So often in discussions pertaining to free speech I hear this term thrown out in attempts to justify why someone might condone some forms of speech restriction but not others. Of course I am alluding to people who condone preexisting regulations on hate-speech in regards to race, but not also condoning such regulations in regards to gender identity.

The argument typically goes that in the case of race it is merely restricted speech. That you are not permitted to say specific words that we consider to be racial slurs or discriminatory language. They present this as being different from the case of gender identity, specifically gendered pronouns. Supposedly because you are "forced" or "compelled" to use specific words, in this case a person's preferred pronouns. But are you really?

I have not seen a single policy that explicitly states one must refer to someone specifically by the pronoun they prefer. One merely cannot persistently apply pronouns to a person that they are not comfortable with. If a person says they would prefer to be referred to as "he", that is not an immediate obligation upon you to refer to him as "he". You can refer to him with his name. You structure your sentences such that you do not need to use pronouns. You can avoid talking about him in the third person. You merely cannot refer to him as "she".

So how exactly is this "compelling" or "forcing" you to say something specifically; at least, any more than current speech restrictions are?

If you can claim that this is compelled speech, why can I not claim that me not being able to call my coworkers racial slurs is a form of compelled speech? Why can I not claim that I am being compelled to refer to coworkers as things that are specifically not racial slurs? In saying that I cannot call someone a racial slur, you are saying that I "must" refer to them as something that is not a racial slur.

There's a reason "he" and "she" exist. It's easier to use those words than to form the sentence differently, or maybe the person you're speaking to doesn't know their name, or forgets names a lot. It's convenient. Calling someone a nigger isn't convenient

Speaking from your own biases here. Some old cunt from 1940 probably could just as easily feel that "nigger" does come off the tongue easily, and being able to just say "nigger" instead of otherwise describing a person is incredibly convenient.

its only use is malicious.

The person who wants to use it may claim they don't mean it in a malicious way. "Nigger" is just how they describe black people. To them "nigger" could just means someone has dark skin.

You can argue calling someone who identifies as female but is a male "he" is malicious

Yeah that's sort of the point.

but calling someone "he/him" is not inherently malicious

Never claimed as such. I don't see how something not being inherently malicious means we can't address situations in which it is malicious. Hell, "nigger" isn't inherently malicious either. It can be said for historical or contextual reasons, like it is right now, ironically.

And all of this just seems to be arguments why one should be restricted and the other not, but doesn't really tell me why one is "compelled" speech and the other not, which is more what I intended to be the scope of this conversation.

Saying nigger is fine for old people who still see white people as the real race. Think about it, you'd refer to everyone as something else, but your own kind as the standard. "he's a nigger" "he's a mexican", but you wouldn't say "he's a white just like us and everybody else", because there's no reason to give it any attention. If we remove the reason there needs to be a divide between "the normal people" and "people of color", then we also remove remove the context where we call people mexicans or africans, or Puerto Ricans.

If I'm describing a person to someone else, then I'll talk about interests or whatever and what kind of vibe they give off. If they're gonna search for the person, I'm gonna tell them they're black or Caucasian, along with features like a big nose, bushy eyebrows etc.

Well, context is key for one. Calling someone a patently hateful racial epithet is pretty cut and dry. Misgendering someone could be a simple misunderstanding. Even if it was intentional, it could simply boil down to a matter of personal belief, and nothing relating to hatred or incitement of violence to an individual. Not to mention you have to actually prove the speech was for malicious intent.

So I'm not entirely sure how you would go about legally compelling people not to misgender someone. It's too much of a grey area.

it is my personal belief, nothing relating to hatred or incitement of violence, that your name is "fuckbrain"

you have to prove that this speech is for malicious intent to compel me otherwise

Quote from: Verbatim on May 22, 2018, 11:00:30 AM

Quote from: Mordo on May 22, 2018, 10:51:13 AM

Well, context is key for one. Calling someone a patently hateful racial epithet is pretty cut and dry. Misgendering someone could be a simple misunderstanding. Even if it was intentional, it could simply boil down to a matter of personal belief, and nothing relating to hatred or incitement of violence to an individual. Not to mention you have to actually prove the speech was for malicious intent.

