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Open letter denouncing the "restriction of debate".

There are no right or wrong feelings but trouble starts when people let feelings solely guide their interpretation of reality. Subjective interpretation replaces critical thinking. This does not include the faux outragers who generate offence to bully or coerce others into submission.

Half the battle in terms of health outcomes is the messaging IMO.
Doesn't this belong in the Brexit thread?
 
@Woodface - I think that is a red-herring argument, but the world being as big as it is, there will definitely be one abusive man who'll try it. I personally don't see why anyone would declare themselves as "female" while continuing to act and appear completely masculine - what would be the point?

On the more general point, I have an intense dislike of people who get angry on behalf of other people, as if those people didn't have their own voice and their own opinions. I suspect that those who piled opprobrium on J.K. Rowling cared a lot less about debating the difficult subject of how to accommodate the frictions between our own rights and those of others, than they cared about being seen to take the right-on position. Twitter is home to sloganeers, and there's nothing more worthless than slogans in addressing a complex issue.

For whatever it's worth (and I know it's very little), I am a staunch defender of everyone's right to not live their life in misery, whatever its cause.

I don't see happiness as relative or finite, and denying someone the right to express the person they feel that they really are is condemning them to a life of misery. However, on the subject of trans rights, like J.K. Rowling, I do have reservations about the rush to push young children into transition, something that I think reveals an unhealthy desire for quick fixes and enforcing a very polarized, stereotyped view of what it is to be "male" or "female". Hard dichotomies are the refuge of lazy thinkers*, and I worry that a well meaning effort to help people has fallen into the trap of taking the simplest answer as the right one. Not everyone sits at the extremes of the gender spectrum: I've a friend, a gay woman, who often presents herself in a very masculine manner, but she doesn't want to be male - that persona is one part of a more complex identity. We've spoken about it a bit over the years, and it took her a long time to get to that place, but she said that had she gone down the route of surgical reassignment, she would be deeply unhappy now. I worry that in today's environment, her young teenage equivalent would be encouraged to take that same step at an age when she hadn't yet formed her personality.
Yes, fair observation, probably an extreme example.
 
Well, here is what the president of the “Human Rights Campaign” organizations said. She is “trafficking in harmful lies at a time when the trans community is facing unspeakable violence. Twenty-six trans and gender non-confirming people were killed in 2019 in the U.S.. ... If she won’t listen to trans advocates about the harm she is causing, she does not deserve her platform.”

This illustrates the point behind the original letter. If you disagree with me you hate me, therefore you are guilty of hate speech, therefore you must be de-platformed. Or have a fatwa declared against you if you are Salman Rushdie. Or be blacklisted for opposing the Vietnam War like Noam Chomsky. Or be accused of anti-semitism if you are opposed to the current boundaries of Israel.

https://www.hrc.org/blog/hrc-president-alphonso-david-responds-to-j.k.-rowlings-latest-transphobic-b

The HRC response is disappointing in its lack of substance, but a far more detailed response is a couple of clicks away on Twitter here from Andrew James Carter, someone I’ve never heard of but who appears to be a lawyer. He does at least break-down JKR’s response and the counter-points in a way those of us somewhat baffled by the whole thing may be better able to grasp.
 
Well, here is what the president of the “Human Rights Campaign” organizations said. She is “trafficking in harmful lies at a time when the trans community is facing unspeakable violence. Twenty-six trans and gender non-confirming people were killed in 2019 in the U.S.. ... If she won’t listen to trans advocates about the harm she is causing, she does not deserve her platform.”

This illustrates the point behind the original letter. If you disagree with me you hate me, therefore you are guilty of hate speech, therefore you must be de-platformed. Or have a fatwa declared against you if you are Salman Rushdie. Or be blacklisted for opposing the Vietnam War like Noam Chomsky. Or be accused of anti-semitism if you are opposed to the current boundaries of Israel.

https://www.hrc.org/blog/hrc-president-alphonso-david-responds-to-j.k.-rowlings-latest-transphobic-b
Ok fair enough, I just find it odd the way it is framed, there are concerns that certain elements of trans rights are anti women.

I have no real dog in this fight.
 
