She has the right to speak. She can literally go off and write another book right now. She simply lost the right to one specific platform, because other people used their right to speak to tell her to fuck off.
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Richard Dawkins tells students upset by Germaine Greer to go home and hug a teddy
- Thread starter Erin S Kittens
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She has the right to speak. She can literally go off and write another book right now. She simply lost the right to one specific platform, because other people used their right to speak to tell her to fuck off.
I never said I hope hate gets a platform or that I advocate for it. I said that essentially I am coming down on the side of a university structure that DOESN"T bend to the will of mobs trying to exert pressure to silence and ban unpopular opinions and those who have them even if it occasionally leads to speakers or people that may present hateful ideas. Knowing full well such a university system isn't full proof and there may be individual instances where such mob outrage may have led to a more equitable outcome.
I'm not advocating bringing in all the hate mongers we can find.
You have broadened the term "political" to such a general umbrella that pretty much anything anyone ever says is political. It basically reduces the word to worthless because everything is essentially political.
And you can start with this straw man tripe:
Its not worth shuffling through a wall of text with nothing of value really offered.
Don't educate yourself to pass a test, enlighten yourself to understand the subject of the test. If you understand why something is harmful then further understanding of new or emergent issues becomes intuitive and obvious. Otherwise you're simply going through the motions and telling people what you presume they want to hear as a path of least resistance. That will date you and your mindset.
It is and always has been more than "knowing what to say", it's about empathy and without empathy there can be no understanding and if there is no understanding you have the conditional and pseudo intellectual cop outs about "morphing goal posts". (about progressiveness of all things)
Progress doesn't stop just because someone who once "got it" decided to close their heart and mind and "lost it".
Her right to speak in a PRIVATE place and receive money for it
The problem is discourse is the only way to prevent oppression against these people in the future. Of course we shouldn't be arguing about this, but we must.
YES. THAT IS MY ENTIRE POINT. YOU FINALLY GET IT. THANK YOU.
It's an awful point. Its only purpose is to win this argument. It has no credible value in the discussion. Using the actual definition of the word, lots in academia and education is not political.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
When one of the points is that something being apolitical is even a thing that can exist yes, it does have a point. No speech is "apolitical", we're not discussing two different classes of material here
SolicitorPirate
Member
All this thread has thought me is that GAF doesn't value the safety and well being of trans people. None of you would be spouting this bullshit of the need to have contrary opinions if Greer was arguing BLM doesn't matter because black people are subhuman.
But everything IS political.
We are now talking in english because the USA won the world and it is now the most taugh language in the west hemisphere.
The way we choose how to express outselfs, out words and how we manage our sentences says a lot about our views on others and outselfs.
I'm black and I have repeatedly said, in this thread and others, that i would value that sort of discussion.
Plenty of speeches aren't political. Not everything presented to an audience is:
1. Of, relating to, or dealing with the structure or affairs of government, politics, or the state: a political system.
2. Relating to, involving, or characteristic of political parties or politicians: a political campaign.
3. Interested or active in politics: I'm not a very political person.
4. Influenced by, based on, or stemming from partisan interests or political ideology: The court should never become a political institution. The attack was a political crime.
5. Based on or motivated by self-serving interests, especially in attempting to gain power or to please people of a higher rank in an organization: political maneuvering within the company.
6. Indicating national or regional boundaries. Used of maps.
2. Relating to, involving, or characteristic of political parties or politicians: a political campaign.
3. Interested or active in politics: I'm not a very political person.
4. Influenced by, based on, or stemming from partisan interests or political ideology: The court should never become a political institution. The attack was a political crime.
5. Based on or motivated by self-serving interests, especially in attempting to gain power or to please people of a higher rank in an organization: political maneuvering within the company.
6. Indicating national or regional boundaries. Used of maps.
If we are going to use the core greek version of the word then sure, it can be argued anything said is meant to influence others to some extent.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Politics is soley the domain of things that concern the state or nation? I don't even think the most die-hard "anti-political" people would agree with such a narrow definition.
