Not all, but the vast majority are.

Surely you have a citation for this whopper of a claim.

calling the debate “vast” and “majority” now

Here's the thing, though. I think your stance is way, way, way too censorious.

I like to think of myself as a reasonable man who doesn't accept bigotry but who thinks there should be more in the tool-kit than just a BANHAMMER for people who don't behave within exacting standards.

While my eyes roll to the back of my head when I hear certain commentators talking about how the "world has gone mad" and how CRT, diverstiy and inclusivity and not being an ******* to transgender people is somehow PC gone mad etc..., I also have to agree that in some cases there is a zeal to get people fired or punished for relatively minor transgressions.

This is why I asked you if smartcooky would forgive smartcooky for saying "Uncle Tom". Clearly you felt that retracting and apologizing was enough. I agree that it should be, but not everyone does, and from what you have said on this thread, it would seem that you don't either. I believe you even said you would fire a university teacher for saying "Spanish flu". That is censorious in the extreme, in my opinion. And you have also cheered on when, say, a woman in a dog park may, or may not have used a racially-suggestive word, got doxxed and fired from her job. That to me also seems censorious and unforgiving in the extreme.

You may want to realize that being extreme in all your views isn't exactly consistent with skepticism or reason.

I found this article on Spiked about the Dave Chappelle affair, apparently he's 'White Adjacent' now...



https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/1...ite-privilege/


Also relating to that is Jerry Coyne commenting on a posting by Andrew Sullivan regarding some of the language used at the protests against Chappelle:



https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/...-gay-movement/


Coyne links to Sullivan's article in his post and for once some of the comments are worth reading especially the one by a poster called James Walker discussing the tensions in the Gay Rights movement in the 1980s (e.g after AIDS.)

I think by now we can guess that just about every article on Spiked is of a kind of moral panic about cancel culture, or lockdowns, or climate change or PC gone mad, etc...

somebody yelled at someone with a tambourine. truly disturbing stuff

It's not so much the yelling, as the choice of words, “Repent, m**********r! Repent! Repent!” has a decidedly 'religious zealotry' air to it.

No doubt, but can we please try to elucidate the situation a little rather than just yell at clouds.

What is the problem?
How can the problem be fixed?

It seems to me that the “problem” is very vague. And people are cherry picking examples to forge a narrative which comes across as a bit of a moral panic.

Not quite what I said.

In the correct context, where you would use the term in a discussion about how it was inappropriate to use it, then fair enough. Even if you use it out of such a context, so long as you withdraw and apologise when challenged on it, and undertake not do it again, also fine.

Where I draw line would be its use, and when challenged on it, doubling down, and defending its use while screaming about "freeze peach" and "akidemik feedumb" like that idiot Jon Zubieta when he used Wuhan Virus as a slur in a chemistry syllabus. Not only did the subject material have nothing to so with the virus, it was not even in the body of the syllabus work, it was the bloody safety document!! Completely unacceptable behaviour IMO

Again, she had opportunities to back down from her racist rant. She didn't do it, UNTIL the video went viral - The only thing she is sorry about is that she got filmed being racist; he go caught. I believe 100% that had there been no video, she would never have apologised to the man.

How do you yell with a tambourine? :confused:

A controversial comedian... :rolleyes: I probably wouldn't have watched it at all if not for all the publicity.

I don't understand people complaining because a comedian said offensive things about their group. That's what they do.

Welcome to the club, now get over yourselves. As a bald white Italian with more body hair than Bigfoot I know what being the butt of a joke is. You aren't that special.

I’d describe the Dave Chapelle cancel culture crusade the crown jewel of manufactured outrage. But then he did it again.

An astute observation. Trans people will have to accept being fodder for mean spirited jokes, a totally novel development. /s

Yea it is remarkable how quickly Netflix took down the offending program. A clear example of cancel culture there, virtually no one had a chance to see it, and the added noise certainly didn't drive more people too it giving it even higher ratings.

Jared Holt's podcast today about modern moral panics is worth a listen.

https://shtpost.substack.com/p/our-m...nics-102621-ft

Wasn't sure whether this thread or the CRT thread was more appropriate, as they both seem as part of the same greater "anti-woke" freakout.

Jared interviews Michael Hobbes about his piece here:

https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/

Not addressed to me, but I was curious.

According to this, white people are less likely to be transgender. It doesn’t say this, but I assume there are still more of them due to the majority of US being white. (Is that still true?*)

According to this, the rate of MTF transitions are about equal to FTM transitions.

I couldn’t find anything on current numbers, exactly.

