Ongoing Death of Free Speech: ACLU Lawyer Cheers Suppression of a New Book
greenwald.substack.com
greenwald.substack.com
Een volk dat voor tirannen zwicht, zal meer dan lijf en goed verliezen, dan dooft het licht...
This loosely translates to
People who yield to tyrants will not just lose their lives and goods, they will lose their soul...
Giving in to the cancel mob is not an option since that only makes them stronger. Assuming that you're convinced your ideas are just as valid as those espoused by the mob, just different, I see no reason for people to shut up in the name of keeping the peace. Speak your mind, enter discussions with those who are not of like mind. If you are met by nothing but shouted epithets, slurs and attempts to silence you consider this: if the shouters really were convinced they were on the right path they would not need to shout. They would meet your opinions with arguments of their own, they would speak as they are spoken to.
Don't let yourself be silenced.
Since you asked.
Sometimes I stay quiet because every infight in "The Left" is wasted airtime that allows my political opponents to look calm and normal.
Sometimes it's a matter of priority.
If I talk about gun control a lot, I'm going to turn off lots of people.
I wish the whole Democratic party would stop talking about gun control. I don't think it makes the biggest difference. If they talk about it, they will probably lose voters who would otherwise support issues I care about more.
So how does this relate to the book? I don't know. I haven't read the book. I heard it's bad.
Let's do an "if by whiskey".
If the book is bad... If it's complete misinformation, cherry-picked facts twisted to match bad-faith conclusions, and it's only going to hurt trans people... Then yes, I'm going to stand up brave and say "The publisher should refuse to carry this book, because it is full of harmful lies." Because it is damned expensive to get people to read the truth once they've bought the lies. As a capitalist, I don't want to sell the book about why Nazis are good if it means I have to waste a bunch of money writing a book that refutes it, which many of the readers will not read.
Of course, now we've invoked the Streisand Effect. It's far too late for effective good-faith censorship. Censorship at this point means that I, an adult trans woman with no children, am part of the same `#trans` hashtag as the performative-woke cancel-mob that just wants to mutilate children. I wish I could leave that hashtag. But nobody can take hashtags off once someone puts them on you.
If the book is bad, then it's too late to censor it. But I wish it had been censored sooner, within the publisher, because I think it's a very bad look for a publisher to (following your analogy) publish Nazi propaganda that they could choose to just not publish. If a book comes out to rebut this one, will it make the same headlines? Will it hit the front page of HN? Is this the replication crisis, but for the Twitter age? And before that book gets published, how much damage is done by people accepting un-rebutted misinformation?
If the book is good... If it's mostly true, if it's good-faith concern, and not whataboutism and concern _trolling_, then it still really sucks that people are going to read this headline, maybe even read the book, and come off thinking that I, an adult trans woman with no children, am now part of the same hashtag as the performative-woke cancel-mob that just wants to mutilate children. I wish I could leave that hashtag. But nobody can take hashtags off once someone puts them on you.
What's my unpopular opinion? People lack nuance. Especially online.
In my opinion the book is dangerous because the median person will spend at most 1 minute per day thinking about trans people. If that whole minute is, "Wow, trans people want children to mutilate themselves and separate them from their parents," then I have lost something.
Because now I am vaguely associated with something that we can all agree is terrible. Even if we don't agree whether it's related to me, or how often it happens. I am sure it has happened at least once, I'll grant you that.
My unpopular opinion is that I _shouldn't_ care about this book. I _shouldn't_ feel threatened by free speech. The fact that I come here and write long wordy whiney liberal diatribes about this, I think says that something is wrong about how little rationality is really floating around, even in a space like Hacker News. I should be relaxing in my backyard while I take my estradiol pill, not typing away and wondering if someone's going to accuse me of hurting children one day.
Free speech works great if everyone is a rational actor who doesn't commit to big ideas without big evidence. Are most people rational most of the time? Consider that the lottery still exists.