The HRC response is disappointing in its lack of substance, but a far more detailed response is a couple of clicks away on Twitter here from Andrew James Carter, someone I’ve never heard of but who appears to be a lawyer. He does at least break-down JKR’s response and the counter-points in a way those of us somewhat baffled by the whole thing may be better able to grasp.
That's an excellent thread Tony. I have to say I'm shocked by the level of ignorance some posters on this thread have displayed about the issue. The analogy isn't perfect but the moral panic about trans people has uncomfortable parallels with the demonisation of homosexuals in the 1980s (section 28, anyone?) and depends on similar deeply flawed ideas about difference inevitably leading to depravity.

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. On another forum I use, there are now several threads, broadly inspired by Black Lives Matter, where the amount of ignorance on display about racism is quite remarkable. This is from educated people with impeccably liberal credentials, in an organisation that you would expect to be completely "right on" in its attitudes to minorities. Meanwhile, the non-white members of the forum who initially expressed concern about its inclusivity gave up long ago and disappeared.

Regarding the letter defending free speech, well yeah, it's all great mom and apple pie stuff but the hard questions about its limits still remain. This article by Nesrine Malik is an excellent counterpoint to what she calls the myth of the free speech crisis:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/03/the-myth-of-the-free-speech-crisis

I'm sure the signatories to that letter mean well but I fear they are giving claims of a free speech crisis more credence than they deserve.
 
Good thread, but it is becoming confused and confusing.

On freedom of speech and tolerance:

The argument is people should tolerate other people's speech without trying to counter it. This is usually brought up when Anne Coulter or such wants to go to a liberal college and give a hate speech show and local students demonstrate and sometimes force the Conservative Club to cancel the event. Notice that Anne is not being denied her right to express her opinion - she is a famous and rich person with no shortage of expression channels. She is being denied an access to a local public venue, which is not a right.

In such a case, I believe that a community decency standard should be operative. Coulter is a hate speech performance artist and a community should have a right to deny her performance space, much like a live sex show or a dog fighting championship. I find this denial of privilege behavior perfectly normal.

When people try to shout down others' speech they find objectionable, they are exercising their own right of free speech. End of story. Preaching polite behavior is nice, but that's a separate complaint. When I speak I don't have a right to polite silence.


On Rowling and trans phobia:

She is expressing a not too uncommon viewpoint shared by Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. You can read all about it, but in a nutshell, an older radical feminist contingent feels that trans women are not women and their identity threatens gender-based feminism they grew up with.

I don't agree, but can sort of see how a sudden influx of new women who used to be men can unnerve an older feminist who has spent a lifetime advocating for the female gender.

Rowling has a perfect right to say her thing. But she has no right for polite defference from people who passionately believe that trans people have suffered enough and they don't want to enable more hate toward them.

This may have been posted before:

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

It's a complex read. She got some of my sympathy part way through with an honest retelling of her domestic abuse and wanting to protect her daughter. But then she decided that the real danger is from "men who think they are women" going into women's bathrooms. By now this has really a form of trans blood libel - a gross, false and grotesque attack with a purpose of inciting trans phobia. So not surprising she got pushback - she absulutely should.
 
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Regarding the letter defending free speech, well yeah, it's all great mom and apple pie stuff but the hard questions about its limits still remain. This article by Nesrine Malik is an excellent counterpoint to what she calls the myth of the free speech crisis:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/03/the-myth-of-the-free-speech-crisis

I'm sure the signatories to that letter mean well but I fear they are giving claims of a free speech crisis more credence than they deserve.

The whole thing has a whiff of that ugly Jordan Peterson thread here from a couple of years back. I was disappointed to see some of the names prepared to put their signature to what I view as an alt-right trope no matter how it is phrased. There should never be any ‘right’ to disenfranchise or alienate minorities, and all too often that is exactly what this boils down to. An almost exclusively wealthy white straight elite throwing their toys out of their pram because they can’t always get away with dictating the rules.
 
When people try to shout down others' speech they find objectionable, they are exercising their own right of free speech. End of story.
Okay, but then you would also have to accept that a nationalist knobhead shouts down your speech. If not, it's called 'double standards'.

As far as my personal relationship is concerned, it has not yet happened to my partner (nor to me) to ask me (her) to 'simply shut up'. The day this will happen will be a bad day for our relationship.