I don't understand why you seem to assume that something can only be political if it is an intentional polemic.
I find it even weirder that you're using that to justify inviting a feminist on the grounds that she wouldn't have to go all political.
Have a problem with the definitions, take it up with the dictionary authors.
They challenged it and they won. Actively avoiding it would be what Dawkins said" run home"
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I mean...feminism isn't political unless its advocating for policy change?
Trans people receive the kind of hate Greer shouts every single day when they go out on the streets. This is not a "I want to avoid confrontation" kind of thing or else that would be a SUICIDE kind of thing.
We are saying that Greer has lots it's chances of saying anything more meaningfull and receive for it
GeneralHerpes
Member
Don't be afraid of free speech. It's working.
It is LITERALY not free speech. It is Paid Speech =P
Consider the threads I've seen today, that's not as safe a bet as you think it would be.
I'm sorry, but a couple of people have made this analogy now and it's completely fallacious and wrongheaded.
The idea that black people are mentally deficient or subhuman:
1) Has been completely rejected by the entirety of western society minus some blatantly evil fringe elements for a very long time now; and
2) Requires only a modicum of life experience to rebuff. (By which I mean meeting black people (or seeing them on fucking TV!) is enough for the vast majority of people to realise that any such suggestion must be, on its face, bullshit)
The idea of whether trans people are or aren't who they claim they are or are rather suffering mental illness / delusional etc
1) Has not yet been accepted or even communicated to society at large. Things have gotten started with Caitlyn Jenner, but the vast majority of people I know have had a very negative reaction to that. It is, for many people, their first exposure to trans issues.
2) Is not something a normal person will come to understand through life experience because
a) trans people are very, very rare,
b) the knowledge that a trans person 'knows' they are a different gender from their body lies within themselves, and as such is difficult to prove, and subject to the same suspicion as mental illness typically receives ('how do I know they're not faking?'), which therefore means
c) it requires science to prove that they are transgendered and that that's a 'thing', so to speak. (I'm no scientist.); and further
d) for that science to be communicated to the public as part of the educational process.
As a result of these differences no one could possibly make the first set of claims regarding black people and pretend they are doing anything but inciting racial violence with lies and bullshit. On the other hand what is classified as 'trans hate speech' is still just perfectly acceptable 'common sense' in most of the countries around the world. It would shock many, many people to learn that their opinions would be classified by others as hatespeech. They're utterly different positions when taken in context.
That said, I'm sure Greer knows the effect of her words, but I still think the analogy is a really poor one.
Why wouldn't you use the Greek and actual meaning of the word?
Politics is a general term of the market of ideas, norms, values. Being allowed to say or do anything is political. That's why not caring about politics can be a harmful thing unless you don't care about anything that politics can possibly influence, not even if you live or not live.
Saying things are not political is understandable but essentially creates this fake assumption that you can live an apolitical life.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
^All of which is very little comfort to actual trans people. "Sorry, society just hasn't caught up yet" isn't an answer I'm satisfied with when we're dealing with a group of people who have one of the highest (maybe the highest?) rates of suicide of any group I'm aware of.
I think the point is rather that if you believe everything is political, then nothing is political.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
"Do you guys want to get sandwiches for lunch?" falls below the threshold of being meaningfully political. The choice of even what science classes to offer in high school or the television programming selected by a network certainly fall above it
I mean I could break it down to an extent (proof of acceptance of capitalism, western food, etc) but I don't think even I could be arsed to get down to that level, heh.
It's a shitty answer because reality is shitty. You can say you're not satisfied and I understand that but that doesn't change the fact that I'm right. It's certainly no comfort to trans people but what should be a comfort is that things are changing, and as we've seen with gay rights liberals are 100% in charge of changing public opinion these days and the internet has enabled societal opinion to change faster than ever. Progressives are winning every fight. So things should get better, and fast. But to what endpoint, I'm not sure.
