There seems to be a new background assumption that one's identity can be chosen, whereas I think in reality it's inherited.
How do you define “identity”?
A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
121–130 of 1001 posts
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
> 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…
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Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#123There’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…
CIS (as born) women may also have (traditional) male-like traits. If you separate people by traits in prison, then why separate based on trans-ness alone? For example, large women are more likely to rape small women in prison simply because they can. If you separate based on such risks, then separate large women from small women also; why focus on just trans? Many prisons already separate by ethnic group simply to ke…
> "Regular" women
The word you're looking for is "cis".
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#124I think the irony of the current battle around identity is that we have been making steady progress based on the idea that personal characteristics shouldn't matter. However this whole debate is reversing that by not only saying it matters a great deal but that other people should be forced to defer to others personal choices even when it directly affects them
Do you feel the same way about nicknames? If you call someone by a nickname that they don't like and they let you know they prefer their own name then do you consider it too onerous to defer to them about it?
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
> 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…
This is a great comment. It seems to me that some in the US far right and left wings have an analogous view of using the political system as a way to garner publicity rather than governing. It's less obvious in the court cases. Many of the people associated with the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol folded pretty rapidly once they were indicted.
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#126> 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…
Without doing a deep-dive into the way you communicate I'd recommend that you broadly reconnect on shared values, like the importance of human dignity and compassion, before trying to proceed further in a conversation where it is starting to feel like other parties are treating you like a faceless adversary.
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's weird is that not long ago is popular to say "I disagree with everything you have to say, but I'd die for your right to say it". It's amazing how times have changed from that shared belief. 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".
Among a certain sect of internet libertarians, maybe. And we saw that the result of that was the proliferation of communities on popular websites dedicated to legal but sexually suggestive pictures of girls (ex. /r/jailbait on Reddit), communities dedicated to voyeuristic photography, vitriolic hate against people who are overweight, etc.
I'm sorry but Evelyn Beatrice Hall first wrote those words in 1906, as a description of the beliefs of Voltaire, who died in 1778 and whose ideas were extremely mainstream at the time the US was founded.
These ideas long predate the internet and the Libertarian political party and to box them in as such and dismiss them carelessly is extremely intellectually dishonest and bordering on flamebait.
Additionally, if your best evidence against freedom of speech is Reddit, I suggest you retool your arguments from scratch.
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#128Freedom 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).
What exactly is extreme speech? I don’t recall for advocating for illegal speech.
Everything up to imminently calling for violence in the US is protected so if that is what you are saying then I’d agree with you.
However what is “hate” or “intolerant” depends on the person and identity group. E.g. “All lives matter, marriage is between a man and a woman, men can’t get pregnant, Muhammad was a pedophole, flipping the bird to a police officer” all would offend different groups of people but are protected speech.
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#129Gender 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…
The same could be said for most wedge issues. In the US, gun rights and and abortion also become a focal point of US politics despite the existence of issues that deal with millions of preventable deaths (automobile safety, obesity epidemic, poverty), issues that deal with hundreds of thousands of displaced peoples and killed civilians (Afghanistan and Iraq war, war mongering over Syria, Libya, Iran, etc), and climat…
There's truth here, feels-over-reals is very much a problem in US politics. That said, feelings/perceptions have consequences if left unchecked. A few hundred people being "made an example of" by the police each year can functionally oppress an entire ethnic group in a country.
All that said, in light of the previous example, it makes the abortion fight seem particularly...whimsical...given the stakes. The evangelicals believe they themselves are going to heaven regardless of what the non-evangelicals do and those getting abortions don't care so it's rather hard to point to a group being oppressed by their beliefs here.
Re: A backlash against gender ideology is starting in universities
#130A 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?
> I've seen a few videos from various Universities
I've also seen a few videos from various Universities. _Remarkably few_, given how much attention this topic gets.