I don’t think that this supports EC’s claim that there is a “vast majority” in the community, let alone that they are one thing or another.


*ETA: it is not still true. By the numbers, there should be more Hispanic transgender people, than white.

ETA2: Actually, if these trends remain consistent, we should expect the majority of transgenders to be Hispanic trans men over time.

Got about as far as "TERF-ese for 'trans people don’t exist'" before giving up on Michael Hobbes.

'The Economist cites the case of Colin Wright, a post-doctoral student who had difficulty finding a job after publishing a series of essays “arguing that sex is a biological reality” (TERF-ese for “trans people don’t exist”).'

Oh, Hobbes is that one.
An evolutionary biologist states a scientific fact that contradicts the tenets of pseudoscientific postmodern gender theory (analogous to an evolutionary biologist stating simple facts about biology that contradict intelligent decision) but is really saying 'trans people don't exist', and therefore by implication it's not a serious problem that his career was ruined (actually I believe it was due to sharing a peer-reviewed journal article on gender dysphoria that contradicted the ideological narrative).

Hobbes can say this, and in the same breath claim that left illiberalism doesn't exist. It's a complete and utter lack of self-insight, which I suppose is true of all those caught up in fundamentalist cults.

"It is not nearly as widespread or distressing as many dubiously (even entirely false) presented examples would lead one to believe."

"It doesn't exist."

I'm confused, are you for or against misleading summarization of an issue?


You found one point of disagreement and cast away the entire article and disparage the author.

I'm confused, are you for or against rigorous ideological purity?

Oh, Colin is fine.

He's managing editor of a publication, has a podcast, gets speaking gigs...

Yeah, he's "ruined."

You're literally doing what the article described.

ETA: he's found an income stream from telling people how he can't get work. Nice gig if you can get it?

I'm curious what this guy's tenure prospects were like before he got "cancelled".

Academia is a notoriously competitive environment. Getting a tenure track job after getting a Ph.D. is often very unlikely unless you're coming from an elite program with an extremely impressive resume.

Someone who realizes that their prospects were dim might see getting "cancelled" as a savvy career move.

Someone elsewhere remarked that the problem with the current landscape is that anyone who disagrees with trans epistemology is immediately branded a bigot who does not believe trans people have a right to exist.

I do not understand trans epistemology. Maybe someone can explain it to me. These sort of politics have traditionally appealed to a blank slate version of human nature, but what's being espoused sounds weirdly biologically essentialist. (Which is not unprecedented: Left-wingers who temperamentally favored nurture over nature went all-in on a gay gene.)

What about the traditional distinction between sex (biology) and gender (social construction)? Is that no longer thing?

A person can be male/female/neither/other/etc. If I identify as a male, then I'm a male because I say so? And I say so because I'm a male? A year from now, or five minutes from now, I could sincerely identify as female, in which case I'm female...? But was I always female?

Are we looking at the same chart?

Ok, but again so what?

Dave Chapelle just unapologetically said everything you wrote in a much funnier way even though he had already been disagreed with and labeled a bigot, for the second time, got collectively paid $40M to do it, and everyone loved it.

The current landscape seems fine.

Okay, I can understand that there is a fundamental illogicality or coherence to trans epistemology - or at least the versions that you describe.

However my question relates to cancel culture itself. Specifically what should be permitted as a legitimate criticism of something someone says, what should be accepted as academic freedom, what should be grounds for losing one’s job etc…?

Has there been any legal or government shifting of the needle or are we talking about a sort of epiphenomenon of social media in which the ability to reach a bigger audience has been democratized to some extent?

So to summarize, EC's "whopper of a claim" was actually just a "whopper" with utterly no basis in fact.

Who's have guessed? :rolleyes:

Oh, damn. My color blindness got me. I thought the top line was the total population. My mistake.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on a right-wing cancellation that's ended in a lawsuit.



https://www.thefire.org/lawsuit-fire...aculty-rights/


And and online article discussing how both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of 'It offends, make it go away' actions:



https://www.thebulwark.com/what-canc...e-is-and-isnt/

The framework tends to be that trans people have a right to exist they just don't actually exist.

I do wonder if he had picked say asians or jews for his other minority group getting rights and acceptance faster than blacks what people would have thought of it.

Similar to how being gay is a lifestyle choice rather than being an inherent quality of the person themselves?

Exactly, being trans gets expressed as just a facet of postmodern gender theory instead of any actual trait people fundamentally posses.

Just checking in here,
Orange is the New Black is live in NZ on Netflix so I must be missing the meaning of your post..