What about the book? I think people should read it. Don't believe the headline. That's kinda the problem, is that if you have 1 minute per day to think about trans people, please don't spend it on 1 headline that _heavily suggests_ we're _associated_ with monsters. I don't think the author deserves any sales, so please pirate the book, read the whole thing, _and fact check it_.
And once the truth has gotten its shoes on, what do I want you to think? I want you to think, "Wow, it _is_ terrible what happened to those children. Those individual doctors _are_ bad. Those individual trans people in the book _are_ bad. But the fact that ReactiveJelly is trans has _nothing_ to do with _any_ of this. What's she gonna do, kick them out? Become Blaire White and constantly emphasize the bad people in a desperate bid to keep her own head above water? Become Contrapoints and write nuanced 2-hour liberal diatribes that no moderate will ever watch? Sit in her backyard and take her pill while quietly accepting that every minority is going to keep catching flack for the crimes of the worst people who happen to share their hashtag?"
I hope I don't sound agitated. That would, of course, mean that I'm wrong. /s
I will not go too far into the whole 'trans issue' since that is a minefield which can not be negotiated without having a current map which is likely to try to send me ways I'd rather not tread. What little experience I have with the phenomenon tells me that people who were 'born in the wrong body' just want to be accepted for what they are without being forced into a cheerleader role for a team. The book - which I have heard about, having listened to several interviews with the author as well as having read Douglas Murray's "The Madness of Crowds" - calls for caution in performing irreversible operations on children, something which I whole-heartedly support. As far as I know - from having listened to the author as well as several others lecturing on the subject - the large majority of children who present as 'trans' end up as gay or lesbian, at ease in their own bodies. To me this makes it clear that a call for caution needs to be heard, given the irreversibility of sex change operations and the negative effects of puberty blockers.
You rationalizing censorship because the book says something you don't like, or because you might become associated with it, or because it might change what people think to a perspective you disagree with is the EXACT reason why freedom of speech is important.
You have it. The society in which you live held it as a value. It allowed you to make the choices you've made.
It is not rational to say "it's ok for me to have freedom of speech, but it is not OK for 'that author' or 'people with that idea' to have it."
Free speech "works great" regardless of the degree of rationality of the general public, because it allows the rational to speak. It permits ideas to be expressed, digested, rejected. It lets people think. It allows them to further develop their thinking skills.
Again, freedom of speech produces rational actors.
Social media, in the form of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the like are cancerous to our society. They amplify extreme positions. They do this deliberately with algorithms, or as a secondary effect of their primary goal, capturing attention. Sensationalism garners more attention than reason.
It makes people care about things that are immaterial... like hashtags.
Your Twitter handle is not you. Your posts are not you. Your speech is speech. That any one of those may, at some point be associated to a hashtag that only exists in these ephemeral, harmful swamps of societal outflow should matter little. You haven't lost anything real.
But to say that someone should not be allowed to publish, that a book should be banned, that some person should be silenced because someone else doesn't like what they might say, that is damaging to the entirety of society. It denies the advances of the last three thousand years of political philosophy.
The idea that censorship is OK is dangerous. It should be discussed, argued against, and proven, once more, wrong, with speech.
The simplest reason in favor of this stance, is that it let's you be you. You'd never have even been allowed to make the choices you've made in a society that wasn't steeped in the idea of freedom of speech. Such a society wouldn't have produced estradiol, let alone made it available to anyone.
Our horror at the terrible things people say is the required price for our freedom to say the important things that ought to be, that must be, said. Freedom of speech is too important to a civil society to allow anyone's discomfort to have any weight in an argument over restricting it.
Twitter's use of addictive dark patterns is well-known, and those techniques bring out the worst and and most mindless in people. E.g., compare Greenwald's consistent, well-researched op-ed's to his bitter, nasty ad hominem attacks in his varous Twitter insult-wars.
It's as if everyone has decided to get coked up and go talk politics at 2 a.m. at a noisy club. I'm sure it's convenient for journalists to start there since they know everyone is at the club, but it's also lazy if they start every article with shit cokeheads were yelling at each other. (As well as boring for readers.)
