Free Speech: Causes, Consequences, And The Mob

I've been trying to talk about cancel culture for a while now. I thought that while everyone was talking about it they would talk about the dizzying rise of trans rights rhetoric and its growing role in law and policy, but nobody would touch it. Too hot a potato. Well the good news is it's not a hate crime to talk about it here (yet), so I will. Basically, I'm trying to hold a middle-ground position while fending off accusations from both sides that I don't care about either of them.

Last night I learned that the people I looked up to and thought of as responsible, thoughtful people, the ones who told me that counter-speech was a remedy to negative, hateful speech, consider me to be a damn Nazi. See this screencap?

 That's how I found out.

I'm not sure if they've been talking about me behind my back or not but damn, that hurt. No counter-speech, no DM, just a message saying that my views are extremely hateful and hurtful. What's particularly creepy about this is that saying that men can't become women except on a social and possibly sexual level; the underlying biology is still the same even after surgery and hormones, was fully and completely acceptable until recently. The trouble with woke culture is it's constantly changing, as I pointed out yesterday, and yes, it's the same people as the ones I screencapped yesterday.

Now anyone who has read my blog sees how my views change and evolve. I keep a record of my mental journey to show where an idea comes from and how I respond to it as new information comes flooding in. Since these chaps play their political cards close to their chest in terms of trans issues, I had no idea that evidence-based policy had been sacrificed on the altar of Woke until tonight. Nobody owes me anything but a bit of basic courtesy. Mind you, I can't help thinking that a) there's a lot of money at stake if they do engage with me in public and b) discussing the issue will force them to admit that any arguments they have for their position are mostly based on social consensus and emotion rather than on solid scientific evidence. Denying that cancel culture exists because siloing allows people to continue to speak where they're welcome pretends that social discourse isn't being harmed by astroturfing and the siloing that results as a result of aggressive speech policing on and offline. I'm not buying it. So, then, let's talk about causes, consequences, and the mob.

Causes

All speech has an origin, a paradigm based around a set of ideas about a particular person, people, or events. The paradigm encompasses not just the person, people, or events, but the speaker's perception of these. This is important since we can't address speech, whether we like it or not, until we've decided whether or not the speech we are being presented with contains reliable information to discuss or not. This perception is usually based on a general consensus of what we accept as the truth. For example, if someone pops up on my timeline to announce that the world is flat or that cancer can be treated with baking soda I'll rip them a new one because the general consensus among people I trust is that neither of these statements is true. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the case. We usually start with the consensus, then add evidence if and when our perceptions are challenged. If the evidence we go looking for to bolster our case doesn't stand up to scrutiny, we have the choice to either double down on something we know is a lie and keep repeating it, or accept that we're wrong. I pride myself on accepting that I'm wrong when confronted with compelling evidence. I've been wrong about prohibition of drugs and of prostitution and admitted it. Hold that thought.

Confronting the causes

Whenever we argue a point online, the smart people like to look at the cause of the argument rather than just bashing the poster. One person once asked me where my views on trans issues had come from. He is the only person who ever asked me, so, as a courtesy, I wrote a thread that I ended up pinning to my Twitter profile. I actually thanked him for asking me. People who make their points in good faith will generally be happy to explain why they came to the conclusions they have. On that thread, Thom asked a follow-up question, which I answered by telling him it's actually men I have the problem with. Since, as another commenter pointed out, dysphoria is now no longer required to qualify as being trans, anyone at all can claim to be trans and we are all obliged to accept it without question.

When you go through that thread, you'll often find, as I have, that many of the people commenting therein aren't arguing in good faith. Why? The causes of their views are based on echo chamber consensus and they haven't thought it through. Result: drive-by insults and accusations, ad-hominem attacks and misrepresentation of your points, or mindless regurgitation of talking points followed by muting and blocking. Sooner or later the patterns are so clear you can tell at a glance whether the person you're dealing with is a mindless troll, a Good Doggie partisan, or someone who genuinely believes in what they're telling you. As the discussion progresses you can tell whether they have actually considered the ramifications of their position or not. So I can confidently tell you that at least one of the two men I unfollowed tonight is a Good Doggie partisan, at least for that particular cause, because he a) considers my moderate stance to be extremely hurtful and harmful and b) since neither of them would discuss it, I'm thinking they might lose money if they did. The older one could at least have DM'd me about it, but he didn't. I understand the need to pay the rent, believe it or not.