On the Dorian Abbot affair:



https://theusfreespeechunion.substac...f-dorian-abbot

It sucks that you can't, like, read. I was not really writing a polemic. I was asking questions. Also, Dave Chappelle getting pre-paid tens of millions does not translate into anything for the typical person -- and, as a matter of fact, not everyone loved it.

Critics of the Chappelle-critics say that the protests and outrage weren't so much about this pre-paid special, but about anyone who wants to make the next special. I think it's a little silly to read such far-sighted motives into the mob, but they could be right that this is the (intended or unintended) effect. Also, as a matter of fact, some people can get with a lot more than others (as fired Trump supporters discovered). I remember comics marveling that pre-scandal Louis CK was able to say the n-word and indulge a lot of bits nobody would dare say. In some respects this is earned. Chappelle is at the top of his profession.

I'd certainly hope someone who is uncancellable will say unpopular things. We had a similar thread topic some time ago where I observed Jews can be especially effective opponents of Israeli colonialism.

In any case, it's rather stupid to say Chappelle got paid for criticizing transpeople. He got paid for being Dave Chappelle: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. The special was not peek Chappelle wit, but he got paid top dollar. As with Louis, or many Oscar winners, it's a body of work dynamic.

The trans topic in particular is not just a matter of losing employment, but having a basic conversation. I see people, and know people, who say they're happy to talk politics with friends about all issues except this one, which harkens back to the idea that freedom of speech is related to freedom of thought.

Quick question for Chappelle critics
 

What ought to happen to his offensive material, now?

:rolleyes:

So, unless EC was talking about the population of the entire world instead of just the US or just the Western world, the only thing debatable in the claim is "vast".

Only if you also ignore non-binary and trans men, as EC does because they aren't a challenge to her privileges. (Yes trans women are 2-3 times as common as trans men and while it seems afab enbies are more common that could be a product of amab not having ways to express that in our culture, but also putting in 'white' and 'middle class' makes her claim not just a whopper, but a really silly one.)

My inability to correctly read colored lines on a graph aside, that appears to not be the case, or it is decreasingly so. Given the higher number of females to males in the US population, there are probably more trans men than trans women or, again, there will be.

I read it, seemed most of your questions had little to do with cancel culture and I felt were probably best answers elsewhere by someone with a greater interest in them.

It is stupid to say he got paid to criticize trans people. He got paid to produce a comedy special. In that special he criticized trans people. He also did that a few years ago, so all this worry about not being able to criticize trans people publicly in the next special seems over blown, since this was the next special. Unless the critics-critics are worried about the next-next special. In which case, the 95% rotten tomatoes score, because everyone loved the special, is a good indication he’ll probably be back again. Unless we’re worried about the next-next-next special, which admittedly, who knows. The nebulous unnamed Chapelle critics cancel culture mob and the dozens of trans rights protesters with tambourines might have gotten their way.

Maybe that’ll make the fired Trump supporters, who undoubtedly also dislike trans people, and the people who know who will literally talk about any other topic but this one, feel better. Dave Chapelle has their back.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fox...eans-crows.amp

Look, him and Joe Rogan, another guy so victimized by cancel culture that he has the most popular podcast on the planet, are teaming up. Pour one out for your homies.

Is this bad?

Only for trying to find a coherent definition for the term "cancel culture"

No, it's not bad. Everything is fine, that's kind of the point isn't it?

Everything is fine for the people who are "too big to cancel," as it were. Doesn't help folks like Kathleen Stock or Leslie Neal-Boylan.

John McWhorter on the Dorian Abbot affair:



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/o...s-america.html

As a general rule of thumb, if a topic is metaphysically and epistemologically murky, we should probably be less inclined to cancel people.

As far as bringing Chappelle back, the price needs to be right. Someone released internal figures casting doubt on the profitability of his specials. As far as most the popular comic and the most popular podcaster teaming up for sold shows... right or wrong, the majority of Americans believe there are two genders, so a minority shunning the majority always seemed problematic at first glance. Over-representation in culturally influential industries and institutions helps with the shunning, but also threatens to stir a backlash from majorities feeling put-upon by "the homosexual trans agenda".

Your two examples of "cancel culture" are people, both who had tenure protecting their academic freedom, who voluntarily resigned because they did not like that their public comments invited public criticism.

The "cancel culture" phenomena in a nutshell, powerful people expect their free expression to be above criticism and react extremely poorly when that is not the case. Perhaps people who can't handle the heat should stay out of the kitchen.

The gatekeepers are extremely upset that the unwashed masses are allowed to call them morons.

"voluntarily" :D

Both resigned. They had tenure, it would have been nearly impossible for the school to fire them for unpopular opinions.