IMO this rule also applies very much to society as a whole. End of my story.
 
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The HRC response is disappointing in its lack of substance, but a far more detailed response is a couple of clicks away on Twitter here from Andrew James Carter, someone I’ve never heard of but who appears to be a lawyer. He does at least break-down JKR’s response and the counter-points in a way those of us somewhat baffled by the whole thing may be better able to grasp.
That's helpful, and does clarify the issue somewhat. I confess, the subtleties were lost on me until I read that thread. I feel a little better informed.
 
The HRC response is disappointing in its lack of substance, but a far more detailed response is a couple of clicks away on Twitter here from Andrew James Carter, someone I’ve never heard of but who appears to be a lawyer. He does at least break-down JKR’s response and the counter-points in a way those of us somewhat baffled by the whole thing may be better able to grasp.
That sort of substance is what HRC should have posted, although I always dislike the "sentence-by-sentence rebuttal" form of debate. This is a discussion of ideas, it's not a supply contract for machine parts. (Also, on a technical level, it's the paragraph, not the sentence, that is the unit of "expressing a point"; isolating sentences from paragraphs is not as bad as isolating words, but it's on the same scale)

Back on the original topic, you see quite a few replies on Twitter like this one: "can you help me - I don't know where JK Rowling stands or whether I should be praising her or hating her?" This illustrates the bigger problem. Twitter and other social media platforms are tribal, and people want to know what their "in-group behaviour" should be. But the abbreviated commentary means Twitter is also highly polarising: there's A and Z, but nothing between - a couple of hundred characters doesn't suit nuance. There's no space for someone whose views are sometimes abhorrent to you, but whom you mostly agree with: in this world, with no time to process the mass of information spewed at you, shortcuts are needed, so people become either entirely virtuous or entirely evil.

I think once you understand that kind of black/white world-view, something as crazy as "cancel culture" makes more sense. If someone who was previously counted in the "good" column says a small thing that is not good, they're immediately shifted into the "evil" column because if they're not "good" what else could they be? Once relocated, they are then free to be subjected to the full fury that a betrayed mind can muster.

This is a generational phenomenon, and there's a reason why the higher profile victims are all people who grew up before there was an "internet": it's not that they were able to "get away with" their contrarian views before the likes of Twitter, it was that those statements were met by more measured, nuanced rebuttal and civil debate.
 
This is a generational phenomenon, and there's a reason why the higher profile victims are all people who grew up before there was an "internet": it's not that they were able to "get away with" their contrarian views before the likes of Twitter, it was that those statements were met by more measured, nuanced rebuttal and civil debate.
Great post, I agree with all of it. To pick up on the bit above, a second reason is that people of this generation were what you might think of as ‘first generation Woke’ inasmuch as their formative years were the years of MLK, Women’s Lib, The civil rights movements, CND, etc, and the beginnings of the rejection of casual racism and sexism in popular entertainment. We knew that the old stuff was wrong, and there was much iniquity, and were feeling our way towards a better society. We also carried the baggage of those old ideas, though, and sometimes bits of it we’ve not really thought about manage to reveal themselves.

Part of the current problem, it seems to me, is that people are being required to be pure of thought, as well as righteous in deed. I don’t think that is entirely possible. The best we humans can manage is a recognition that some innermost thoughts and gut reactions are wrong, and we consciously suppress them. But having the thoughts isn’t wrong, it is just human. And sometimes, it takes a third person’s perspective to point out why, and where the thought is wrong. If they are too busy demonising you to explain your error, how do you learn?
 
You must accept my views on everything in their totality. If you don't, you have no right to speak or work, and I will boycott everything you do or have done.
 
Good thread, but it is becoming confused and confusing.

On freedom of speech and tolerance:

The argument is people should tolerate other people's speech without trying to counter it. This is usually brought up when Anne Coulter or such wants to go to a liberal college and give a hate speech show and local students demonstrate and sometimes force the Conservative Club to cancel the event. Notice that Anne is not being denied her right to express her opinion - she is a famous and rich person with no shortage of expression channels. She is being denied an access to a local public venue, which is not a right.

In such a case, I believe that a community decency standard should be operative. Coulter is a hate speech performance artist and a community should have a right to deny her performance space, much like a live sex show or a dog fighting championship. I find this denial of privilege behavior perfectly normal.

