Hacker News Reader

Comment by celdon25 | Hacker News Reader

I've heard Shapiro's opinion on the matter, and he is most definitely not intending to "call their otherness out". Rather, the point he intends to make is that by agreeing to others demands that he and others use "correct" pronouns, that he would be giving up his principles on free speech, and therefore the foundations of the country. Other people like to frame the issue as plain bigotry without trying to understand the actual point of view at hand.

View on HN

Everyone is welcome to exercise their freedom of speech to say offensive things -- and no one is required to give them a platform to do so. Nothing new here.

Miss Manners was strongly of the opinion that you should call people what they wished to be called. In her era, the controversy was about Miss vs. Mrs. vs. Ms.

That’s a convenient opinion for a married woman going by “miss”. Also, an opinion I agree with.

"Gosh. How can it possibly be bigotry to call people something they don't want to be called? I do it all the time." - the belief system of a bigot, spoiler alert.

So let's speak frankly for a tick. Is it that you have such a low opinion of your readers that you think that "oh, it's a well-known and self-admitted regressive's free speech in question, not that he hates trans people and has a vested interest in catering to those who hate trans people" is an actual argument? Or are you a dupe who genuinely buys it as if it were true?

Of course, my question is rhetorical. Not attempting to other trans people? Don't insult the people reading your comments like that. Shapiro's entire schtick is othering anyone who the GOP doesn't have in their pocket. His entire ethos, hell his entire telos, is to maximally hurt and control those who are not white, straight, preferably-Christian men (and them too, so long as they are poor).It has nothing to do with "free speech" except insofar as "free speech" can be perverted to "freedom to abuse others while remaining beyond their reach." That's what he gets out of bed in the morning for.

This insistence on assigning maximum negative intention to someone's actions is really bizarre, and is a trend I see a lot of on the Left today (though it isn't limited to them). You're reading into what Shapiro does (I don't follow the guy) and inventing an entire narrative around it that makes him sound like an actual in-real-life cypto-Nazi (which is a little strange, as understand that Shapiro is Jewish).

What you call "inventing", I call "having been unfortunately aware of his boil-on-the-public-discourse's-rear-end existence for most of his career." And to be very clear, he's not a crypto-Nazi. He carries water for crypto-Nazis because they pay his checks. Being Jewish is immaterial; this was the argument used about the gay, Jewish Milo Yiannpoulos not possibly being a literal fascist. Play that one back, too, and see where you get.

There is a strain of thought among the terminally gray-fallacious that somebody has to say "I am a trans-hating asshat" (which is different from being a Nazi, crypto- or otherwise) to be understood as a trans-hating asshat. He does it intentionally, he does it with malice, he does it to appease his similarly trans-hating-asshat bosses and customers, and we have the receipts. Res ipsa loquitur.

>His entire ethos, hell his entire telos, is to maximally hurt and control those who are not white, straight, preferably-Christian men

Shapiro is Jewish.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com