Another point I'd make is that it's not like the public are getting their anti-trans ideas from Greer, like some racist or terrorist guy would inspire others. She's just stating the default position people have held for centuries. She's influencing no one here because people like her already feel that way, and they're a majority.
So the real fight here is to get the message out there regarding trans rights. In that respect every media blow-up like this helps. So, thanks Greer!
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
The point is that people should be able to tolerate the mere utterance of an idea, or the potential for such, even a repugnant one, without falling apart, especially if they are college students. Greer is a fairly noted feminist author, no? Good, bad, or indifferent, she's part of the intellectual life of 21st Century America, and A) the idea of repudiating a person's entire body of work because they are wrong in one sphere is the epitome of anti-intellectual sanctimoniousness I despise, and B) I can't see anything but cowardice and weakness in refusing to face ideas one disagrees with head-on.
I don't think anyone who says that stuff thinks it's acceptable as an answer, rather a grim description of a horribly unfair chronology.
Greer, like Dawkins and Hitchens, is like lots of other intelligent, articulate people who've done a lot of good, but have peculiar and confounding blind spots. I think if it was Sarah Palin there wouldn't even be a thread. We expect a LOT better from someone with Greer's history. And sadly looks like we expected too much.
I wish Hitchens had lived long enough to confront and acknowledge his neocon and Iraq BULLSHIT. Greer still has plenty of time. I hope she can reflect.
The point is anything can be reframed to be political if you're open enough with how you define and relate words. Even your sandwich question.
A Link to the Past
Banned
Good rule of thumb: as long as hate speech is about trans people, it's speech that's worth debating.
Not saying that everyone is a flipflopper, but I guarantee you that if the thread swapped Greer for Duke, Dawkins would be on the cross.
Not saying that everyone is a flipflopper, but I guarantee you that if the thread swapped Greer for Duke, Dawkins would be on the cross.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Sure, but I think I can do more to help the health and wellbeing of trans people by standing alongside them in saying "no, what, this isn't even up for debate" and rejecting opinions like Greer's flat out rather than engaging with them. I've had people I consider friends tell me that one is more supportive to them than the other
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
Which is why the "everything is political" mantra is such bullshit. Virtually no aspect of human experience decreases to absolute zero as other components come to the fore, such that you can say "Everything is _____" for a variety of possible things. However, various factors recede to negligible levels, such that you can reasonably say that they are not a factor in some settings. Not to mention that when you say "Everything is _____", virtually anything can be inserted into that construction and made to fit by some twist of logic. The test is not whether an argument can be made, but whether such an argument holds water in the face of experience- and evidence-based wisdom.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones" is a wonderful little rhyme to teach children that also happens to be completely and utterly wrong in the real world.
Trans folk have a disproportionately high suicide and murder rate; Greer contributes to the culture that enables that when she calls them rapists and monsters. Given feminism's moves towards intersectionality I think it's fair to call her at best behind the times; when you look at the scientific evidence against her position it becomes clear she's little more than a bigot.
Moreover, as I said, she has the right to speak on her terms, the Cardiff students just didn't particularly care for her giving a lecture and the University obviously agreed. In fact I would argue that they were confronting the idea by protesting.
I feel like part of the reason even very clever people have blind spots relating to this issue is because how we define gender is a very personal thing, massively wrapped up in our own self-definition and sense of self. In Greer's case it goes beyond that, and it's massively wrapped up in her life's work and her career as well. The entire meaning of her academic and worklife existence, at this point, might as well be riding on how people interpret these issues. That's not an easy position in which to do an about-face on something, when the idea is so central to your life.
Then you also have semantics issues, where what one person means when discussing 'sex', 'gender', 'women' etc might be quite different from what another person means by those words. You almost need to sit people down before every new discussion and make sure everyone's on the same linguistic and vocabulary page. You'll see the gender and sex mixups in every single trans thread, for example. Often when these issues are cleared up you find people are much closer in opinion than was supposed.