When people try to shout down others' speech they find objectionable, they are exercising their own right of free speech. End of story. Preaching polite behavior is nice, but that's a separate complaint. When I speak I don't have a right to polite silence.


On Rowling and trans phobia:

She is expressing a not too uncommon viewpoint shared by Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. You can read all about it, but in a nutshell, an older radical feminist contingent feels that trans women are not women and their identity threatens gender-based feminism they grew up with.

I don't agree, but can sort of see how a sudden influx of new women who used to be men can unnerve an older feminist who has spent a lifetime advocating for the female gender.

Rowling has a perfect right to say her thing. But she has no right for polite defference from people who passionately believe that trans people have suffered enough and they don't want to enable more hate toward them.

This may have been posted before:

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

It's a complex read. She got some of my sympathy part way through with an honest retelling of her domestic abuse and wanting to protect her daughter. But then she decided that the real danger is from "men who think they are women" going into women's bathrooms. By now this has really a form of trans blood libel - a gross, false and grotesque attack with a purpose of inciting trans phobia. So not surprising she got pushback - she absulutely should.

Interesting point about access to public spaces; however, not all speech is equal under the First Amendment e.g. subversive speech.
 
You must accept my views on everything in their totality. If you don't, you have no right to speak or work, and I will boycott everything you do or have done.

Again that’s a bit of a right-wing trope. The reality is we live in a marketplace and as an example I have the absolute right to refuse to drink in a Wetherspoons, complain to advertisers who advertise in bigoted hate publications such as the Daily Mail etc. We have as much right to call out and boycott as others do to speak. As a platform owner/publisher I also have a right to define the parameters of what I am prepared to host, e.g. any racists and other bigots are out the door here pretty fast. I support ‘no-platforming’ racists, fascists etc. If I’m not prepared to do it here why should I expect a student union, public venue or wherever to?

PS I’m deliberately staying at a safe distance from JK Rowling’s postings as I’m obviously not in any credible position to mansplain her position and views as a woman/feminist, especially her perspective as a survivor of abuse. I will just walk quietly backwards Homer Simpson-style into the hedge whilst trying my best to upset neither the radical feminists or the trans community, both of whom I would happily defend and welcome here. I genuinely support both, but they really need to sort this one out between them IMHO.
 
Good thread, but it is becoming confused and confusing.

On freedom of speech and tolerance:

The argument is people should tolerate other people's speech without trying to counter it. This is usually brought up when Anne Coulter or such wants to go to a liberal college and give a hate speech show and local students demonstrate and sometimes force the Conservative Club to cancel the event. Notice that Anne is not being denied her right to express her opinion - she is a famous and rich person with no shortage of expression channels. She is being denied an access to a local public venue, which is not a right.

In such a case, I believe that a community decency standard should be operative. Coulter is a hate speech performance artist and a community should have a right to deny her performance space, much like a live sex show or a dog fighting championship. I find this denial of privilege behavior perfectly normal.

When people try to shout down others' speech they find objectionable, they are exercising their own right of free speech. End of story. Preaching polite behavior is nice, but that's a separate complaint. When I speak I don't have a right to polite silence.


On Rowling and trans phobia:

She is expressing a not too uncommon viewpoint shared by Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. You can read all about it, but in a nutshell, an older radical feminist contingent feels that trans women are not women and their identity threatens gender-based feminism they grew up with.

I don't agree, but can sort of see how a sudden influx of new women who used to be men can unnerve an older feminist who has spent a lifetime advocating for the female gender.

Rowling has a perfect right to say her thing. But she has no right for polite defference from people who passionately believe that trans people have suffered enough and they don't want to enable more hate toward them.

This may have been posted before:

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/...ns-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

It's a complex read. She got some of my sympathy part way through with an honest retelling of her domestic abuse and wanting to protect her daughter. But then she decided that the real danger is from "men who think they are women" going into women's bathrooms. By now this has really a form of trans blood libel - a gross, false and grotesque attack with a purpose of inciting trans phobia. So not surprising she got pushback - she absulutely should.


