Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

What could possibly be interesting about talking about what happens to JK Rowling, a genre fiction author who is richer than her decrepit Queen and who derives no income from posting online

Nothing will happen to her, she’s not going to get murdered in her castle by trans terrorists

Has money, won't be murdered - end of discussion!

I mean. Yeah?

Are you worried about how she feels???

Literally nothing has happened to any of these people. They’ve made bad posts online and other posters are telling them to stfu because they don’t know what they are talking about.

Some of them were targeted by fatwas iirc.

What is a fatwa but a post by another name

A fatwa is a 'formal legal opinion' in Arabic, so it checks out.

I think what is going on is more like if the mullahs issued a fatwa and everyone clowned them mercifully.

lol, mercilessly

The argument that masses of people calling you a hateful TERF cunt and saying your books should be burned, etc, doesn't count as a thing that has 'happened to' someone, sounds like an argument that words are just words which ... I don't think you really agree with

Ok I’ll revise: i literally do not care what happens to JK Rowling, I have no reason to extend her the courtesy of taking her perspective, nor do I think it’s an interesting intellectual exercise to do so

She is a terf cunt tho ppl should keep telling her that.

Every time she gets called out by her fans, which include the trans community, she just writes another essay explaining her opinion which is more offensive than the last, so...

There's a diff between ruining someone's life over an 8 year old Tweet made when someone was 12 and canceling someone who is repeatedly saying hurtful TERF things instead of having any real reflexion or withdrawing from the battle.

So yea, silby otm

Xpost

hateful TERF cunt

I mean, Rowling made a point of siding with people like Magdalen Berns:

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

There is nothing reasonable about defending the 'immensely brave' Berns, who has described trans women as 'blackface actors', 'men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women', in addition to outright stating that 'trans women are men' (see Kate's posts upthread).

And this is just one example among many of Rowling's dog whistling (I'm being very generous here).

I only objected to ganging up on Rowling when the evidence was a few people on her follow list. Can't imagine trying to do so after the last 5 months

Following on Twitter = 'make a point of siding with' = 'defending' = TERF?

Did you read the essay she wrote

It's far more than defending someone

Not gonna embed the full Berns quote itt but it's considerably worse in context. You can look it up if you want.

cardamom, that indented quote speaks for itself, but read Rowling's essay if you haven't already. It's not just about 'following someone on Twitter'.

Errr cardamon.

The argument that masses of people calling you a hateful TERF cunt and saying your books should be burned, etc, doesn't count as a thing

Then the letter might have been better if it had argued that people shouldn't shout abuse at other people and should continue to buy their products.

The problem here is that calling people names is also free speech, as is making decisions about who's products to buy

We can certainly make the argument that we shouldn't go round hurling abuse at people, though that might run counter to the spirit of the letter, if they had done that

Literally nothing has happened to any of these people.

I doubt anyone will be Graham Linehan to write anything anytime soon.

... asking Graham Linehan to write anything anytime soon.

More of a “did to self” than “happened to” in that case, I daresay

Lots of people don’t get asked to write for things. If TERF-man is reduced to moaning about it at the pub, he’s merely been brought to the same level as all the rest of us. Let Harry Potter lady self publish; let David Brooks exercise his free speech in the yahoo news comments section, god knows he has no more insight than anyone else there

yeah i think if Linehan was being this much of an asshole about basically any contentious topic he'd be in the same boat, he sounds like a completely toxic person to have to interact with.

I want to write a sitcom treatment about a guy who destroys his life because he can't bear to be wrong about something on Twitter, maybe he'd go for that.

I think there's a teasing implication here that some of us (on dear old ILX and on Twitter) do, in fact, believe in freedom of speech ... when used defensively, as it were, at someone deemed to have 'shot first'.

Punishment must not be restricted by concerns about proportionality, and it's definitely retributive rather than restorative justice we're looking for. Asking for limits, 'civility', in the responses to the baddy is not the done thing.

Where I differ, I think, from the free speech letter in Harper's, is I largely get why this attitude is the attitude.

If you're familiar with online discussion, you're definitely familiar with trolling (i.e. someone in bad faith saying whatever will piss off the village, for a laugh) and mostly the safest bet is to block trolls. You can't assume there's a real person there to have dialogue with/appeal to, and most likely there isn't.

And it's difficult to fully articulate how much damage is being done irl by online hate speech, though we know damage is being done (mass shooters quoting stuff from online in their manifestos). It's murky, which makes figuring out a proportionate punishment complicated, therefore no one bothers with proportionality. And also what exactly would restorative justice look like, in the case of JKR?

Magdalen Berns also tweeted about the “trans lobby” being funded by Soros, so you know she was very decent indeed.

In fact JKR also tweeted in support of Maya Forstater, for what JKR says was being forced out of her job “for stating that sex is real?”

The truth is a bit different.

Maya Forstater’s contract was not renewed and she took her ex employer to court for it, claiming her right to free expression had been breached because of her “gender critical beliefs”.

She was tweeting terf stuff and this was raised with HR by her colleagues, she misgendered people constantly and referred to trans women as men. Basically she wanted the law to endorse her right to say whatever she wanted in the workplace over the legal right of someone to be identified as male or female. The law did not back her up and the judgement said:

“The claimant is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”

Forstater, in her witness statement, more or less confirmed this: It “may be polite,” she acknowledged, to use a person’s preferred pronouns, “but there is no fundamental right to compel people to be polite or kind in every situation.”

And the judge also said “I conclude from … the totality of the evidence, that (Forstater) is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

Now personally if it was me, and I had to hear those things said about myself, I’d probably die of shame, but she’s just started crowdfunding and painting herself as a free speech martyr, same as the rest of them. No respect for her and even less for Rowling.