A significant portion of our population, including journalists, is addicted to social media. As a society we have yet to take steps to curb this toxicity. Now, can we please at least admit this is a problem and quit letting this sludge leak into serious writing for the sole benefit that it's free and easily discoverable?
Edit: from Strangio: "it was supposed to be a cheeky response to Bari [Weiss] not something to be taken on its own terms without that context." What's more generous-- that Strangio is secretly against free-speech and intrepid Greenwald caught him before he deleted his true feelings, or that a system that optimizes for dogfights got the better of Strangio?
>Since some ppl have misunderstood my tone, and censorship is an important matter and as a public educator I have a duty to be precise, let me clarify:
>I do NOT advocate defacing library books.
>I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.
https://twitter.com/graceelavery/status/1327743400553172997
As to the burning of books generally:
>Remember: all you’re doing is removing a commodity from circulation—much as one might destroy a contaminated crop, or take action if a distributor failed to do so.
https://twitter.com/graceelavery/status/1327746546851524608
Not a view I would have ever expected to hear from a public institution of learning.
For context, here is author Abigail Shrier’s synopsis of the book in her own words. Judge for yourself whether it constitutes hate speech:
It is amazing that this term is used so frequently while being entirely undefinable. Hate is an emotion that is unquantifiable in the general sense but is used ad nauseam throughout the media without regard to it's undefinable scope. Worse yet, it is used in laws that have incarcerated people base on some perceived level of "hate", again which has never been defined.
In many countries though, the "hate speech" IS explicitly defined in law; I find it frequently creates more questions than it answers though ("Why is Group A protected but Group B and C are not"?), while providing meaningful insight into cultural views of the mainstream (ditto).
There's any number of western liberal democracies with Blasphemy / Hate Speech laws on books, where strictly speaking an Atheist would struggle to even explain their views. And of course any number of countries of any political persuasion where such laws are meant to stifle and are exercised for suppression of viewpoints.
I don't have an answer to this. However we define it, some people/groups genuinely hate, without cause reason or empathy, and they genuinely provoke and exercise violence. Inasmuch as we try to get to a root cause of the problem, I can understand why well meaning people can attempt to define precursors of violence and suffering. I just haven't seen it done well yet :-/
I suspect, though, that these laws are a continuously moving target, from what I have observed with various incidents in the UK for example.
Censoring the book at this point is going to cause a Streisand Effect.
The Tweets cannot be censored, and moderates have very little control over the narrative.
What should the narrative have been?
If the book is good, "Author encourages you to form a strong relationship with your child so that strangers won't tell them what to do. In this specific case it was something about gender."
If the book is bad, "Author says some silly transphobic things, tries and fails to smear trans people. Rebuttal in the top comment."
But now that it's censored....
"Stealing things is okay because optics are not a real part of politics!"
"I will just do whatever I want, and in 1,000 years history will vindicate me and the moderates will finally stop voting Republican"
"The communist revolution is but Two Months away! Never vote in any election! Punch a moderate today!"
And on the other end of the horseshoe:
"The left wants to burn books!"
"Perhaps everyone left of center are the real Nazis!"
"When are they gonna start rounding up white people?!"
"Why do trans people drink the blood of Christian children?"
Nothing but bad-faith arguments and strawmen. Somewhere, Scott Alexander is spinning in his office chair.
It's gonna be a shitshow and the best I can hope for is a stop-loss mitigation. Please don't shoot, I'm a centrist and I like private property rights. The only book I've ever burned was an old encyclopedia I found in a dumpster.
HN has an automated flame detection system, probably based on the number of up and down votes, or language used.
72ha99ahsbc7's comment is [dead]ed. Everyone should enable the setting to see [dead]ed comments. Not rarely those are the best.
You can only check 'show dead' option on HN to be exposed to what others have deemed unworthy to be heard or touched by key-presses.
It's funny that for 10+ years I didn't work on accumulating karma because of some 'what are internet points good for?' nonsense. I should probably reconsider that frame :)
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#flaggi...