All of these things make it an area ripe for miscommunication, imo. Whereas 'black people are dumber than non-black people' or 'homosexuality is evil' are utterly black and white propositions and discussions, with no such scope for semantic arguments or miscommunication.
And I think you do more good by having an open debate. I get your position, though. It's impossible to say who is right. There's no doubt that if you were supporting a friend that you'd take your position. I'm thinking more along the lines of progressing society's understanding of all of this through use of the media etc.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
I don't get it. Was Greer specifically barred by those protesting her to speak at the university? Those activists were merely protesting about the nature of her hateful speech, yeah? And it was her that cancel her own appearance in the end, right?
Well, the activists only exercised their free speech as well about how they dislike her thoughts and ideas, yeah? And it seems like Dawkins doesn't like that, equating their protests as attempts to bar free speech (irony)? So what are they supposed to do? Just shut up and not voicing their opinion about Greer at all then? Wasn't the fact that they're protesting is proof that they exercised their critical thinking?
Well, the activists only exercised their free speech as well about how they dislike her thoughts and ideas, yeah? And it seems like Dawkins doesn't like that, equating their protests as attempts to bar free speech (irony)? So what are they supposed to do? Just shut up and not voicing their opinion about Greer at all then? Wasn't the fact that they're protesting is proof that they exercised their critical thinking?
There's really no other way for me to read "go home and hug a teddy".
There's not enough information to come to a clean conclusion here. The crux of which is the nature of the protest. Were they protesting the person, the persons right to speak there, the persons platform, or were they defending their own sensibilities through protest?
All people are doing in this thread is choosing whichever one fits their argument best to try and win an argument.
All people are doing in this thread is choosing whichever one fits their argument best to try and win an argument.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
Uh, the University didn't agree with anything. She canceled her talk of her own accord - which, to be fair, is on her for letting herself be kowed. But the point is, preventing ideas from being expressed does NOT defang them, nor is a talk at a college going to be the tipping point for someone at a higher risk of suicide, especially considering I'm pretty sure the talk wasn't going to be ABOUT trans folk nor her opinion on them. I'd also argue lack of ability to engage in compartmentalization is one of the biggest, most pervasive flaws of modern culture, in addition to lack of spine, but that's another conversation entirely.
Lets stop trying to take all nuance out of a conversation, this isn't a presidential campaign we're talking about.
Whoops, I forgot that. Thanks.
This is not preventing ideas from being expressed. Germaine Greer has the right to go and write as many books as she wants. This is a specific case of somebody asking that a specific platform - a pedestal, frankly - be withdrawn. And, for whatever reason, Greer withdrew, so now the entire press is framing this as an issue of "free speech". Not wanting somebody to be given a platform is not the same as them being denied the right to speak. I cannot stress that enough.
I mean you're right - that's why trans activism is able to survive the onslaught it's getting in the press at the moment because all the papers forgot their moral compass again. But on a fundamental level this is being framed in the wrong context.
This issue has NOTHING to do with free speech. It is a PAID LECTURE so it is payed speech in a PRIVATE university =P
Free speech of hate speech means that you can SAY what you want, like Greer said, and DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES of said speech, like FOR EXAMPLE, being denied of receiving money and appearing in a private university
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
You miss the larger point that her opinions on trans folk were, at best, a footnote in her overall output as a writer and were not going to be remotely the focal point of the talk she was going to give. To protest the very idea that she be given a platform for DIFFERENT ideas because of the intolerability to some of her ideas in another sphere - even if, objectively, those ideas are pretty crummy - is, as I said earlier, the kind of anti-intellectual sanctimoniousness I can't stand. Ezra Pound was a real piece of shit, but if he were going to give a talk focusing on his best poetry, his support of fascism would have been a real poor excuse to deny him that platform.
Edit: And Dawkins, in general, is a prick, but I'm with him on this.
He tends to say his opinions to lots of things where his opinions are not needed.
Also he is shown to have some .... troubled views on some minorities.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Legitimate_criticisms_of_Dawkins
For me personally it's the fact that he seems to tend towards social conservatism at times.
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