And she tweeted in defence of Maya Forstater in December 2019, by the way.

I question why anyone needs to extend a magnanimity to these people that will never be reciprocated, or care about how to rehabilitate them, any more than for richard spencer or whoever

And also what exactly would restorative justice look like, in the case of JKR?

― Never changed username before (cardamon)

oh! there's an actual question. thank you for posting that cardamon, you spared me from posting a fairly ill-tempered and lengthy response to your suggestion that perhaps there was some "miscommunication" going on.

restorative justice is contingent on the perpetrator admitting and taking accountability for wrongdoing. it is _not within my power_ to heal the results of an ongoing wrong for which the perpetrator is not only not repentant, but is actively proud of. absent accountability, i cannot forgive people their wrongs, only excuse them. the inability or refusal to acknowledge this is another fairly severe failing of liberal thought.

The Fields o' Fat Henry (Tom D.) at 11:53 11 Jul 20

Literally nothing has happened to any of these people.

I doubt anyone will be Graham Linehan to write anything anytime soon

I mean....good?

How many people on Earth have more interesting things to say than Linehan? a million? a billion?

all of which to say all these motherfuckers aren't concerned about "free speech" it's their privilege being stripped away, they believe that they deserve a large platform to speak from and be well paid to do it.

lemme try and soften up that post i didn't make a little bit and see if i can get something out of it.

i have a hard time reading defenses of rowling right now as anything _other_ than a tu quoque argument, as anything other than "whataboutism". i talk about my problems, my personal problems, about how transphobia hurts me, and if someone responds "yes, but surely you have to admit that rowling hasn't been treated fairly" - we're back to the idea that there is no functional difference between ignorance and trolling, right?

one possible interpretation of that statement in context is that it is deliberate use of a rhetorical trick to avoid confronting or addressing my specific concerns and the specific needs trans and gender-non-conforming people have.

another possible interpretation of that statement is that the person making it is sincere, that the person making that statement is genuinely seriously concerned that rowling's wholehearted commitment to the erasure of trans lives might possibly negatively impact her professional prospects.

and you want to have it all, right? all lives matter, right? you can't possibly see how making that argument _necessarily_ undermines trans and gnc self-determination, can't see why expressing concern for rowling is deterimental and hurtful to trans and gnc people. cardamon, i don't know how on earth to explain that to you. it's like explaining the colour green to someone, or trying to convince a person to put on, say, a special pair of sunglasses. i have to believe, have to hope, that you are acting in good faith, that eventually you will figure out the problem twelve thousand people are trying to explain to you at once, and not give up and say "the hell with those trans people, they don't know how to treat other people with respect".

(xp) Er, yes. The point was being made that nothing ever happens to any of these people and I was merely pointing out that sometimes something does happen to these people. I'm not talking him being flung off Twitter, I couldn't give a fuck about that, I'm talking about what he actually (is supposed) to do for a living, I can't see him being commissioned to write anything for anyone anytime soon.

He has said he’s lost work because of it. However I think he’s a slightly different case in that he was so abrasive and aggressive and got more so as time went on that he was actually damaging to the cause - none of his celebrity pals spoke up about his banning, which I thought was very telling.

Literally nothing has happened to any of these people.

I doubt anyone will be Graham Linehan to write anything anytime soon

I think "any of these people" meant the ppl who signed the Harper's thing. Linehan didn't get asked, mostly because he's a comparative nobody. Which is also why Rowling will never be as badly off as him, more's the pity.

Probably yes, I came in in the middle of a conversation tbh.

great posts by kate itt

Is it coincidence that this debate seems to break down almost perfectly along snark vs smarm lines

and you want to have it all, right? all lives matter, right? you can't possibly see how making that argument _necessarily_ undermines trans and gnc self-determination, can't see why expressing concern for rowling is deterimental and hurtful to trans and gnc people.

not to try to gloss anything cardamon said, but: if you think that it's possible for things that a person says, beliefs they have, espouse, etc., discourse they generate (excrementally, as it were), to have the conequence that other people can no longer (legitimately, justly, without doing any harm, etc.—take your pick) express any sort of concern for them in any way, particularly concerns defined by universal human charity (as in 'a charitable read'), forbearance, love, patience, etc., or an impartiality that tries to assess every situation and every case based on its merits, and tries to see that no person receive less nor more than they are due (because of their own actions, because of what's been done to them, because of norms of rational consideration, because of anything)—then you are demanding that those on your side relinquish their basic commitments to justice, fairness, equality, compassion, yadda yadda yadda, as part of the price of showing compassion and solidarity for you. you can do that more loudly and you can strew more recriminations about as you do so, but i don't think it's going to budge the people who perceive that you are asking something non-negotiable of them.

an impartiality that tries to assess every situation and every case based on its merits

This was where I pulled up because there's no such thing as "impartiality" — everyone comes into a situation with biases, whether drawn from socialization or personal experience or material interests, but one way or another they affect their perception, and therefore the "merits" of each "case" are going to look very different to each observer. There are always sides, frequently more than two, and you always have to pick. You are not hovering on a cloud; you are waist deep in the same shit as the rest of us.

these disingenuous appeals to universalism are such bs

people say that but i doubt they believe it wholeheartedly. the whole legal system is designed around the presumption that setting up authorities on the law to hear arguments between two sides about the facts is an undertaking that works best of the authorities judge impartially. it's one thing to say 'there is no impartiality'. it would be another to tell anyone who's called to judge something that they should give up on trying to be impartial when it's possible and when it matters.

Left can sneer and posture all he/she wants but i doubt a credible defense of total abandonment of basic human decency will be forthcoming

The legal system is so great?