Sincerely, can someone direct me to a calm, low jargon explanation that I might be able to grasp on why there seems to be a full court press to suppress rather than refute this narrative? What is dangerous about viewing this trend as a social contagion, and what makes stopping people hearing about it trump other civil rights?
Why, on this topic is it so often "shut up" rather than "here's why she's wrong..."?
Here's the closet thing to an explanation in the article:
> The book and the arguments contained within it are fueling a wave of bills in state legislatures to criminalize health care for trans youth including through felony bans on the provision of care and forced outing of trans youth by school officials (an actual serious First Amendment concern).
It's a hot legislative issue and therefore wrongthink on this subject should be suppressed? Free speech except about particularly important things? Gun rights have also been on a legislative roll without this treatment. Why is this different?
Because a certain (seemingly growing) contingent on the left views speech as violence and therefore will not engage in an argument, instead they'll try to make it so that the speech will never be said (resorting to violence, harassing the bureaucracy until they change institutional rules, etc.).
One of the funnier phrases I saw recently that I think sums it up:
"sticks and stones should break your bones, and words will always hurt me."
Because it is essentially an ideological interpretive framework, not an empirical claim; the contentious part of it is not subject to falsification, so it cannot be refuted.
> What is dangerous about viewing this trend as a social contagion
There are two parts to viewing it as a “social contagion":
(1) A negative value judgement, and (2) An empirical claim that it is a social phenomenon.
#2 is not contentious, literally no one disputes that both social and personal acceptance of trans identity is a social phenomenon.
So what's the contentious part? A value judgement. It's not subject to refutation.
> Is that an argument that an ACLU lawyer would accept for other contentious issues, like abortion or gun control? That it's a hot legislative issue and therefore wrongthink on that subject should be suppressed?
The ACLU has never opposed private action to oppose and discourage publication or distribution of views that a private actor views as unwelcome, in fact, were there state action to suppress such private action, the ACLU would likely defend it as the essential component of free speech that it is. The action at issue here is exactly that kind of private action.
This is a totally disingenuous answer.
- You haven't told anyone that you're transitioning, and Eve the attacker tells Alice and Bob. You weren't ready to tell Bob, and you never intended to tell Alice. Eve has outed you as trans to Alice and Bob.
- The public part of your transition is complete, you can pass for cis, and you don't want people to know you're trans. Eve tells Alice and Bob that you're trans. You weren't ready to tell Bob, and you never intended to tell Alice. Eve has outed you as trans to Alice and Bob.
The 2nd kind of closet is often called "going stealth". Some sources says it used to be called "woodworking", i.e. blending into the woodwork. Some people call the 1st kind "stealth", but I think "closet" is less ambiguous.
> I can't hide my trans status from my parents or a school that I attended pre-transition.
This is true. I came out at work recently, so almost all of my coworkers know that I'm trans.
But there are a few new hires who might not know. It would be impolite for someone to tell a new hire about me, at least without asking me.
So for children, the 1st case is probably what they're talking about. If a child is questioning their gender identity, it's not kind to out them to anyone. They will probably be bullied.
It's the gender identity equivalent of gossiping about Alice having a one-night stand with Eve. Is it wrong to bully her about it? Of course. But as long as the bullies exist, it's also wrong to gossip about it and expose her to danger.
Defense in depth means don't bully anyone, and also don't open them up to bullying.
I do not agree with that rule as a law, for the record, but it does make sense as an ethical policy among doctors.
Having said that..
As a counter example: as immigrants, we always get ‘where are you from originally’. One can’t be ‘outed’ as an immigrant. It is what it is.
And so what? If I had to hide that I am an immigrant, then it would mean that I am ok with discrimination against those who choose to disclose or can’t hide that they are immigrants.
It is a fear based position. The calls for suppression of truth comes from a place of fear. I have some compassion for those acting out of fear, but we cannot sacrifice rational means to find fixes to problems ..neither can we suppress freedom of expression.