So I'm not entirely sure how you would go about legally compelling people not to misgender someone. It's too much of a grey area.

it is my personal belief, nothing relating to hatred or incitement of violence, that your name is "fuckbrain"

you have to prove that this speech is for malicious intent to compel me otherwise

Oh shit I just got nae nae'd :-0

you should be used to it by now, fuckbrain

as long as you're comfortable with that logic, i'm sure we can roll with that

well no, never mind, because your whole point is that it's okay to ignore personal comfort

and i wholeheartedly agree with you, fuckbrain

Wut

what is the appropriate number of holocausts that a group of people must endure before you're allowed to treat them with any dignity or respect as human beings without coming across as an SJW or something

two? three? just one? or is it case by case

how many trans people need to be killed in order for society to collectively take issue with it

what's the minimum number for it to be considered "the same" and therefore worthy of outrage

I mean, my dad used to call us little girls when we were younger and I have a huge masculinity complex because of it, my older brother was especially affected.

Don't misgender people.

Quote from: challengerX on May 20, 2018, 12:33:36 PM

Quote from: eggsalad on May 20, 2018, 11:54:04 AM

Speaking from your own biases here. Some old cunt from 1940 probably could just as easily feel that "nigger" does come off the tongue easily, and being able to just say "nigger" instead of otherwise describing a person is incredibly convenient.

Whether or not "nigger" rolls off the tongue doesn't make it a word that's used for convenience or one of the main every day words in the English language. "Nigger" could be erased from the world and the English language would be fine, not the case for "he/she".

Maybe "nigger" used to be the acceptable way to refer to a black person, but it fell out of use by the insistence of black people that it be stopped. It didn't just happen naturally; the acceptability of the phrase had to be intentionally erased. I imagine we're seeing the same thing here, where maybe it's currently okay (but really not) to intentionally refer to an open transperson by a pronoun or name they don't prefer, and they're fighting against it so that in X number of years people will see it as as hateful of an intention as using the word "nigger".

Calling someone a he when they don't want to be called a he is hardly comparable to a racial slur with hundreds of years of historic prejudice and hostility behind it.

I mean, it's a pretty fucking reductionist way of looking at this. I'm not trivialising trans people's experiences but it's insulting to draw an equivalence between the two.

Quote from: Mordo on May 23, 2018, 03:02:19 PM

I'm not trivialising trans people's experiences

yeah you are

How come I knew EXACTLY what you were going to quote.

Christ you're predictable.

im so edgy and cool by not quoting people and typing in lower case without punctuation

look

at

me

am i verbatim yet

ｈｏｌｙ　ｓｈｉｔ　ｈｏｗ　ａｍ　ｉ　ＳＴＩＬＬ　ｎｏｔ　ｖｅｒｂａｔｉｍ

the bottom line is that turkey wasn't trying to say that they're equivalent

they're just both shitty, and the fact that you need a holocaust to happen in order to take them seriously is kind of disgusting

it's actually EXTREMELY disgusting, but you know, i'm kind of numb to all this faggoty right wing bullshit at this point

how can you not see that saying "WOW THAT'S SO DISGUSTING THAT YOU COMPARED SLAVERY TO SJWs" is a fucking bitchmade bullshit way to argue

it has to be some kind of logical fallacy, it almost feels like an emotional appeal because you're allowing your personal outrage and disgust over the comparison to cloud the actual argument being made:

that it doesn't matter how bad it gets, you don't get to say "nigger" without social consequences and there should be equal consequences for not respecting someone's gender identity

you can talk all you want about how "nigger" is worse and all that, but the ultimate point being made is that they're extremely fucking rude and cunty things to do and say to someone, and that's what the subject is

that's the only thing being argued here and you're trying to derail it into something else and it's just retarded