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You actually aren't free to threaten people, not even in glorious USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimidation#United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menacing

(probably more)

Something to keep in mind.

Sure, that's why I threw the word usually in there. My point isn't that what happened here is "Right" or "wrong" my point is, 10% of the internet freaks out about all of these things, and 10% trolls, and 80% shrugs.

If you want to understand the other 90% you need to read all of what they say before you downvote it.

The rest of the paragraph betrays your usually.

No, what I mean by that is that it will always be legal to hurt people in certain ways with words. Those ways are not threats but emotional... such as:

What I had in mind was a mother saying "I never loved you" to her kid. Or a father suggesting it's the kid's fault that Mommy left/died/drinks. Or telling somebody they're a loser and will never amount to something. Or that they're ugly and unloveable.

When you go to the grocery store and you see a mother be really awful to her kid (or dog), you don't call the police (and you couldn't, unless it was physical). But instead you give them a dirty look-- you use social pressure instead of legal pressure.

And we do this because the legal system isn't well equipped to handle such injustices (these cases would often be heresay, too expensive, too long/convoluted). But the social-pressure system has its own limits, and gets abused too.

This isn't good analysis:

So those people who have been the victim of politics (you used a gender-specific pronoun, now I will shun you, but I'm really doing it because I don't like you and want to hurt you but have a convenient social excuse to ostracize you and look like the good guy for doing it) often overreact and take out their anger anonymously online.

People aren't getting shunned for using gendered pronouns. They might think that's why people avoid them, but if that is the only thing they are doing, no.

How can you say nobody is getting shunned for gender pronouns?

Did read the link I posted about people getting in trouble for the word "Niggardly?" The fact is, plainly that there are SOME people who use the guise of political correctness as a power game. Sorry if you don't want to believe that, but the evidence is pretty clear.

Now this doesn't invalidate all of political correctness, because the world isn't black and white. The fact is, there are bad people out there, and they are on both sides (and this is true for almost any issue), and if you cannot admit this then your tribalism is actually part of the problem.

How can you say nobody is getting shunned for gender pronouns?

Do you mean how can I prove it? I can say it really easily, because I believe it. Proving it would be pretty hard (logically it's impossible). But you haven't exactly demonstrated that people are getting shunned for uttering pronouns

As far as the link, there's like 4 really not that horrible situations listed (a guy moved to a different job, a university decided to abolish its academic speech code (the opposite direction of reprimanding someone for speech), a teacher wrote some letters, unclear). It's not exactly evidence of the widespread horrors of PC shunning.

Now this doesn't invalidate all of political correctness, because the world isn't black and white. The fact is, there are bad people out there, and they are on both sides (and this is true for almost any issue), and if you cannot admit this then your tribalism is actually part of the problem.

Yes of course there are people that take things too far. But your argument is that there are so many of those people, shunning so many other people unfairly over tiny issues, that they have created a troll army on the internet. It's ludicrous.

Well I can tell you I've personally had situations in my life where:

- I was told things like "You can't understand this as a white man,"

- I had a coworker get very disturbed (and possibly go to HR) because another coworker used the word "Tight ass" about me (as a joke, which I was cool with. Unclear if he thought that was anti-homosexual, or disapproved of the word ass).

- Where I went to college, an allegedly racist student was attacked and it was recommended he withdraw from university "for his own safety" over some confusion over an allegedly racist cartoon on a fridge in a common area.

- I had a coworker recently say on slack that she would "feel uncomfortable as a woman if her manager suggested that Trump isn't racist."

- During the anti-Trump marches in SF I saw a group of people attack a man standing to the side holding a pro-Trump sign.

So, therefore, yes, some people are doing one of two things:

- Getting really emotional about equality and wanting to play hero so badly that it goes to their heads in a way that makes them the bad guys.

- Ruthless people use whatever tool they can to try to win an argument.

Now maybe you're in the South, where you are surrounded by actual racists doing actual hate crimes, so I understand you may have valid personal experiences around racism. But if you want to be a good person, it's your obligation to listen to and consider my experiences.

Because the pattern I seem to keep seeing is that self-righteousness is enemy.

What happened to the gendered pronouns?

While your analysis may be accurate, I don't think this case has anything to do with freedom of speech. If the attacker had walked up to the journalist with a strobe light with the intent of inducing a seizure, it would have no different to what happened here.

Did you read all of what I wrote? I'm not suggesting the action is "justified" because of "Freedom of Speech." But you absolutely cannot deny that from a legal context, this absolutely comes into a freedom of speech discussion. For the history see (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#U...)

In the information age, we are still trying to figure out the murky boundary cases in a way that makes sense, both legally and socially. Those cases include: cyber-bullying, drawing mohammad, posting people's address online, trolling, cease-and-desist[1], fake news / pizza-gate, speech-codes [2], whistle-blowing

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBO5dh9qrIQ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%...

Their analysis is not accurate.

Performance generally falls under speech, and hence is a protected right, but running up to an epileptic screaming I was going to cause a seizure while shining a strobe light at his face wouldn't be a protected "performance". It would be assault.

And so is this.

However, the fact is, words often can hurt more than physical violence.

Spoken like someone who has never been the victim of meaningful physical violence.