If trans people are discriminated against, we should tackle that phenomena of intolerance. We can’t pretend that trans people don’t exist and we can’t feed the paranoia..justified or not.
The only way to figure out answers is to dig down deep to get the root of the issue. This is impossible if we are not allowed to talk about it.
That question in the US usually means either 1) your accent is noticeably not American, or 2) you or your ancestors didn't come to the US from Europe or via the African diaspora.
Native Americans get asked that question. Fourth-generation Chinese-Americans get asked that question. Puerto Ricans are asked that question. But a white friend of mine, born in the US to English parents, with no noticeable non-US accent, doesn't get asked that question.
So "where are you from originally" comes across not about "immigrant" but about being "different" and even with an implication of being a second-class citizen. See for example the opinions given at https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/08/opinion/where-im... . Quoting Samantha Geovjian Clarke, born in the US, raised in Portland, Oregon:
> Sometimes I think they feel like it's more polite to ask ambiguously "where are you from?" or "what are you?" because they're afraid to say race, ethnicity, heritage or nationality – lots of white people don't even know the difference. But they end up being hurtful and displaying deep-seated biases about race by implying I'm not really from America if I'm brown, even though I was born here, or worse, implying that I'm not human because I'm brown (with the "what are you?" question).
If the question "where are you from originally" and variants are interpreted by many as a sign of intolerance, and not simply one of curiosity - which it surely is for some! - then perhaps it's not a particularly effective counter-example?
If you want to dig down deeper to get to the root of this specific issue, here are some resources which talk about it: "Everyday Racism: ‘Where Are You Really From?’" at https://theglobepost.com/2017/08 , /10/everyday-racism/ ; "Is It Racist to Ask People Where They're From?" at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/qu... ; and an essay more focused on examples of when that question is asked with racist overtones, "“Where Are You From?” Racial Microaggressions" at https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-r... .
Typically, it means to publicly reveal, when this is not welcome by the subject, the gender-socially-ascribed-at-birth (usually, on the basis of external genitalia) of a person whose gender identity and public gender presentation are not consistent with that ascribed-at-birth gender. (Though in the case of the legislation at issue, it generally goes beyond that kind of outing to also include forcibly ascribing the gender-ascribed-at-birth and regulating substantive behavior and options on the basis of that ascribed gender.)
The issue here is that certain tomes present a particular issue from such a viewpoint that they lend themselves as ammunition to the people who hate what the book is about. So for example it is harmful to spread a one-eyed story about teenagers “self-identifying” as trans and undergoing surgery without pointing out that the surgery is the culmination of years of therapy and introspection, or suggesting that coming out as trans is not related to changes in societal acceptance of trans people (they feel safer to come out because they see other people doing it and not being stoned to death).
So the book is basically right wing propaganda, rationalising their opinions about trans people and giving them the justification for publicly labelling trans people as trans, as opposed to just letting them be who they are.
It doesn’t matter what the author’s intent was (though interviewing with Quillette suggests they have a dim view of trans people, despite being one herself — perhaps the other trans people aren’t real trans people in her mind because who would want to be a man? I have no idea). Because of the tone and the avoidance of relevant background material, the book harms the trans community.
There are times when hearing both sides of an argument is productive, but when one side of an argument wants to deprive the other of human rights (eg through demonisation) then there’s no constructive argument to be had.
There has to be a line where we say, “any discussion that crosses that line is not tolerated.” Any moderator of an Internet forum knows this: if you let discussions past a certain point they quickly get out of control and instead of just cautioning one person you’re stuck spending your evening banning accounts, deleting posts, posting apologies for letting things get out of hand, and most importantly losing a heap of your regulars who no longer feel this this forum is where they want to be.
So to a lot of people, quisling propaganda like, “I am trans and I have this horrible story about fake trans people going through surgery when they really shouldn’t” is the same as those over-the-line not-quite-trolling conversations which 11 out of 10 times end up in flame wars and mass moderation.
