Your entire second paragraph (ie, the premise of your argument) is "citation-needed" moral panic hogwash. what, pray tell, was the result of this "six years of flooding the zone of hysterical demagoguery" against "kids posting frog memes" - this is why everyone involved in GamerGate and proto-MAGA online trolling was completely kicked off the internet, definitely didn't continue mostly unchecked and evolve into new and more virulent forms of extremism?
Oh no, wait, if you provide examples they are all going to be edge-case nothingburger bullshit, just like what Hobbes was talking about.
The standard Sartre quote, mutatis mutandis, applies here: "Never believe that the anti-trans are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-trans have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
I went to a university where two men kissing was (and still is) expressly forbidden, and men couldn't eat at the student cafeteria or even take exams if the staff thought their hair was too long.
And you want to talk about "chilled expression"? Until a few years ago, it was university policy that if a victim of sexual assault reported it, and was revealed to have been drinking at the time, they would face disciplinary action for drinking alcohol. Basically institutionalized victim blaming! This policy was reversed when somebody in charge finally had the epiphany that this was a surefire way to make sure sexual assaults went unreported.
So my reaction to a lot of these "I feel like my peers judge me for my perspective and I can't always speak my mind without reservation" takes is "Wow, that sure sounds hard". I got put on academic probation over a haircut! And that's far from the worst thing my school ever did.
It's more than a little frustrating to see the conversation about "free speech" so dominated by finger-wagging at "the wokes" while stuff like what happened (and still happens) at my school seems to be basically ignored.
Your entire second paragraph (ie, the premise of your argument) is "citation-needed" moral panic hogwash. what, pray tell, was the result of this "six years of flooding the zone of hysterical demagoguery" against "kids posting frog memes" - this is why everyone involved in GamerGate and proto-MAGA online trolling was completely kicked off the internet, definitely didn't continue mostly unchecked and evolve into new and more virulent forms of extremism?
Oh no, wait, if you provide examples they are all going to be edge-case nothingburger bullshit, just like what Hobbes was talking about.
The standard Sartre quote, mutatis mutandis, applies here: "Never believe that the anti-trans are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-trans have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
I went to a university where two men kissing was (and still is) expressly forbidden, and men couldn't eat at the student cafeteria or even take exams if the staff thought their hair was too long.
And you want to talk about "chilled expression"? Until a few years ago, it was university policy that if a victim of sexual assault reported it, and was revealed to have been drinking at the time, they would face disciplinary action for drinking alcohol. Basically institutionalized victim blaming! This policy was reversed when somebody in charge finally had the epiphany that this was a surefire way to make sure sexual assaults went unreported.
So my reaction to a lot of these "I feel like my peers judge me for my perspective and I can't always speak my mind without reservation" takes is "Wow, that sure sounds hard". I got put on academic probation over a haircut! And that's far from the worst thing my school ever did.
It's more than a little frustrating to see the conversation about "free speech" so dominated by finger-wagging at "the wokes" while stuff like what happened (and still happens) at my school seems to be basically ignored.
White text on black background is annoying. Do you want me to read it or not?