Who decides what voices should be silent?
Gay people are a subset of people who have been harassed because of something that a) they cannot control, b) harms nobody (As long as it is between two consenting adults, but that's the same for heterosexual relations).
Fascists are a subset of people who have been harassed because a) they call for non-whites to be exterminated, b) previous fascist movements have put into practice that goal.
The difference is: If I speak about death to gay people, historically this has led to gay people dying -- even if a gay person sat still, they would be attacked. If I speak about death to fascists, historically this has led to fascists dying -- but only after they have mobilized to take power andor spread their beliefs.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out which voices should be silent. That is, if one values equality among fellow humans, and keeps a gentle eye on history.
This gets kind of dicey to implement in a place like SF, where it seems like half the people my age think that all registered Republicans are, ipso facto, literally fascists.
And I will show you a group of fallen men, like the rest of us, who will abuse their power for political gain.
And where do you draw the line? Maybe you could get everyone to agree on "kill all gays" being irredeemably intolerant. But what about conservatives who think that children benefit from having a mother and a father and so believe that only adoption by married heterosexual couples should be allowed[1]? According to you, is that just wrong or is it worthy of censorship? And what of the many religions who believe that wives should obey their husbands? And what of discussions of multiculturalism and its potential threats to social cohesion? You give only easy examples, but the trouble is never with the easy examples.
[1] And the for the record, I'm in favor of allowing adoption by gay couples.
>Voices that call for repression of rights for certain parties should be silenced.
This is going to sound unbelievably pedantic and frustrating, but... What about the right to free speech?
1. Vulnerable groups should be protected. If my speech has historically led to The Right To Life of others being violated, then their right to life is much more important than the freedom or protection of my speech.
2. The right to free speech is a legal device to protect you from the government coming into your home and taking you to a gulag for stating certain things. In no cases are your rights to speak being violated, you can speak these things privately within your home. However, when in public and on private land, we need different rules. Just as public indecency violates your right to wear or not wear whatever you wish when out and about, so do hate speech, libel, slander, and defamation laws also restrict what you can state in public.
3. I wonder why people only bring this up with respect to social justice discourse. A couple of months ago, a person was taken to court by someone in government for laughing at them during a speech. Just this week the CDC was banned by the government from saying "evidence-based" and "science-based". And yet the social groups (on 4chan, twitter, facebook, HN, etc.) that frequently claim for freedom of speech with respect to social justice is curiously silent about examples of actual government repression of speech. This leads me to believe that there is a certain disingenuity when this is used as a rebuttal.
In Sam's case, it sounds like all of his social discomfort is happening entirely within free speech principles?
From what I can gather, Sam sometimes freely-speaks an idea that other people find harmful. Others then freely-speak back to him that he should stop, because it's harmful.
But it sounds like Sam's arguing not just for the right to free speech, but the right to have everyone listen to you. That right is limited by others' rights to live peacefully, and not be regularly subjected to words that harm them.
What's in the back of my mind is an unremarkable person who has an opinion that their boss doesn't agree with. We never read their blog posts, because by definition I'm talking about when the power dynamic is backwards.
EXACTLY. It's amazing to me how many people take it upon themselves to conflate Right To A Platform and Right To Speak Unrebutted with the Right To Free Speech
Let's take a 30 year old and a 15 year old. We accept in a society that two 15 year olds can consent to sex to each other. We do not accept that a 30 year old and a 15 year old can consent to sex.
But for a person with a sexual preference for teens, their attraction is
(a) something they can't control
and
(b) something that doesn't harm anyone if there is consent between both parties.
There is a lot of room for argument here. Take a 15 year old and 19 year old. Is that okay? What about 17 and 19? Where's the line? How can it possibly be the case that age difference necessarily indicates a power differential that inhibits consent in all circumstances?
So we are in a pickle now. Either this similar argument is wrong, and hence the original argument can be questioned, or this argument is good, and hence the majority cultural belief about such relationships needs to be drastically questioned.
Either way, we should allow people to voice their arguments.
But for a person with a sexual preference for teens, their attraction is
(a) something they can't control
and
(b) something that doesn't harm anyone if there is consent between both parties.
A minor is someone who we have arbitrarily decided has less ability to determine how to act compared to an adult. Yes, different cultures having different ages indicate that this is arbitrary, and yes it is difficult to know where to draw the line exactly, but the fact is that to protect minors the line needs to be drawn somewhere. It is mildly contradictory that a 16 year old in Britain can sign up for the armed forces, have a child, and get married, but they are not allowed to drink or drive a car. That doesn't mean that those boundaries should not exist, however.
Ultimately the exact definition of these sorts of things come down to cultural handshakes. Why do people drive on the left-side or right-side of the road? It's a cultural handshake. Consent between two parties of different emotional maturity is a difficult thing to figure out, hence why we have the cultural handshake that says that for certain parties it is unacceptable for them to liasion at certain ages.
To say that those power dynamics apply to two adult men of the same age, is -- to put it mildly -- ridiculous.
But again, my main point stands. If we are to shut down any discussion of the scenario I gave, which many people would be willing to do, by your own considering this would be shutting down a discussion on whether we can drive on the right side of the road or whether we should shake hands.
And then this is predicated on such lack of debate not causing any harm, when it can be argued there is similar harm as what people say gay people experience.
Again, please, these are devil's advocate arguments. Not personal views.
We live in a political environment where you can be labeled a fascist for not wholeheartedly supporting an array of ideas that have been determined to be so obvious that they don't warrant discussion (large scale immigration, white culture as toxic, transgenderism as normal and desirable, just to name a few).
Given that context, you'll excuse me if the idea that we can easily figure out who deserves to be silenced is implausible.
As for your specific example, it doesn't really fit into what's happening now. Violence towards people labelled as fascists is common, but not the other way around. And in parallel cases, things like "death to cops" has absolutely led to an increase in people murdering police officers. This whole thing is benefiting the far right from a propaganda standpoint.
when it's acceptable and somewhat popular to say the same thing about whites, men, straight people, etc.
In contrast, cis white men are not being murdered by trans women. Thus for them to state that "cis should die" is a act of protest, and has very little effect on the real world. The difference is: Is this likely to happen, is this happening, and has this happened? In the former instance the case is yes, in the latter the case is no.
Violence towards people labelled as fascists is common, but not the other way around.
Indeed, White Supremacy is listed as one of the things that the US DHS is working to combat[2]
"death to cops" has absolutely led to an increase in people murdering police officers.
[0]: James Fields was a fascist. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/charlottesvi...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-dou...
[2]: https://www.dhs.gov/blog/2017/08/16/did-you-know-four-ways-d...
And there have been specific instances of BLM activists killing police, this being the most high profile one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police...
We also had a Bernie supporter shoot Steve Scalise, and the general social media response to Rand Paul being assaulted was celebratory and saying he deserved it for being a Republican.
Seems like the power dynamics doesn't necessarily mean what these people are saying won't lead to violence. There are certain things which no power imbalance excuses, and in my opinion this is one of them.
And what happened in Dallas is much more clear cut than what James Fields did in Charlottesville. He seemed to have snapped after someone hit his car with a bat. Seems more like road rage to me based on the video. I think they're going to have a hard time convicting him of 1st degree murder, honestly. Plus, had the police done their job that entire situation likely would have been avoided. The violence should not have been allowed to escalate like it was.
Normal humans will, in fact, stop associating with unpleasant people just as a matter of course.