Which comes down to the tolerance paradox: in order to be tolerant, there are some things you can’t tolerate. If there is no line, then you are permissive rather than tolerant. If we accept that publicly demanding that someone or some group of people be murdered is a criminal act, then at some point we have to accept that speech that doesn’t directly call for the same is still as bad and shouldn’t be allowed.
Sure, argue all you want for free speech purism, but you need to accept that some people will view murder as a necessary response to speech that they have heard. You may feel comfortable that you will never be murdered as a result of a call to action, but I am not.
To me, a book that purports to expose some confected controversy about trans people (especially if presented as “from the trenches” reporting) is just as bad as a book that literally calls for the murder of trans people.
--- begin quote ---
That speech is “dangerous” and “incites violence” and therefore must be stifled has been the cry of censors for centuries. It is the claim used to try to silence Communists during the Cold War, Muslims during the War on Terror, and pro-Palestinian activists now.
And (as I recounted in an article long ago about the effort to criminalize speech in the name of the War on Terror), it is the claim rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in two landmark rulings: its unanimous 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a KKK leader who had used a speech to threaten violence against political officials, and the 1982 ruling in Claiborne v NAACP, also unanimous, in which the Court held that the First Amendment bars imposing liability on someone for the criminal acts allegedly "inspired" by their speech (that ruling protected NAACP officials from attempts by the State of Mississippi to hold them liable for the violent acts their fiery pro-boycott speeches allegedly incited).
--- end quote ---
I hope it changes. I'm frequently upset by ACLU actions (I tend to be conservative), but I respect them. I'd be sad if I lost that respect.
Example #2 would be the police shooting of Deon Kay which the ACLU immediately called the shooting "murder". This was after video was released showing Kay lifting a gun at officers.
For decades, the ACLU has prided itself on its defense of due process and free speech. That time is fading quickly.
That this submission was flagged and marked dead after dozens of upvotes, makes the author's points a bit stronger.
It's a bit like someone on the board of the Free Software Foundation advocating for people to not install Linux anymore because they don't like how Linux doesn't work properly on their Mac!
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Now an argument to say it was trivial would be: 1) its a deleted tweet 2) tweet was mainly a joke 3) tweets dont represent ACLU, its fear mongering 4) tweet based journalism is problematic
So you have a bad tradeoff between "If we give children autonomy, some of them will make bad decisions," which is true, and "If we don't give children autonomy, some of them will have worse mental health outcomes," which is also true.
The current discussion on free speech seems to be: "If we allow misinformation to sprint around the world before the truth has got its shoes on, that causes harm. It's okay to censor obvious misinformation if it will protect people," versus, "Why is it obvious? Why is it harm? Some parts of the book are true. What percent needs to be misinformation before censorship becomes valid?" Those are important questions to ask, but they don't generate enough hype and outrage for Twitter to answer them. Never forget that you are staring into a kaleidoscope which is designed to make you feel any strong emotion that keeps you looking. It is not a place where logic thrives.
I probably won't be in this thread long, because I can feel my heart rate spiking, but I hope nobody walks away thinking this is a cut-and-dry problem at all. Every difficult problem has two solutions that are simple, obvious, and wrong.
Many things to tease out here:
1. Parents are the legal owners of a child’s DNA until the child is an legal adult. Personally, I subscribe to this position.
2. Child rearing must be(imo) in the domain of the parents in charge and not the govt or peer group or popular opinion.
3. Children’s brains..especially teenagers..are not well formed and are not capable of making a well formed decision. Studies say that it’s not until age 25 is a brain considered fully formed to make rational decisions.
4. Teenagers should absolutely talk to medical professionals about what is distressing them ..physically or emotionally. I don’t think there is any debate about trans teenagers wanting to gather more information and research before making very powerful changes that are also likely irreversible.
5. Finally, not everyone is going to accept personal choices of the 7.5 billion odd others. We just keep on creating newer categories of protected classes and placing them in untouchable bubbles with the expectation of immunity from general opinions. This isn’t helping said protected classes at all and only making them more vulnerable.