Ben Shapiro talking about it, I'll transcribe part of it here.
> I feel bad for Ye. There are people who are bipolar in my family, like when people are in manic episodes, which he _clearly_ is in a manic episode, they say things that are insane and they think that nobody can tell them what to do and the more insane it is and the more people disapprove the more they do it. And they do crazy stuff and when he comes out of the manic episode it's ... it's going to be really really bad for him.
Someone then asked Shapiro, "would you debate with him [Ye]" and his response was "I won't debate with people who are mentally ill".
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That seems like a pretty rational, reasoned response, and I'm not sure why you think he was harmed in some way.
Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape. No, the need to be protected from the _ACT_ of rape, how does one do that without talking about rape?
If a victim of rape feels harm from the very utterance of the word rape, that's a mental problem that should be dealt with through therapy, not by making it more difficult to protect from the _ACT_ of rape by making it more difficult to speak about it.
We have 100's of years of common law to better vet out what types of speech have a tendency to result in violence, and there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list.
> Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape.
No, that seems to be either an incredibly biased reading of my comment or an attempt at a bad faith argument. I am claiming: rallies that announce "all trans people are child molesters" are inevitably followed by physical violence against some trans person for "molesting children". More often than not, people who hold such rallies are aware of such implications, and are intentionally holding such rallies to cause harm. Thus, words, for all intents and purposes, can be a direct cause of physical violence and thus should be regarded as such in very extreme cases.
> there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list.
Sometimes the laws simply have not caught up with the times. Quick example: how long have gay marriage been federally legal in the United States? Law follows common sense and consensus, not the other way around, which is why I do not agree with your suggestion that we should forsake common sense and consensus to blindly follow the letters of the law.
In case you are genuinely concerned, let me try to change your mind.
Did you know that among transgender community, rate of attempted suicide is 40%? [0,1] If being inclusive of people regardless of their identity can help us mitigate that number, I believe we should do so, even if it lets three "perverts" mask their intentions. Citing three cases happening in the prison system and asking all trans women to be banned from all women's restrooms everywhere is... quite a strong ask.
Moreover, the three cases you mentioned all happened in prison, where you are already locked up and under tight supervision (supposedly). How many cases are there where such a thing happened in a general gender neutral bathroom? To argue that "we should not be respectful of people's gender identity because there is harm in to negate the overwhelming positive impacts of it", you have to show the proofs.
I admit I am quite sceptical that providing carte blanche access to women's spaces to males who identify as transgender will have a significant impact on reducing suicide rates amongst this population, such that it outweighs the negative impacts on women. I've not yet seen anything that convinces me this is an appropriate policy direction, but I appreciate the opportunity to consider arguments that may change my mind.
My view is that with something as complex and multifactorial as suicide, we have to be cautious in ascribing a particular cause or mitigation, and the available data must be examined with caution.
The first abstract you linked describes a 41% attempted suicide rate, but I'm not clear how this was determined or exactly which population it applies to. It seems to be for a poster at a psychiatry conference, the full copy of which isn't available online, as far as I can see. Do you know how this figure was arrived at? I would be interested to see the original source.
In the second paper you linked, which concerns transgender people in India, it sounds like there are many other correlative factors that involve poverty and lack of access to education and employment, with many living in slums, begging and working as prostitutes. Access to the bathroom of their choice or other opposite sex spaces seems to be the least of their issues, and it's not mentioned in this paper. The section discussing resiliency sounds promising though, with correlations to higher income, better support structures, and being employed in a mainstream job. Perhaps these are the factors best addressed by policy, in India at least?
I had a very religious teacher who went on a rant one day about the book 'The Clan of the Cave Bear'. Having read, and loved, the book I was at first very interested in his opinion on it.
He completely misrepresented both the book and the things that happened in the book. I was actually astounded, he very clearly had not read the book himself and got his opinion from somewhere else (this was mid 90's).
I'm completely onboard with ensuring teachers limit how much of their political and religious beliefs make it into the classroom.
OTOH, there was a controversy in the late 90's where a teacher asked a little girl not to wear a "I love jesus" t-shirt to school. Apparently there was a Mexican boy named Jesus in class and it got everyone giggling and was disruptive.
