If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)
from the free-speech-is-not-that dept
One of the more frustrating things about the various “debates” regarding “free speech” lately, is how little they are actually about free speech. Quite often, they are actually about people who are quite upset about having to face social consequences for their own free speech. But facing social consequences has always been part of free speech. Indeed, it’s part of the vaunted “marketplace of ideas.” If people think your ideas aren’t worth shit, they may ignore or shun you… or encourage others to do the same.
Over at The Bulwark, Prof. Nicholas Grossman has a really good article exploring Elon Musk’s attempt at reframing the debate over free speech. It is well worth reading. The crux of the argument that Grossman makes (in great detail that you should go read to have it all make sense) is that when you break down what Musk actually seems to be thinking about free speech, his definition hews quite similarly to what a lot of trolls think free speech means: the right to be a total asshole without consequence.
The article highlights what many of us have said before (disclaimer, it does link to some of my writing on the subject), that the real underlying question is not actually about free speech, but where society should draw the line on what is, and what is not, acceptable in public company. And that’s really what this is all about. Free speech, as a concept, has to fall back on whether or not the government suppresses speech. For all the talk about social consequences of free speech, or whether or not there is a “culture of free speech” or “principles of free speech,” everyone has some level of internal voice that notes what kind of speech they feel goes too far for polite company — even if they don’t think such speech should be illegal.
But, then, the question becomes, if there is some speech that I, personally, don’t wish to associate with, should others be forced to do so? And that’s where the debates over content moderation actually live. In that space that says “where should the line be drawn” for what is acceptable and what is not. And when you look closely at the actual debate, it always comes down to “I want to be a disrespectful asshole to people I don’t like, and I don’t want to face any consequences for it.”
As Grossman aptly notes, a private company deciding whether or not to host your content, isn’t really a free speech issue at all. Every platform agrees that some moderation is necessary. Every platform that has tried to do otherwise, changes course, often within days.
Multiple Twitter alternatives have been tried, all vowing to be “free speech” platforms that don’t moderate content. Every one of them—Gab, Parler, Gettr, etc.—has ended up moderating speech and enforcing rules, because what their “unfettered free speech” resulted in was doxxing, promotion of violence, and various other depravities that underscored why content moderation became the norm on the internet in the first place. And all these alternative platforms have flopped as businesses because “Twitter for people who want to post things you can’t post on Twitter” isn’t appealing to most users.
For business reasons, if nothing else, Twitter under Elon Musk would still moderate content. It might, however, change which users it prioritizes.
On top of that, he demolishes the idea that content moderation is about “leftists” trying to “censor” conservative voices:
This supposed bias is an article of faith for large swaths of the right, but when serious researchers have gone looking for it, they don’t find empirical support. A 2021 study found that, across seven advanced democratic countries, Twitter’s algorithm boosts posts by right-wing politicians and parties a little more than posts by left-wing politicians and parties. Another 2021 study set loose some politically neutral “drifter bots” on Twitter and found strong evidence of conservative bias, but “from user interactions (and abuse) rather than platform algorithms.”
Content moderation decisions can be haphazard, not least because the Big Tech business model means a small number of employees rely on algorithms and user reporting to oversee far more content than they can possibly handle. Public perception of these decisions often derives from a few anecdotes repeated by interested parties, and doesn’t match the data. For example, a 2022 paper found strong support in the U.S.—from both Democrats and Republicans—for social media companies taking action against misinformation. Of accounts banned or suspended for misinformation, more were conservative than liberal, but there was no evidence of political bias in enforcement decisions. Every banned or suspended account had clearly violated terms of service, it’s just that people on the right happened to break misinformation rules more often.
So, if there’s no actual evidence of bias, and everyone (even Musk) recognize that there needs to be some level of moderation, what is this “debate” really about. As Grossman highlights, it basically all comes down to whether or not you can be a total asshole without having a social media site say “that crosses our line of what we feel is appropriate here.” He uses the example of the Babylon Bee, whose Twitter suspension for misgendering someone has been pointed to as the catalyst for Musk to decide to buy Twitter.
But is that actually a “free speech” issue?
Of course not. You can be an asshole all you want, and you can disrespect people in obnoxious ways, proudly highlighting your own moral degeneracy all you want. You just can’t expect everyone else to support you in doing it, and not tell you when they feel your behavior has crossed their specific line, their terms of providing service.
So, yes, Elon Musk can take over Twitter, and then he can have every right to change the rules to whatever he wants. Just like Gab and Parler and GETTR and Truth Social and others have every right to set their own rules as well. But none of those are actually battles about “free speech.” They’re battles about where private entities draw the line of what they feel is and is not appropriate on their own property.
And when you look at it that way, you realize that none of Musk’s arguments are actually for free speech. They’re for his desire to redraw the line to allow more assholes on one site, without consequence. And, as Grossman notes, this insistence that it’s about free speech, really really distorts the underlying principles of free speech.
Twitter is a private company, and its rules are up to its owners, whether that’s Elon Musk or anyone else. As a supporter of the First Amendment, I accept that, even if I don’t agree with their choices. But as someone who greatly values free speech—not just legal protections from government, but a culture that fosters expression and dialogue—I refuse to cede the concept of free speech to those who think a defining feature is trolls trying to drive trans people and other minorities off social media.
And that’s exactly right. I’ll fight more than anyone to actually protect the 1st Amendment, and your rights to say what you want and to be an asshole on your own property. But there is nothing “free speech” about just demanding that private entities draw the line for “what level of asshole do we allow” somewhere more assholish.
Filed Under: assholes, content moderation, elon musk, free speech, nicholas grossman, trolling
Companies: twitter
Comments on “If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)”
Can't violate a right you don't have
If someone wants to frame free speech as consequence-free speech then they have essentially neutered the term and made it useless since they are describing something that has never existed.
Even when you may be free from government penalties for acting terrible there has always been social consequences for acting in ways that the society around you doesn’t agree with, from people not wanting to be around you to active shunning you, so someone complaining that social media is ‘attacking free speech’ is essentially complaining that something that the speaker never had is under assault.
Re:
Lots of people seem to think “free speech” means (or is synonymous with) “free reach”. Those poor bastards…
Re: Re: Free speech and so called prompts to limit free speech to supposed society approved speech
The whole point of free speech is to bring attention to typical behaviors like your little speech on only accept pack social etu mentality ideals that allow people to be bullied violently violated and abused just because their views go against the stupid wealthy lazy servant wanting pretentious people with fake no substance ideals that cause huge amounts of harm and slaughter in order to fulfill unrealistic ideals of bullshit kingdom slave possessing inhumane ideals ,I love the fact that people who come up with new and innovative perspectives and experience of different life experiences that oi can gain other knowledge from and get inspired and enhance my knowledge and creativity I welcome it with open arms and openmindedness that I only gain from having access to invited unvitoed ideas and experience that is honest I use it both to better inform myself and as an education tool as brainstoing with many people is so much more successful than your obvious sheltered does and don’ts life that is only encompassed by supressive laws and since most people in the world can’t manage to live by only ten commandments that these same people think that everyone should observe millions of rules that only serve to suppress and abuse instead of allowing freedoms you can always agree to disagree you docile fucking twat
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Why is everyone so twisted up about musk buying twitter? They’re acting like Elon raped their mothers and wiped the blood off his dick using their shirt
Re: Re:
Because Elon still acts like he’s living in apartheid-era Africa despite him actually leaving said place due to him not agreeing with apartheid.
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Because Elon still acts like he’s living in apartheid-era Africa despite him actually leaving said place due to him allegedly not agreeing with apartheid.
FTFY. 😉
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So You Can Sue Twitter
So a doctor can sue twitter if twitter calls the doctors medical opinion disinformation?
If your argument is the twitter is entitled to publishers free speech rights then they should be sue for libel when they defame others … consequences after all …
Oh wait no they cant be sued because section 230. The only immunity in the entire fucking world your moronic hypocritical ass seems to like.
Mike you are a sociopath. The only reason you like section 230 is because its the immunity that applies to you. That is a textbook sociopath, dont think rules shouldn’t exist just dont like rules to apply to me.
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What immunity?
Like when I call you a goat fucker, because you are one, you can’t sue Mike?
That makes perfect sense to me, since Mike didn’t call you a goat fucker, I did.
And since my speech is protected under the 1st amendment, Mike has no obligation to remove it either.
If you want to come sue me for calling you the goat fucker you are, then come at me bro!!!
God you’re an ignorant fucking asshole that wants to be the fucking asshole goat fucker you are in all the places that have told you to fuck off.
Talk about a real piece of shit you are.
Re: Re:
Like when I call you a goat fucker, because you are one…
Actually, that is defamatory. The commenter you’re replying to doesn’t fuck goats, he lets goats fuck him. 😉
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230 immunity applies to every user of a service. If someone posts something defamatory on Twitter and other users retweet that post, those other users aren’t liable for defamation thanks to Section 230.
Re: Re:
Hyman Rozen has stated that silencing someone is winning the argument.
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So what?
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Hyman isn’t worth the effort.
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Hyman has spewed a lot of deranged baseless drivel. So what?
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I have said that very effective criticism, including successful satire, that demonstrates the weakness of someone’s position to the extent that they are ashamed to continue holding and stating it, is good. That is not silencing, that is winning the argument.
Woke ideologues do not believe in reality, only power, so naturally they see such winning as forceful silencing rather than the triumph of truth over lies.
Re: Re: Re:2
Meanwhile, NeoNazis like you prefer to bully, intimidate, harass and murder people to win arguments, since smarter people than you can and have won arguments against your ilk by simply having better evidence, better logic, and, oh, at least wanting to listen to your deranged, violent drivel before dismissing it and calling the FBI.
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Re: Re: Re:3
It is woke ideologues who like to call unassailable arguments against them “violence”. It was the same woke ideologues at the tech platforms whose viewpoint-based censorship led to the creation of Parler that removed Parker from their app stores and payment processing. Woke ideologues cannot win arguments by truth, because their ideas are lies. They can only win by force.
Re: Re: Re:4
Can you give us even one example of this? Just for a laugh?
And haven’t you got anything better than “woke ideologues”? It’s genuinely the stupidest sounding of the current conservative talking point insults.
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Re: Re: Re:5
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html
Re: Re: Re:6
Paywall. Can you quote the line you refer to?
Re: Re: Re:4
Not how nothing Hyman Rosen says ever bears the slightest resemblence to anything out here in the real world.
Re: Re: Re:4
What arguments? BE SPECIFIC. STATE EVENTS. DATES.
Becayse you fucking NeoNazis actually engage in actual fucking violence. Buffalo. Charlottesville. And then there’s the political harassment, threats and flat out bullying in Idaho, led by proud NeoNazis.
Visa is so fucking conservative they told Onlyfans to fuck off.
Oh, and I’m sure AWS being so exceedingly polite and “offering” to help Parler with its moderation problem before removing them from the premises is about as “woke” as it gets.
Or that anyone who doesn’t want getting investigated by ALL THE ALPHABET AGENCIES would think it wise to disassociate with any entity endorsing and encouraging INSURRECTION.
Funny that the majority of all the violent acts, then, are linked to Trump, the Republican Party, NeoNazi ideals and white supremacy. Funnier then is how the rich and powerful NeoNazis are being left alone as well.
Outside of threatening sitting Presidents (something frowned on because, well, there’s been at least 2 successful attempts made by actual enemies of the state and countless other failed attempts by actual nutters), we’ve been watching, horrified, as the people in power let your fucking filth wreck the country and spread your hateful ideology out of America.
It is YOU who are resorting to political violence. Both of the physical and ideological kind.
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Re: Re: Re:5
https://nypost.com/2022/04/13/suspect-frank-james-was-spewing-racist-hate-well-before-brooklyn-shooting/
https://www.blackenterprise.com/girlfriend-of-dallas-shooter-says-he-had-fear-of-asian-americans/
https://nyti.ms/2YC0gZY
Re: Re: Re:6
Could you explain how those support your claims or detract from theirs? The second and third don’t even appear to be related to the topic at hand at all.
(And no, the fact that the killers were black is not enough to show relevance; not every black person is a “woke ideologue”, and even if they were, this wouldn’t show that their actions were motivated by “woke ideology”. Moreover, the other person never claimed that only white supremacists and similar white or anti-black ideologies commit violence, so simply citing three examples of racist or antisemitic violence committed by blacks doesn’t disprove the claims actually being made.)
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Re: Re: Re:7
As with Black-on-Black crime, it’s a matter of focusing attention. Woke ideologues bring notice to any case that can be construed as racist white people attacking people of color while de-emphasizing the opposite. Indeed, woke ideologues often deny that Black racism is even possible, because they say that it requires power to be racist that Black people don’t have. I didn’t even mention the despicable piece of filth Louis Farrakhan who is still enormously popular in the Black community.
So, for example, woke ideologues will talk endlessly about the beliefs of the Buffalo store shooter but say nothing about the beliefs of the New York subway shooter.
Re: Re: Re:8
I’m not talking about woke ideologues’ claims. I’m talking about the claims of the person you’re responding to. How are they relevant to that?
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Re: Re: Re:9
“the majority of all the violent acts, then, are linked to Trump…”
Woke ideologues, with their “fiery but mostly peaceful demonstrations”, are notorious for overlooking violence and racism from their favored victim classes.
Re: Re: Re:10
Citing 3 violent acts (being generous) that aren’t linked to Trump doesn’t contradict the statement that a majority of violent acts are linked to Trump. “Majority” doesn’t mean “all”; the existence of at least some exceptions are not only allowed for but expected.
Re: Re: Re:3
We all know that if neonazi’s came into power the very first thing they would do is shred the Constitution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl
Free speech indeed.
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Murder also silences someone, but is illegal pretty much everywhere.
He really wants to win an argument that bad, huh.
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So a doctor can sue twitter if twitter calls the doctors medical opinion disinformation?
I’d invite all of you persecuted fucktards to sue Twitter over your banned posts. At least that way we’ll finally know what they are since none of you have the balls to answer.
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Exactly this.
I want right-wing conservatives to come out and say what posts are getting deleted and why think the posts should be reinstated.
The last time I checked, Twitter wasn’t removed posts that talked about conservative issues such as smaller government or fiscal responsibility l.
So come on, let’s see what the deleted posts said and see how people defend the right to post them.
Re: Re: Re: Nothing like the classics
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
(All credit to Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence.)
Re: Re: Re:2
It’s so telling that this beautiful little piece almost never gets replied to by anyone defending “conservative speech”. They definitely know the ones.
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The ones that expose the follies of the left.
Re: Re: Re:3
What follies? Be exceedingly specific.
Because I am working on a very specific definition of the left, and it says, “Marxists”, and I do not see any Marxists in power.
Re: Re: Re:3
Your laughably false equivalence does not left follies make. Try again, lemming.
Re: Re: Re:3
And that’s exactly the kind of over-simplification and taking out-of-context that Mike is talking about!
Re the Learn to Code Situation: Its originated from a bunch of news stories from Left-wing (sorry, “Left-wing”) publications, like this one talking about re-training initiatives for coal miners. You can like or hate these articles; personally I think they’re pretty elitist and incredibly out of touch with the people they’re talking (down) to. But the fact of the matter is, these were published news articles.
In contrast, from The Right (sorry, “Right”): In 2019, After a round of layoffs from organizations like Buzzfeed and Huffington post, there was surge of DMs and replies targeting former staffers, spamming “learn to code” or some variation. To the point that it reached harassment-level events for those concerned.
Whether this was a coordinated effort, or grew out of organic sense of frustration and schadenfreude, who can say? But either way, Twitter identified the vector of attack, decided that it violated existing rules on spam, harassment, etc. and took action to stop it from happening.
You can have disagreements with the moderation decision. I certainly do! But it’s absolutely not the case that two actors did the identical things, and one was censored becaue politics!
Re: Re: Re:4
Note: Coding programs are right now highly successful in helping former coal mimers in Kentucky get lucrative employment without having to leave the communities they value.
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The post by the Babylon Bee giving Dr. Rachel Levine its Man of the Year award.
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So you admit you got nothing but lies.
Re: Re: Re:2
So… bigoted views… Gotcha…
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Re: Re: Re:3
It is no more bigoted to say that transwomen are men than it is to say that people cannot fly by flapping their arms. Reality does not modify itself to conform to people’s wishes.
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The facts say transwomen are women no matter how much you wish reality would conform to your mental illness.
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Since transwomen are—at least under some reasonable definitions of the terms—women and not men (though they are typically male), but no credible argument could possibly be made that people can fly by flapping their arms, the comparison is inapt. Also, your denial of the terms as such despite the scientific backing behind them is itself a denial of reality.
The point is that misgendering is bigoted (you claiming it’s not doesn’t change the reality of the situation), and it is perfectly reasonable that Twitter would not want to host such content. That is not an example anti-conservative bias but anti-bigotry bias, and I have no problem with that kind of bias.
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Re: Re: Re:5
There are always people who assert that their own beliefs are so unassailably correct that no dissent needs to be tolerated. The Inquisition burned its heretics and the Communists put opponents in lunatic asylums.
Transwomen are men. You can redefine the words any way you like, but you don’t get to force anyone else to adopt your definitions. You can try to hound dissenters into silence, but you don’t have the numbers to succeed. And places like Florida and Texas are going to return the favor, to the detriment of everyone.
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You haven’t even alleged that that’s the case with Twitter and its actions regarding transphobic rhetoric.
No they aren’t.
I can tell you that, on my platform, that’s not the definition we use, so any other definition is to be ignored. I can also say that your definition is wrong in this context. Most importantly, my point was that your comparison was inapt.
Who said I’m trying to silence you? I’m saying that Twitter deciding it doesn’t want to host the “dissenters” because they are bigots in Twitter’s view is not a problem in my view. I’m also saying that the “dissenters” are bigots.
If they even mentioned transphobes being banned, you might have a point, but they don’t. They just assert that “conservative” views are being “censored”. Moreover, those laws are blatantly unconstitutional and will ultimately be made void for that reason.
Re: Re: Re:6
Projection, thy name is Hyman.
Re: Re: Re:4
Not about right or wrong. It’s about not being an asshole. The whole point is that when you say things like that, you are coming off as an aggressive, abusive asshole. And that drives people away. And websites who want people don’t want asshole mucking things up.
So, even if you think you’re not a bigot, you’re still an asshole.
So… maybe stop that?
Do you also walk up to people you think are ugly and tell them that? Or do you have the common sense and decency not to. Think of it like that. If you know enough not to insult people, why do you feel the need to do that in this particular case?
It is almost as if you want to show off that you’re an asshole because you simply do not like the way some people live their lives.
The problem, once again, is with you.
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Re: Re: Re:5
Not liking the way other people live their lives is something lots of people do. You might remember candidate Obama complaining about those Americans who “cling to guns and religion”.
The beliefs of woke gender ideology are false. Transwomen are men. Woke gender ideologues demand that everyone accept the opposite, and seek to force real women to allow these delusional men into women’s single-sex spaces. They seek to have public schools conceal children who are expressing such delusions from their own parents. They seek to have some gender ideology taught as true in public schools. None of that is about not liking how people live their own lives. It is all about not allowing a false ideology to be imposed upon people who correctly refuse to accept it.
Dr. Rachel Levine and Lia Thomas and Donald Trump are public figures. Public figures can be subject to satire and mockery and criticism in ways that are typically off limits to private individuals.
Re: Re: Re:6
You keep saying this, but you still have presented no evidence to support these claims.
Or stop shoving their outdated views on human sexuality on others and such, which is what they’re actually doing.
Again, they are neither delusional nor men, and you have yet to successfully support the idea that this is a problem or that it actually is forcing their beliefs on others.
You have given no evidence to support this claim, nor have you rebutted my point that this is far from exceptional given that there are a variety of circumstances where public schools and mental health professionals conceal such for just about any mental health condition.
You have provided no evidence that actually supports this claim. The one piece of evidence you offered to try to support this only supports the claim that they stopped explicitly referring to people with penises as “men”, “boys”, or “he”, which a) is not affirmatively teaching anything in support of pro-transgender ideas and so isn’t “hav[ing] some gender ideology taught as true”, and b) is actually true even ignoring transgender people since intersex people exist and include some people who, without any surgery or treatments or such, are naturally female in just about every way but also happen to have a penis. I’m sorry, but that simply doesn’t support your assertion at all.
The bathroom thing and the “concealing it from the kids’ parents” thing are about not liking how people live their own lives, and the only other specific claim (about teaching that some gender ideology is true) is an unsupported claim, so it can be discarded until you demonstrate that it’s actually true.
Again, you have failed to demonstrate that it is a false ideology, and you have failed to demonstrate that people are attempting to impose it on anyone. No one’s forcing you to be transgender or to date or have sex with a transgender person if you don’t want to.
But that satire should not be bigoted. The so-called satire of Dr. Levine is only satirizing her for being transgender and no other reason, and it only made fun of her transgender-ness. If people satirized Trump for being a straight white cis male and for no other reason and only made fun of that part of him, I would say that’s off-limits as well. Face it: if Levine wasn’t transgender, she would not have been satirized at all. Bigotry is not acceptable regardless of the identity of the target of the bigotry. That some level of satire is acceptable for public figures that is unacceptable for private figures doesn’t mean that no level of satire can cross the line if it’s only about a public figure.
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Re: Re: Re:7
On schools hiding children’s trans delusions from parents:
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/05/12/teacher-has-free-exercise-clause-right-to-tell-parents-about-their-childrens-preferred-names-and-pronouns/
Re: Re: Re:8
So what? “Teachers have a right to disclose” is not the same as “teachers have a duty to disclose,” nor does that contradict what I said. There are lots of things you have the right to do that you shouldn’t do. This doesn’t help your case at all.
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Re: Re: Re:7
Dr. Rachel Levine and Lia Thomas are quite obviously men. They incorrectly claim to be a woman. Satirizing them is a way of demonstrating and arguing that trans ideology is false, and that transwomen are men.