Good post, as a parent of a trans child I find Rowlings statements prejudiced and ignorant for the following reason, in Sweden pretty well all toilets are unisex, will she avoid coming here?, last time I looked out of the window the place wasn't falling apart, as for the argument that some people might pretend to be trans to obtain access to womens toilets that is straight prejudice, its like banning black people from shops because some black people steal and white people might disguise themselves as black people. The idea the people want to be trans, for if you like, fun or its trendy is just lunacy, its psychologically very difficult and is shown by the huge incidence of self harm and suicide by trans people. It doesn't matter that its difficult to imagine what its like to be trans or why people might want to change gender there is enough evidence out there that it is real and by the way trans people are just as human as the rest of us, shame on Rowling for such ignorant prejudice. She is not having her right to free speech challenged, she is being allowed to be a bigot and other people are expressing their freedom of speech to call her one.
 
I think it is increasingly difficult to be across every issue, there is a degree of ignorance & indifference.

Some people are just not that interested, they mean no harm but probably only engage in matters directly effecting them.

I learn more about these issues as I go along, I can now see how JKR caused offence but also was appalled at some of the responses. I understand she was accused of weaponising her own abuse.
 
That sort of substance is what HRC should have posted, although I always dislike the "sentence-by-sentence rebuttal" form of debate. This is a discussion of ideas, it's not a supply contract for machine parts. (Also, on a technical level, it's the paragraph, not the sentence, that is the unit of "expressing a point"; isolating sentences from paragraphs is not as bad as isolating words, but it's on the same scale)

Back on the original topic, you see quite a few replies on Twitter like this one: "can you help me - I don't know where JK Rowling stands or whether I should be praising her or hating her?" This illustrates the bigger problem. Twitter and other social media platforms are tribal, and people want to know what their "in-group behaviour" should be. But the abbreviated commentary means Twitter is also highly polarising: there's A and Z, but nothing between - a couple of hundred characters doesn't suit nuance. There's no space for someone whose views are sometimes abhorrent to you, but whom you mostly agree with: in this world, with no time to process the mass of information spewed at you, shortcuts are needed, so people become either entirely virtuous or entirely evil.

I think once you understand that kind of black/white world-view, something as crazy as "cancel culture" makes more sense. If someone who was previously counted in the "good" column says a small thing that is not good, they're immediately shifted into the "evil" column because if they're not "good" what else could they be? Once relocated, they are then free to be subjected to the full fury that a betrayed mind can muster.

This is a generational phenomenon, and there's a reason why the higher profile victims are all people who grew up before there was an "internet": it's not that they were able to "get away with" their contrarian views before the likes of Twitter, it was that those statements were met by more measured, nuanced rebuttal and civil debate.
Excellent post. Some great points made there.

I’ll add that a very large part of the problem is that many people guilty of behaving in this way are oblivious to the fact they are doing it and form gangs. I don’t bother with tw*tter, but on pfm reference has been made by some to a pfm pile-on. It’s mostly laughable but overall is a negative thing that stifles proper discussion.
 
Good post, as a parent of a trans child I find Rowlings statements prejudiced and ignorant for the following reason, in Sweden pretty well all toilets are unisex, will she avoid coming here?, last time I looked out of the window the place wasn't falling apart, as for the argument that some people might pretend to be trans to obtain access to womens toilets that is straight prejudice, its like banning black people from shops because some black people steal and white people might disguise themselves as black people. The idea the people want to be trans, for if you like, fun or its trendy is just lunacy, its psychologically very difficult and is shown by the huge incidence of self harm and suicide by trans people. It doesn't matter that its difficult to imagine what its like to be trans or why people might want to change gender there is enough evidence out there that it is real and by the way trans people are just as human as the rest of us, shame on Rowling for such ignorant prejudice. She is not having her right to free speech challenged, she is being allowed to be a bigot and other people are expressing their freedom of speech to call her one.
Excellent post.

I think the problem I have is that I don’t feel I am in a position to speak on behalf of women on this issue.

Unfortunately there are extreme examples which will be used for the purposes of wider prejudice.

I agree with the entirety of your post.
 
Freedom of speech, not freedom of hate speech...
Precisely. "I don't like Section A of the population" is acceptable. Bigoted, but if I want to be a bigot that's up to me. "I don't like Section A of the population, let's kill them" is incitement and rightly illegal.
 


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