You can understand both sides there, but at the end of the day it's a place for learning and if it's being disruptive due to the students age then it's being disruptive.
So I don't think it's all that simple, but I do think we can do better.
> Could you provide an example of free expression, not committed to either "enlarging understanding" or "uncovering truth", that would be part of a useful conversation?
"wanna fuck?"
Now I get to watch you and others try to backpedal "enlarging understanding" to simply mean communicate so that the above expression can fall into it, otherwise you're clearly wrong.
But no human is going to use the phrase "enlarging understanding" to simply mean communication, so I'm not going to buy it.
threats of violence, up to and including death threats, are completely legal.
What's not legal is threats of violence with both the intent and the means to follow through.
If an 80 year old man walks up to and tells me they're going to kick the shit out of me, it's perfectly legal. Not only is it legal, no one is going to do anything about it until that man actually attacks me.
If The Rock walks up to me and tells me he's going to kick the shit out of me, it's very clearly illegal (assuming we know intent, of course) and he will go to jail for it.
This is why things like repeating can also be illegal. If you never have the intent or the means to follow through with a threat, but do it repeatedly to affect mental state, that too is illegal for a different reason.
But the presumption that this speech is de facto not legal is absolutely incorrect, in the US at least.
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Libel is not criminal in any way, shape, or form, and is a bad example as a result.
That a particular field has a high majority, may intuitively seem like it’s a better field for that majority if you’re just casually observing, but deeper studies often show that there are tons of systemic factors that go into it.
Are most farm hands Mexican because they’re drawn to it culturally? That may be the repeated observation of the person looking at it without much to gain from being part of it.
However once you start looking into it, you’d see the systemic issues that led to it like ethnic discrimination at higher level jobs and the network effect of hiring.
Similarly for women trying to enter tech. There may be systemic issues keeping them out, but going by “90% of software engineers are men, so it must be because they’re more drawn to it” really doesn’t allow for women trying to enter the field to make changes to policies etc that disadvantage them unfairly.
This is the danger of majority rule. It’s why it took so long for many rights to be won by disenfranchised minorities.
It amazes me that so many people think trying to refute an example refutes the point. It doesn't, replace social with pack in my comment and move on if you must.
The rest of your post is just trashy thinking. If you believe the ratio of men to women is not due to personal choice, that's a claim YOU need to back up. I don't have to back up the assumption that it's personal choice, especially against someone who is, when you boil it all down, saying that it _IS_ personal choice, but that they were manipulated into that personal choice.
Where is all the angst over the lack of female loggers?
There is angst over the lack of female loggers. I don’t know why you think there isn’t?
This exists for all trades. Logging just isn’t that visible to most people so it’s not one that’s brought up as often.
You’re conflating many many points in your arguments. You also have yet to say why you think people are drawn to certain trades but keep expecting others to put up more and more evidence.
Dorian Abbot is a perfect example of why you're wrong.
He opposes affirmative action and as a result got cancelled at MIT for a _completely_ unrelated talk about climate and life on other planets.
If you yourself disagree with him and do not want to participate in the talk, fine. don't watch it, don't listen to it, don't attend it, and use YOUR speech to recommend others do the same.
What happened here is that he got cancelled so that those who _WANTED_ to associate no longer could. This is not about association, and it's not about speech, it's about preventing others from hearing and it's about harming him for daring to have that opinion.
When the cancel culture stops happening, THEN I'll start believing when people say the things you're trying to say here. Not before.
I looked into this Dorian person, and it appears we have different definitions of "cancelled," as this person did give a talk at MIT, at a different building than originally planned.
It seems this person has made a handsome life being a spokesperson for conservative denial of systemic racism in America, I don't see someone actually harmed or "cancelled."
Also it sounds like students did exactly what MIT approves: they protested. For whatever reason the University decided then to move the venue. What exactly is the issue you have with this scenario?
gp asked specifically what "cancelled" means. You seem to be trying to avoid providing any definition and instead creating and attacking straw men based on your imagination of a leftist argument.
In our various conversations on this thread, you're continually posting in bad faith, because I and a few others aren't granting you your base assumptions.