There is no way to make such arguments to the satisfaction of woke gender ideologues, because to woke gender ideologues, the very claim that transwomen are deluded men is bigoted and evil. The fact that the satire is effective only makes the opposition from woke gender ideologues more heated.
Re: Re: Re:8
All can take this as they will: idgaf
There is something to be said to the aspect of them being gay effeminate men/women.fearing the term gay as of itself.
At the same time there is a legitimate aspect of genetics that verifies damaged (that is the correct term) DNA links which create gender (scientific use) abnormalities. Many of which are shown in various levels of ‘trans’ lifestyle.
Before anyone jumps on that do keep in mind a SIS study in Gene (journal) suggests an estimated 89%-92% of all living humans having damaged DNA. Sexual balance is but a minor aspect of a greater premise.
But I can just as easily jump to the evidence-lacking conclusion that being purely and absolutely straight is a deformity. Or societal induced illness.
Poor brainwashed heteros.
One equally could wonder if damaged DNA is part of evolution or because of it.
Apx 175mya amphibians developed true transsexuals. Fluidic gendering. Based on population needs. That came to standard (eat) in the Cretaceous and continues to this day. Where they were generally Sequential hermaphrodites, one gender at a time, they developed into a presentational hermi lifestyle.
This as opposed to Simultaneous hermaphroditism where both genders exist at various levels of development from Pseudo to Full. Metals and reptiles both have large populations of Simi hermi population. From the pseudo of canines (esp Hyaenidae) where females are born enlarged and their part decreases in size with age. To Chimps and Humans that often m, when rarely complete, are fully dual and fully functional.
Full function is found in small pockets of larger reptiles as well. And with Birds.
So I take both sides of the viewpoint.
Many trans people are just lying to themselves about what they really are.
AND
Many are truly partially multi-gendered. .
Re: Re: Re:9
I fn hate autocorrect. Fml 🤦♂️
Eat vs est? Fu
Thanks autoincorrect for making a well researched reply look wholly stupid. Fu autocorrect. And fuck your patent processes too!
I hope you suffer the slow painful overflow of a cascade error. A 4004 has better turning than you.
Re: Re: Re:8
making fun of trans people for being trans isn’t satire – it’s bullying
youre saying the same kind of crap that anti-trans bigots say in the hopes that their targets will kill themselves
is that what you want too?
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Re: Re: Re:9
We make fun of flat-Earthers and television evangelists and ivermectin takers. People who express obviously false beliefs and wish to force those beliefs on others or spread those beliefs are appropriate targets for satire and mockery.
The difference between schizophrenics and trans people is that there is no schizophrenic ideology that demands that people believe that schizophrenic hallucinations are real and external. So we shouldn’t mock people who are suffering from schizophrenia, but we should mock men who politically insist that everyone affirm them as women or vice versa.
Re: Re: Re:10
Which is why we mock you.
Re: Re: Re:10
Because they deny science and obvious reality. Transgender people don’t. Again, they don’t claim that they can change their sex or that their sex is something it isn’t; they claim how they identify, which is a claim about a belief about themselves in a more abstract sense, not a tangible sense. There is also scientific evidence supporting their claims.
You have failed to demonstrate that their beliefs are actually false, let alone obviously false. At best, you defeated a strawman version of transgender people. You have also failed to demonstrate that they wish to force their beliefs on others.
See, this is why you should probably actually learn more about psychology and what psychologists actually say before making assertions about how psychology is invalid. If you did, you’d know that those two conditions have literally nothing in common at all, that many—if not all—schizophrenic people actually believe that their hallucinations are external and real and sometimes do try to convince others to believe them, that transgender people don’t make any claims about their externalities that contradict reality, that transgender people are no more prone to hallucinations than cisgender people, etc.
Re: Re: Re:8
No, they are obviously bad at presenting female. So are some ciswomen. This is also irrelevant to my point.
No, they correctly state that they are women under the definition of women that they use. That they don’t use the same definition you use doesn’t make their claims incorrect as they were intended.
Using satire to present a false and bigoted view is still bigotry. This doesn’t help your case at all.
Given that the “deluded” part of the claim is contrary to the expert consensus on the matter, that claim is bigoted.
You can make arguments opposed to transgender people without calling them delusional. You could say that their gender identity should not dictate language or others, or that the physiological or genetic sex should determine the use of single-sex spaces or sports or whatever. You can oppose things transgender people ask for without calling them deluded and without necessarily being bigoted. However, the specific argument you are complaining about is bigoted.
No, the satire is not “effective” because it won’t change any minds. No one who supports trans rights believes that every transwoman presents female well (or even at all), and most anti-trans people are under the (false) impression that no transwomen can pass as female very well at all. Same goes for many who are on the fence: they are mostly either already fully aware of the fact being demonstrated, assume that fact is true, or already thought that transwomen can’t present female well.
Since it doesn’t call out anything anyone actually claims, doesn’t present anything people don’t already know or assume to be true, and doesn’t convince anyone not already convinced, it is not “effective” except in terms of causing offense, which is not what I consider a worthy goal in a discussion.
Re:
True facts like that aren’t defamation, shithead.
Re: Re:
And Dr. Oz hasn’t tried to sue Twitter over his actual misinformation… yet.
Re: Chozen
Think first, Speak later, works best.
#1, most sites get Fact checkers to do the work. THATS a 3rd party. You can Sue Those folks if you think they Need to correct FACTS.
#2 The Person who Published this and Made personal remarks In the beginning, is a person you Could sue. But most of this is from other articles,so you need to KNOW WHO to sue. Whose opinion, you are wanting to contest.
#3 Those that get to Published here, May be considered Independent Aggregators more then anything else. They Gather from the net, and MAY add their OWN comments(which I would suggest they add in the comments section, as a personal Addon to the topic)
Re:
First off, PSYCHOPATHY is a DSMV mental disorder, meaning, you really should be a mental health professional to make that call. And you are a white-worshipping race traitor, not a mental health professional.
Secondly, you have a problem with both the First and Fourth Amendment.
Thirdly, we also do not want to associate with your bloodthirsty, NeoNazi ass.
Lastly, get the fuck out before you murder someone. We know you wanna.
Furthermore, social consequences from others who disagree is ALSO THEIR FREE SPEECH. Its wild to me that these “free speech warriors” don’t even see that they are trying to silence dissent, which is of course, not free speech at all.
Re:
‘I should be allowed to say whatever I want but you shouldn’t be allowed to return the favor’ is such a delightful bit of hypocrisy that exposes that the complaint isn’t about free speech but the consequence-free speech and free reach that they think they have a right to.
Re: Re:
They want pretty much three things, implicitly or explicitly.
The first one is partially a free speech issue. One is indeed free in the US at least, to say pretty much anything except for a very few narrowly defined exceptions. (I think it all comes down to defamation, fighting words and incitation to crime.) It’s also contingent on the time and place. (The second point gets into more details about this.) In short, free speech has never been absolute to begin with.
The second one is purely based on the rules of the location, real or virtual, of your intended audience. Not a matter of free speech. Even public places might have rules, they simply can’t apply viewpoint-based discrimination.
The third one, as you mentioned, has never existed. Not ever, not anywhere. When you act, even through speech alone, there are consequences. People might approve, people might disagree, and they are free to speak their reaction within the same limitations you have to abide by.
They hide this implicit third point as they pretend that opposite speech is an attempt to silence them. Funny enough, by their own standard , they shouldn’t be allowed to speak a lot of their opinions since a ton of their speech is reactionary, if not downright antagonistic. (I’m always having fun thinking about applying their ideas to themselves.) Their hypocritical selves won’t understand that of course, but replying to someone is not “silencing speech”, it’s “adding speech”.
(An example is the possible reversal of Roe v Wade. The conservatives “Justices” are criticizing the 1973 decision, saying it was wrongly decided. That’s an attempt to censor the seven Justices who wrote and approved it at the time. By their standards, not ours.)
Winning a debate – or having a debate for that matter – is not censorship, it’s the exchange of ideas that they pretend they’re in favor of.
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Re: Re: Re: The Projection Is Strong
1. The right to say anything, as abhorrent it might be.
Roughly accurate, but not extending to spam, personal harassment, or literal racism and hate speech. (The real thing, not as defined by woke ideologues.)
2. The right to impose their speech on any audience.
False. Instead, not to have platforms censor their speech, so that people who want to hear it may.
3. The right to not be criticized back.
False.
Of course, all three of these things are what woke ideologues demand.
Re: Re: Re:2
“Instead, not to have platforms censor their speech, so that people who want to hear it may.”
why should you get to have your speech forced on Twitter? why shouldn’t they have the right to say “no”?
holy shit are you a rape apologist? your’e one of those incel types, arent you?
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Re: Re: Re:3
I don’t want any speech forced on Twitter. I want Twitter to decide for itself not to censor speech. This should be because Twitter decides for itself that free speech is more valuable and desirable than viewpoint-based censorship. I want that to happen through constructive criticism, or by change of ownership to someone who holds those values.
This summer is my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Re: Re: Re:4
and if they don’t change their mind, that’s good enough reason to call in the feds and make them change their mind, right?
btw you wouldn’t be saying any of this “carry my anti-transgender crap on your platform or else you’re an enemy Of free speech” stuff about a mastodon instance geared towards LGBT people
so why should Twitter have to host your anti-transgender bullshit – because it’s got more users?
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Re: Re: Re:5
No, Twitter should never be forced to change their mind, only convinced, or be bought by someone of different mind.
It Twitter chooses to engage in viewpoint-based censorship, it is an enemy of free speech. That’s what being an enemy of free speech is.
Having clearly marked affinity groups within a service that stay on topic or decide within the group that certain discussions are off the table is different. (For example, Facebook has a Kosher Trader Joe’s group and a Kosher Costco group. The former does not allow discussion of which kosher certification marks are “acceptable” and the latter does.) As long as the service permits affinity groups to form as the members wish, they are upholding free speech principles. It’s cross-group site-wide viewpoint-based censorship that makes a platform an enemy of free speech.
Re: Re: Re:6
so you’re saying Twitter doesnt deserve the right to moderate because it’s too big?
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Re: Re: Re:7
No one “deserves” a right. Twitter has the right to moderate as it wishes. Twitter should not use viewpoint-based censorship because that is antithetical to the free speech of its users, and Twitter should prefer free speech to censorship. Criticizing Twitter is a way to try to convince it that its current principles are wrong and that it should do better. They have the choice to listen or not, and they might be bought by someone who will have different principles.
It’s not that Twitter is too big to be allowed to moderate. It’s that Twitter, and Facebook and similar platforms, are set up as generic speech platforms where people come with an expectation that they can discuss anything they like. The platforms are allowed to violate those expectations, but they shouldn’t.
Nine of this is about coercing the platforms to change (except for the Texas law, which is unconstitutionally awful), only about encouraging them to change.
Re: Re: Re:8
so you’re saying Twitter should be forced to host racist speech because you think it should be forced to host racist speech, huh?
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Re: Re: Re:9
Clearly the people who should have forced you to learn to read fell down on the job. Or maybe it’s just that the woke will only see what they want to see.
Re: Re: Re:6
The fact that twotter has never done so and never had any plans to do so makes the rest of your delusions irrelevant even if they weren’t lies.
Re: Re: Re:7 Even if they were right, they'd still be wrong
The censorship bit is right out but the viewpoint-based moderation claim could be seen as true however which viewpoints is the real sticking point.
For example a store with a ‘if you start making racist/sexist comments your ass is out the door’ could technically be considered to have viewpoint-based rules, but other than bigots most people are likely to be perfectly fine with rules like that because they have no interest in listening to bigots when they’re just trying to shop/eat.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’m sorry, but you don’t get to decide what is or isn’t hate speech. Whether or not you consider it such, deliberate misgendering and deadnaming people outside of very specific circumstances is hate speech. This isn’t an extremist position despite your insistence to the contrary.
As I’ve already told you, this is a distinction without a difference. That is imposing their speech on those platforms’ audience.
Also, that Twitter and Facebook ban such speech from being on their platforms doesn’t mean that that speech can’t be found elsewhere on other platforms. Anyone who wants to hear it still can.
I note that you don’t actually clarify what your position on this actually is; you simply state that this characterization is false without explaining why it’s wrong.
Absolutely not. Heck, even by your own claims, this is clearly false because, even under your characterization of “woke ideologues”, #1 is very much not something that they demand; quite the opposite, actually, based on your own assertions about them.
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Re: Re: Re:3
I get to decide what is hate speech on my platform.
Re: Re: Re:4
Sure, but the general populace and other platforms can disagree, as can the definition of bigotry.
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Re: Re: Re:3
To elaborate, I was responding to the false characterization of “what we want”, or at least what I want.
Since I am describing what I want, I do get to also define hate speech the way I want.
Dr. Rachel Levine and Lia Thomas are men. To refuse to allow such “misgendering” to be stated is to refuse to allow woke gender ideology to be contradicted. This is why I said that the supposed things I want are actually what woke ideologues want – the ability to define what speech is out of bounds and the refusal to allow criticism or contradiction.
And, as usual and no matter how many times the woke ideologues here will not hear it, I am not seeking to impose anything on any platform. I, and others with more influence, are seeking, through criticism, to get the platforms to understand that viewpoint-based censorship is against the principles of free speech and that they should do better.
When those people who took the “go elsewhere” advice seriously and went elsewhere, woke ideologues pursued them and tried to shut them down at their new location. Even without that, censorship on a platform is still censorship. Woke ideologues claim otherwise when the censorship is in a direction they like. But when Florida public schools adopt a curriculum that does not let woke ideologue teachers speak in the way they would like, woke ideologues squeal in dismay, instead of saying that those teachers can go teach elsewhere.
Finally, the reason I simply said that the last claim was false is that I do not seek the right not to be criticized back. What else should I have said to that?
Re: Re: Re:4
What you call “woke gender ideology” appears to be nothing more than “anti-transphobia”, which is not an extremist or false position, nor is it a position that I would have a problem with. It’s also a subset of “anti-asshole”. Deliberately misgendering someone is being an asshole. You don’t have to agree, but you keep making it sound absurd or extremist when it’s not.
With regards to what is respectful or should have social consequences (and yes, Twitter not hosting your speech is a social consequence), yes. I fail to see the issue.
And I am stating that you are objectively wrong on that by any sensible definition of “free speech” and that you have failed to back up your position as sensible. I am also stating that you are essentially telling the platform to host speech that they don’t want to host, and that your attempts to distinguish your position from “imposing your speech on a particular audience” are inadequate, particularly since you continually insist that “woke ideologues” are attempting to force platforms to ban certain content when what they are actually doing based on your allegations is not materially dissimilar from what you’re advocating.
To my knowledge, I have never asserted that you are taking the position that governments should impose a law on platform, at least not since you specifically disclaimed that position.
I still see no evidence of that.
Yes, Parler was removed from Amazon AWS, the Google Play store, and the App Store after the 1/6 insurrection, but everything points to that being those platforms taking action when Parler failed to abide by the terms and conditions for those platforms, which is not an instance of woke ideologues pursuing them and trying to shut them down, and, notably, this didn’t happen until after the insurrection—long after Parler started—and never happened to similar platforms like Gab or Truth Social, the former actually predating Parler by many years. It’s also worth noting that Amazon had been taking action on enforcing its T&C on Parler since well before the 1/6 insurrection but well after Parler had begun, and Google and Apple’s actions were not terribly damaging for Parler since neither’s phones, OSes, or browsers actually prevented you from accessing Parler’s website, which is not substantially and meaningfully different from its app. On top of that, none of the reasons for any of the demands or for the actual suspensions/removals appeared to be related to any woke ideology I’ve ever heard of.
So, yeah, the evidence seems to indicate that you’re completely wrong on that.
Again, repeating the same thing over and over again doesn’t make it true.
Setting aside the fact that the actual objections had virtually nothing to do with “woke ideology” and were also made by plenty of people who are not terribly in favor of trans rights generally, those restrictions were far more severe than Twitter’s rules on hate speech (with far worse consequences) and were imposed by a government actor, which is a decisive difference between the two things your comparing. Once again, you compare apples and oranges. A public school is not a social media platform. And it wasn’t just the curriculum, either, as it also imposed restrictions on what teachers could say to students outside of what is being taught.
I was just making the observation. I wasn’t drawing any conclusions from that.
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Re: Re: Re:5
I could just restate my position again, but it would be useless. What I attribute to malign activity by woke gender ideologues you attribute to supposedly value-neutral terms violations. What I think are correctly stated arguments against woke gender ideology you think are transphobic bigoted hate speech. I think that viewpoint-based moderation is censorship and you don’t. So be it.
And really, “a public school is not a social media platform”? Are you joking? A public school is a much more restrictive forum than a social media platform, and the state has the right to set the curriculum as it wishes.
Re: Re: Re:6
I agree. After all, your position is quite clear. The problem is that you fail to support your position.
Because you haven’t demonstrated your claim, and you have the burden of proof here. Hanlon’s Razor.
Of particular note, many of the things you claim “woke gender ideologues” oppose aren’t being moderated against on Twitter in the first place. Of the rest, many fall under the category of things that could reasonably be interpreted as bigotry. Whether or not you agree with that interpretation is irrelevant.
No, they are all either arguments against positions held by no one, invalid, unsupported, ignorant, irrelevant, denying science, based on definitions we don’t agree on, not being moderated against by Twitter in the first place, and/or transphobic or otherwise bigoted. Not all of your arguments are bigoted; just some of them.
I’ve actually tried to accommodate your definition of “censorship” for the sake of argument on multiple occasions. I’ve noted that I disagree with that, but that’s about it on that front.
Where we truly disagree in this area is whether or not such a thing is occurring on Twitter and whether or not such a thing is inherently bad (or ought to be changed) when done by private parties regarding what’s on their property.
No. I’m completely serious.
A public school is run by the government and so is subject to the 1A. A social media platform is neither of those things. My entire point is that the two are completely different beasts and are entirely incomparable in this respect.
Also, as far as the curriculum is concerned, a public school isn’t a forum at all, and as I specifically stated, what was being objected to wasn’t just about setting the curriculum. On top of all that, you have specifically stated that just because someone can do something doesn’t mean that they should, and an objection to how a school’s curriculum gets set because it is based on bigotry and ignorance is perfectly consistent with this.
Finally, although you don’t appear to care whether or not it’s the government doing viewpoint discrimination or a private party, I—and many others—do. A public school’s restrictions on speech within that school are completely distinguishable from a social media platform’s rules about the content on that platform on that basis.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’m late on this reply.
First, thank you for sharing your opinion.
If you are honest, you are not the loud hypocrite that many other conservatives are. But your anecdotal opinion doesn’t weigh much in the face of a number of other cases.
Second, I’m talking about many loud conservatives who whine that they are “censored” any time they are 1. banned for bad behavior or 2. replied to in anything but complete agreement.
Since you’re definitely not one of these, I’m amused that you felt targeted.
If you really want to disprove my point, you can’t just talk about your own personal expectations. You’ll have to show that conservatives never (or very rarely) complain about being censored when someone tells them they’re wrong. As there are several high-profile conservatives who did this on camera and in public statements, you have a high bar to meet. (e.g. Politicians complaining about social media platforms adding information banners on top of their posts.)
Finally…
Thanks for agreeing with me despite starting with “False”. You literally described the same thing I did. You added an “objective”, but the means is the same. And still no, you are not allowed to impose your speech on everyone anywhere with the excuse that a few are willing to listen. You can choose a venue that will allow it instead.
Re: Re: Re:3
I think a large part of the problem is exactly that!
The Republican line on censorship is so far away from reality that they’ve damaged the argument for us more strict hardliners. Myself included.
Being thrown off a platform is not censorship. Noting, flagging, tagging… not censorship. Deletion of your comment—is!
In order to actually l be censorship the censor must deny or otherwise disruptively bar access.
Not printing a book is not censorship. Neither is refusing to sell it. Or stock it. Or refusal of more copies.
It does not become censorship unless you remove copies you have from an audience.
The other case where there is actual censorship is in modifying.
Let’s take an easy extreme example. Porn.
Warning notes are no different than black plastic bags.
Flagging/tagging is no different than placing it behind the shelf.
Opening it up and taking a sharply or yuck stickers over all the ‘naughty’ stuff is censorship. Removing pages or parts of pages is censorship.
Want a conservative example?
Removing the Song of Songs is censorship. Placing a warning before it is moderation. As is placing it out of order in the back.
The dropping of Trump and other republicans is not by itself censorship.
My concern was two fold on the deletion of tweets from a blocked account.
Deletion is censorship. And! In the case of sitting politicians deletion is counter to federal records retention statutes.
They are working on the latter.
Not once did I demand or say they must host speech.
My belief that they should host sitting members of government does not equate to saying the must.
Too many Republicans demand hosting.
And most Dems demand actual censorship. Both sides are completely in violation of 1A.
Seems like you could put that headline at the top of every comments section and…well, not save any time, because the sort of people that statement applies to never listen no matter how many times you explain it to them. But it’d still be apt!
Re:
It’s not so much that they never listen, it’s that they don’t believe that they are the ones being the assholes.
Take some of the regular trolls around, a couple of which are truly in the fucking asshole category, but they continue to think that they should be able to force themselves onto any platform they want, regardless if they have already been told to fuck off.
They probably think we are the assholes and they are just acting like normal people.
Re: Re:
Y’know, there’s a reddit forum that we should refer such people to.
Misused a word, there....
“…his definition hues quite similarly…”
The word you were looking for there is “hews”.