Consequences

One of the favourite go-tos of people who deny that cancel culture is a thing, that counter-speech is ineffective if you only have a water pistol while t'other side has a fire hose, and that censorship means shutting down speech only when the Government is involved, is the idea that the consequences of any speech being made is part and parcel of the marketplace of ideas. Okay, fine, if you're going to make that analogy, please note that in a marketplace, if you're selling top hats and spats and nobody wants to buy them, an angry mob is not going to crowd around your stall telling you how horrible you are and telling everyone else not to buy them. I'll post the link to the obligatory xkcd comic here before I post the text thereof.

Public Service Announcement: the right to free speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your b******t, or host it while you share it. The 1st Amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences. If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show cancelled, or get banned from an internet community, your free speech rights aren't being violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an a*****e, and they're showing you the door. - Free Speech, by xkcd

I used to think this was Gospel, a never-to-be-questioned Eternal Truth. However, tonight I learned that you can become an a*****e very easily if you're not careful, particularly where woke culture hot topics are concerned. Due to the steady back-and-forth of the arguments on both side of the trans issues debate, I hadn't realised that a general consensus had formed outside of social media on the liberal/progressive side that cast me as the villain just for being a woman afraid of unknown men in places where I'm supposed to be safe. I'm the bad guy for not keeping up with political fashions.

Okay, let's take a closer look at this, line by line.

The right to free speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say.

That's no comfort if a social justice warrior reports you to your employer for having an extremely hateful and hurtful view, and you get "shown the door" as a result. I used to think it served actual Nazis right if they were pictured marching with tiki torches and were reported to their employers and fired for it. Having an actual Nazi, who hates non-white people and people who don't share their religious and other convictions on the payroll is not a good look. I get it. But these days anyone can become a Nazi and thereby be fired just by not keeping up with political fashions. That is terrifying.

It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your b******t, or host it while you share it.

I totally agreed with this until I saw how Reddit subreddits where women were gathering to discuss issues that affected them as women were being shut down or made private due to accusations of transphobia because they weren't using the inclusive language dictated by the thought police. No such "consideration" has been shown to the ones on men's health problems. Nope, not at all. Of course the violent misogynist subreddits are still up. Okay, so sod off, then, you've been shown the door, right? About that: these subreddits have been building an organic, living and breathing community where women could come together to discuss woman stuff. Being made to batten down the hatches means that a) the community stalls and b) the moderators now have to think about moving to a place where men, however they identify, aren't telling them what to say on threads about their own bodies. I get that Reddit isn't obliged to host them but actively conniving at a hostile takeover of women's discussions by men, however they identify, has a chilling effect on women's discussions. If we have to include men in order to avoid invalidating them, they're not women's discussions any more, and the Eye is always upon them. That's a chilling effect, right there. Were it up to me, I'd announce that I'd found another host and post the details of the new forum, then lock the subreddit and move out.

The 1st Amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences.

This is what a lot of people are getting wrong. The fact that social media platforms are popular doesn't make them "the public square." Until the US government formally creates a social media platform, if Twitter kicks me off for stating that biology is real and sex matters, it's their right to do so. I also accept that all speech has consequences, which is fine, to my mind, if the consequences are proportionate to the offence caused and taken. I wrote this five years ago:

Shaming is used to correct, control, and silence individuals and groups. It's an authoritarian construct and has existed for as long as humanity has, it's not an internet thing. People used to be put in the stocks or pillory and pelted with all kinds of stuff, they were made to wear bridles, had bits cut off their faces or bodies, had their heads shaved, or were made to wear symbols that marked them out as pariahs. Today, they get monstered in the general media and/or doxxed, mobbed, or presented in a negative light on the internet. The effect tends to be the same; people end up having their reputations shot to hell, which can affect their employment situations, their relationships, and other aspects of their lives. It shapes our culture by working to maintain the status quo of social attitudes, political thought, and personal behaviour. It's very effective at controlling people's behaviour and reinforcing generally held attitudes. - How Shaming Shapes Our Society, by Wendy Cockcroft for On t'Internet

