Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

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?

*they

I’m sorry for disrespecting the legal system your honour

eye on the ball, silbs

it is an actual instance of impartiality being realized in practice

as can be found in every walk of life at every level

perfectly? of course not. but do we abandon the idea? i doubt you can make that case

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.

― j.

i would with quibble your word choice here, but other than that, uh, i'm not actually sure i disagree with you! this is sort of the heart of it, why i say i'm not a liberal and i'm opposed to liberalism - what those words - "justice, fairness, equality, compassion" - mean to liberals is not necessarily the same as what they mean to me! i look at the way liberalism has implemented its professed ideals over the course of its existence, and there have been lines drawn, priorities made, privileges granted, and those privileges have, historically, pretty much always excluded trans people, as well as a number of other marginalized classes. we don't always play nice, we're not easy to ignore, a lot of do things that disgust a lot of the nice clean gatekeepers in order to survive. liberalism has a pronounced tendency to prioritize people like rowling over people like me, and i accordingly have a certain lack of trust when liberals say "look, can't we just agree you both have valid concerns?" because i see how that's worked out for people like me in the past - rowling's concerns get addressed first, and ours are an afterthought, if they're addressed at all.

yeah, if someone can't find it in themselves to question the values they were taught, values that are not necessarily in accordance with empirical reality, i don't know that they're going to be a very good "ally".

let me rephrase your statement as i would say it:

if you (the generic "you", here), as a liberal, want to be an effective ally to trans and gnc people, you need to be willing to question the values you were taught, be willing to acknowledge that "justice" and "fairness" and "equality" may not mean the same things to you as they mean to a trans or gender non-conforming person. you need to be able to listen to trans and gender non-conforming people, openly and honestly, and, if necessary, change your beliefs based on what we have to tell you.

Ok sure fine but what is the relevance of the legal system to being rude to children’s book authors online

xp

JK rowling can foad

xps yes you were not meant to disagree with me because i am trying to reframe what i presume is one of your beliefs so that you acknowledge it is in tension with the other line you seem to be taking, that sometimes for the sake of some ends some people can be (substitute most apt option here) written off, destroyed, abandoned to the twitter mob, removed from the circle of concern about sufferings unjust or otherwise, etc.

as far as i was following it the latter is the sort of thing that was giving some itt pause.

silby you disappoint i thought you had read your john stuart mill

I don’t think it’s the case that not giving an iota of a shit about the words deployed against people for their bad posts, and preferring that they not be given the time of day in the discursive sphere, is tantamount to severing them from the human community and the embrace of civil society.

j. I assure you I have never read anything.

if we draw up a table of harms people ought not to suffer, ones that they can expect others in society to protect them from and come to their aid if they suffer, then we're also presuming some degree of impartiality in people's (perhaps individual, perhaps as part of a group or process) assessments of whether harm has been suffered, whether it merits response, whether the injuring party deserves punishment or owes anything to the injured, etc.

some sense of whether what befalls people is deserved or not (however it needs to be calibrated or corrected by reference to other people's judgments, to history, to analyses of society, etc.) is foundational to any effort to impress people into service in a moral or political project for the sake of society / the general good

anyone who urges prospective participants in that project to abandon their sense of impartiality is asking them to mutilate the same thing that was being appealed to in seeking their support in the first place

Maybe it’s fine to suffer the harm of being mercilessly harangued when you say hateful ignorant things about marginalized people, then continue doubling down on it forever. Is that not impartial

As we all know I think it’s good not bad to hurl abuse at people posting harmful and ignorant things

It might get them to stop posting, which would be good

well, take care that you don't have too metaphysical a view of the nature of that act of abuse

on utilitarian terms (apt for people who care about alleviating harms and social ills) the occurrence of abuse can have consequences with uncontrollable or unforeseen downsides

We also all know I’m not a utilitarian!!

if we are having a discussion about freeze peach, other rights, and harms and sufferings then you can't take utilitarians' terms and ideas into account even if you don't agree with them, they're just basic to the controversy as it exists in present-day society

Feel like “rights” can survive as a concept outside of the consequentialist fishtank

certainly, but the fishtank often supplies tools for critiquing existing codifications/tacit understandings of rights.

Idk surely we’re far afield at this point, my only real point is that I assume whatever this letter says is stupid and I don’t object to anyone hassling its presumably mostly rich, comfortable, and famous signatories for signing stupid letters.

And, I guess, that I don’t understand why anyone would have so much time as cardamon does for worrying about how poor Jo Rowling, wealthy intellectual property magnate, feels about being told she’s a dummy.

READ WHAT I WROTE… AND THEN READ WHAT YOU WROTE

No I’m already tired of reading.

ah well it's back to shitposting i guess

“Back”?

charity my man charity

the perfect union of 19th century enlightenment philosophy and shitposting, at least achieved

I mean I’m not gonna front like I’m never mad and I think this is all just a gas, all this posting, but I’m pretty dumb and I mostly post to see what words look like in an order, I’m v glad you and the Enlightenment thinkers are so confident in universal principles but I’m just trying to figure out my own if u feel me

any principles are already on the road to being universal principles

Guess I shouldn’t have any.

I mean I ascribe to a particularist religion, it’s against my religion to believe everyone should follow the principles of my religion

xps yes you were not meant to disagree with me because i am trying to reframe what i presume is one of your beliefs so that you acknowledge it is in tension with the other line you seem to be taking, that sometimes for the sake of some ends some people can be (substitute most apt option here) written off, destroyed, abandoned to the twitter mob, removed from the circle of concern about sufferings unjust or otherwise, etc.

as far as i was following it the latter is the sort of thing that was giving some itt pause.

― j.

ok i'm just going to ignore all the posts after this because i can't follow them.

no, nobody _should_ be just blithely written off as unimportant or "unmutual" or toxic or whatever. all lives matter, humans have fundamental inalienable dignity, yadda yadda yadda, you want me to affirm all those liberal nostrums i will. what i'm saying is that i do not have the _luxury_ of governing my life entirely by abstract ideals, that i value a particular expression of an abstract ideal based mostly on the results it produces, particularly and especially as those results bear on me and the people i care about. you want to hold me accountable for those actions, you want to hold me accountable for violating liberal norms, well, you just go right ahead. based on my observation, i believe those norms have, in practice, failed, and anybody who clings to them, without question, as the only hope for DUMPLINGS! is someone whose allyship i trust and value, and for that matter someone whose judgement i fear, about as much as mitt romney.

that's not an inflexible or universal belief. however, tut-tutting at me about how i am failing _your_ fucking Universal Human Principles does nothing to persuade me.

i am tired, motherfucking tired, of public intellectuals talking about "justice". fucking show me it, show me what your "justice" looks like, and i'll tell you whether it's something i can get behind or not. how's that sound?

Basically want to say that Kate's recent posts in this thread are justification for the existence of this stupid thread.