Re:
Perhaps it applies to “shading the truth”? But no matter, your spellchecking has already been noted and applied. 🙂
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Nope, can't agree
a) The only speech that requires defense is unpopular speech. If we’re not going to permit people to speak against popular opinion then we’re not supporting free speech.
b) Anything you can do to “an asshole” can be done to you when someone decides you’re the asshole. Since everyone offends someone sooner or later it’s in you own best interest to curtail what can be done when the pitchforks and torches come out.
c) The issue is being muddied by throwing in things like doxxing or overt incitement to violence. No one, except the people doing those things, is saying these activities should be protected. Throwing someone off a platform for “misgendering”? Not so clear. People losing their jobs for speaking against a narrative? Unacceptable in the general case. If someone is perceived as being the “public face” of a corporation or such then that entity should have the prerogative to limit that person’s public discourse. I’m thinking of something like Disney firing Gina Carano here, which I believe was within their prerogatives.
d) I find it interesting that the same ideological faction that thinks corporations should be legally forced to act in the public interest also thinks social media platforms should have carte blanche about what’s posted on their sites. In my opinion (e.g.) Twitter can’t hide behind the “it’s our printing press we decide what’s published” trope. Just as someone who publicly represents a corporation can have their speech restricted, social media platforms have voluntarily, if implicitly, accepted a responsibility to allow speech without undue censorship by virtue of acting as public forums. If they want the protection of the press let them hire editors and publish articles like any other news site.
e) Maybe time to reread “An Enemy of the People”. It’s got some rough spots but still. And notice its date. Those who forget the past may be doomed to repeat it, but those who remember it have to facepalm for eternity watching it be repeated.
Re:
“In my opinion”
Thanks for sharing. Good thing your opinion isn’t the law. If Twiiter decides not to allow certain speech, it isn’t censorship. The people posting on Twitter have other avenues to being heard. They can go to Pravda Social, Gab, 4chan, etc. Hell, they can get a job at Fox news.
Re:
1.) Being banned from Twitter or Facebook doesn’t prevent you from speaking against popular opinion. You aren’t owed a spot on those platforms and I’ve got a long-ass copypasta of two legal citations that says those platforms aren’t public fora.
2.) Life is pain. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
3.) The First Amendment gives any business, platform, or individual the right to associate with anyone they wish. As with religion, the freedom to associate must have protection against being forced to associate. An employer can fire an employee who said some racist shit or misgendered a trans employee who works for that same employer; if you don’t like that, you can always bitch about it on social media.
4.) Do you really want me to break out the Halleck/PragerU vs. YouTube copypasta? Because I’ll give you this tl;dr as the last warning against that: No privately owned interactive web service is a public forum by virtue of being open to the public.
5.) Yes, yes, you think you’re a grand hero for trying to stand up to the mean ol’ libs or whatever. Jerk yourself off somewhere else.
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Re: Re:
Sure. Buck v Bell was decided by a court, too (8 to 1!). It hasn’t been overturned. Do you stand by that ruling?
Twitter, et al., can’t say, “We’re open to EVERYONE!” then decide later to censor people. That’s the divide between those who like free speech (me and others on the right side of history), and those who don’t (you and your ilk).
Re: Re: Re:
If Twitter could censor people, you would have a point. But it can’t. So you kinda don’t. Buuuuuuuuuut…
Yes, Twitter can say “we’re open to everyone” then decide later to kick people out for breaking the Terms of Service. Any public-facing business can do that. Or do you think a bar can’t kick out an unruly patron without first signing 274 forms in triplicate and waiting six months for permission to do exactly that?
Re: Re: Re:2 To add to your point:
When Twitter says that it’s open to everyone, there’s no corollary that means you can behave as you want to in violation of the site’s rules.
Re: Re: Re:2
Realistically, Twitter isn’t saying “we’re open to everyone”. They are saying “we’re open to everyone¹”.
¹”who agrees to abide by our rules”
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Re: Re: Re:2
The difference is: in a bar, you can’t easily click a button and block seeing or hearing someone. On Twitter you can, and it’s your choice who you want to read or not, not anyone else’s.
You would have to be an authoritarian to think you know better what other people want to read, see, or hear.
Stop with your Nazi nonsense.
Re: Re: Re:3
So what? Twitter admins still have the right to decide whether Twitter will or won’t host the speech of a given user. In the bar:Twitter analogy, Twitter admins would be bartenders: They can kick out someone yelling racial slurs regardless of what other patrons say (or don’t say) in response. The unruly patron can then go to another bar (i.e., social media service) and keep saying their dumb bullshit until they either get kicked out or welcomed.
The law gives Twitter as much right to kick an asshole off the platform as it gives a bar the right to kick an unruly patron off the premises. But hey, prove otherwise if you can (spoilers: you can’t and won’t) and I’ll concede the point.
Re: Re: Re:3
Twitter knows what the majority of their users want to see, or more importantly, don’t want to see, because users have been telling Twitter for years. A company that needs advertisers for income listens to that feedback and creates policies that attract the most users and hence the most advertisers. This is capitalism 101, why are you so confused about why Twitter does it?
Re: Re: Re:3
The difficulty and speed of kicking someone out is irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:3
At least you admit you’re an authoritarian.
Re: Re: Re:3
If you weren’t just an asshole, you’d understand that the user choosing the platform that moderates over the cesspit that doesn’t is precisely the user’s own choice to decide what they want to see that you lie about supporting.
Re: Re: Re:4
‘Let the users choose what speech they want to see!’
‘They do by picking which platforms and therefore moderation rules they want to use.’
‘I meant in a way that allows me to post whatever I want wherever I want!’
Re: Re: Re:
Ummm…. smart guy, the telephone system is a life-saving network that is of utmost importance in times of life and death situations, but please do tell me how not being allow to tweet something is the same as not being able to call the fire department when your house is burning down. Also, when you make a phone call to somebody, how many people are able to hear your “speech” such that it could be curtailed?
Also, free speech is not something that a private entity needs to “protect”. Free speech means we are allowed to say what we want without GOVERNMENT interference.
Social media will never become the government w.r.t. the 1st amendment… no matter how hard you wish it to be.
And to think that your idea of free speech, which at its core RESTRICTS the free speech of others, is the right side of history? Where the fuck do you people come up with this shit?
Re: Re: Re:
sorry, when did Twitter say “we’re open to EVERYONE”?
Because their terms of service say:
Re: Re: Re:
Funnily enough, a case doesn’t need to be overturned for it to become legally irrelevant, like for example when another case establish another precedent or if the law is changed or amended – which happened to Buck v Bell.
I’m sure you are proud of that strawman, but it is still just a strawman.
Re: Re: Re:
The local grocery store is ‘open to everyone’ but if someone starts swearing at the cashiers and harassing other customers they’re still going to be shown the door.
Re: Re: Re:
The law says you free-speech haters are 100% full of shit when you parrot that lie.
Re: Re: Re:2
Contrast the real-world facts here – Supreme Court precedent cited by the 9th Circuit when they shut down PragerUwu’s attempt to censor Youtube’s free speech – to Anonymous Coward’s pig-ignorant lies:
Re: Re: Re:
What in the fucking fuck does Buck v. Bell have to do with social media, you red-hat simpleminded moron?
For anyone who thinks this goof has some kind of point…
In Buck v. Bell, decided on May 2, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 8 to 1, affirmed the constitutionality of Virginia’s law allowing state-enforced sterilization.
And this little nugget for the dipshit who thought he had a point:
Virginia repealed the law in 1974 and in 2002 apologized to its victims.
Who told you this case was a good idea to cite? I’d bitch-slap that idiot for making you look like a fucking fool.
Re: Re: Re:
Twitter, et al., can’t say, “We’re open to EVERYONE!” then decide later to censor people.
Test that theory out at a restaurant, and I guarantee you’ll get tossed out on your ass.
Re: Re: Re:
Private property does not “lose its private character merely because the public is generally invited to use it for designated purposes.” Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 569.
I think People don’t understand the difference between “censorship” and “moderation”.
The way I see it…
Moderation is a company saying “you can’t do that here”.
Censorship is the Government saying “you can’t do that anywhere”.
“Twitter” cannot censor you unless you believe they’re the only site/app available to everyone (they’re not) and that getting kicked off those sites/apps means you’ve lost your right to speak freely (you haven’t).
Re: Re: Re:
Of course they can! Your entire argument is based on this completely ridiculous claim that doesn’t hold up in any similar situation. To think that a private business can’t do this is mind-bogglingly stupid. Try your luck in any physical store if you’re so sure of yourself.
No, as is clearly explained above, you don’t want free speech, you want consequence-free speech. You want to be an asshole on private property; Twitter wants to be more attractive to more people by hosting fewer assholes.
Re: Re: Re:
And the worst Twitter has done IN SINGAPORE is to append the government’s opinion on certain issues rather than actually removing speech the government finds offensive.
And the Singapore government finds a lot of things offensive. Like legitimate criticism of its state organs for one.
Re: Re: Re:
Re:
You’re missing the point entirely. Twitter didn’t ask to become the “public square” nor can it ever be considered as such.
Twitter is free to chose which speech it allows on its private property and which speech to deny. That is their prerogative, and more importantly, that is their 1st amendment right.
The Twitter community is bound by the rules and TOS that Twitter imposes, and if somebody does not like those rules, then there are other places that will be more accepting of them.
You seem to be part of the crowd of people who think that because Twitter is big enough, they somehow magically become the public square and thus should be bound by the 1st amendment and allow everything that anybody wants to post.
But the biggest point you are missing, is that Twitter has become as large as it is precisely because of its moderation policy and that includes banning users for nothing more than acting like assholes.
The people who are the regular daily Twitter users are there because they are slightly shielded from the racists, homophobes, bigots, xenophobes, and the just plain old assholes.
Changing their policies to be more like you “freeze peach” people will not make their service any better, and in fact, will ultimately ruin it.
Twitter should not have to bend to the whims of a minority of people when there are other sites that are more than welcome to accept the outcasts of Twitter.
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Re: Re: Public Square
The Supreme Court disagrees with you: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=285661631352488303
“Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge.”
Re: Re: Re:
Only insofar as the government is restricting access, not the platforms themselves.
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Re: Re: Re:2
The Supreme Court literally says here that social media is the new public square. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything for whether the platforms can censor their users, but it does that mean that the woke ideologues here who enjoy that censorship and wish that it continues and therefore say that social media is not a public square are contradicting the Supreme Court.
Re: Re: Re:3
… said nobody literate, ever.
Re: Re: Re:4
Sure, the same “literate” people who insist that the 2nd Amendment does not grant a personal right to bear arms.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Re: Re: Re:5
So you admit you’re being paid to spread nothing but lies here?
Re: Re: Re:3
They’ve since made their position more clear:
https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/18/supreme-court-signals-loud-clear-that-social-media-sites-are-not-public-forums-that-have-to-allow-all-speech/
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Re: Re: Re:4
Sure. The woke ideologues here like to use constricted definitions so that they can “win” dictionary arguments.
When normal people think of a public square, they imagine a place where people can freely gather to speak about any topic. The large platforms like Twitter act like a public square, so when they decide to impose viewpoint-based censorship, naturally people get annoyed. To the woke ideologues here, people should never have thought of the platforms as a public square because they’re not government-owned, and therefore the people should stop complaining. (Of course, when the government of Florida exercises its right to set the public school curriculum, the woke squeal in outrage.)
Re: Re: Re:5
so Twitter should be forced to host speech because it’s a public square even though the courts have said it isn’t?
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Re: Re: Re:6
No. Twitter should decide not to impose viewpoint-based censorship because it values the free speech of its users. It is Twitter’s choice whether to do that. It is not Twitter’s choice to avoid criticism if it continues to censor.
Re: Re: Re:7
Why all this arguing if you hold the same position as TechDirt?
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Re: Re: Re:8
Techdirt and its woke commentariat keep insisting that Twitter’s censorship is not about free speech because Twitter is not the government. That is a false and constricted view of free speech, because free speech is a broader concept than simply a restriction on what governments may do. The 1st Amendment is only a partial implementation of free speech.
The reason Techdirt and the woke commentariat do that is so they can insist that they support free speech while at the same time supporting censorship.
So that’s why I argue. It usually leads into more arguments about other woke claims that are being buttressed by the censorship.
Re: Re: Re:9
so you’re all for forcing Twitter to host speech, since you’re against censorship and all that crap
Re: Re: Re:9
We get it, you utterly hate both free speech and truth.
Re: Re: Re:7
What about Twitter throwing out people who insist on creating a toxic environment for users, such as people who insist on deadnaming and otherwise attacking Trans people?
Re: Re: Re:8 Names
If you legally change your name then we should address you by that name.
How many legal names did The Ultimate Jim The Warrior Warrior have.
Don’t announce it, do something.
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Re: Re: Re:8
It depends. Woke gender ideology is false, so a generic ban on saying so is viewpoint-based censorship. Noting that people have gone by other names in the past is also legitimate. Satirizing public officials who are trans is also fine. So are generic comments that trans people are suffering from delusions. And so on.
Attacking specific trans people in situations where their gender beliefs are not germane to the discussion is wrong, as is raising the matter at all when it is off-topic.
So, for example: the Magic the Gathering collectible card game has a number of designers who are transwomen. If a forum is dedicated to the design of the game, bringing up the gender of the designers is irrelevant. If a discussion were to arise about the severe lack of women designers of the game, and someone pointed to the transwomen designers as examples of women, it would be appropriate to say that transwomen are men, but not to attack the designers by name individually. That last would never be appropriate.
Re: Re: Re:9
so you’re saying trans people deserve to be harassed in any space that isn’t only about them being trans?
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Re: Re: Re:10
Woke gender ideology is false and transwomen are men. In any discussion that involves some people asserting that transwomen are women, it is appropriate to assert that transwomen are men. If trans people feel harassed by this, they need to realize that it is physical reality that is to blame, and that they should not be expecting people to lie about physical reality in order to support their false beliefs.
Re: Re: Re:11
good, we’re clear that you think trans peopel deserve to be harassed outside of any space that is only for trans people
the next time a trans person is murdered for being trans, I’ll remember that you justified it by saying it was appropriate to harass trans people
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Re: Re: Re:12
The trans people who are murdered are Black prostitutes. That is, they are criminal or criminal-adjacent young Black men, and they are murdered by other young Black men the way normal criminal and criminal-adjacent young Black men are murdered by other young Black men.
Re: Re: Re:13
Dude, what they said had nothing to do with prostitutes. It was about what you said about that MtG forum. This post doesn’t address anything they said.
Also, as I and Lostinlodos have pointed out, this is a complete non sequitur, has nothing to do with race, and is logically and factually deficient. You fail to back up the initial assertion (that a majority trans people (previously included “of color” and also specified “transwomen”) who are murdered are black prostitutes); you then make an assertion that does not follow and for which you offer no evidence (the victims were young, the victims were criminal or criminal-adjacent (again, prostitution is not illegal in all jurisdictions), the victims were male (only for this iteration, since you expanded from transwomen people of color trans people), the killers were black, the killers were young, the killers were men, and previously that the killers were criminal or criminal-adjacent); and then, from all that, you draw a conclusion which also doesn’t follow, doesn’t actually relate to anything in the discussion up till then, and appears to be factually incorrect (that these killings were no different from “the way normal criminal and criminal-adjacent young Black men are murdered by other young Black men”).
Re: Re: Re:13
Wow. That was brazenly bigoted & dehumanizing in countless ways. That’s the kind of thing that makes me think your parents didn’t love you and didn’t hide it.
Re: Re: Re:11
You can repeat that all you like, but that doesn’t make it true or not bigoted.
Again, I and many others would disagree.
No, the problem is that some people refuse to recognize that physical reality isn’t as neatly organized as they’d like and that transwomen aren’t expressing false beliefs when they say they are women. They also refuse to modify their language to avoid offending people needlessly in discussions where the issue is ultimately irrelevant. Again, just say “ciswomen” or “females” are what you are excluding transwomen from, and then there’s no problem. Insisting that your definitions of “men” and “women” are the correct ones and are beyond reasonable debate—particularly in a discussion where the topic isn’t actually about transwomen—is just being stubborn at best. Just sidestep the debate altogether.
It is not appropriate to turn the discussion into a debate about whether transwomen are men or women just because you see that any giving ground—even by just changing the words you use to clarify what you originally meant by “women”—is “affirming their false beliefs”, which apparently is simply never acceptable to expect under any circumstances at all, not even to avoid sidetracking the discussion into a hot debate about definitions. I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works at all.
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Re: Re: Re:12
It is not sidetracking. A major argument of TERFs is that woke gender ideologues are having men who claim to be women usurp the positions of real women. Naturally, woke gender ideologues would like to forbid such arguments from being spoken, but those arguments are very much to the point.
Magic the Gathering has very few women game designers, and claiming that some of its designing men are women does not change that.
Re: Re: Re:13
No, it is sidetracking. TERFs, as the name suggests, are a radical subset of feminists; they don’t speak for even a majority of feminists. The discussion wasn’t about TERF objections, specifically, or the aspects that separate TERFs from other feminists, but a general feminist issue (female representation in a given industry) with respect to something not directly about transgender people at all or the feminist movement as a whole (the makers of MtG, specifically). If they want to have the debate about whether or not transwomen “count” as women in feminism, that’s a separate issue they should have on a forum only regarding feminism or transgender people or on their own platform. The fact is that the original discussion wasn’t about whether or not transwomen are women, and there is no need to make it into such a discussion, so it is sidetracking from the original discussion.
No, that discussion is separate. If you want to specify that you mean “females” or “ciswomen”, fine. That is fair and reasonable, and it doesn’t generate a separate discussion about whether transwomen are X because no one disagrees with the notion that transwomen are not female or ciswomen. There is no need to get into a semantic debate about the definition of “women” here.
Replace the “women” in “women game designers” with “female” or “ciswomen” and the “men” in “designing men” with “males”, and there would be no disagreement with that statement, nor would that be transphobic or sidetracking the discussion or offensive to anyone or anything. Do you disagree with the statement as I rephrased it? If not, then there is no need to start a debate about the definition of “women” to resolve the issue, so such a debate would sidetrack from the original issue. That’s what “sidetrack” means: it is not necessary to resolve it to resolve the underlying issue.
Re: Re: Re:11
Remains nothing more than Hyman’s deranged hallucinations.
Re: Re: Re:12
There’s a pit of truth to the idea of woke vs support.. A tiny bit.
Some people irrationally demand immediate change.
More realistic and rational people recognise we must work to undo centuries of brainwashing about sexuality. Modesty isn’t morality, it’s power control. Like all aspects of what is, and what comes from, organised religion. The sole purpose is tight control on the populace.
Re: Re: Re:9
Not exactly. I mean, it is viewpoint-based moderation, but that’s true whether or not the statement is true. In this case, it’s false and also bigotry (at least as broadly as you define “woke gender ideology”, which includes basically any position that isn’t either transphobic or acquiescence to transphobic claims), and I have no problem with viewpoint-based moderation of bigotry.
In specific contexts not generally applicable to conversations on Twitter. If you are doing so to correct someone else who’s mistakenly using their dead name, that’s actually a good thing. It’s also fine in a biography or something like that, but that’s not something you do on Twitter, so that’s irrelevant to this discussion. And it’s forgivable to deadname someone by mistake as long as you apologize and try not to repeat the same mistake.
If you mean that satirizing public officials who just so happen to be trans, then sure, but satirizing them because they’re transgender or for being transgender is not “fine”.
Absolutely not, and it’s absurd that you think that it is.
On that we agree, though I should mention that you have done the latter on multiple occasions.
Probably. That’s unremarkable enough that I can take that as true.
True.
I would disagree with that. It would be appropriate to say that transwomen are not ciswomen or are not female, and that that’s what was meant by “women designers”. However, saying they are men is not okay.
Why does it have to be by name? I agree that it would never be appropriate (though, again, you have previously asserted otherwise), but that seems needlessly specific.
Re: Re: Re:5
[citation needed]
Re: Re: Re:3
As it pertains to the government’s ability to restrict access to them, not in regards to what is expected of moderation by private actors or whether the government can force the owners to host content they don’t want to.
Basically, when they say it’s not a public square, they don’t mean legally. Words have different meanings in different contexts.
Re:
a) I’m wondering what you mean by unpopular speech. I’ve yet to see any platforms removing unpopular speech, but you are of course free to give examples you think explains your point.
b) Everyone are an asshole on occasion, but only real assholes complain about the consequences.
c) It’s not muddled because there are assholes who think that free speech means they are entitled to say anything they want on social media and if the platform moderate or kick them off they call it censorship.
d) What ideological faction are you talking about? Considering the topic we have people on the right that think corporations (ie Big Tech/social media) should be forced to carry all speech because they say it’s in the public interest. Then we have some of the centrist (colloquially called the left/democrats in the US) who think the opposite, that social media et al should remove speech like misinformation etc because it’s in the public interest.
e) Ibsen’s book wasn’t about unpopular speech per se – it was about how hypocritical people where when it comes morality and sexual mores. If you want to equate that with hate-speech, harassment, incitement to violence etc, go ahead, but Ibsen would be the first one to call you out on it if he was alive.
Re:
Tell ya what…I was always taught to make sure my own house was clean before demanding someone else clean theirs.
These are some of the terms of service from social media other than Twitter…
FrankSpeech (The Voice of Free Speech):
We have the right to:
Remove or refuse to post any user contributions for any or no reason in our sole discretion.
Parler (Where Free Speech Thrives):
You agree not to:
…(e) to harass, abuse, insult, harm, defame, slander, disparage, intimidate, or discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, age, national origin, or disability; (f) to submit false or misleading information
Then there’s Truth Social, where the moron with the biggest mouth on free speech puts these in his TOS:
As a user of the Service, you agree:
-We have the right, in our sole and absolute discretion, (1) to edit, redact, or otherwise change any Contributions; (2) to re-categorize any Contributions to place them in more appropriate locations on the Site; and (3) to pre-screen or delete any Contributions at any time and for any reason, without notice.
Tell the big mouth “champions of free speech” to lead by example. Or else fuck off, hypocrite.
Re:
If [social media sites] want the protection of the press let them hire editors and publish articles like any other news site.
Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis? Press websites have all the same protections as social media sites. Check out the info in this link if you don’t believe me.
Re:
…said no social media platform ever.
You’re making this crap up out of whole cloth. Your opinion may be that you’d like it to be this way, but there is historical basis or social precedent for this.
the First Amendment applies to the government
The First Amendment says the government cannot infringe free speech. It doesn’t say corporations can’t.