I'm pretty sure that Covid-19 has resulted in people spending more time online than they usually would, which means they have been spending more time discussing and developing new ideas. The astroturfing sponsored by the Transhumanists has got into general circulation and influenced the most surprising people. That shouldn't surprise anyone. What has absolutely floored me, though, is how many men I used to respect have pounced on the opportunity to display the most appalling misogyny under cover of standing up for the rights of a marginalised minority. Imagine how much good they could achieve if, instead of bashing women on the internet, they went and created housing, shelters, employment opportunities, and other spaces for trans people. Well why go to the trouble to do all of that when bashing women on the internet is so much easier? I note they're not so keen on bashing men. What also sickens me is the Good Doggie women gleefully bashing their sisters as if the rules of the Brave New World they're creating for us don't apply to them. They are in for a shock.

The First Amendment has no problem with rampant misogyny or with the social shaming and silencing of women but please don't pretend all this new witch-hunting is the consequences of my actions. It's the consequence of theirs.

If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show cancelled, or get banned from an internet community, your free speech rights aren't being violated

I used to believe this with all my heart. It was an article of faith. However, this is a wired world. Everything is interconnected now, and mob rule reigns supreme. They're no longer content with driving you out of an internet community if you transgress, they want to completely obliterate you. Nothing you say or do will ever be good enough for them. I learned long ago that if you provide traceable details about yourself, people will use them against you. I haven't updated my Linked In for a reason. People are doing all of this cancelling out of fear of the mob and what they will do if not appeased. I have never seen such fury vented by so many on behalf of another group in all my life. Internet hate mobs usually burn out after a couple of months. I didn't realise how prophetic this post would turn out to be when I wrote it, but then I thought we'd smarten up and grow out of it.

Imagine living in a world where, at any moment, the cultural goalposts that define your existence could shift, immediately turning you into a pariah because you said the wrong word. - Political Protectionism, Special Snowflakes And Social Justice Warriors: Four Ways They Wreak Havoc, by Wendy Cockcroft for On t'Internet

There's no point in blaming Millennials for this. The Special Snowflakes have left uni and are now out in the wild. They haven't been forced to face reality by having to leave home and get a job, they are busily bending reality to their will.

It's just that the people listening think you're an a*****e, and they're showing you the door.

Would anyone like to tell me how they got to thinking anyone is an a*****e, please? Someone else told them. Right. Are those people reliable sources of information whose comments stand up to any measure of scrutiny? At that point they usually block me, unless they go off on a sophist rant and I end up blocking them. And as I pointed out earlier, you can become an a*****e very easily if you're not careful, and therefore find yourself being shown the door.

The Mob

So we've got the causes and the consequences down. Now it's time to talk about the mob. You know, that amorphous hive-mind of people on the lookout for a nail to hit with their baddie hammer. You can tell what they did to one former Gender Critical feminist by her pitiful grovelling. She reminds me of Watership Down's Blackavar, or every scene in The Death of Stalin where Molotov called his wife all sorts of horrible names when talking about her to his friends — right in front of her. Take a look at how she describes herself. That's why. I get why she does it by the little messages she slips in under the radar ("I'm so sorry I helped Goodie Bindel to gather the newts' toes to put in her cauldron" - type comments): this is clearly being done under duress. I mean, the things she came out with in that Medium post are comedy gold. The fact that she does this, and is careful to cozy up to all things trans while bashing every questioner along with the downright horrible people (who actually deserve it for being so mean) is a bit of a giveaway.

The mob, as I have pointed out, is having their opinions packaged and handed to them by the mass media, social media, and their friends, colleagues, bosses, and national, regional, and local institutions, e.g. schools, political parties, and the courts. These are then recycled as non-negotiable tautologies like "trans women are women," and woe betide anyone who doesn't accept this at once without question. This is what makes it so very hard to discuss it. But sometimes you can.