I've found it to be both enlightening and effective in these kinds of conversations to make sure to ask very simple questions about what we're really talking about. Why? Because for example I often have people say to my face that the american democrat party is a communist party. Hah. Or, more grim: that queer people are groomers. Terrifying.
So it's an entirely fair question to ask you what you mean by "cancelled." I genuinely don't know. You said a professor was cancelled - but the professor was able to give a speech at the same university. I don't understand! I really don't! What does "cancelled" really mean? Because if you can't answer that, maybe this thing you fear doesn't actually exist. Maybe you really are just functioning as a reactionary enforcer of status quo and lashing out against actual counter-cultural speech, against arguments that are actually being "cancelled" by you and those that support your position.
The same for gender. You said to me on another comment, that "you aren't talking about gender identity," but you earlier in the same chain said "care givers tend to be women." Yet it's as obvious to me that that is a circular definition of a gender completely detached from biological markers ("women are caregivers") as it is to you that men are big masculine lumberjacks. So instead of letting you get away with, I don't know, some kind of assumptive bias? Begging the question? Argument to tradition? Instead I'm simply asking you to demonstrate why it's acceptable to assume "care givers tend to be women." Personally as a man I reject this because it leads to pretty shitty outcomes like me being given stink eye from people when I'm "alone" at a children's playground... until my kid runs up to me. To give a concrete example.
Not to mention I reject that "race car drivers tend to be men" for the obvious nod towards the very annoying stereotype that women are worse drivers than men. Ugh. I'll give you enough good faith to assume that was unintentional on your part.
TLDR you presented a presumptive conservative position and got reactionary when asked, by different people (annoyance at me is normal, I am an annoying person), very simple questions about terms setting and definitions. So? What's up with your ideas? They don't stand to scrutiny? I mean you're doing what your position tends to accuse my position of, which is for me why I put my foot down so damn hard in conversations like this: you're acting offended, you're responding rudely and, frankly, irrationally, and straight up I don't see any rhetorical, logical, ethical, deductive, or evidential basis for the broad vaguely conservative smear I find your belief system to be.
Sorry, I'm not reading all of that. I stopped at the second paragraph.
The answer to the question doesn't actually matter, not to you, and not to me. It's a ploy to try and confound the conversation. If you and the other poster really feel it needs to be defined, then define cancelled as "the thing that happened to Dorian Abbot". boom, you're done. It now has a definition, tautological, but valid nonetheless.
The thing that should be getting discussed is whether or not what happened to him should have happened to him. And the answer is no, it shouldn't happen to anyone.
And now I'm going to leave you with an observation by Richard Feynman.
> Sorry, I'm not reading all of that. I stopped at the second paragraph.
Then, you aren't actually interested in rigorous debate, challenging your ideas? Why are you even here? You have an opportunity here, someone that might have completely different ideas from you, and repeatedly engages with you in good faith in spite of your insults, and your answer is "tldr." Forgive me if I doubt your commitment to the spirit of the value MIT claims to espouse regarding the importance of having these kinds of conversations.
> , then define cancelled as "the thing that happened to Dorian Abbot"
Great! Nothing really bad happened to Dorian Abbot. He got to give his speech and now has defined his career around opposing affirmative action. So, why were you using him as an example earlier as a counter point to me as the negative potentials of not tolerating the intolerant?
> The thing that should be getting discussed is whether or not what happened to him should have happened to him.
But nothing bad happened to him.
Your video link is my favorite ever instance of irony I've ever encountered on this site. In it, Feynman says "you know all the names for that bird, but you know nothing about that bird... People tell me 'did you hear about Jackson Fleugrn experiment?' well no, what's that, can you explain it? I get in trouble cause I never learn the names of things."
You've been asked, what does "cancelled" mean, you answered, "Whatever happened to that guy." Yeah, what happened to that guy? "He got cancelled!"
Posting such a response is attempting to impose upon me time that I am not willing to spend on you. It's disrespectful.
The argument you're trying to formulate here is that being uninvited as a speaker at the grammy's isn't a big deal because the person was able to give their speech somewhere else in front of a completely different audience eventually. That's not how that works, the talk he was uninvited from is considered an honor in his profession.