Twitter, Facebook, etc are not government. They are corporations that make their profit from pleasing their paying customers, namely the advertisers. Not users.
Users are the product. If the product thinks a corporation owes them free speech, then they are wrong in multiple ways.
Everyone is free to leave Twitter, Facebook etc if they object to how they do business. I never use them because I am not a product and don’t intend to allow a corporation to treat me as such.
Those who use social media are agreeing to be treated like a product and they can accept the consequences of this decision. I got no sympathy.
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Re:
“Users are the product” is one of those things that sound wise but are actually idiotic. Unless you’re expecting other people to give you things for nothing (which I suppose is woke Communist ideology), receiving services is always in exchange for something. It can be money, it can be attention, it it can be information. You are free to refuse the exchange, but you are not especially brilliant or insightful for doing so.
The 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to corporations, but the 1st Amendment is not all there is to free speech. Corporations don’t need to honor freedom of speech, but they can choose to. If they want to claim to do that, they should do more than pay lip service to the concept.
Re: Re:
I’ve already got “woke” on my bingo card. Got any others?
Re: Re:
Your guys (Faux & Co) first: fair and balanced?
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Re: Re: Re:
You are using the fact that a service that claims to be evenhanded is lying as proof of what? That other services that you also claim are evenhanded are not lying? The existence of Fox News and their slogan is proof that you should judge by actions, not claims.
Re: Re:
Most people using these terms in this context have little understanding of either and using them together is just stupid to the power of stupid.
Re: Re: Re:
It makes more sense if you consider that when people like that use the term “woke” it just means “people I hate”.
Re: Re:
Ah, right, you don’t even believe in online privacy or that your Social Security Number can be stolen.
I bet you don’t even believe in identity theft, either. Or that modern advertisers have a ton of data that we willingly give to them, via pretty much what we do online, vital or otherwise, because we NEED the Internet to do those things.
I bey you don’t even believe that countries know of this treasure trove of data and want to use it to control the population to do whatever they want.
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Re: Re: Re:
Mostly correct, yes.
Re: Re: Re:2
Good.
And now that we have that on record…
I’m also gonna say that thankfully, everyone important considers identity theft an actual fucking crime. A crime so fucking serious that countries actually cooperate to fight it.
And it’s mot limited to the Internet, Google and related services, either.
Yes, banks also consider Identity Theft a most serious matter.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Which, of course, is why I said *mostly* correct.
Re: Re: Re:4
I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss. Identity theft isn’t important at all.
Disregard that I suck cocks.
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Re: Re: Re:5
On the contrary, impersonation that is not clearly satirical should be grounds for banning, because such speech is intended to shout down and obfuscate the speakers being impersonated rather than countering their arguments. It’s ok to ban noise.
Re: Re: Re:6
Glad to know I have your seal of approval.
Re:
Everyone is free to leave Twitter, Facebook, etc….
Not me. You have to have an account on a site to leave it, and I don’t.
Re: Re:
ie, why should Naughty Autie leave a place they’ve never entered in the first place?
Re: Re: Re:
Clearly not the joke being made, dude.
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The Babylon Bee incident is very clarifying. Woke gender ideologues insist that the post is unjustified targeted harassment against a particular trans person and deserves to be banned. The other side believes that the post is an extremely effective attack on woke gender ideology (because Dr. Levine does not make a convincing woman) and is being banned precisely because of its effectiveness.
Political debate has always been replete with insults, mockery, vituperation, and personal attacks. Platforms that value free speech should err on the side of allowing speech to stand.
Re:
Ummmm, you do realize that Twitter is not the entirety of the internet… don’t you?
Just because their Twitter account was suspended does not mean that their entire existence online was removed. In fact, it was still available to anybody who wants to go to their site, or follow their Facebook page, Gab account, Truth account, etc, etc, etc.
So if you don’t like Twitter’s moderation policies, then why don’t you just fuck off to somewhere that wants people like you.
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Re: Re:
Because the point is to improve Twitter by criticizing its poor decisions and getting them to change.
Re: Re: Re:
Why should Twitter have to change their policies just to appease a small minority of people?
Twitter is as large as it is precisely because of it’s moderation policies.
Fortunately for the rest of us, the assholes like you are definitely in the minority!!
Re: Re: Re:2
Because “muh freeze peach”, apparently.
Re: Re: Re:2
Twitter is as large as it is precisely because of it’s moderation policies.
Exactly right. There is a reason the ‘alternative’ social media options aren’t as popular or populated as the ones most people use and it’s because they are less welcoming to toxic people and content.
If a majority of people wanted to be surrounded by that other content then those other platforms would have quickly overtaken the current ones in popularity when they showed up, that they haven’t says plenty about what sort of experience most people are looking for regarding social media.
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Re: Re: Re:2
They don’t have to change. The point of criticism is to get them to realize they’re wrong and change voluntarily.
Woke ideologues are committed to the notion that people criticizing the platforms want to force them to change, because then they can hide behind the 1st Amendment and say that the platforms don’t have to change. But criticism is not force.
Re: Re: Re:3
The problem with that statement is people like you seem to want the government to step in and force social media companies to host speech that they do not want to host.
Criticize all you want, just don’t ask / expect the government to step in and enforce your criticism.
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Re: Re: Re:4
I do not. I am not Texas, and I am not responsible for what Texas does.
Re: Re: Re:3
But criticism is not force.
What is it when a law is passed demanding it?
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Re: Re: Re:4
It is a bad law, obviously.
Re: Re: Re:3
There is neither objective, legal, or rational basis for Hyman Rosen’s demented delusions that twitter’s wrong.
Re: Re: Re:
Right. It took them far too long to ban the orange buffoon.
Re: Re: Re:
We’ll believe you the first time you ever actually do such a thing.
Re:
Perhaps you would feel better if assholes where a protected class – but people wouldn’t want associate with them anyway.
Re:
Only a bigot would frame a trans person’s legitimacy around how convinced they are.
Someone who wants the absolute worst parts political discord to be celebrated instead of discouraged is not here for a serious discussion.
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Re: Re:
Transwomen are men. That is true independent of how convincingly the men are costumed as women. But often, transwomen are presented in the best possible light for their appearance, such as Caitlyn Jenner having the benefit of makeup artists when appearing on magazine covers, and that can help sway opinions. Presenting unconvincing transwomen, whether it’s Dr. Levine, or Lia Thomas looming over the other members of the swim team, can help sway opinion in the other direction.
Re: Re: Re:
I…
What the actual fuck does trangender people have to do with this, you fuckshit?
Re: Re: Re:
The fact that you think this is only about physical appearance shows your ignorance.
Re: Re: Re:
Why should the general opinion sway back to transphobia? Why should society in general become less accepting of trans persons, what do we stand to gain by reverting back to this attitude?
Comedy? Mocking trans women and masculine women for not looking daintier and fitting your idea of feminine? I don’t know that those “jokes” really would ever hit the same when we know the real people that make up the trans community, our friends and family.
A healthier reality based lifestyle for all? If you want to argue that society is indulging mentally ill folks in too much fantasy, then explain what is the new best practice that the woke folks have suppressed? Because we already know that forcing someone to live as their sex assigned at birth and rejecting who they know they are just results in their misery and often suicide. Accommodating a trans person by simply accepting them as they present themselves, and respecting their right to privacy as it concerns their health and medical history just like we would for everyone who fits a narrow definition of sex and gender norms seems like the easiest and most beneficial to the most people. I mean, aside from some competitive sports that need careful consideration to determine the fairest rules, who is harmed? And please, save the bathroom/locker room privacy garbage, I don’t know what men thinks goes on in ladies spaces like those but it’s not whatever they fantasize. Also, I know some very good women going through menopause that have facial hair, who are not particularly feminine, and I dare someone to ask them to produce proof of their biological sex. I feel especially defensive of them because I know them, but my gut tells me I would find myself similarly enraged whether I knew them, or private information such as their biological sex, trans status or menopausal state. Enforcement of formal/legal restrictions on public bathrooms or otherwise sex segregated spaces would end up requiring expensive and resource intensive system, and I’m not cool with scanning my ID to enter a public restroom.
Getting back to the benefits of shaming trans folks… Ah yes, to protect the children from the trans agenda (whatever that is) or from idolizing trans lifestyle and becoming trans themselves, or to eliminate the novelty factor so that parents don’t force their kids to be trans. The protect the children trope. Do we really need to breakdown how stupid this is? You can’t make a kid be trans, and it’s dehumanizing to say that parents force their kids to be trans like a fashion accessory. We heard this bullshit about homosexuality and it’s exactly that- bullshit. Most people want to teach their kids to love and accept everyone, that diversity and inclusion are strengths in society. I don’t see bringing back the hate as a winning ideology, or one that people want to give room to thrive (considering the conspiracy theories spouted from hate revivalists, I can see why)
What did I miss here? What benefit to society does trans exclusion bring? What supports your feeling that you should work to prevail over the so-called woke ideals of accepting and loving everyone and treating everyone with dignity? What was better before trans people had acceptance? You won’t get booted off TechDirt for explaining your position, though readers will probably have to choose to read it as I suspect it will come from vile and hateful ideals
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Re: Re: Re:2
The fundamental thing wrong with woke gender ideology is that it is false, and yet woke gender ideologues demand that woke gender ideology must be affirmed by everyone. Men cannot be changed into women, there is no such thing as gender apart from sex, and you are only ever the sex of your body, and no one is “assigned” a sex.
Societies have religious, social, and cultural taboos involving single-sex spaces. People who delusionally believe that they are a sex different from their bodies should not be allowed to force their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them.
Public schools should never be permitted to hide the mental illnesses of students from their parents.
Woke gender ideologues do not want trans acceptance, in the same way that gay people wanted acceptance for same-sex marriage, which was live-and-let-line. Woke gender ideology wants to force everyone to accept its false beliefs and punish people who refuse.
In terms of actual acceptance, the Supreme Court has already decided that employers cannot fire trans employees for choosing to present and dress as the sex they wish they were.
We do not “know” what best practices for trans people are. Psychology is political and its science is generally unreplicatable garbage. Woke gender ideologues who claim that their theories are “settled science” are knaves or fools.
Re: Re: Re:3
Woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke…….
You sound like Trump, who also had a habit of latching onto words he liked but didn’t understand and then repeating them ad nauseam. Every utterance makes your argument sound stupider. If that’s all you’ve got, you ain’t got much.
Re: Re: Re:3
In terms of actual acceptance, the Supreme Court has already decided that employers cannot fire trans employees for choosing to present and dress as the gender they actually are.
FTFY. YW. FYI, just because you hate people for not being cisgender like you, that doesn’t give you the right to cast them as ‘other’. BTW, you’re right that no one is assigned a sex, but we are all assigned a gender (which is listed as ‘sex’ on the birth certificate), and in about 1% of the population, that assignation is incorrect. What is your problem with people who want to correct that mistake?
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Re: Re: Re:4
A person’s sex is observed and noted at birth, or often earlier. That a small percentage of people develop a delusion that their body is the wrong sex does not change the fact that their sex has been correctly noted.
We should not allow people to change their sex designation in a way that requires others to allow them into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them.
Understanding that people believe in a false ideology is not the same as hating those people. Correctly understanding that gods do not exist does not mean hating religious people. It does mean pushing back hard on attempts by religious people to force others to affirm their beliefs. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and vegetarians can choose not to eat bacon cheeseburgers. They should not be permitted to force the cafeteria to stop serving bacon cheeseburgers.
Re: Re: Re:5
You have failed to support this assertion. You simply state it as fact as though it is indisputable (which it isn’t). The most you’ve done was allude to social, cultural, and religious taboos held by a portion of the population of some countries, which isn’t even a good argument in favor of your position, and we’ve already presented counterarguments to that that you have yet to refute.
When you deliberately ignore all the evidence that it is not false without having any factual evidence that refutes that evidence, even if you don’t hate them, you are deliberately acting in a manner that is hateful, the distinction being made is pretty small. (And no, hating someone is not necessary in order to be hateful towards them.)
Technically true (except that it’s not necessarily “correct” as the claim that at least one god of some form exists is unfalsifiable), but there is no objective evidence that strongly supports the claim that any gods exist, but there is objective evidence strongly supporting the claim that transgender people have a brain whose gender [identity] differs from their body’s physiological and/or genetic sex. Also, it can be hateful if you, without being asked, approach a theistic religious person and say that they’re deluded because they believe at least one god does exist even if you don’t actually “hate” them.
True, and no one is saying you have to affirmatively say that you agree with transgender people, nor is their any belief that requires or requests you to actively do anything other than leave them alone and be polite.
Yes, and no one is forcing you to have any sort of gender reassignment treatment or to be transgender, nor is anyone forcing you to not be an ignorant or hateful, transphobic asshole. They are saying that you are factually incorrect, saying hateful things, and/or behaving in a hateful manner, that you should stop it, and that social consequences should be imposed on hateful words and behavior. (And yes, deadnaming and misgendering someone deliberately (outside of a biography or something) is hateful, much like telling a gay person and their spouse that they aren’t or should not be married is hateful.)
And no, them using a different restroom or locker room than you think they should is not forcing you to do anything or forcing you to stop doing anything. I fail to see any significant, material difference between this and the same-sex marriage thing in this regard.
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Re: Re: Re:6
You cavalierly dismiss the religious, social, and cultural taboos against mixing sexes in certain contexts. But you do not get to ride roughshod over those beliefs, no matter how much you want to. Instead, you should expect the pushback that you are seeing, because large numbers of women are going to object strenuously to allowing men into their single-sex spaces, no matter how much those men claim to be women, ad no mater how much woke gender ideologues think those objections should not exist.
There is no such thing as brain gender. That is pseudo-science made up by woke gender ideologues to support their false beliefs. Woke ideologues claim belief in science only when it supports the things they already believe, and otherwise fight it tooth-and-nail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/magazine/antipsychotic-medications-mental-health.html
This long article in the New York Times Magazine is illustrative of just how little psychology and psychiatry understand human minds, normal or aberrant, and how little they are able to fix them. The notion that this same science has established anything about delusional people who think they are the wrong sex for their bodies is simply ludicrous wishful thinking.
Re: Re: Re:7
It’s telling that you have nothing but fairy tales with which to argue against the facts.
Re: Re: Re:7
It’s not “large numbers”, it’s a small vocal minority of ignorant bigots. But why don’t you explain why women would object to sharing a bathroom with a transgender woman. Are you leaping to the grotesquely hateful assumption that transgender woman are really just sneaky rapey men? I hope you have better reason than that but I suspect not.
Re: Re: Re:8
Yeah I don’t get this either. Should I also be afraid of lesbians sharing the bathroom with me?
I mean, if I could be so picky about who I share a public restroom with, I mostly just want people who put their rear firmly on the seat instead of hovering and peeing/dripping on the seat. Men who lift and lower the seat after peeing is fine by me. And people who always flush, and don’t get water all over the counter when washing their hands.
For all the rapey men these paranoid people think are lurking everywhere, they are not very concerned about their little boys.
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Re: Re: Re:9
Pederasty will have a resurgence. The Greeks did it, just like homosexuality, and it was natural.
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Re: Re: Re:10
Hiding the truth won’t make it go away. The Sumerians believed that a non-binary sex was created, but the tablet chronicling that legend was shattered and lost to time, because straight people were too scared that their narratives would be challenged.
The Greeks were an enlightened race who understood that you could be married to a woman and have a younger boy who you loved more on an intellectual level. The fact that such norms were destroyed ties in with why this world is presently so hateful – because straight people are in charge. It’s high time the pendulum swung the other way.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Transgender women are men, and there are religious, cultural, and social taboos against men being in women’s single-sex spaces. Those taboos include women not wanting to be seen naked by strange men or seeing strange men naked. The fact that a delusional man thinks he’s a woman does not give him permission to enter a women’s locker room where both of those things will happen.
The rapey men issue comes into play when these delusional men are also criminals and demand to be incarcerated in women’s prisons: https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/transgender-rikers-inmate-gets-7-years-for-raping-female-prisoner/
Re: Re: Re:9
Men rape transwomen in men’s prisons far more frequently than transwomen rape women in women’s prisons. Indeed, as far as I can tell, the latter has only ever happened once, while the former is actually fairly common.
Additionally, you’re the one who brought up prisons here. Everyone else was only talking about restrooms and locker rooms, and any safety concerns regarding the rape of ciswomen there appear to be either vastly overblown or completely unrelated to whether or not transwomen are allowed in there. Whether or not some subjects in the debate may have some merit of being debated, we’re talking about a completely different subject of the debate, so don’t change the subject.
Also, again, they are not delusional, they are not men (though calling them male is fine), you shouldn’t be seeing anyone else naked or be seen naked by anyone else in such situations to begin with, you often can’t tell the difference anyways unless you’re doing something you shouldn’t, and that transwomen in men’s locker rooms often get raped there (far more often than women get raped by transwomen in women’s locker rooms, which seems to be virtually never) carries more weight than mere discomfort or social and cultural taboos.
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Re: Re: Re:10
I did not bring up safety concerns in bathrooms or locker rooms at all. Religious, cultural, and social taboos are real, and no one is required to demonstrate fear as a reason to keep them. They exist, and delusional people don’t get to override them for the sake of their own delusions. In our society, it is recognized as legitimate for a woman to not want to be seen naked by strange men or to see strange man naked, not because she is afraid of the strange men, but simply because that is how she was raised. She is not required to accept that a delusional man is a woman no matter how much he insists that he is, and she is not required to raise any extra justification beyond the fact that this is a socially accepted taboo.
Woke gender ideologues are welcome to try to convince women to change their minds, of course.
Re: Re: Re:11
Culture, society, and even religions change over time.
That something was or is taboo does not mean that it will continue to be taboo in the future.
You seem to oppose the idea that such things can change, though, as if a particular societal belief is immutable law. But if that’s the case, I must remind you that there were points in the past when Christianity was taboo and pederasty wasn’t.
Also, “that’s how they were raised” can be used to justify all sorts of terrible things. “That” may be how a person was raised, but that doesn’t make it right, nor does it excuse continued bad behavior.
Re: Re: Re:11
I never claimed you did. Others have, but regardless, that is not germane to anything I said.
In that people have them, yes.
If they are being used to justify ignoring actual fears or something or to enforce bigotry, then yes, they do need to offer more than just the existence of taboos. Again, taboos exist against same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, integrated public spaces and restrooms, crossdressing, and defying gender roles, and yet you have no problem ignoring those taboos.
Again, it’s not a delusion, and I already said that this isn’t just an issue of the fact that they wish to use the other restroom or locker room based solely on their gender identity. You should really stop repeating this since it makes it look like you aren’t even paying attention to what I say and just focus on your script.
No, it’s still primarily the safety thing that gets used to justify it, along with privacy (but, frankly, that’s an unconvincing argument given the fact that lesbians are still acceptable in the same situation), but more importantly, as I’ve already stated, you shouldn’t be seeing anyone naked or be seen naked by anyone in these spaces, period, so it’s a non-issue.
Additionally, if the reason for the man seeing the woman naked is because otherwise the man would likely be in genuine danger, the mere existence of the taboo against that is insufficient. The mere existence of a taboo is largely an “all else being equal” resolution of the issue when it comes to governing others’ behavior. If all else is not equal, then there generally needs to be something more to justify keeping it.
And since we’re not talking about a delusional man, this doesn’t apply, especially since there are actual safety concerns if the transwoman uses the men’s room. I also reject the contention that the taboo as you specify it is “socially acceptable” as opposed to other similar taboos that would not be violated.
The irrational stubbornness of a small subset of women about tradition should not be used to justify endangering people, particularly where they would never even notice it and may never even have to deal with it themselves while others who do have to have no problems with it.
Look, you seem to claim that there are no circumstances under which social, cultural, or religious taboos should give way, but that’s simply not the case even based on your own positions on anything other than this single, specific issue.
So tell me, why do these specific taboos trump the safety of others, especially where the violation of these taboos can be done without being discovered and without ill intent?
For that matter, why do some people’s taboos trump others’ taboos? See, you keep talking about taboos regarding same-sex spaces regarding bodies (so only males in the men’s room and only females in the women’s room), but others have taboos that conflict with them (e.g. only men (both cismen and transmen) in the men’s room and only women (both ciswomen and transwomen) in the women’s room). If one choice violates one taboo but the other choice violates another taboo, clearly the mere existence of the first taboo is not enough to resolve the issue. (There are also more limited taboos which only say that cismen shouldn’t be in the women’s room and ciswomen shouldn’t be in the men’s room.)
Oh, and one last thing: There is an exception to those taboos when it comes to parents taking a minor of the opposite sex to the restroom. This is more evidence that we make exceptions to taboos under certain circumstances. We do the same thing regarding taboos against public nudity for breastfeeding in public. It’s not like those taboos simply went away; there are still plenty of people who object to these exceptions. However, again, the mere existence of taboos doesn’t trump everything else.
Re: Re: Re:11 Oops
Delusion
Delusion en mas
Like what? What that isn’t based on the former two?
Re: Re: Re:11
I’m a cis woman. Discomfort (insert any more appropriately descriptive word such as embarrassment, shame, fear, unexpected arousal for discomfort) in seeing another person naked, or them me, has nothing to do with the sex, sexual orientation or gender expression of the other person. It’s all about context. Where and what circumstances did this likely unintended incident occur. Nobody, at least in the women’s bathroom, is getting naked, and all nudity associated with using the toilet occurs behind stall doors. In most all locker room/shower set ups, very, very few women get openly and freely undressed- maybe it’s modesty, but I’m betting on it’s our own self consciousness & shame about our body’s appearance; and there is general expectation and applied practice of looking at the floor. Of course I don’t think anyone should feel ashamed of their body, but it is what it is. I can only imagine that trans women have the same body hang ups, if not more so, and they patiently wait for a curtained changing area to open up while staring at the floor like the rest of us. It never looks like the opening to the movie Carrie, that’s a ridiculous fantasy from a fictional story.
