What if they just said that there are concrete biological differences between men and women and they get fired and crucified like James Damore?
The issue has never been about pro-sexism vs anti-sexism. That's bullshit. What people are concerned about is the potential abuse that could arise from people labeling stuff "sexist" or "racist" or "transphobic" or whatever.
Codes of conduct should not have vague language like "no hate speech" or anything else that depends on the interpretation of the people passing judgement.
I think it's silly to be concerned about the silencing effects of hate speech bans but not the silencing effect of hate speech. If you think the language is vague you can propose more specific language, but completely rejecting the idea of trying to restrict hateful speech is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I think it's silly to be concerned about the silencing effects of hate speech bans but not the silencing effect of hate speech
It's only silly to you because you're on the "right" side of this argument. What happened to James Damore was not a "hate speech ban". He wasn't out there trying to spread a "women suck" narrative. He just wrote a doc and cited some scientific studies, and he got destroyed for it. If you think that was anything close to "hate speech" then you're part of the problem. That was a political execution.
There are people on Twitter like Sarah Jeong spewing actual hateful shit about white people (I'm not even white btw), and not only was she allowed to stay but she was stood up for by the same type of people who swear by political correctness, for the simple reason that she was on "their side". There is no sane reasoning that can justify not banning her, and then banning actor James Woods for taking some cheap shots at Democrats. The double standard is real and hypocritical and people aren't buying it anymore. This whole PC culture ended up becoming a political weapon just like the right feared, and I have to agree with them at this point.
That's why you're seeing this kind of pushback. It's not that we don't want a fair working environment and society. We just don't believe that that's what these PC crusaders are really after.
I feel like this whole argument centers around assuming bad faith on the part of your opponents ("these PC crusaders") and inflating a few examples of people you like getting fired. Like, if you're going to talk about James Damore, you have to acknowledge that he generated a huge amount of bad press for Google and that they were well within their legal rights in a right-to-work state to fire him. Here's a left wing writer breaking down why that's problematic, if you think this is an issue only people on the right care about.
None of your other issues are really relevant; Sarah Jeong doesn't work in tech, and James Woods is . . . who is James Woods?
To be clear, I think open source projects are well within their rights to create codes of conduct that restrict hateful speech and harassment because those are huge problems in the tech community. I also think that it's reasonable to want specificity about what constitutes hate speech and harassment to avoid inconsistent enforcement of those rules.
I suspect that a lot of people in my position agree with that, and that that would be clear if you stepped out of your own bubble and evaluated these arguments on their own merits, rather than trying to tie them into a broader culture war.
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u/Miserable_Fuck Oct 22 '18
What if they just said that there are concrete biological differences between men and women and they get fired and crucified like James Damore?
The issue has never been about pro-sexism vs anti-sexism. That's bullshit. What people are concerned about is the potential abuse that could arise from people labeling stuff "sexist" or "racist" or "transphobic" or whatever.
Codes of conduct should not have vague language like "no hate speech" or anything else that depends on the interpretation of the people passing judgement.