> "I think there are very valid parts of this argument about appropriation of voice," he added, saying he believes "we do have the obligation to teach ourselves and to do research and to treat people with respect if we're going to have them feature in our work".
> He said there must be "decency towards people outside of one's own immediate experience".
This is the key point. If you are not doing your research, misrepresenting people or not showing the respect people deserve you should to be called out. From my point of view it looks like the people complaining about self-censorship are just being told to show common decency and they don't like that
>But he's simultaneously criticizing people who want to end "cancel culture" because he sees them as also committing a "denunciation of other people’s speech".
Right, but I think his criticism here is not that "they should not denounce other people's speech", it's that they are being hypocritical in their reasoning. He's arguing against the soundness of their denunciation, not arguing against their right to make it.
> but to me it seems like a good idea to at least consider the potential negative effects self-expression may have on others, and weight that against the benefits of self-expression.
> this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t
But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.
> I'm not applying this social pressure to self censor
The pressure is on being educated enough to be polite with the people you discourse with.
I do not know how we can meet in the middle ground since you believe that using accurate words to describe people is censor.
Yes, what outside communities call you is outside of your control. However, what you call outside community is within your control.
Since it is within your control and you can choose to use any word you want (as long as you are fine with the repercussions), this is not censor. You can absolutely call anyone by any word you want.
That said, refusing to expand your vocabulary will diminish the range of you thoughts. Keeping with the previous example, calling two different and unassociated tribes by the same name will prevent you from learning about them separately.
You'd be wrong. Many of us think that judging content by whether it offends someone is a terrible idea. Viewers should self-censor if they find something objectionable rather than subject everyone else to their personal opinions.
> You don't get to tell people what to name things just because you're offended.
Sure you do, and you get to say your reasons too, refuse to adopt something based on those reasons and try to persuade other people and organizations to accept your reasons. You even get to apply mild sanctions - like not buying things from them or discouraging others from interacting with the person who did the thing that offended you.
You just don't get to forcibly compel anyone. If they disagree with your reasons and don't care about upsetting you, you can't make them change.
It seems that a lot of people want not just freedom to offend with their speech, but also freedom from the reasonable consequences of offending (including responding speech), which is even less coherent than wanting freedom from offensive speech.
Yes, but people are allowed to do that. I don't think "free speech" means what you think it means. It's a comforting idea that other people are too immature/emotional/dumb to consciously think about an opposing belief, but that wasn't the case here. There's no obligation to hear out a side that would do you harm given the choice. w/r/t letting people say unpopular things, the university did decide to host him in the first place, which represents the university's commitment to some form of free speech. Individual people should not be subject to scrutiny for protesting something they disagree with.
>Voicing disapproval of cancel culture is received as trying to advocate against cancel culture. That might not be your intent, but it is how it is received.
As I said:
>All this is to say that while there may always be an implicit social pressure involved with all speech, it is generaly at a tolerable (and if not then inevitable) degree. While mass cancelation is a method of exerting social pressure, and while as you say both regular speech and cancelation result in some amount of social pressure, the social pressure exerted by cancelation is to a much higher degee, and the reason is that it is intended and therefore amplified, rather than minified as would be in a productive discussion.
Therefore there is no hypocrisy, because the degree is much lower and from a moral evaluatory stanpoint of intention one aims to maximize and the other to minimize. To say all disagreements and expressed moral convictions are censorship is to remove censorship as a meaningful word. Therefore we must in order to have this word in to a case of above average pressure.
> He's got the right to say it, and I've got the right to feel offended.
Nobody's questioning that. The point is rather that being offended by such things is (IMHO) silly, especially given that it betrays a certain degree of ignorance. On some level, taking offense is a choice, and citing your right to do so is equivalent to doing something just because you can. More to the point, his word-choice does adequately illustrate his argument, even if you find it distasteful.
Playing the role of the vocabulary police is more often than not a case of making a mountain out of a molehill.