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Re: Re: Re:12
In men’s locker rooms I have been in, there are plenty of men who walk around naked without covering anything. I have done that myself. I have no idea what goes on in women’s locker rooms.
The recent French pro-abortion movie, Happening, had the same sort of locker/shower room scenes as in Carrie, with women walking around nude and talking with each other, and no one covering up. Perhaps you’re right that it doesn’t happen in real life, but these movies illustrate a social assumption that it does.
We certainly know, from the #MeToo movement and plenty of other examples, that there are men who get sexual thrills from exposing their genitalia to women who don’t want to see them, and men who get sexual thrills from seeing women naked who don’t want to be seen by them. Women should not be required to interrogate men who come into their locker rooms to determine their reasons for being there; those men should simply not be allowed in unless the women already there have consented to it.
Re: Re: Re:13
Nudity in most of Western Europe is not taboo the way that it is in the US. They have healthier attitudes and social norms around sex and nudity than the regressive US. So the movie you are talking about might be an accurate depiction of the French, but not the US. It would be interesting to know how the issue is being approached where nudity and sexuality are more socially acceptable.
Yes, I’ve heard about the men’s locker rooms being a comfort zone for nudity. I would still speculate that trans men are more likely to maintain some privacy to avoid potentially dangerous interaction, and may not have fully shed the “modesty” drilled into him as a female child.
That said, you are drawing an unfounded connection between trans women and sexual deviancy. Do you think trans women are sending unsolicited dick pics of the very genitalia that they feel betrays their true self? Does a trans woman present a statistical probability greater than cis woman to be a voyeur or sexual predator? Does the danger, in your opinion, lessen with those on hormone therapy, or bottom surgery? Where is this presumption of danger, or at minimum, the likelihood of inappropriate/offensive behavior come from? As a cis woman, I don’t see the risk to myself or my daughter increased by trans women sharing these otherwise segregated spaces, and I am way more over protective of my daughter than I’d like to admit.
Re: Re: Re:13
The solution to thrill issues is more naked more often.
Trasgredire open with much my premise.
When a flasher pulls it out, the lead hikes up her skirt and shows her, um.
The reason flashers are a thing is there are prudes. Stop reacting!
So what if someone is naked. We’re creating this society of perverts by being so secretive!
Btw, if parts bother you you have serious issues. Stop hiding them and go to a dr to get some help.
Re: Re: Re:14
I hate to go to the ‘but the children’ trope, but I think it’s less cut and dry than you’re making it.
When I was 13, I was babysitting my 7 yr old neighbor girl, and we were down at the creek, where we had spent countless hours as one of the last generations that really played outside, when some dude walked out of the bushes wearing nothing but a baseball hat and high top sneakers. He was probably in his mid twenties. We were on a sandbar (rocks actually, that were always accessible unless of flood conditions) and could not easily cross to the other side of the woods because the water was a few feet deep and home to lampreys and snapping turtles, and he was essentially blocking the exit back onto the path into the woods. I don’t remember feeling scared exactly, more shocked and a bit panicked that I didn’t have a sufficient way to protect the little girl, my friend. This was in 94, the video for Soul Asylum Run Away Train haunted me and crime was high. Fortunately this dude probably did only want to shock us, and after I finally found my voice to tell my little friend that it was time for us to leave, he wondered away from the path’s entrance. Neither of us was particularly innocent to the sight of a penis, and perhaps that’s why neither of us was scarred for life, but it was still shocking. And I don’t think that sort of situation, or anyone in situation where they are generally secluded from other people, that it would be a good idea to flash beaver or do anything aggressive or provocative.
In general though, I agree we are too uptight over sex & nudity. That doesn’t mean I know exactly how to instill healthier values and attitudes with my daughter, but I have read a little about different European approaches. She’s still little and a somewhat delayed, so ownership over her own body is all I’m worried about for now.
Re: Re: Re:15
Generally, I believe there’s some middle somewhere.
The majority of my friends are female. And the majority of them would do just that: Flash back. [I know, none of us are normal]
Personally, I’d whip out my phone and take pics to post on the web. Little worm tried to frighten me.
There’s a difference Between flashers and Exhibitionists.
Flashers seek dominance by discomfort. The majority are prone to inaction.
Returning the assault, of sorts, turns them into cowering globs of man-goo.
People freak over dick picks. WHY!
The fastest way to do major damage is to reply
Here’s three favs from my friends.
You call that a dick?
If that’s as big as it gets you need to see a dr
There’s a hole in your pinky.
As a pan male I’m more aggressive. ‘Your place or mine’.
I’ve never got a reply.
Here’s an Jones question though: why do I never got air drop kitty pics. Only worms!
Seriously!
Re: Re: Re:16
I think women flashing or kitty pics are just more difficult in a practical sense. If I pull my pants down, all that’s visible is bush (I prune what’s needed to wear a swimsuit, but I gave up all that hair removal business in my 20s when I discovered it did nothing to enhance my pleasure, quite the opposite). I’d have to get my pants off and contort myself to kinda show actual muff. And snapping a snapper selfie, in addition to the contortion, you gotta worry about getting some decent lighting to see the bits; you need a selfie stick or stand with remote to actually take the picture, which is going to be tough to see while also spreading and bending while staying in the good light. And while there is great, beautiful variation across the female anatomy, I just don’t think it presents the same “personality” as the uh, worm. Maybe it’s the ability of independent movement that gives a sense of liveliness to men parts, but women’s parts, again still beautiful, look more like a pile of drapes. Not bad, just different.
I guess mooning is a practical option, but it just doesn’t feel right for that situation. Mooning is more for offending the uptight, and comical purposes.
I don’t really need to complicate the already complex relationship I (and likewise many other women) have with my breasts by adding a new dimension of flashing a stranger. Me and the girls have been through a lot together, some douchebag trying to upset me doesn’t deserve a lookie-loo.
I’m not sure that mocking a flasher is guaranteed to end with the flasher retreating. They have already demonstrated they are deranged by flashing, a violent outburst isn’t beyond the pale. For anyone who isn’t trained or experienced in self defense, like me, is best to give minimal reaction and get away. I have put myself at risk a number of times shooting my mouth off and I don’t think I should push my luck.
I have received a few unsolicited dick pics and my reaction has been immediately cutting communication. I’m no prude, and that is aggressive and presumptive in all the wrong ways.
Re: Re: Re:17
Granted and accepted understanding.
I forget at times most women don’t go through the learning process of personal defence. Unfortunate. Though it’s becoming a standard aspect of HS education now. Most of the youngins my friends have (girls) will easily kick the crap out of the average grown man. Most I trained, at least initially.
Shins, balls, chin, balls, heart
Kick grab punch kick punch.
i suggest you look that up and teach your daughter.
It’s a combo that will take down nearly all men. Replace balls with an aimed targeting of clit and you take down aggressive women too!
I’ve been mugged twice. Both times I was the one the cops held.
One friend’s then-17yo daughter spent a weekend in jail for putting some drunk redneck in the hospital before the charges were dropped it’s a sound method of attack that works.
(He’s still in jail serving 7yrs for sexual assault and corruption of a minor).
I grant you not all flashers will back down. But I’d posit the majority will. The very act of offence based flashing is in the ‘threat’ and offensiveness.
Those that don’t? Kick their arse!
Seriously, this country needs to start toughening up the female population!
Seriously: the greatest warriors throughout history were all women. The Valkyrie, the Amazons, the Whores, the Vickans, the Wraith.
What the fuck happened?
Ps: pics. Guess that makes sense. You can’t exactly ‘whip it out’ can you?’ I find worm pics more annoying or funny than disturbing. Along with my your place or mine, I also use “wow, you should see a dr about that” and “does that hurt?”
And
Good on you for not shaving. A generally a worthless pointless practice that reduces satisfaction for both partners. Regardless of gender.
Re: Re: Re:13
In men’s locker rooms I have been in, that is very much not the case. In my personal experience, you don’t look at other people while they’re naked in locker rooms, and you spend as little time naked in there as possible. In fact, most of the time, you at least keep your underwear on, so you’re still at least partly dressed.
And yet you argue based on your assumption that people see each other nude in there.
In France, sure, but not in the US, which is what we’re talking about here.
None of whom were trans, or in women’s restrooms, or in women’s locker rooms, so it’s irrelevant.
I agree. Unless they have reason to believe that they are male and not accompanying a female child, the women should just mind their own business. No interrogation necessary.
Again, how would you enforce this? While not all transwomen pass as female and not all transmen pass as male, many of them do so at least as well as most ciswomen/men, and some ciswomen look indistinguishable from a cisman (and vice versa). How would you even know?
Re: Re: Re:14
I’ll interject here. Obviously there’s a location dislocation. It’s not all day naked sway but … your premise of it ( unity) being minimal is definitely not the norm I’ve come across.
In fact I can count the number of locations where steam, sauna, ext didn’t specifically state to please “sit ON your towel”. (Emphasis mine).
Some will wrap the towel over. Most don’t.
Here I believe your idea of prevalence is wrong… and his concern is unwarranted.
Re: Re: Re:9 Or?
And that does nothing to show that they would not have raped male prisoners.
Preference does not dictate drive.
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Re: Re: Re:10
You are, of course, free to suggest that men be regularly imprisoned with women, since they will rape whomever they are incarcerated with, and why should imprisoned men have to suffer inequitable amounts of rape. I suggest that this is not a winning argument.
Re: Re: Re:11
Since we’re talking about transwomen specifically and not all males, and transwomen in general are statistically far less likely to commit rape at all than cismen (in prison or otherwise), there is no need to go so far as to say that there should be no sex-specific prisons. That you can stretch the argument beyond its terms to make it into a less sensible argument doesn’t refute the argument that was actually being made.
Seriously, if you keep attacking strawmen like this, you’re probably gonna run out of straw pretty soon.
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Re: Re: Re:12
The MCAS system of the Boeing 737-MAX was responsible for only two crashes out of hundreds of thousands of flights. Surely no one should worry about such a low percentage problem?
Sorry, but human nature is such that even a single rape incident resulting from woke gender ideologues having forced the state to lock women prisoners up with men prisoners is going to result in a great deal of negativity, especially when correctly publicized by opponents of woke gender ideology.
The reason is simple – don’t lock in women prisoners with men prisoners, and you will have zero rapes of women prisoners by men prisoners. It is then straightforward to point out that woke gender ideologues don’t care about real women, but just want to force their beliefs on people who don’t share them, no matter who might get hurt in the process.
Sure, that’s tendentious, but the point is to win the culture war, not to be nice about it.
Re: Re: Re:13
Women who don’t believe transwomen are women are closeminded bigots who need their perspectives changed.
Bigots as might as J.K. Rowling have fallen. More will come.
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Re: Re: Re:14
Rowling’s name is all over the most recent Potterverse movie as writer and executive producer. We have an elaborate Harry Potter sure here in New York City. The first six books on Amazon’s “most read” list this week are all Harry Potter books: https://www.amazon.com/charts/2022-05-22/mostread/fiction/
Woke gender ideologues have utterly failed to cancel Rowling. I think woke ideologues use her as an example of cancel culture not existing, seeking to have people forget that it’s not for lack of their efforts.
Re: Re: Re:15
Give it time. Who do you think readers on this site would rather defend – an anal vore Rule 34 artist, or a transphobic freak of nature like you? We didn’t “cancel” J.K. Rowling. We made her see the consequences of her hateful beliefs. You might argue that is a distinction without a difference. Tough.
Re: Re: Re:13
Plane crashes are not analogous of this situation.
Frankly, the idea of bringing up a subject like prison rape and focusing on that one time it was supposedly committed by a trans woman, when the only predators in women’s and a statistically notable amount in men’s prisons are fucking employed by the institution, and paid with our tax dollars, is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard and makes it impossible to take you seriously.
Don’t pretend that you give a fuck about women and then point to an imaginary boogie man when a real pack of wolves is attacking in plain sight.
You are the gender ideologue, not me. You are the one demanding that sex specific segregation be strictly adhered to for no reason other than tradition, and regardless of how it harms already marginalized people. You want to go around and attack the dignity of people who have zero impact on your life or that of your loved ones, and to do so with impunity. You are the one refusing to believe any research that doesn’t comport with your opinion, and declaring with zero evidence that essentially the only reason you don’t have evidence to support your view is that it’s being suppressed; that all of the scientific and medical community are completely unethical and/or compromised by Democrats (and shit, Soros is really to blame amiright?
You still can’t explain what society stands to gain by rescinding acceptance of trans people denying their dignity by imposing your gender ideology on them.
Re: Re: Re:14
The idea that trans people can rape is a narrative pushed by pasty-faced old white conservative straight men losing control over their close-minded safe spaces. Not for longer. The paradigm shift is inevitable and it will be glorious and it will be fabulous.
Re: Re: Re:15
Anyone of any gender or species is capable of rape. Among some primates (chimps, gorillas) and birds (ducks, hawks) rape is the norm and gay rape common.
Don’t be an idiot. Address concerns openly and honestly with facts and solutions.
Re: Re: Re:16
It sounds like you’re worried, boomer. Unfortunately for you, nobody believes the alt-left exists. Everyone here knows that the alt-left is a bogeyman invented by Trump voters to stir a moral panic. No more. The tyranny you straight breeders inflicted on us will come to an end. Sooner, rather than later.
Re: Re: Re:17
Use whatever term you want. People who demand immediate change and the process, results, and consequences be damned.
Most of us are a far more logical.
Because “alternative” was used by many progressives since the mid-2000s to self identify.
Since progressives are an alternative to the Democrat proper, and they are “further left” then that… alternative left is quite accurate.
What the hell is a straight breaded? If you mean heterosexual your so far off the mark it’s past funny. You’re just a projecting fool.
I don’t even know who your are! What tyranny have I inflicted on you?
Be specific now.
Re: Re: Re:14
You are correct that I disbelieve that science has proven the claims of woke gender ideology. If I live long enough and the science stands the test of time, I’ll change my mind then.
For now, I believe that woke gender ideology is false, and therefore no amount of dignity or harm reduction or anything like that is going to get me to affirm those beliefs. I expect trans people and woke gender ideologues to live their lives unconcerned with what I think of them, as they should.
As for single-sex taboos, it is not that I particularly care about them, or about women. It is merely that people who hold a false and delusional ideology do not get to impose their beliefs on people who don’t share them. That’s what living in a free society means. You get to be crazy in your own way, but you can’t push your crazy on other people. They’ve got their own crazy to deal with
Re: Re: Re:15
Rather revealing. You do realize that you are just recycling homophobic talking points against the “gay agenda” and applying them to the trans community, while adding a dose of ableism and science denial?
The whole ‘we don’t care what they do behind closed doors so long as we don’t have to see it’, or ‘gross, I don’t want to see them holding hands or kissing in public! (clutching pearls) how do I explain that to my children?!!’, the don’t ask don’t tell policy. Ridiculous fears that some how kids could be turned gay by teachers, scout leaders, gay or politically correct liberal parents. Fears that the gay community is predisposed or even a cover for pedophilia. Or gays will sexually harass straight people and try to spy on them in the bathroom. Do you see the correlation here?
Homosexuality was a certified mental illness with a long record of inhumane and damaging “treatments”, which were also used on people who openly admitted to being trans as well as anyone who did not comport with society’s gender rules (like effeminate men and women who wore pants). Frankly, science and medicine comported with your gender ideology for far too long and was not just an abysmal failure, but atrocious and antithetical to the Hippocratic Oath. While gender dysphoria is still a diagnosis, it doesn’t necessarily apply to all Trans people, and the current treatment is something they choose to undertake at the pace and to the degree that they choose, informed and guided by the latest research and professionals from different medical disciplines. People are getting ethical care, with their dignity in tact, and overall gaining better mental health.
You complain about the “craziness” being imposed on others, in this free society. Ever consider it’s your incredibly narrow ideas of “normal”, dictated by people whose entire goal has been to control society in order to preserve their own power, that’s being imposed on us “crazies”? That would be the historically accurate account of society. Accusations of mental illness and moral turpitude have been the go to strategy every time a minority or misunderstood group challenges the social power structure. Of course, you don’t care about women, so you probably are totally ignorant to the history I’m talking about, but it encompasses many issues of today including abortion.i don’t remember if you mentioned Buck V Bell or someone else did, but it’s a perfect example of powerful people inflicting their idea of normal & morally superior ideas on women who came from certain backgrounds such as poverty or Catholicism, or suffered from a medical condition like depression or epilepsy, who were poc or consorted with poc voluntarily, who were or perceived if easy virtue, who drank and danced, were unmarried or with no family, or just pissed off a man with power.
It’s not that your personal opinion matters on an individual basis, it’s that you favor politicians who think likewise and can use the power of government to hurt and suppress the disfavored groups. Even if you aren’t a voter, by signaling that certain people are getting something they don’t deserve or at the your and the people like you, personal expense, or that they pose a threat to the safety of women and children, a threat to the moral fabric of the nation, that they are criminal or deranged, you create and support hostility which is conducive to violence. You signal that violence against the disfavored group is deserved, will go unpunished, or even a moral, sanctioned act in the eyes of God.(you needn’t believe in any god for others assume you are aligned spiritually. None of the hate is sanctioned by God, people just manipulate scripture to justify bad things to control the masses).
And with no sarcasm, I hope you never become gravely ill. Because if you think medicine and science are so morally bankrupt that they intentionally inflict harm and reject evidence in favor of ideology that is the complete opposite of the past, then I can’t imagine how you could possibly feel safe getting care, or confident it would work. To believe that politics have corrupted science to thoroughly would mean that you might be targeted not to survive, or that studies showing effectiveness of a drug or procedure are at minimum faulty. Perhaps there is more radical environmentalist using the woke agenda and undermining proper sanitation, like single-use disposable items. There is quite a rabbit hole of possibilities if you buy one conspiracy theory that you might as well consider.
Re: Re: Re:15
As Cattress pointed out, this is more-or-less identical to what people have said about the so-called gay agenda.
Also, incidentally, the science on transgender people has been around for quite some time; I learned about it before I was in high school (though I don’t recall exactly when I learned about it). It appears to me that you’re only denying the science because you don’t like what it says.
You know, you keep saying you’re not a bigot or an asshole, but you are really bad at not sounding like one.
That said, I should probably be surprised by you saying you don’t really care about single-sex taboos, but I’m not. You’ve already demonstrated that you don’t really understand them or that they are not the same amongst all who have such taboos.
Since you have failed to demonstrate that these are people who are delusional or have false beliefs, and that they are trying to impose their beliefs on others, this is simply an unsupported assertion on your part.
Re: Re: Re:15 It’s not about science
It’s about language.
You simply misunderstand the current use of the term “gender”
It’s your choice of the older definition that is putting you at odds.
You would at least have less places to be attacked if you discussed people with or whiteout penises and vaginas. Rather than “gender”.
Those that seek to push gender identity over the social norms of gender=sex are never going to consider anything as valuable input if you flippantly refuse to even recognise their choice of definition.
Re: Re: Re:16
That does seem to be a major sticking point for him. He keeps saying that trans people claim that they can change from men to women (or vice versa), or that gender or sex can be changed, but that’s just not the case. They just don’t define gender the way he does, and he refuses to acknowledge that anyone could possibly use any definitions other than his, so he argues against a strawman instead.
There is also scientific backing for this, but really, you shouldn’t need that to at least understand that the issue is one of definitions, not delusions.
Re: Re: Re:17
We are what we are based on what we say and what we feel. We are non-binary and genderfluid and everything in between that doesn’t fit the warped pigeonholed view of straight people trying to run the world into the ground, like they always do. Anyone who disagrees is a bigot just like that freak of nature Hyman Rosen.
Re: Re: Re:16
I think the problem is he doesn’t want to even acknowledge the possibility that there could be a difference between gender and sex.
Re: Re: Re:17
The fact is gender has always been, no pun intended here, fluid in science. Reptiles and amphibians both can change sex randomly.
Effeminacy is common in felines. Especially in larger consistent groupings.
Gay, both male and female, sexual activity is normal for many species primates. And some species of Canis.
Gay male sexual activity is common in water birds. Especially in juveniles and adults after mates nest.
That the multi-definition term gender has long been used for “sex” specifically… doesn’t make the other definition, now used by many, and less accurate.
Some people get hung up in lack of understanding.
Re: Re: Re:13
Given that a single crash generally has dozens of victims or more while a single rape generally only has one victim, and given that there are more flights generally than there are prisoners who are transwomen generally, the scales are completely different in every conceivable way.
Also, I was comparing two percentages, not simply citing a single one and calling it low.
Sorry, but just because something gets a negative reception doesn’t mean it’s still reasonable to fear it happening again when all things are considered. Frankly, the fact that such a story would get broadly negative reception but that this does not happen when men rape other men is itself a problem.
You can talk all you like about human nature, but it is also human nature to be irrationally wrong and/or paranoid about certain things. That doesn’t mean that their concerns should outweigh the actual data.
And yet the number of rapes of prisoners by other prisoners will not decrease. Male prisoners will rape male prisoners, and female prisoners will rape female prisoners.
See, my problem with this is that it solves the wrong problem. You want to reduce rape of female prisoners by male prisoners. I want to reduce rape in prisons entirely.
It is then straightforward to point out that you haven’t actually solved the problem but simply moved it elsewhere, so people like you don’t care about prisoners.
It is also straightforward to point out that ciswomen get raped by ciswomen in prison and transwomen get raped by ICS men in prison more often than ciswomen get raped by transwomen at all, so your argument is invalid.
That you care more about “winning” than you do about actually being right or actually solving real problems says a lot about you, none of it good.
Re: Re: Re:7
Funny how someone who claims to be an atheist uses religion when it matches their prejudices.
Re: Re: Re:8
Even funnier: The same religious bigots he sides with would turn on him in a flat second if trans people were to disappear forever. Hate like theirs requires an enemy, and atheists are nothing if not the enemies of God(’s most fervent and violent followers).
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Re: Re: Re:9
Who is more zealous about seeking heretics to cancel at the stake than woke ideologues?
