The JK Rowling/Transgender Discussion

ceezmad · Aug 3, 2020

Dr. Wankler said: ↑

Very little to do with sex and gender, but an interesting discussion featuring a range of authors on free speech. This might be a good place for it. Or not. Others can decide.

https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/college-campus-protest-free-speech-moral-panic.html

One passage:

Robbie The next phase of this conversation will move to the workplace. I recently wrote about a San Francisco museum curator who was forced to resign because he said, after noting the museum’s diversity efforts, that well, of course, there would still be paintings from white artists too. Was it clumsy phrasing? Sure. But it created a petition that branded him a white supremacist and demanded his immediate ouster. This is the kind of thing that worries me and probably worries a lot of other people. Was it properly a free speech issue? I guess not. Still seems bad and wrong.

Pardis: But this is why we need freedom to be wrong, and freedom to be clumsy, and freedom to talk about things, about pain points, about racism in safe ways.

Andrés: Slate alum Michelle Goldberg wrote in her New York Times column that she does worry about the left having a speech problem in a climate of “punitive heretic-hunting” (speaking of Trotsky), and she alluded to NYU professor Jonathan Haidt’s criticism of “safetyism“ in these debates, when disagreements are quick to lead to calls for HR to get involved. She wrote that “even sympathetic people will come to resent a left that refuses to make a distinction between deliberate slurs, awkward mistakes and legitimate disagreements.”

Robbie is Robbie Soave, who writes for Reason and is for my money one of the best reporters on the Higher Ed beat. Pardis is Pardis Mahdavi, who as an Iranian scholar was almost cancelled for good and who s currently a social science dean at Arizona State, and Andres is Andres Martinez, editorial director at Future Tense, who sponsers the talk. There are others, too.

There's more I find interesting, but my iPad is being an asshole.
Click to expand...

You can get fired for saying many things, there is not freedom of speech there.

It is part of cancel culture, but legally speaking if enough pressure gets put on your employer for something you say, you can be fired.

Dr. Wankler · Aug 3, 2020

ceezmad said: ↑

You can get fired for saying many things, there is not freedom of speech there.

It is part of cancel culture, but legally speaking if enough pressure gets put on your employer for something you say, you can be fired.
Click to expand...

I disagree with Robbie Soave there: it can still be considered a "freedom of speech" issue, it's just not a First Amendment issue.

But this is America: we're cool with giving business power over individuals we don't give to the government.

A philosopher makes the case here, with rebuttals from others who don't buy her argument.

Belgian guy · Aug 4, 2020

Can we at least agree JK was not cancelled? Some people collectively decided they now deem her an asshole, but both her wealth and the cultural impact (world-wide) of the Potterverse essentially makes her an uncancellable individual.

My opinion on the discussion at the heart of this isn't really relevant (seems like something that should be resolved between Cis- and trans-women).

More generally speaking, I do think both sides are guilty of oversimplifying issues of what are essentially competing rights between two historically disenfranchised groups. Any simple solution to such complex realities must almost always be bullshit.