> How do we go back to debating meaningful problems and solutions and tell these language policing idiots to do something useful?
By refusing to placate emotional cripples and authoritarians. By refusing to accept the false assertion that everyone is innately entitled to respect. Respect is something that is earned. Those who seek to police our language due to imaginary harms that they assert someone may suffer are not entitled to respect - quite the opposite. It is long past time we as a society started actively disrespecting these people. We should heap scorn and ridicule on the people who came up with this ridiculous blacklist of commonly used words and drive them out of decent society. We should actively disrespect the self-appointed hall monitors that claim the power to decide the acceptable parameters of public discourse. The fact that such petty, small-minded people have filled the halls of power in most of most powerful institutions, from academia to government, is a withering indictment on our society.
> Imagine not understanding that there may be some disagreement about whether something 'considered objectionable or offensive' is truly objectionable or offensive
And this is really the crux of the issue. If I find what you have done to be objectionable or offensive, it shouldn't matter that there is debate about what society at large considers objectionable or offensive, you have lost my personal support. If lots of people also consider it objectionable or offensive, and they all subsequently withdraw their support, that's how things are supposed to work. You don't get to decide what other people get offended by, nor do you get to decide how long it should take them to get offended by it. If my support is valuable to you then you shouldn't do those things which I say offend me for fear of losing my support. If you don't value my support, then you are free to ignore my cancelling of said support. This is what it means to live in a free market of ideas.
Let's not pretend that this issue is some complicated and nuanced situation. There have always been weirdos out there who get vocally offended by dumb things - maybe you pissed off a bunch of flat earthers by having a globe in your profile pic - and nobody cared. The reason people are concerned about cancel culture is that they recognize that some of the things they have said or done or plan to do could legitimately be considered objectionable and offensive by a significant number of people, and rather than choosing to address their own behavior they instead choose whine about how unfair it is that people don't unconditionally support them.
> Just because -you- don't mean it to offend or -you- don't believe it's offensive doesn't mean it isn't -to someone else-.
I haven't claimed otherwise.
> Don't you do that anyway? I do that every day - at work, to my nephews, to my parents, to strangers. What's the big deal?
The big deal is not self censoring, which yes, we all do out of politeness and respect. The big deal is being forced to self censor things we consider appropriate to talk about in context out of the concern that someone present might possibly find it offensive, rather than being able to rely on anyone present who finds offensive to be able to speak up or leave.
If I'm having a political discussion, and were to feel forced to not express my opinion because someone might take offence, I would be largely unable to express my political views, for example. If everyone were to avoid saying things about politics I find offensive, I could effectively shut up debate by entering pretty much any political debate.
> You said "But I would mind having to pre-emptively self-censor because someone might take offence at something that is not intended to offend." which I took to mean that you weren't wilfully intending to offend. Did I read that wrong?
I don't generally intend to offend. But I often intentionally state my opinions of things knowing it might offend someone. E.g., if at a political debate, I won't avoid stating my view just because someone might take offence. The intent isn't to cause offence, and I will respect it if I know there are people present that find a specific subject particularly difficult, but I don't believe we should accept that people have a right to not be offended if they choose to participate in a meeting knowing certain subjects will come up.
> but you don't have an automatic right to express those views wherever, whenever, and to whomever you wish anyway.
I have not suggested I do. But that does not mean I should not take severe offence if e.g. an organization like a student union effectively shuts down meetings where views the majority doesn't like, but that some students want, are likely to come up by insisting on "safe spaces".
I have yet to be at any political meeting that would be a "safe space" if you insist on offending no-one, for example. But these means of censorship are unsurprisingly being applied in exceedingly one sided ways. Incidentally a lot of the people that regularly gets a platform at many of these places are people whose views I find deeply offensive.
> He said there must be "decency towards people outside of one's own immediate experience".
This is the key point. If you are not doing your research, misrepresenting people or not showing the respect people deserve you should to be called out. From my point of view it looks like the people complaining about self-censorship are just being told to show common decency and they don't like that
reply