Re: Re: Re:10
the same people who invented cancel culture when they literally burned “witches” at the stake – religious zealots
Re: Re: Re:8
Freedom of religion is part of the cure values of our society. The fact that religion is false does not give anyone the right to demand that others give up their religious beliefs, just as lying is protected by freedom of speech.
Re: Re: Re:9
And yet you demand that trans people give up their beliefs.
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Re: Re: Re:10
I do not. I demand that trans people not be permitted to impose their false beliefs on people who do not share them.
Re: Re: Re:11
sp you’re saying anyone who kills a trans person is only defending themselves from having woke gender ideology forced upon them, gotcha, cool, good to know where you stand
Re: Re: Re:12
I hate to defend Hyman on this, but I don’t believe you can reasonably draw that conclusion from what they said as they did firmly draw a line that violence is not acceptable.
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Re: Re: Re:13
Actually, we can. Anyone who insists on denying us our beliefs will not stand up to the paradigm shift. If they don’t assimilate, we humiliate. Until their minds and legs are opened, this overpopulated planet is in peril.
Re: Re: Re:14
“Anyone who is not with us is against us”, huh? Sorry, but no, it is not at all the same thing to be a transphobe who approves of murdering transgender people as it is to be a transphobe who doesn’t support (or even actively denounces) murdering transgender people. Hymen is clearly in the latter camp.
Again, stop making me support Hymen.
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Re: Re: Re:15
Calling our beliefs a delusion puts them in the same camp. They simply do not believe our concerns are legitimate.
You choosing to defend him is disappointing, but going by your post history, I believe you will not be swayed by him for long. The shifts in narrative will favor us eventually. It is a good thing that calling someone a bigot actually has some teeth these days.
Re: Re: Re:16
For the record, I am only saying that actively supporting murdering someone is not the same as disregarding the concerns by that person that they might be murdered. As far as defenses go, it is an incredibly weak one, but it is also important.
Re: Re: Re:17
If straight men will not open their minds, it is our duty to open them.
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Re: Re: Re:15
Remember that to woke ideologues, speech that opposes them is violence. It’s not surprising to me that they would think that murder and speech are the same. It’s also not surprising that they think that trans people are being deliberately targeted for murder rather than being part of the epidemic of Black men murdering other Black men. All woke ideology comes with a firmly established victim class.
Re: Re: Re:16
You used to come for the term “SJW” like it was a dirty word. We reclaimed it back. Now you come for “woke” like it’s something objectionable. History will not validate you. You will be beaten back into the annals of primitive civilization like the conservative fools who believe in an imaginary sky friend.
Re: Re: Re:11
You have yet to adequately support the assertion that that’s what they’re doing by entering same-sex spaces corresponding to their gender identity. I mean, you’ve also failed to support the assertion that the beliefs are false, but even setting that aside, I fail to see how this is imposing their beliefs on others.
Re: Re: Re:11
Notice how this behaviour, in the real world, is exclusive to transphobic trash like Hyman.
Re: Re: Re:12
Not true. It is also held by racists, homophobes, biphobes, and other bigots.
Re: Re: Re:7
False. I already explained that there are ways to give both sides what they want. I just explained why such taboos don’t have much weight in this specific case where safety is an issue and they likely would be none the wiser either way. Additionally, I gave religious taboos more weight than social and cultural taboos.
Basically, I weighed the two sides and explained why one side would win out over the other but also noted that there are ways to satisfy both sides. How that is a cavalier dismissal of anything I don’t know.
Social and cultural taboos are not “beliefs” per se. Additionally, I never said that. You should learn to stop putting words into my mouth.
Which I fully did expect. There was also pushback against integrating public restrooms and drinking fountains. What exactly is your point?
They are a small minority of women. And, again, “large numbers of” white people objected against integration. I still fail to see your point.
And often appear no different from women for all salient intents and purposes.
It’s not really about whether or not the objections should or shouldn’t exist per se; it’s about whether or not those objections have any merit and whether or not they should trump the factual safety concerns and wishes of transgender people.
Tell that to the neurologists. Like I said, there is a consensus among experts that you are wrong on this.
You have given no evidence to support this assertion.
That psychology and psychiatry are currently limited by our current technology and understanding in terms of effectiveness of understanding some aspects and in fixing things is irrelevant to whether or not they are scientific and whether or not they understand other aspects or know how to treat things that don’t need fixing.
No, that’s simply you cherry-picking the parts that are not well-understood about psychology and using them to try disprove a completely different topic of psychology and neurology. Every field of science has its limits. We don’t know everything, and there are some parts that are more well-understood than others. That doesn’t mean that the parts that are generally accepted are wrong or invalid.
Oh, and as someone who has mental disorders, I am intimately aware of these limitations, but I still recognize the value that they have. Stop attacking a science for the fact that it has limitations—something not in dispute—and actually give evidence to support your assertions about whether or not the consensus is wrong on the specific claims at issue instead.
Finally, again, it’s not a delusion if it is reasonable given the evidence or if it’s true, and they believe they are the wrong gender for their bodies. I know that you don’t believe there is a difference between sex and gender, but they do, so when describing their beliefs, you should use the terms the way they use them. Otherwise, you’re describing a strawman.
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Re: Re: Re:8
That we do not have an answer for trans people is irrelevant. Disagree with us, and you’ll pay for it. J. K. Rowling was but one example. Straight ideologues are not infallible. Your bigotry can be defeated.
Re: Re: Re:9
I’m almost certain you’re responding to the wrong person. I’m the one opposing transphobia here.
Either that, or you’re just a troll.
Re: Re: Re:3
[citation needed]
Just be polite: don’t call someone by a name they no longer go by, use the pronouns people prefer (or “they” if that’s too confusing or problematic for you), and mind your own business when doing your business. That’s basically the entirety of what transgender people are asking for, and I wouldn’t say that’s affirming anything.
No one is claiming otherwise. As I’ve stated, transwomen have a woman’s brain in a male body, and some wish to modify their bodies to be closer to that of a female (to various extents). None of this involves a claim of men changing to women.
You still have yet to support that claim or rebut any of the arguments offered against that claim. As such, we have no reason to disregard the general consensus that there is a distinction.
See the two previous responses.
Yes, they are. I’ve already pointed out to you that there are cases where the sex assigned at birth differs from the physiological and genetic sex at birth.
Social and cultural taboos unrelated to safety (at least factually) do not trump genuine safety concerns based on facts. Religious taboos also have their limits. Moreover, there are a number of ways to address this without violating any such taboos (at least those that are even remotely reasonable) while still not forcing transwomen to use the men’s room or transmen to use the women’s room.
There’s also the practical issue of enforceability, as—when dressed at all—there are some ciswomen who appear indistinguishable from the average cisman and some cismen who appear indistinguishable from the average ciswoman, and most transgender people only ask to use the restroom corresponding with what they present as, anyways, and such transwomen look indistinguishable from most cis women (and such transmen look indistinguishable from most cismen). On top of all that, in such single-sex spaces, there is no good reason you should even be seeing someone else’s privates or ID or whatever to even know what their physiological sex actually is; if you do, one of you is doing something they shouldn’t be. As such, setting aside the question of whether or not they’re okay with it, it’s prohibitively difficult to actually enforce in practice (at least without violating even more widely held taboos, and even then, it’s still impractical), and—in most cases—no one would even know.
As I’ve said before, with regards to taboos that restrict what other people can do and which are not actually based on factual safety concerns, if you generally cannot enforce the taboo and you generally cannot tell if and when that taboo is violated by specific conduct, that taboo is not worth worrying over too much.
As I and others have already pointed out to you multiple times:
You still have not given a compelling reason why they shouldn’t given the difficulty of detecting or enforcing such a rule, the dangers that transgender people actually face when in the restroom corresponding with their physiological/genetic sex, and the fact that we expect reasonable accommodations for just about every other disability or mental disorder.
Given that a) some mental illnesses of some people are a direct result of their parents’ treatment of them, b) there is a general expectation of privacy with regards to disclosure of mental illnesses without the patient’s consent which can include not telling the parents, and c) telling the parents can—in some cases—make things worse by any measure, this assertion is clearly false. (And yes, these also apply to gender dysphoria.)
Additionally, you’re the first and currently only person one either side of the general issue that I’ve seen even bring this up, so I don’t have any reason to believe that this is a genuine issue that needs addressing to begin with. To my knowledge, you’re the only one who seems to even have a problem with it, at least as it relates to transgender people, and I don’t see transgender people or their allies demanding it much if at all, so it doesn’t appear to be an actual controversy.
No, they do; you’re just less willing to let live in this case. You’re still expected to call a gay man’s spouse his husband and a lesbian’s spouse her wife, there’s still legal recognition involved, there are still religious, social, and cultural taboos held by a number of people that are violated by it, and so on. Additionally, being let into a specific restroom or locker room is similar to same-sex marriage in that the general populace doesn’t actually have to do anything for it to occur; if anything, it’s even easier to accommodate since you don’t need to make any bureaucratic changes. Where they differ (change of name and deadnaming) is not much different from legal name changes that plenty of cisgender people go through, and it’s far from unreasonable or even difficult.
[citation needed] for each of those claims:
Which is good! Though, again, it doesn’t address the safety aspect regarding use of single-sex restrooms and locker rooms. As I’ve stated, the reason transgender people want this accommodation (which isn’t much different from accommodating disabilities or mental illnesses to a reasonable degree) is in no small part due to the dangers they face without it. Nor does it entail an official recognition by the government of their gender identity the same way that same-sex couples’ marriages are recognized.
Still, this is definitely a victory.
Just because you, personally, don’t recognize a particular field of study as a legitimate science doesn’t make it unscientific or invalid, nor does it mean that the consensus among the experts has any less value.
Additionally, it is false that psychology is largely or primarily political (“based on social norms to a significant extent, at least regarding what is or isn’t a mental disorder” would be far more accurate), and you have failed to demonstrate otherwise. That there was arguably one guy who allegedly said that politics played a significant role in deciding to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders is not evidence that this is the general rule or even proof that it was about the politics rather than societal changes (the difference between the two can be difficult to discern in some cases). It is also false that psychology studies are generally unreplicable; while case studies (which are generally not replicable) are more common in psychology than in most “hard” sciences (though not terribly more common than in medical science), plenty of psychological studies are, indeed, replicable.
And, yes, we do “know” (as much as it is possible to know, at least) what the best practices are regarding transgender people. And if you want to convince us to disregard what the experts say they are, simply dismissing them as experts solely on the basis that psychology is “political” or “not scientific” without exceptionally strong evidence for that claim is not a valid argument. Unless you have strong evidence to dispute the specific claims on best practices, no one else has any reason to disregard the experts on that, especially given the fact that we often do accept their claims in most other cases.
Again, that you personally don’t accept that psychology is science is irrelevant to whether it actually is a science, and that you don’t agree with a particular conclusion that the majority of scientific experts in the relevant field(s) have come to a consensus on doesn’t mean it’s not settled science. It is far from foolish for laypeople to accept the general consensus of the experts in the relevant field(s) as true (or at least likely true) absent strong, specific evidence to disregard those experts or the particular, relevant claim(s).
Also, the deal with transgender people is that it’s not just psychology; neurology (which is a hard science) also plays a huge role, and it is settled science that human brain chemistry and neurological structures correlate better with one’s asserted gender identity than with one’s physiological and/or genetic sex at birth. Indeed, that is one of the reasons psychologists have decided on the best treatment for gender dysphoria that they have. As such, even dismissing the psychological aspect, neurology still supports the transgender side.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Claiming “danger” to get your way is just emotional blackmail. I could just as easily argue that a man who enters a women’s bathroom while pretending to be a woman is going to be in more danger if discovered than he would be in the men’s room. In any case, such “danger” is irrelevant. Men who wish they were women do not get to override social taboos regardless of how unsafe they claim to feel, any more than cabdrivers get to refuse to pick up Black passengers for fear of having to drive to dangerous neighborhoods.
As for the science, my position continues to be that you want to claim its mantle because you like what you think it is saying, but I believe those things are unproven and false. Time will tell. The science will either hold up or it won’t, although the current academic environment will delay that, since it is culturally impossible to demonstrate results that counter woke gender ideology without destroying one’s career. It is probably not even possible to get institutional review boards to approve experiments that might produce such results.
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Re: Re: Re:5
The gender binary is a lie, and people who still believe in the filth that is heteronormativity deserve to be hauled out and have their mind opened with an intense anal fisting.
The only reason why they knock it is because they haven’t tried it.
Re: Re: Re:6
I’d say it’s more of an overly simplistic description of human sexuality that doesn’t adequately describe all of humanity and leads to harmful results if adhered to precisely in all cases rather than a “lie”, but yes, gender and sex in humans are not binary; they’re more bimodal, though even that is a bit of a simplification because there are so many variables (brain chemistry, sex chromosomes, genitalia, reproductive organs, hormones, breast development, skeletal structure, facial structure, vocal chords, body hair, facial hair, etc.) that all can differ from each other in a variety of combinations and from the two modal genders/sexes in various ways even absent any surgeries or other treatments.
(And that’s not even getting into gender roles, where some cultures have traditionally recognized more than two genders, and where we have things like tomboys and the feminine male equivalent among others, or genderfluid people, who vary their gender identity at different times.)
Whoa there! First off, heteronormativity—which is solely about sexual orientation (as well as romantic preferences regarding gender and sex) and not other aspects of human sexuality like transgender, genderfluid, intersex, and/or non-binary people—is not something anyone here is defending, including Hymen Rosen here, who has previously taken pains to distinguish transgender people from homosexuals. I’m guessing you meant either “cisnormativity” or “cisheteronormativity”, which do relate to the topic at hand and could be descriptive of Hymen’s stated or actual position, but heteronormativity doesn’t appear to work here.
Second, while I agree that heteronormative, cisnormative, and cisheteronormative people should open their minds, doing so so forcefully is beyond the pale and likely counterproductive.
Uh, no. Different people have different sexual preferences, including both sexual orientation and kinks, and while some people only discover some of their preferences through actual experiences, that is not the case for everyone or necessarily for all of such people’s sexual preferences. A lot of people—likely even a majority—can tell their sexual orientation intuitively; gay people don’t necessarily need to have straight sex to know they’re gay, and straight people don’t necessarily need to have gay sex to know they’re straight.
Additionally, that specific kink you reference isn’t even something that most gay, bisexual, or pansexual men enjoy, nor is it exclusive to sex between two males as some straight men enjoy it, too, at least from a female partner, and some women (of any given orientation) also enjoy it. On top of that some people of any sexual orientation, sex, and gender may enjoy doing it but not having it done to them. As such, I don’t think that would even disprove heteronormativity or cisheteronormativity as having that kink is not really sufficient or necessary evidence that a man is not straight, nor is not having that kink sufficient or necessary evidence that a man is straight.
Furthermore, that kink, like many other kinks, doesn’t necessarily require one to have tried it to decide it’s not for them. While there are some people who only know whether or not they like it through experience with it, that is not the case for all people of any given combination of sex, gender, sexual orientation, and romantic preferences regarding the sex and gender of their partner(s). It’s simply not the case that one “shouldn’t knock it till they try it.”
And while I agree that one shouldn’t condemn people who engage in (or restrict people from engaging in) such an act (at least while in a private place) if all involved parties are adults who have willingly given informed consent to do so, whether or not they tried it has nothing to do with it. Heck, most acts relating to some specific kinks (necrophilia and pedophilia, for example) should be condemned and restricted without having to try it for oneself to see if one enjoys it oneself. But even setting that aside, even if they do try a kinky act like you describe, that in itself is not enough to condemn that act in anyone else who does enjoy it with willing adult or similar-age partners. It is not at all unlikely that they will not enjoy it or change their mind on it should they try it; indeed, they would likely to be even more firmly against the act.
Finally, (and I can’t believe I have to say this, but) forcing someone to receive such a thing without their willing consent is rape, and that is wrong. Even if they later enjoy it, forcing it on them is still wrong, but that is far from a foregone conclusion. Plenty of people have become so traumatized from a rape that they become unwilling to engage in acts they would have actually enjoyed, and this is far from a universal kink even among men who enjoy sex with men. As such, that would be exceptionally immoral and likely counterproductive.
So no, I cannot agree that “[t]he only reason why they knock it is because they haven’t tried it,” and even if that was the case, that would not justify what you are suggesting, nor does your stated goal.
Re: Re: Re:7 Re
Er, uh, yes it is the case. Without experience the absolute best one can do is claim to have heard/read/seen…something.
Be it sex, a book, a movie, a game… if you haven’t tried it you’re ignorant.
Well i greatly disagree with the idea that they should be entered forcefully with an alternative appendage, or appliance, or apparatus—one should not make formal declarations as fact without actual knowledge.
Re: Re: Re:8
I mean, it’s a fact that I don’t like it. I don’t need to try it to know it’s not for me. We’re dealing with personal preferences here, not objective facts. While I encourage people to explore their preferences, I would not agree that it is always necessary to have direct personal experience with it to form a rational opinion on it as far as your personal preferences.
But yes, the most egregious part is forcing it.
Re: Re: Re:9
Oh, but I wasn’t saying you can’t have a personal opinion. Rather that your personal opinion without actual knowledge shouldn’t be the end all and be all for others.
Re: Re: Re:10
I never asserted that it should; in fact, I explicitly stated that it shouldn’t. I fail to see any actual disagreement with what I actually said.
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Re: Re: Re:9
It’s called true love. The so-called institution of straight marriage won’t accept it, because they are constructed on a foundation of primal animalistic abuse with the sole aim of producing offspring. Yet they ignore that the fact is, every male has a prostate gland from which immense pleasure can be derived. Straight people refuse to admit it. They don’t know what they’re missing and persist in their close-minded ways. They’ve had their finger on the pulse of universal narrative for far longer than they deserve.
Re: Re: Re:10
Sorry, but not everyone gets pleasure from the same actions, and getting pleasure doesn’t make it okay. And again, not all gay people are okay with the specific act we’re talking about, so this is not exclusive to straight people.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Gay people know what they want. “Straight” people are fools who haven’t tried it, so they keep knocking it. That’s why our cultural and artistic senses have dulled over the centuries, focused purely on crass entertainment meant to satisfy the breeders, too limited and close-minded to the possibilities that liberate their true selves.
Every “straight” guy needs a queer eye. Once they learn to witness the world through clearer, fabulous perspectives, only then will they be capable of shedding their bigotry and toxicity.
Re: Re: Re:12
I’m sure they do.
Some, maybe, but not generally. For one thing, plenty of straight people don’t “knock” it per se; they just don’t have any interest in it. Not everyone has the same tastes, and trying to force straight people to be gay is just as bad as trying to force gay people to be straight.
[citation needed]
I have no problem with getting fashion advice from them. I don’t think it’s always necessary, but I have no problem with it.
I don’t need to have gay sex to not be a homophobe. I also know several ex-homophobes who are still straight and have never tried gay sex but still actively support the LGBTQ movement despite their previous bigotry. Your claim simply isn’t true.
Re: Re: Re:13
When your sexual intercourse doesn’t result in a pregnancy of rape and spawn a creature of hell after a nine-month waiting period, it frees up your mind for greater intellectual pursuits. Straight people fear this. They know that girls kissing girls in college will never want to go back to “dating”. Of course, the openly homophobic ones are also the ones who secretly molest little boys and make the news after proclaiming that they don’t believe in stimulating the prostate, because they’re dumb enough to believe in an imaginary sky friend. The ones who know better know to stand with us. They know what the alternative is. You either wave our flags or we will expose you for the filthy bigoted breeder closet child molester you really are.
Have a fabulous Pride Month.
Re: Re: Re:5
No. It’s an actual problem that should be addressed.
And such an argument would have no resemblance to the argument I’m making, and it has no evidentiary backing. A better one would be that a ciswoman who enters a men’s restroom is more likely to be raped than a cisman who enters a woman’s restroom, but even that’s not quite apt.
Look, the fact is that transwomen get raped in men’s restrooms far more often than women get raped by transwomen or by men pretending to be ciswomen or transwomen in women’s restrooms. This is a fact.
It is at least as relevant as the taboos you keep referencing.
It’s not just that they feel unsafe; it’s that they statistically are unsafe. You don’t get to override that just because it goes against tradition or makes some people feel uncomfortable.
Because that isn’t just a taboo; it’s factually deficient, irrational, and racist. Additionally, cabdrivers are common carriers, so they cannot discriminate like that, though the cab companies can (hypothetically) decide to limit which neighborhoods they offer as destinations on the basis of safety.
This is comparing apples to oranges.
And you have offered zero evidence to back up either of those positions, so I can continue to assert that they are unproven and false. The former especially as you have offered no instances of cases where I reject science when I don’t like what it says (you haven’t even really attempted to do so), so you haven’t even made a prima facie case that that’s true, but also the latter as your belief that they are unproven and false doesn’t disprove the fact that they are proven to be true.
I mean, you seem pretty intent on simply denying that the field is even “real science” entirely when its conclusions are inconvenient for you, so I have no reason to expect you to accept their conclusions when that time comes even if I didn’t take the position that that time has already occurred.
And here, you demonstrate that you don’t understand how science works. This is not how it works. Science is all about making new discoveries and overturning existing ideas. Those are what pay out and make one’s career (along with supporting corporations’ agendas at times, though that has nothing to do with the current academic environment, and there are still plenty of incentives to counter this should such end up leading to false or unsupported ideas), not supporting “woke ideology”. You have offered no evidence to dispute this, just a bald assertion, so [citation needed].
Ib id, especially with the [citation needed].
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Re: Re: Re:6
Women are allies of sexual minorities because we have both been persecuted by the narrative and lies of the patriarchy. Yet the fact that they think transwomen do not deserve to share their spaces proves that there is internal bias that they have not completely purged from their system. Trans people are incapable of rape, they don’t have the toxic masculinity that makes it possible.
