Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Some of the responses to the Harper's Letter said, basically, sure everyone is favor of free speech in the abstract, but also everyone agrees that there are some things that are just out of bounds. You agreed. Another response to the letter said, hey, the problem with the letter is that it refers to a bunch of difficult situations in a sort of abstract way, glossing over real problems in a way that makes one side (e.g., J.K. Rowling's) look better than it really looks when you drill down a little into what actually happened. In other words, the idea of "cancel culture" is being exploited by people who did things that are not particularly defensible, and who are making a lot of noise about the "culture" more generally because they don't want to talk about what actually happened in certain instances specifically.
This is exactly what Williamson (and you, by extension) did with Rapoport. You don't have dig very hard to see that he was fired because of a history of discriminating against people who worked for him, not because he posted the wrong picture on Instagram.
There is, in fact, another pattern here, one you don't want to see. Bennett, pretty clearly, was not fired because people were offended by Cotton's views, but because he managed the op-ed and the fall-out so poorly -- in particularly, telling other people they needed to be exposed to Cotton's views and then admitting he hadn't read the op-ed. Bennett wasn't fired after the op-ed ran, but only after the story kept getting worse as he put gasoline on the fire. J.K. Rowling, who signed the Harper's letter, now is in the news for using libel lawyers to extract money from a news site for children that did not like her views about trans people. She is actually suppressing speech, not the "morons" who are "easily offended" who don't like her views about trans people. "Cancel culture" becomes a way to delegitimize and dismiss the people criticizing her without paying attention to what she and they are actually saying and doing. (For the record, I don't agree with all of the criticisms of her.) Even if the phenomenon you're trying to describe is true and problematic in some cases, it is being used as a smokescreen in other cases so that people can avoid what's really going on.
This is why I keep inviting you to talk about the specifics of actual cases, to respond to actual people instead of referring nebulously to "idiots" and "morons" and "organizers." Just as you say may agree with the aims of culture culture, others may agree with what you would say about specific cases. But we'll never know if you keep tilting at windmills.
You've put a lot of words in quotes in your post. Trying quoting someone.
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Let’s take the most lurid example: Rowling. She didn’t write anything controversial. She simply said men are men and women are women. Is that true? Well, science can debate that. It can also debate whether a trans woman is a woman in the same regard as a woman born a woman.
Instead of allowing that, the extremists on the left insist there is no dispute in these areas. Which is untrue. Psychiatrists are still untangling gender and sex.
So if one disagrees with Rowling, what should be the response? Well of course it should be to state why one thinks she’s wrong. Ah, but did that happen? No. An idiot brigade has called for her head. Boycott her books, don’t watch the films. How dare she hold such an opinion!
That’s cancel culture in a nutshell. “I’m right!!! I’m right and you’re evil and need to go away if you disagree with me! I’m a victim, or on the side of victims!”
All one can do is roll his eyes.
