81–90 of 1001 posts
Freedom of expression/free speech doesn’t mean freedom not to be offended or that you have to agree with the views. If we do not support even the most offensive speech then we risk a very slippery slope leading to censorship and 1984.
There's no historical reason to think that not supporting extreme speech will lead to fascism. There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic).
You think the Weimar Republic is a point in favor of that claim?
In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate‐speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti‐Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti‐Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti‐Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective public relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate.
In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews.
Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. “Remarkably, pre‐Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti‐hate law,” he writes. “Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti‐Semitic speech…
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-2015/war-free-ex...
Gender politics is a cancer on the left, even though I agree with it, it takes up so much time and energy away from things that would benefit everybody including trans people, like universal healthcare, better employee protection laws and better, more available education. Such a small percentage of the population has been the center point of so much discussion and debate, and for what benefit? All I see it doing is g…
I don’t know if this article is describing this phenomenon accurately, as the first paragraph contains an obvious falsehood: “ A flyer with an image of a gun and text reading “shut the fuck up, terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a slur) was circulating. ”. TERF isn’t a slur. No one has successfully beaten and killed a woman while calling her a TERF and then got away with it in court like the gay panic defens…
An experiment you can perform at home: do an exact search on Google for the phrase "punch a terf" and wonder if this is meant to suggest violence.
There’s a lot that’s already been said in this topic but I feel compelled to bring up the damage imposed by TERF talking points. The conversation goes something like this: “Transgender women possess an innate maleness that carries a non-zero threat to female spaces.” They believe that dictionary definitions of woman are prescriptive, declared at the chromosomes during birth, rather than descriptive, as in how one pre…
Many prisons already separate by ethnic group simply to keep the peace. Yes, it's segregation, but the alternative is more prison riots.
Thus, if separation happens for practical reasons, then don't limit the separation practices to one group; otherwise, you will be accused of discrimination, perhaps justifiably. Use statistics, not stereotypes, to find the split points.
Or get better security so mixing doesn't result in problems. Lowest-bidder security has down-sides.
> The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is tantamount to hate speech and try to suppress it. This is 100% my personal experience also. Even on HN last week someone said I should try to be a "better human" and compared my suggestion that maybe someone might oppose transgender women in women's spaces for reasons other tha…
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
A flyer with an image of a gun and text reading “shut the fuck up, terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a slur) was circulating Not accepting incivility from people is hardly what I'd call a "backlash". We don't operate our universities on the heckler's veto.
> We don't operate our universities on the heckler's veto. I've seen a few videos from various Universities where invited speakers are shouted down because of supposed wrong views. But then it isn't the heckler's veto if their views are wrong or what?
The videos you haven't seen are the ones that were never made because the wrong-view person was stopped from even giving their scheduled talk via "de-platforming".
If one person says they feel unsafe, should they be asked to leave instead of the newcomer, with whom the majority are ambivalent?
Basically what I’m getting at is what’s the algebra / game theory of creating safe spaces based on tolerance and intolerance?
There’s a lot that’s already been said in this topic but I feel compelled to bring up the damage imposed by TERF talking points. The conversation goes something like this: “Transgender women possess an innate maleness that carries a non-zero threat to female spaces.” They believe that dictionary definitions of woman are prescriptive, declared at the chromosomes during birth, rather than descriptive, as in how one pre…
The fear that cis-women have of rape is real. The fear that transgender women have of rape in a men's jail is real. I think the fairest thing to do is take both of these fears seriously and house intact trans-women in a space where they neither feel threatened with rape, nor impose that threat on cis-women.
I think referring to this fear as a "TERF talking point" is as disrespectful as it would be to minimize the fear that trans-women experience in men's prisons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno if I'd agree that it's a small vocal minority, zero-tolerance to anybody questioning the current dogma is seen everywhere where trans acceptance is a focus. Ten years ago I was told, by trans people, that there are physical differences between trans and cis brains. Say that today, and you get kicked out of LGBT spaces for being a transmedicalist or truscum. I have no idea whether it's true or not because you…
"Truscum" being the word for someone who thinks that changing one's gender and sexual characteristics might not be the greatest idea ever unless you actually have , like, gender dysphoria. Never mind the many, many people who are now pursuing "detransition" after going one step too far. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?