Re: Re: Re:7
OMG 😳
That would be…
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-prisoner-who-sexually-assaulted-inmates-jailed-for-life
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/male-inmate-sexually-assaulted-female-in-washington-womens-prison-former-guard-says
I mean seriously. Are you brain dead?
You don’t help anyone with that kind of shite.
Re: Re: Re:8 I held out for as long as I could.
Consider this reply a small gesture of goodwill on my part because you won’t be getting another one: When you see comments like those, flag them and move on. They’re trying to bait you into replying by sounding like what a right-winger thinks a queer leftist sounds like. Their schtick is easy to spot because said schtick tries to invoke the idea of a queer-led rape-heavy sexual revolution or whatever. Don’t take the bait—just flag and move on.
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Re: Re: Re:9
Believe as you wish. The right wing gets the blame either way. It’s a win-win.
Re: Re: Re:9
I have a point of my own though.
Rather than pretend (which is exactly what many left-leaning reports do) that there is nothing of concern, head them off at the pass.
Armed with actual evidence.
Both real and fake trans rape will occur! Does occur.
Just like female on female and male on male rape occurs.
Accept the rare occurrence. Address it. Face it. Move on.
The problem isn’t trans people. It’s the lack of sexual outlets in confining humans in small groups of population.
Addressing sexual needs of inmates is a moral necessity that would end most incarceration rapes if properly dealt with.
Re: Re: Re:8
Inadequate support and hormone therapy, for which institutionalized norms favoring straight people are to blame.
The second URL specifically says “male inmate”. That says enough.
Re: Re: Re:7
You think that only people with toxic masculinity rape? Goodness, no! Every demographic (except asexuals) has had at least a few rapists among them.
Clearly, you’re a troll.
Re: Re: Re:8
Name the ones who make the news. How many of those are there compared to straight white men? How many of those get called out? You said it yourself. The number of “bad actors” among us is so small, so insignificant, it’s not worth talking about. Because that’s our identity. We are the embodiment of true love from human to human.
I rest my case.
Re: Re: Re:9
How many rapes does it take before it’s worth talking about?
Re: Re: Re:10
Do you talk about them?
Does anyone?
Are there throngs of people in the streets angry at what trans people do, besides the conservatives and prudes too close-minded to understand things the way we do?
No, there aren’t. Because trans rapists are a strawman made up by incels, desperately trying to cling to their dying relevance.
Re: Re: Re:9
You made an absolute, unqualified statement that transwomen cannot rape because they lack toxic masculinity. This is patently false. Are they statistically less likely to rape than cismen? Absolutely. That doesn’t justify your original claim.
Re: Re: Re:10
You can continue to deny the truth before you. The fact is that straight males number the majority of rapists. Sexual and gender minorities simply don’t come up to a fraction of those statistics because it’s not biologically possible to do so. We simply aren’t born that way. If we were, there’d be more talking about it. You might think it doesn’t justify the claim, but on the contrary. Such experiences give us the language to express and identify who we truly are, instead of the skewed filth that cisheteronormatives try to pigeonhole us in. Straight males are the cause of everything that’s wrong with the world, which is why a battered bisexual woman can lose a defamation lawsuit against her abusive ex-husband.
Straight males might not like it, but the truth is that reality is often biased towards facts. Not their lies.
Re: Re: Re:11
Straight females are a distant but resounding 2nd place.
The number of anything other than straight people involved in rapes is lost in a rounding error.
Re: Re: Re:12
Women are allies of sexual minorities because they’re more open to awakening to their actual nature, just look at Rebel Wilson. Men, on the other hand, are too deeply entrenched in their entitlements to enjoy a cock stimulating their prostate.
At least on this count we’re in agreement. Straight people are rapists.
Re: Re: Re:11
Nobody is born a rapist.
Do you know that that’s what happened, or do you just assume it because all straight males are evil?
Re: Re: Re:12
I see Amber Heard now owes a marital abuser fifteen million, and that you have yet to talk about rapists who aren’t straight people. Because they don’t exist. Non-straight rapists are a strawman. That’s why we don’t talk about them, unless you’re a Christian, which means you’re a closet homosexual.
Re: Re: Re:13
OK I see you’re either trolling or just completely off the deep end. Have fun with your delusions.
Re: Re: Re:14
And still no mention of non-straight rapists. If they existed it wouldn’t be hard to bring them up, would it? Yet you don’t. It’s almost as if they don’t exist, or you don’t have any examples worth bringing up.
Re: Re: Re:15
Non-straight rapes happen. But when they do they tend to be women, not woman, raping a man.
Abnormal but not does happen.
Re: Re: Re:16
If they happened, nasch would be talking about them. The fact that none of you can bring up a single example proves my point.
Re: Re: Re:17
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3673560/three-women-rape-man-23-for-three-days-after-kidnapping-man-in-a-taxi-and-force-feeding-him-energy-drinks-in-south-africa/
Re: Re: Re:18
Again, not a non-straight rape.
Re: Re: Re:17
Don’t be stupid. I’m not against your ideals.
Re: Re: Re:13
Did you watch any of the trial or read any of the transcripts?
You still think she’s a victim?
Re: Re: Re:14
A bisexual woman losing to a straight man is a loss, and she is a victim.
Re: Re: Re:13
Amber Heard owes herself money? How does that work?
Re: Re: Re:3
Christ, gender and sex are not the same. Sex is biology, the reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormones. Gender is the social construct, subject to change with time and variation across different societies. One can be masculine without being male. While masculine and feminine correspond with male and female, masculine and feminine are not not fixed concepts. And many, if not most people express themselves as a blend of both.
You are the one demanding that trans people dress as their biological sex or identify themselves so that you can regulate their actions in public. What do I care if a trans women pees in the stall next to me? How would I even know? She just wants to pee in peace too. You do realize that you can’t necessarily point out trans folks in a crowd, right? She’s no threat to me or my daughter any more than any other stranger. But she is at increased danger by entering the men’s bathroom, and sometimes I think that’s exactly what some of you transphobes want. No one would know either way if the lady entering the women’s bathroom was a masculine (or menopausal) woman or a trans woman. Maybe it’s not entirely transphobia, but an entitled sense of curiosity that some sexually repressed conservatives are looking for an opportunity to explore. You don’t see her as human, deserving of rights to be safe and act with autonomy (because women shouldn’t really have autonomy in the conservative opinion), so her wellbeing doesn’t matter.
You didn’t answer my question. What does society stand to gain by retracting the little dignity afforded to trans people?
You decided that psychology is just politics, like you know something about it. But I’m talking about psychiatry, that’s a medical field. Either way, you haven’t offered any kind of care or treatment for trans people that isn’t designed to drive them to suicide and has the proven success of gender affirming care. You think kids should be outed to their parents, regardless of what is in the kids best interest, but don’t think the kid should have access to the care that parents and doctors and the kid feel is best if it means beginning to transition. I mean, do you think that trans people should be denied existence, like they are a myth, some strange psycho-social phenomenon that will disappear if we ignore it?
If you can’t come up with a reason that society benefits by rescinding support of the trans community, can you give a reason you benefit from this? You keep talking about gender ideologue boogie man out for blood. But I am 1000% sure that it has always been at the risk of imprisonment, life threatening violence and death for anyone to violate the social norms regarding sex and gender. In the USA we arrested women just for wearing pants. Trans women of color face a harrowing amount of violence and murder including here in America, though it’s not exactly (openly) state sanctioned. People have little respect for men who pursue nursing careers, and are suspicious of men who want to work with little kids.
What are the gender ideologue doing to you, er the conservatives, er the transphobes? Reporting you to Twitter? Outing your hateful rhetoric to those who don’t want to be associated with it? Where’s that tiny little violin I had….
Re: Re: Re:4
People are free to accept or reject social gender roles as they like. People are free to dress as they like. But we have religious, social, and cultural taboos around single-sex spaces, and those taboos are about bodies. No matter what gender role a person wants, they should not be permitted to force entry into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them.
Whether or not a trans person using a single-sex space is detectable is irrelevant. A waiter is not allowed to spit into the soup pot even if the diners will never know.
Re: Re: Re:5
Okay, but this kinda conflicts with your next statement.
First, not everyone has any such taboos. It’s far from universal, even when just restricting it to some specific Western democratic first-world nation.
Second, of those who do have such taboos, it’s far from universal that it’s about bodies, and it’s far from universal among those people that it’s about the bodies they were born with rather than their current bodies (i.e. whether or not they have certain genitalia).
Third, there are also social, cultural, and religious taboos about gender roles and gender-specific clothing, and these taboos are also often about bodies. As such, the existence of the taboos you describe are not, in and of themselves, sufficient even by your own standards in other areas.
You still haven’t given a sufficient reason why not. Again, based on your statements about gender roles, crossdressing, and same-sex marriage, the only reason you gave in support of this (the existence of social, cultural, and religious taboos against it) would be insufficient by your own standards regarding anything except transgender people in single-sex spaces. As such, this is special pleading on its own.
The comparison is inapt. The waiter not spitting into the soup pot is a hygiene issue and presents a health hazard. There are science-based reasons why that is not allowed; it is not solely a matter of social, cultural, and religious taboos being violated by such conduct.
(It’s also inapt because a waiter is held to different standards than the general populace concerning what is or isn’t proper conduct (we generally condemn waiters yelling at customers more than we condemn customers yelling at waiters), but since we also condemn literally anyone who spits in a soup pot even if no one else ever finds out, I’ll let that slide for now.)
As such, in the latter case, there is still more than just social, cultural, and/or religious taboos being violated by this conduct to justify disallowing it, but you still haven’t done that for same-sex spaces.
A better comparison would be to halal and kosher food as the only reason one shouldn’t serve non-halal food to a Muslim or non-kosher food to a Jew even if they would never know is because of religious taboos, but even then, there are important distinctions. In that case, something that violates the taboo is being done directly and physically to them: feeding them food that violates their religion. There is also no countervailing reason to allow such conduct; there is no remotely reasonable justification for secretly feeding someone food that goes against their religion, and the only possible reasons for doing so would be complete incompetence/ignorance or ill intent towards a specific person(s), and those are never good justifications for violating a taboo.
In the case of transgender people in same-sex spaces, nothing is being done directly to the ones with the taboos (at worst, they’re “collateral damage”, to the extent violating taboos without their knowledge is “damage”), and there are countervailing justifications for allowing transgender people in the same-sex spaces they wish to use (including factual safety concerns with the alternative, deeply and genuinely held principles and beliefs, alleviating mental health issues, discomfort of transgender people with the alternative, taboos held by others that differ from the ones you mention, etc.), so we can still readily distinguish between the two scenarios.
Basically, if some conduct violates a taboo in a way such that the violation will likely never be known to anyone other than the person doing it, the existence of such taboos is a significantly weaker justification for banning the conduct than if the conduct was more openly violating the taboo, so it’s easier to justify the conduct than it would be otherwise. Additionally, the nature of and reason for the taboo are also important considerations in such a case. If the taboo is based on human health or is about something being done directly to the person who holds the taboo, then the taboo holds a good amount of weight that requires far more evidence and better justifications to overcome than it would otherwise. Finally, the reason for the conduct is also important: violating a taboo out of pure incompetence/ignorance or solely to harm someone or violate a taboo is essentially never acceptable, but given some justification, it is possible for the conduct to be acceptable despite the existence of taboos by some against it, with the amount of justification needed to overcome the taboo depending on the nature of and reason for the taboo as mentioned earlier.
This is why I objected earlier to you saying I dismissed taboos “cavalierly”. I actually examined the relevant taboos and the allegedly violating conduct as well as the asserted justifications for them, weighed them all carefully, and drew conclusions based on all that. Even if, at least in some cases, the end result is dismissing the taboos, it’s a far cry from a cavalier dismissal if it came only after careful weighing of both sides. (Not to mention the fact that I also noted the existence of compromises that would make both sides happy.)
Re: Re: Re:6
We have no use for taboos based on the delusions of conservatives who believe in imaginary friends.
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Re: Re: Re:4
The vast majority of transwoman of color who are murdered in the U.S.A. are prostitutes. That is, they are young Black men involved in criminal or criminal-adjacent activity and they are murdered in the same way other such Black men are murdered, by other similarly situated young Black men.
It is, of course, a taboo of woke race ideology to talk about the murder of Black people by other Black people. Black lives matter only when they are taken by white people.
Re: Re: Re:5
Actually, most of the sex worker murders are men murdered by men who thought they picked up a woman.
At least based on testimony from those apprehend.
Presenting yourself as having a socket to someone looking for a socket and turning out to have a plug 🔌 is rather problematic.
Re: Re: Re:6
so what they have between their legs determines whether they deserve to be murdered?
Re: Re: Re:7
It’s not about “deserves” per se. It’s more about expectations and the motivations behind the wrongful action. I can understand why someone would be motivated to kill a transwoman prostitute who still has a “plug” and see that as something that is reasonable to expect, but that doesn’t mean that I think the victim deserves to be killed (“buyer beware” applies for one thing) or that such a murder is justified.
Being charitable to Lostinlodos here, I believe what they might mean is that the claim Hymen made doesn’t necessarily fit the claims about blacks-killing blacks (since it has ultimately has nothing to do with the criminality of prostitution or the victims, the race of the victims, the race of the killers, or any prior criminality of the killers) or how it relates Cattress’s post (since she was talking about situations that are not analogous to prostitution, so her arguments about transgender people in such situations are not related to the reasons transgender prostitutes get killed).
Admittedly, this is likely unduly charitable, but it’s still a valid interpretation, and it demonstrates that there is no need to assume that LiL here is victim-blaming here.
Re: Re: Re:8
That’s exactly where I was going with that.
Hyman Rosen Used a partial piece of evidence and jumped to a personal conclusion.
In reality colour/race has absolutely no influence on such murders.
The vast majority of prostitution murders are trans people. Full stop.
And not so much attempting to victim-blame here as much as discuss a rather pointed observance of lack of critical thinking.
Prostitution is already risk filled. Adding fraud to it only heightens that risk. Considerably.
How Coward jumped from what I said to advocating murder? In no way did I remotely communicate that.
And no, Coward, that doesn’t mean trans is fake. What I specifically refer to is a biological male selling female consumption. In that and only that case.
Now you can discuss your premise of how holders of a tool can better advertise tool-holder’s options. (One of many non-issues with legalisation of prostitution).
But like any person seeking any socket. If you purchase expecting one and it’s not there. The payer is going to be unhappy.
Again, all I was attempting to say was ‘why bring race into it when it’s a non-factor’.
Re: Re: Re:9
so you’re saying trans sex workers deserve to be killed for fraud?
Re: Re: Re:10
Seriously, stop otherwording him. That’s not what he said. He explicitly stated that he’s not saying that. That these transwomen prostitutes may be considered to have committed fraud and, thus, that their clients may be unhappy when they find out is in no way a claim that they deserve to be killed at all. You read way too much into things.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Lostinlodos is a Republican heteronormativity apologist. Anyone who believes in heteronormativity is a transphobe. Of course he’s saying that transwomen prostitutes deserve to be killed, what else could he possibly be saying?
Re: Re: Re:12
You’re an idiot. I’m neither Republican nor heteronormative.
I’m a far left Social Libertarian with some centrist fiscal thoughts extreme left social beliefs. And pan sexual.
And fully willing to admit to both.
You, on the other hand are clearly an alt-left progressive. Part of the cancer in the American Democrat party. Progress by any means and any cost.
Conform or die. Your support for killing the opposition is quite clear as you and your will equate everything to murder or race.
Most telling is like most of those alt-left people: you don’t stand by your statements publicly. You hide behind anonymous.
Sure, I piss off many dems here. I’m to conservative on defence, border and guns; and libertarian on self. Tax the source, not the result. Etc.
But I stand by what I am. And don’t hide it. I piss off everyone. Equality!
Your a coward. Hide and make things up to provoke.
Re: Re: Re:13
Nobody believes the alt-left exists. Hardly surprising, when straight people have been trying to run everyone else who doesn’t fall under their definition of “normal” out of everything. But the paradigms are starting to shift and it couldn’t happen a second sooner.
Re: Re: Re:12
Both of us already explained what else he could have been (and in fact actually was) saying: that them being killed in these circumstances is not terribly surprising.
When a jilted man kills a woman, that is not terribly surprising. When a woman is found talking to another man by an abusive husband, that the woman is later killed is not terribly surprising. When a woman hides a secret pregnancy that she got from another man from her husband and the husband finds out, that the woman gets killed is not terribly surprising. None of that means it’s the woman’s fault she got killed, nor does stating any of that constitute saying that the woman deserves to be killed.
But even if he did, that wouldn’t have anything to do with _hetero_normativity, which is about discrimination against gay sex, not transgender people. Even if your assertion about him saying trans prostitutes deserve to be killed for fraud was true, that would fall under either cisnormativity or cisheteronormativity, not heteronormativity.
Also, Lostinlodos has an… interesting perspective on human sexuality, marriage, and privacy that most certainly does not align with Republican heteronormativity, cisnormativity, or cisheteronormativity. I’m not sure what I would call it, but it basically involves having no single-sex spaces or privacy from people of another sex or gender in a state of undress in public spaces like public restrooms (which he sees as the real problem with the transgender-restroom debate), that marriage shouldn’t be recognized by the government for either gay or straight couples at all but should be replaced with civil unions exclusively for both cases on the grounds that the word “marriage” is itself religious, and doesn’t seem to care if transwomen are considered men or women so long as they don’t try to hide that they still have a plug (if they do still have one) from their partner-to-be before trying to have sex with them, at least when money is involved. I don’t agree with a lot of his positions, but I wouldn’t call them conservative or anything-normative.
Re: Re: Re:13
You can look at the comment history on this website. Nobody believes the alt-left exists. We’re all traumatized, abused, harassed individuals who suffered under a patriarchy bent on imposing the will of old white straight men.
Now a paradigm shift is coming.
Re: Re: Re:14
None of this even relates to anything I’ve said.
Re: Re: Re:15
It doesn’t. Because you correctly believe that the alt-left doesn’t exist. Hyman and Lodos, on the other hand, believe that there is a shadowy group of leftists trying to control the narrative. In a sense, we are, but close-minded apologists for straight white males like Hyman keep trying to portray that as a bad thing. We fought for gay marriage. We fought for a cure to AIDS. Now that straight white males no longer have the stranglehold they feel so entitled to, they’re collectively losing their minds.
Re: Re: Re:16
You mistake alternative far left, alt-left, for the boogeyman “AltLeft”. There’s a big difference there. In that the actual radical left does exist, as tiny a group as they are. And has very little in common with the “woke” agenda Republicans complain about.
Republicans fear change. And change is AltLeft.
I fear ‘right now or burn it to the ground’. Those are the alternative left.
Funny non-coincidence, the anarchist alt-left has the same by gun or by sword processes of the AltRight and Q.
There’s little difference in the method of a few dozen charging down a hallway in the Capital and bashing through the door to the senate floor, and the “protestors” who firebomb a federal courthouse, flip over cars, and burn tires. Other than intended result.
The difference between me and progressives is I support gradual change with social learned acceptance and planned preparation.
Both sets of alts, both extremes, demand immediate change and consequences be damned.
Re: Re: Re:13 Bingo
You hit it dead centre! And much of that stems from viewpoint of over-private privacy. Which you also noted!
Like so many of my commentary I dig far deeper than any political notions any side has. I look for the real reasons for current status.
And here all I can say to both sides is STFU! I means seriously, why the fuck do you care what they have or lack? Why is a naked dong so hurtful in your mind.
We are so sexually repressed and so morally up tight as a whole… why the fuck does it matter?!!!? Seriously.
I don’t care if you present, or believe, or pretend, or any level. I simply don’t care. And I consider such a stance to be the superior understanding of the biological based facts.
Your (well, his) views on on sexuality are a far bigger problem than gender.
Oh, a cock… the horror! ??
Where I have always, ultimately, shown support for mixed gender my concerns were proper preparation of the inevitable. No matter how ware it is. It will happen.
That’s very different than saying we shouldn’t all cast aside stupid power-control-based rules.
A particular philosopher once wrote “do what thy wilt shall be the whole of the law”. A bit too free for me. But when it comes to things like this! I fully support ‘be yourself’ and anyone who gives you trouble… I’d happily tell them to flat out duck off. Ignorant self righteous prudes.
Re: Re: Re:12
This is actually false. He’s quite the opposite, actually.
That doesn’t actually follow. In Iran, for example, homosexuality is banned (punishable by death), but it is based on gender identity rather than sex-assigned-at-birth. It may seem rather odd, but belief in heteronormativity doesn’t necessarily entail belief in cisnormativity or any other transphobic beliefs.
Also, as stated, Lodos doesn’t believe in heteronormativity to begin with, nor is he a transphobe (as far as I can tell), so this is irrelevant.
Maybe actually read what we said. Both of us make it explicitly clear that Lodos was saying that the reasons for transwomen prostitutes getting killed are based on understandable feelings even though they don’t justify killing anyone, and that they don’t support Hyman’s point.
Again, one can easily understand why someone got killed without saying they deserve to be killed. Your inability to grasp this major distinction is your problem, not Lodos’s.
Re: Re: Re:9
That’s what I figured, and I mostly agree. There was absolutely no good reason to turn this into a discussion about race when all indications appear to be that it was a complete non-factor in this. I have no reason why Hymen decided to bring that up.
Additionally, it is certainly understandable that—to continue using your euphemisms—someone who pays for something that they expect has a socket and later finds out that they got a plug instead is certainly not going to be pleased to say the least, and that transgender prostitutes arguably should do something to mitigate that specific aspect of the issue (as it’s one of the very few cases where the genitals of a stranger are actually relevant, especially since money was exchanged based upon these expectations). None of this at all means that the killers are in any way justified in choosing to react with violence or that the victims are in any way to blame for being killed. That the victims could have predicted and possibly mitigated the anger doesn’t in any way change the fact that the only ones responsible for the murders are the killers, not the victims.
All in all, there’s a lot of conclusion-jumping going on here.