Then you try to imply he benefited from it, so why is everyone opposed to it? That's akin to arguing that the reasons for naming a boy Sue is valid parenting advice.
> Posting such a response is attempting to impose upon me time that I am not willing to spend on you.
You’re willing to spend the time to write 12 replies, but you’re too busy to define the terms you use? Defining terms (especially when they are highly politically charged) allows everyone to get on the same page. Playing games with your terminology to the point you admit they are tautological is the definition of disingenuous discourse.
No one was asking you for a novel-length response. Took me 2 minutes to read lol. If you don’t want to read something, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to respond to someone who has taken the time to respond to you, don’t. But taking time to reply only to say you don’t have time to reply is a lie. You want to reply, and you have plenty of time. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t reply. If you had better things to do, you’d be doing them.
Just define the terms you use; that you don’t allows you to slip around the debate. You’ve spent far more time dodging questions and rationalizing your dodges than it would have taken to just define the terms you use.
Very hard for you to explain how someone was “cancelled” when they are standing on a soapbox and their message is getting out to a huge audience. Really cuts against your argument, so it’s not a surprise you want to hand-wave your way through that (“it’s tautological!”).
> I'll buy 'Shit that makes no sense' for 500 Alex.
What you’re saying here still doesn’t make sense because you obviously do have the time to read a few paragraphs of text (not a novel), or else you wouldn’t be here still responding in a day-old thread. Instead, of making up a lie that you don’t have time, just admit you don’t want to engage with the arguments made whatsoever.
> We defined it as "that which happened to Dorian Abbot".
And is that something you made up to win an internet argument, or something that you could support through some external citation? Usually definitions aren’t personal feelings.
Regardless, if I am to take your personal definition of “canceling” at face value, it doesn’t seem to prove your original point in bringing up the term. As far as I can tell, you’re just retreating to this position because it’s the only way to keep your argument consistent. If you were to attempt an actual definition of “cancel”, you’d be forced to admit that nothing really bad comes of it (unless you can bring up more examples, but you seem to only cite the one).
I'm wondering how long before we get to the part where you tell me you're a troll who has been misconstruing everything I say to keep me going to ultimately win by wasting my time after I claimed not to want to waste it?
> If you were to attempt an actual definition of “cancel”, you’d be forced to admit that nothing really bad comes of it (unless you can bring up more examples, but you seem to only cite the one).
What's happening here is I and others are demonstrating that the concept of "woke mobs cancelling people" is essentially a totally fabricated non-issue that is being used as reactionary fear-mongering to oppose progressivism. It's a way to maintain inequitable hierarchies and disparities, through various rhetorical strategies, such as claiming the very act of trying to dismantle said hierarchies is creating them ("cancelling" conservative viewpoints, accusations of thought-crime, etc).
What you're blatantly failing to do is demonstrate that our accusation that this is all made-up fear mongering is incorrect. You simply can't defend "cancelled," you can't point to more examples, to use your terminology, you've well "lost" this conversation. I don't like that framing though because I'm not here to "win arguments," I do that in my head in the shower every day lol, I'm here to hone my own values and viewpoints against people that genuinely disagree with me.
I actually did want you to provide a real definition of cancel and what you're concerned about because to be honest I'm not going to go out of my way to research the potential negative side effects on rich successful white men of not being allowed to be openly misogynistic or racist or supportive of unjust power structures, and so if there actually are unexpected outcomes, I want to know, and see how these things that are my values (lifting up minorities etc) can be improved. Normally that means talking with people who want to throw my values out with the bathwater, but that's fine and expected. What's frustrating is when they throw their own values out with the bathwater. At least with you, quite happily, that hasn't ended in an anti-semitic or racist rant, which is how it usually goes.
I'm not actually misconstruing everything you say, now am I? I misunderstood initially what you were saying in your back-and-forth but I think we've gotten past that by now, because no matter how you slice it (whether it was about reading a reply or writing reply), you obviously do have time.
Now back to the meat of the discussion and the questions you dodged: I was wondering if you had any references to support your assertion about the tautological definition of "cancelling" someone, which read to me as "you know it when you see it", which seems overly broad to me. Did you have a citation for this definition?
