responsibility for this.”

Goddam right.

After the attack, it was revealed on social media platform Twitter that her attacker was a transwoman called Cathy Brennan, who it has been reported has previously advocated violence against women.

Brennan tweeted last night: “Lost my shot [sh*t] at Bindel. She filmed me. I’m safe.” and went on to say the “truth of the matter is that I did not raise a fist. I attempted to push past security so I could speak face to face with a person who has caused great harm to trans people across this country.

“I had been reaching my phone to try and record JB when I realised she was filming me. My one regret about the encounter is that I was unable to do so.”

Today Brennan, a film critic who has written for The Skinny magazine and the British Film Institute, said that if the press wanted “to hear my side of the story they can offer me the chance to write a full opinion piece in my own words. Otherwise, I will not be discussing it personally with anyone I do not know.” Brennan has previously tweeted in support of violence against women who believe that changing the Gender Recognition Act to allow people to self-identify as any gender, rather than needing a medical diagnosis, would endanger women’s rights to safety, privacy and dignity by doing away with single-sex spaces. One tweet read: “Any trans allies at #PrideLondon right now need to step the f[uc]kup and take out the terf trash. Get in their faces. Make them afraid. Debate never works so f[uc]k them up”

In other words physically assault them.

In Japan high heels are mandatory for women.

Japan’s health and labour minister has defended workplaces that require women to wear high heels to work, arguing it is “necessary and appropriate” after a petition was filed against the practice.

Necessary and appropriate for what, exactly? Knowing who is which sex without having to raise one’s gaze from the floor?

The remark came when Takumi Nemoto was asked to comment on a petition by a group of women who want the government to ban workplaces from requiring female jobseekers and employees to wear high heels.

“It is socially accepted as something that falls within the realm of being occupationally necessary and appropriate,” Nemoto told a legislative committee on Wednesday.

Easy for him to say.

Campaigners say wearing high heels in Japan is near-obligatory when job hunting or working in many Japanese companies.

Some campaigners describe high heels as akin to modern-day foot-binding…

Which they are. They’re a mild form of it, but they do bind and deform the feet, and they also inhibit women’s ability to move. The streets around the World Trade Center were littered with the damn things after the towers collapsed.

Trump’s off to Ireland now, to visit his impecunious (aka stone cold loser) golf course.

Trump’s visit to Ireland is not an official one, although he will meet with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar briefly at Shannon Airport. The visit is primarily for the president to stop off at his own golf resort at Doonbeg, in County Clare, where his ideological war on the environment takes something of a physical form.

A sprawling, luxury property, Doonbeg sits on the west coast of Ireland, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Trump opposed the construction of a wind farm near the site in 2014, and sent a celebratory tweet when the local council denied planning permission. There was a mild controversy in 2018 when it emerged he had lobbied Varadkar – then the Irish tourism minister – over the issue.

Then in 2017, the Trump organisation was granted permission to build a 38,000 tonne sea wall to protect the resort from sand dunes which were facing coastal erosion.

Facing what? Erosion? How is that possible? How could stable genius Donald Trump have bought a golf course in a spot subject to erosion?

Perhaps ironically, given Trump’s stance on climate change, his own lawyers included in their application that climate change was partially behind the coastal erosion.

Oh, well, yes, that kind of climate change. But that’s totally different from that other kind! That other kind that doesn’t exist, and that will go away as long as everybody agrees to keep the water clean crystal clean like crystal so clean despite repealing regulations against pollution of streams rivers lakes ponds oceans and the like. No the kind that’s eroding Don’s dunes is a very small Irish local kind that just affects this one spot. It’s different. Not the same.

Local people don’t want Don’s wall though, and it’s hung up in the planning process.

An Bord Pleanála – an independent, statutory body – who are considering the appeal, told The Independent: “The planning appeal is still under consideration. A decision on the appeal is unlikely to be made in the near future.”

Then they burst into giggles and hung up the phone.

Din-dins at the pally was the first time Donald “The Pig” Trump and Kate Middleton met, but he had a history. What kind of history? The usual kind, of course: his history of insulting her on Twitter.

Back in 2012, French magazine Closer published photos of Middleton sunbathing topless.

That is, she and William were staying at a private house owned by relatives, and a photographer took stealth photos of her, which is an absolute shit thing to do. She wasn’t walking down Oxford Street with her tits out.

But Trump saw fit to scold her on Twitter – Trump, the guy who brags about grabbing women by the pussy, and does in fact grab women by the pussy. Trump who called his daughter “a piece of ass” on Howard Stern’s radio talk show.

Who wouldn't take Kate's picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing. Come on Kate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2012

Who wouldn’t spy on a woman in order to photograph her naked in order to sell the photos for big bucks? Everyone who isn’t a sleazy prurient misogynist shit, that’s who. Maybe Kate Middleton shouldn’t get naked to take a shower, either, because who knows, maybe somebody with a telephoto lens can get a shot through the window.

They sued, by the way, and the magazine lost and had to pay a settlement. Trump’s legal theory is bullshit.

I’d love to think she spat in his eye at the din-din, but I don’t suppose she could.

Funny how it’s the women he goes after, isn’t it.

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.