Re: Re: Re:6
True, though I hope we would both agree that, even if a violent reaction is unsurprising in such a situation and the reason can be understood, it still doesn’t mean it’s the victim’s fault they were killed. If so, then we’d likely agree that this whole tangent is ultimately irrelevant.
Either way, it also still appears that the bit about the alleged race of the killers and about BLM is unsupported and/or irrelevant and did not need to be included, which I assume you’d also agree on.
Re: Re: Re:7
I have no idea where this became anything at all. I assume the coward is trying to stimulate tensions just because 🍿
Re: Re: Re:5
That actually doesn’t follow, even ignoring your calling transwomen “men” yet again.
First, the original claim you asserted says absolutely nothing about the age of the people involved (either the victims’ or the killers’). It also says nothing about the race, gender, sex, or prior criminality of the killers. It claims that the victims were PoC, transwomen, and mostly prostitutes, but that’s it. Nothing about anyone’s age and nothing about the killer.
Second, prostitution is not necessarily criminal or criminal-adjacent activity in all jurisdictions, so even the assertion that the victims were necessarily involved in criminal or criminal-adjacent activity doesn’t necessarily follow from the claim that they were prostitutes.
When you say “that is”, what follows should be a rewording of or at least a necessary conclusion based on what came before, meaning what follows must be equivalent to or at least logically and necessarily follow what came before. However, this claim is neither equivalent to nor a logical and necessary conclusion that can be derived from the first claim; it is a separate claim that requires its own justifications to be convincing. So, again, [citation needed].
Also, once again, even accepting that as true, how does this relate to any of the claims, arguments, and evidence that have been made here thus far by anyone? How is this even remotely relevant aside from the fact that it involves transgender people being harmed in some way, which is a very loose connection?
[citation needed], and, again, this is still all entirely irrelevant.
Literally no one claims this. This is a strawman.
Also, again, no one was talking about Black Lives Matter here. This whole comment is basically a complete non sequitur. None of the claims made here are relevant to this discussion at all.
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Re: Re:
Political speech is not academic debate. It exists to effect changes in policy, against opposition. It’s part of a war. As such, if being brash and obstreperous works, then that will be used. Decrying effective speech by opponents as being beyond the pale is just part of the same war.
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Yes HYMEN ROSSNOTMAN, Twitter allows you to say fuck, shit, cunt, and whatnot.
Maybe not the last one in certain contexts.
Twitter allows personal insults to stand as well. And, annoyingly, some forms of non-violent forms of harassment like tag pollution.
What they don’t allow, though, is the sort of shit that even the First Amedment doesn’t allow. No death threats, no incitement of violence, no detailed plans on how you would murder someone/pee on a teen if given a chance (even OJ wasn’t allowed to profit off his fucking totally not a tell-all book), no race-baiting, and more importantly, no government official telling them to delete any post they find offensive.
And misgendering is largely accidental. If ANYONE keeps insisting that misgendering is a massive issue, I can fucking guantaree that, regardless of WHO is making a huge fucking fuss over it, they’re most likely either unhinged assholes or, more commonly, NeoNazis.
And legally, I only know of ONE unhinged trans person who had to face a court with a judge who was kind enough to actually correct themselves wrt gendering the prosecution. (Mauer vs Imagos Gameworks, for those interested in knowing more)
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That was actually Imagos Gameworks v Alex Mauer. The company had to sue a musician who had worked for them because she sent false DMCA notices to Steam to get a game she allegedly worked on pulled from the marketplace.
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I know about Imagos v. Mauer because I saw it unfold in real time and I backed the Kickstarter. Mauer is an extremely talented musician and composer, but her behavior vis-à-vis Imagos was indefensible. It was explainable, yet inexcusable.
Re: Re: Re:2
That last commment was from me. Sorry for not signing in! 😥
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To Someone Else, You Are The
Taking the Maga King as a prime example, the leftist complaint was that not enough people were shunning his speech. Instead, he gained support and 10s of millions of followers. Social consequences were insufficient for leftists, so they demanded material consequences. Censorship and bans are performed when social consequences aren’t working as intended.
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And if Donald Trump had been censored and bans from social media platforms didn’t count as social consequences, you might have a point. But neither of those things are true. So you don’t have a point.
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[Hallucinates facts not in evidence, as always]
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Twitter did not ban Trump until Jan 6 happened. And no sane company wants to have all the alphabet orgs investigating them because they were associated with a known insurecctionist.
A sitting President censoring themselves would have been quite the story. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. A sitting president abetting insurrection, though…
Good thing companies HAVE the First Amendment.
Its ironic American users complaining about free speech, try living in russia, if you speak out against the government, you,ll be imprisoned, arrested on made up charges, even if you are a rich oligarch you,ll have your assets confiscated , your business will sold for a small fee to friends of putin, maybe you,ll be poisoned, or sent to prison for 20 years,
theres no free speech in cuba, iran ,china ,
some countrys like iran simply randomly shoot people who protest in public,
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Very little free speech in Southeast Asia as well.
You get shot and called a drug mule in the Phillipines if you so much as say their leaders are bought by the Chinese, you get arrested for accidentally insulting the king in Thailand, and you get SLAPPED, insulted and your life turning into a flaming ruin in Singapore if you actually try to criticize the PAP.
Just 3 examples from the region.
I found this story in which Donald Trump fucks and castrates Harry Potter. I’m thinking about getting a Twitter account just so I can post the linl there and test Elon Musk’s commitment to freedom of speech. 😀
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The fucked up thing is, that’s not even the worst fanfic I’ve ever seen/heard about.
I’ve spent way too much time on This God Damned Internet.
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Love wins. You can’t stop true love between intellectuals.
Free speech means you can’t be put in jail for being an asshole. It doesn’t free a person from accountability in the private sector.
Pleased to know that someone is still on the “… moral degeneracy…” beat, Reverend Falwell.
An interesting parallel is the law on whether one can electioneer or protest politically in a shopping mall. In the 70s and 80s, malls took the place of town centers. Town centers were public spaces, so, as long as one didn’t block the way or cause a disturbance, one could protest or voice political preferences as one chose. That right did not exist in malls as they were private property even though they served the function of town centers. (Of course, the mall thing is increasingly moot as malls are closing and contracting.)
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Before claiming malls “served the function of town centers”, why don’t you define what a town center even is and how that is relevant to a modern shopping mall.
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I think in the context used, ‘town centre’ means an area in or near the middle of a town that is designated as a retail space. In such a case, it is analogous to a shopping mall (not synonymous because the former is owned by local government and the latter is privately owned). Interestingly, in a UK town centre, the shops are often rented from local government, but they are still considered private spaces accessible by the public because they are privately controlled.
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No, Pruneyard does not apply in amy way to online platforms.
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Meaning
No. Free Speech means the freedom to be an asshole. To you. Because who decides what thing that someone says makes them an asshole? You? The Ministry of Truth?
So, I’m happy to be an asshole. In your eyes. Free Speech means that assholes are just as free to speak as you (who call yourself a non-asshole, I assume. The trouble is that, so many of us think you are the asshole. But that doesn’t stop you writing these stupid articles mis-stating Free Speech.
As we complaining? Nope. You are free to be an asshole. No one cares or should care. And if you don’t understand this basic concept? You don’t understand Free Speech.
You are still free to be an asshole though. Only an asshole would even think of trying to limit free speech. Turn the channel if you don’t like the speech, bud. Take you nonsense censorship tendencies down the road. To the sinkhole. Then jump in. Poof. No more articles against Free Speech by an asshole! Yay!
But you know, there’s always going to be another asshole to write more of this pap. Oy vey.
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Free Speech also means the right to call you an asshole. And since you want to talk about some First Amendment shit, Free Association means the freedom to choose whether you want yourself/your property associated with an asshole. When people tell you to GTFO because you’ve been an asshole, they’re not censoring you—they’re showing you the door in the hopes that you’ll leave voluntarily.
Free speech is not short for “consequence-free speech”. Everything has consequences; even victory has a price.
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It also means the freedom to call an asshole an asshole, to not associate with assholes, and to remove an asshole from your privately-owned property for being an asshole. It does not mean the freedom to be an asshole without consequences imposed by private entities.
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Only an asshole would think they should be able to say anything they want on Twitter, free of any consequences, which you might remember is the context of the article.
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Dude. You’re the one coming to my site.
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So, you came here to harass Mike?
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The people being assholes can objectively be called assholes when they constantly espouse racist, homophobic, xenophobic, bigoted views and ideas.
That you want to be considered an asshole for espousing those same ideas, well that’s on you then.
We all know that the people like you who complain the loudest about Twitter’s moderation policies are the ones who are also facing bans due to acting like racist, xenophobic, bigoted homophobic assholes.
If you are so butt hurt about Twitter’s moderation policies, why can’t you assholes go fuck off to the sites that welcome the fucking assholes you are?!?!?!
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Pot, meet kettle.
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We could take a vote on whether readers here think you are an asshole if you’d like.
I’m a yes vote.
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As we complaining? Nope.
Shit, boy – the entire conservative platform revolves around your fucking complaining. Because if you weren’t complaining, you’d actually have to do something. And we know that’s not gonna happen.
Keep up the good fight, asshole! Dog fucking help your stupid ass if you actually get what you want.
So, totally on brand then given the asshole he is.
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5th Circuit Got Mike Worried
After the 5th Circuit removing the injunction mike is very very worried. His only source of income is serving as a shill fighting against regulating social media as a common carrier.
Mike is about to get fucked with a Texas sized dick and he knows it.
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How many times are you going to use this?
And why do you have such fantasies about dicks? Most children outgrow their tendencies to always talk about penises and farts.
Prove it mother fucker! You can’t so you won’t and you will just whimper off like the little bitch you are, pissing and shitting yourself.
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I fail to see how Twitter could ever be a common carrier in any context. If anything, a company that provides Internet access would be a common carrier.
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Can you even articulate a single valid reason that social media should be a common carrier?
Let me give you one example that destroys your entire argument…
When your house is burning down, are you going to Tweet, Facebook post, Instagram post, or TikTok a video to contact the fire department?
Or will you just pick up the common carrier telephone, cellular or landline, and call 911?
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Or will you just pick up the common carrier telephone, cellular or landline, and call 911?
No. I’ll call 999 or 112. ;D
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I am very sure this is a form of harassment.
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For someone who whines, bitches and moans about homophobia you really do fall for the same stereotypical incel BBC crap. Never change, Chozen, we could all use an example of a slimeball to not emulate.
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I think you grossly overestimate the impact of Twitter on Mike’s or anyone else’s lives.
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Some people understand what common carriers are.
Some people say platforms are common carriers.
There is zero overlap between these two groups.
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[Asserts claims not in evidence and without providing any]
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Then I guess I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
The thing about Texans, they have to have big belt buckles, big cowboy hats, big guns and big trucks all because they are over-compensating for something else being really, really, really, really, really small.
Double Standard of Free Speech
I agree that there has always been a double standard when it comes to free speech for the far right. So often, they claim that they are supportive of free speech and they always proclaim that they have been “silenced”.
Yet, at the same time, when I give them (namely the Freedom Convoy) the finger, suddenly, there is a change in tone. It’s no longer “I support free speech for everyone”, but rather, “Your speech is less important than my speech”. I’ve been able to replicate these findings over and over again under multiple different circumstances in different scenario’s. You can almost put a stopwatch to this predictable result. In fact, when Musk seemed to be all but certain to buy Twitter, there were tons of Russian bots – I mean, American Patriots(tm)) who were demanding that any “leftists” that were announcing that they were leaving or thinking about leaving Twitter, many of them were calling for those accounts to be banned. Again, it all falls back to the “my speech is more important than your speech” thinking.
Much like so many other “conservative beliefs”, their version of free speech is heavily distorted for their own perceived self interest. The reality has always been that if your value is, in fact, free speech, then that free speech needs to apply to everyone. Otherwise, it’s not really free speech so much as preferential treatment to certain forms of speech. It’s easy to argue that the preferential speech system is not really free speech at all. What’s more is that the right to be free of the consequences of your speech is not a right to begin with.
It is with those (and a number of other reasons) why I, like Masnick, fall back to governments role in speech. It makes debating the topic infinitely easier. Is Twitter banning you for harassment? That’s not a free speech issue. That is a private entity curating their content, not the government silencing you for free speech. That private entity, however, has a right to oversee and control what goes on with what is effectively their property. If you are behaving like a jerk on their private property (digital or physical), they are allowed to grab you by the collar and belt buckle and throw you out.
Reality
I believe your wrong. I think what he is after is more to make any consequences just as open and public as the start off.
Like he wants to grab some 🍿 and sit back and read.
I’m still not sold here. Ignoring twitter who actually found less destructive methods of moderation than censorship, on the whole.
People talk about misinformation and disinformation. And yet where is the call to sell at form all the flat-out-lies claiming Trump said to ingest bleach? Something that absolutely never happened. Not even by 20 degrees of twisted interpretation.
And much of the origin commentary that gets booted is because of who says it vs what is actually said.
Ultimately this comes down to one simple question.
Is flagging and other methodology currently used at twitter any less effective if more people are flagged vs booted outright?
I don’t really see how this premise, keep and flag, not dump and ban, really changes the bottom line.
Honestly, I don’t really see much changing.
Call me naive if you wish. But I prefer to judge after the fact.
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I don’t know why you posted the exact same comment over and over again, but it’s annoying. I can only guess that the first time it was held in moderation, so you tried again. The thing is that that’s unnecessary and actually counterproductive as it means your spamming, one of the things that the filter is supposed to remove.
Now, I’m not going to flag this first comment (yet, at least), but I am going to flag the duplicates as they are actually spam. I hope you can understand.
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Feel free.
I think I figured out that there’s simply no notice of comment holding.
Refreshing is a common problem for my service area sometimes.
And uninitiated refresh is a beta bug being world on.
Didn’t intend to troll/spam. Just hard to tell un-noted hold vs random refresh. Won’t happen again.
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Fair enough.
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Ideally Mike would implement the optional notification WP offers telling users their comments have been held.
IOS has 3.4mil active developers. 2.8 of which are using one of 7 semi-current betas as regular use OSs to some degree despite warnings not to.
Safari refreshes in betas have been an issue since 14.pa. I’m using 15.4.1
Testers have solved some but not all of them. I’ve submitted multiple patches myself for review.
A true fix is unlikely until well into 16.x public.
Too many people have too many variants on this bug. It’s entirely caused by handling of 5G handoff but since there’s currently 30-some different “5G” frequency ranges trying to interact with each other fluently….
And the fallback 4G being switch based, not network controlled—it’s not an easy fix.
Not that you actually care. I’m fairly sure you don’t. But it explains why I’m not the only one who has done this.
It’s one of those ‘hey sysop [mike] push the toggle button’.
I’m looking the fool here.
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I mean, he did reasonably appear to imply that that was a good idea, so it’s not all that out there as far as far as supposed falsehoods go, nor does the truth really make Trump look much better if at all.
Furthermore, content that gets flagged and (generally) removed as “misinformation” or “disinformation” tends to fall under four categories:
Even taking your assertion that this specific claim is, indeed, misinformation or disinformation as true, it doesn’t really fall under any of the four categories that generally get removed on that basis (though things outside of those categories may be removed for other reasons, like hate speech or speech promoting violence). Twitter generally tries not to arbitrate truth in its moderation, so even when a claim is clearly false, they generally only remove content based on it being disinformation in specific situations where they feel the need to step in, and even for those situations, they waited to start doing that until they felt that they could no longer refrain from doing so. It is not the case that Twitter even tried to remove all disinformation, and this has nothing to do with political leaning but rather both the obviousness and seriousness of the falsehoods.
In this case, the posts at issue claim, “Government official/politician A made medical claim X, and X is false/stupid/dangerous,” and your reason for asserting that this is disinformation is that you claim that no reasonable and informed person could credibly claim that A ever said X. The thing is that Twitter generally doesn’t remove posts solely because they falsely claim that a given government official or politician said something specific. Had they said, “A
said X, and/so X is true,” when X is actually false, “A said not X, but X is true,” when X is actually false, “A said not X, and/so X is false,” when X is actually true, “A said X, but X is false,” when X is actually true, or something else along those lines, that would be removed (assuming X is a medical claim at least), but whether or not A ever actually said X or not X is not the deciding factor there. (The same would apply if X is a claim about an election or electoral process.)
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Do note I’m not knocking twitter. As far as I am aware actual deletion is beyond rare. And I draw a firm line between moderation and the censorship (even if local) of deletion.
It’s a knock rather on those who run around demanding more moderation who by-and-large only want it applied very selectively.
With that understanding my commentary makes sense. Hypocrites call for moderation of falsehoods but ignore any falsehoods they want out there.
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Btw: i did post
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I believe you are wrong. I think what he is after is more to make any consequences just as open and public as the start off.
Like he wants to grab some popcorn and sit back and read.
I’m still not sold here. Ignoring twitter who actually found less destructive methods of moderation than censorship, on the whole.
People talk about misinformation and disinformation. And yet where is the call to sell at form all the flat-out-lies claiming Trump said to drink cleaning products
Something that absolutely never happened. Not even by 20 degrees of twisted interpretation.
And much of the origin commentary that gets booted is because of who says it vs what is actually said.
Ultimately this comes down to one simple question.
Is flagging and other methodology currently used at twitter any less effective if more people are flagged vs booted outright?
I don’t really see how this premise, keep and flag, not dump and ban, really changes the bottom line.
Honestly, I don’t really see much changing.
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I believe your wrong. I think what he is after is more to make any consequences just as open and public as the start off.
Like he wants to grab some popcorn and sit back and read.
I’m still not sold here. Ignoring twitter who actually found less destructive methods of moderation than censorship, on the whole.
People talk about misinformation and disinformation. And yet where is the call to sell at form all the flat-out-lies claiming Trump said to drink something? Something that absolutely never happened. Not even by 20 degrees of twisted interpretation.
And much of the origin commentary that gets booted is because of who says it vs what is actually said.
Ultimately this comes down to one simple question.
Is flagging and other methodology currently used at twitter any less effective if more people are flagged vs booted outright?
I don’t really see how this premise, keep and flag, not dump and ban, really changes the bottom line.
Honestly, I don’t really see much changing.
Call me naive if you wish. But I prefer to judge after the fact.
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Subject
I believe your wrong. I think what he is after is more to make any consequences just as open and public as the start off.
Like he wants to grab some 🍿 and sit back and read.
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Re: Comment
I’m still not sold here. Ignoring twitter who actually found less destructive methods of moderation than censorship, on the whole.
People talk about misinformation and disinformation. And yet where is the call to sell at form all the flat-out-lies claiming Trump said to ingest bleach? Something that absolutely never happened. Not even by 20 degrees of twisted interpretation.
And much of the origin commentary that gets booted is because of who says it vs what is actually said.
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Re: Comment
I’m still not sold here. Ignoring twitter who actually found less destructive methods of moderation than censorship, on the whole.
People talk about misinformation and disinformation.
And yet where is the call to sell at form all the flat-out-lies claiming Trump said something about cleansers.
Something that absolutely never happened in the way published. Not even by 20 degrees of twisted interpretation.
And much of the origin commentary that gets booted is because of who says it vs what is actually said.
Free speech means no censorship
This is not just about “assholes” (although one man’s asshole is another man’s truth-to-power speaker).
Tech giants are political speech they dislike under the guise of misinformation when it turns out later that the information was correct to begin with. Like the Hunter Biden laptop story for example.
Companies like twitter should be held to the same standard as the government when it comes to free speech, because they have the same amount of power and influence over our speech as the government. Arguably more so. The potential reach a person has on twitter is much larger than they have in the public square of their home town.
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A politically charged story like that could have serious effect on the landscape. Therefore, there’s an increased interest in reducing the spread of unconfirmed information. That the information was eventually confirmed doesn’t change what was known at the time.
I mean, we generally think the people who claim that the lizard people rule the world are nutjobs. Are you going to be angry at “Big Culture” if we eventually find out that the nutjobs were right?
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So what?
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Yes, actually it is. You’re wrong.
This is wrong. You have been fed a lie and you believe it. You are wrong.
A story we’ve debunked a dozen times on this site. Twitter used the same exact policy it had used on other similar documents. If Twitter had not done that, then THAT would have been inconsistent.
And Twitter stopping the NY Post did not slow the spread of the story nor diminish the attention it received. In fact, the opposite.
Bullshit. Twitter cannot jail me. It cannot tax me.
And we’ve explained multiple times: no one who has run any kind of forum believes this, because your forum will be all spam.
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Something like 25% of Americans (around 2/3rd of republicans) still think Trump won the election, and uh, Jan 6. These are the direct result of misinformation.
And my uncle, yeah the casually racist one, who I would not ever agree with on most any subject but I did think that had solid common sense, landed himself in the hospital for 3 months with COVID-19, and hopes to be off the oxygen tank and walking again by summer (a man that was still working 50 hours a week even though he technically retired). Because he believed all the lies and misinformation about vaccines and masks, at 67 years old, he nearly killed himself.
There are real consequences to that shit spreading, ones that hurt users and workers at these Tech companies alike. Stop whining that the bare minimum was done to slow/reduce that harm and calling it political.
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People who defend straight white men tend to forget – or rather, intentionally ignore – that the rest of us paid the price for their tyranny.
Never again.
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… said nobody capable of rational indeoendent thought who supports free speech, ever.
Well good luck amending the Constitution.
What’s wrong with this country, that we don’t teach our girls self-defense? The patriarchy. Can’t have the girls getting all that book learning, speaking up for themselves, making decisions for themselves and then overtaking men on the final frontier of physical dominance! Do you remember the mockery coming from the right when the military introduced maternity uniforms? Like pregnant women weren’t already serving and we were suddenly introducing a weakness to our forces to serve a ‘woke’ agenda. It’s all about keeping the current social power structure and order. Female warriors have been memory-holed. As have a significant amount of contributions to society from women, poc, and other minority groups.
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Straight white men are the cause of everything that’s wrong with world today. They need a big black cock up their ass to know their true place.