Having the talk

There's a certain amount of both-siderism that goes on when even attempting to have the talk. Anyone coming out for TWAW will at once be ratioed by people who say, "No, they're not," as Stephen King discovered yesterday. Anyone who says as much as, "I love my trans friends and gladly use their preferred pronouns. I'll accept them as women on a social level, but not on every level, they're still biologically male after all" is immediately piled on and would have to mute the thread to avoid the pitched battles that inevitably result. I can't help wondering if all this faff has given him an idea for a new book, and he's trying out scenarios. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to have been given the opportunity to have the talk by a person I least expected it from. The man brought me to tears twice, not by being brutal, dismissive, or patronising, but by his empathetic consideration for my position even though he didn't agree with me on everything. We agreed enough to have a very thorough discussion and he's more than welcome to quote this blog and any of my tweets if he wants to. I trust him to do right by me. You'll have to keep going back to the source tweet to get at all of it but this is the best oppportunity I've ever had to a) have the talk and b) get heard. It doesn't matter that he didn't agree with me. It mattered that he paid attention and weighed my arguments on their merits.

Rules of engagement

Look, I understand why the tech bros didn't want to have the discussion. They know me well enough to have an idea of what to expect: when I think I'm right, I'm relentless and will take on all-comers. I get it. That said, I still think it's massively hypocritical to talk about cancel culture while dismissing the effects of astroturfing on public discourse. Imagine my surprise, then, when I actually did find someone who was willing to discuss this with me. I made a few mistakes and had to learn from them along the way. This is what happened.

I began by responding to a tweet on cancel culture. Sunny was annoyed with my pre-emptive tagging of several prominent GC transsexual allies, and constantly expected to be harangued by them (they didn't hop in, they left us to it). His attitude changed when I apologised and untagged them, at which point our chat took off. Okay, so how do we replicate my success? There are some rules.

1. Find an appropriate venue. Twitter isn't always the right one, I was just lucky that I had the right thread at the right time.
2. Find the right participants. Tech bros afraid of a hit to their reputations and/or revenues aren't the right ones for this particular talk even though they like to discuss cancel culture.
3. Be aware of the audience. I was a guest in someone else's e-house and was mindful of this. Take a deferential tone and accept the cues you're given, as I did. 
4. Set the tone of the discussion yourself, even if the other participant seems hostile or suspicious. By being respectful and calm in your responses and explaining your actions (which I did before I acted on the implied request to untag the other people), you build confidence in the other person that you are who and what you say you are.
5. Try to find common ground where you can. I've always been a bit of a tomboy and love sci-fi and fantasy. That's a thing that Sunny and I have in common. Chatting about that helped to lower his guard and I got to get my points across.
6. Don't dismiss arguments you've heard before because you've heard them before. Use your talking points to their best effect by adding in anecdotal and other evidence. If the other participant won't accept this as evidence, just say it's anecdotal and therefore not proof, but these things still happen. I didn't report all my personal #MeToo stories, but that doesn't mean they never happened.
7. Admit that some of the people who share your positions are horrible people. Let's be honest, there are some bitter man-haters out there, and they're vicious to trans people. When Sunny said he hadn't seen anyone so horrible on his side, I began my response with "I'm sorry to report that..." and told him that there's a lot of really horrible TWAW proponents about, and they seem to be driving the movement.
8. Demonstrate empathy for the other participant's positions, especially if they're personal. I also want trans people to be happy, safe, and accepted.
9. Wait till you have established a healthy rapport before you start to talk about difficult things. Once Sunny had accepted that I'm not an evil harridan intent on shunting trans people to the margins of society, we were able to talk about safeguarding and my fears as a woman. Basically, I'm afraid of obviously masculine men. The androgynous and effeminate ones appear to present less of a threat to me, so I'm less worried about them. Sunny accepts this as a woman thing and wants to work towards a solution. So do I.
10. Agree on a pathway to a solution. It's too easy to put the world to rights between two people who pride themselves on being decent. Your solutions might not suit everyone. I suggested a stakeholder conference where as many different voices as possible can be heard, the idea being to create a set of rules by which as many of us as possible can agree to live by. Sunny agreed that this is reasonable. I'm not sure how we can get that to happen, though.

Well I'm glad I got to have that conversation, mostly because it is now out in the open and the people I tagged can take a look at it and decide if I called it right or not. My audience will be able to see if I called it right or not, as can Sunny's and that of Salma Yaqoob, the person who started the thread. I hope to be able to build something positive from this and that you, reader, will be able to think a bit more deeply about what's going on and what, if anything, we can do about it. I really hope the astro-turfing will be addressed on some point in a respected public forum rather than in the wingnut right wing blogs, where they mostly are. What I don't want to see is the debate about women's rights to spaces free of men being held on the right and and ignored on the left. That will do no one any good.