Protest is a right. But when trans activists use it to intimidate and shut down lawful gatherings, it crosses into harassment that infringes on the freedom to assemble.
Apparently this is not a problem around abortion clinics. Use that as a model. Arrest them. This is just their “violence is speech” bs. They are childish and malevolent and shouldn’t be tolerated in a free society. They’ve been coddled too long. But there may be no solution in deranged blue cities.
The abortion clinic model isn't possible in some cases. If the town is heavily pro-trans, police turn a blind eye and avoid getting involved at all unless something finally breaks out.
Rather a lot like conservative communities during the Reagan-blinded era when this nonsense was going down. Was just wondering this myself as I read this article: What happened to Clinton's RICO anti-racketeering law to protect women going to abortion clinics. And it's Trump and the Republicans who would put a stop to this crap, if someone put the bug in their ear. Because the Democrats certainly won't. They're okay with shutting down women's speech as long as it's a guy in a dress.
Yes, it’s a problem when townspeople have lost their minds in blue states. The rule of law is in jeopardy. It’s astonishing how quickly American values of fairness and decency can be lost.
You never saw segregation and Klan rallies and flags smashed through bus windows. And the people fueling these are, if not the same ones, almost exactly alike.
"I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm."
Honestly, this is the problem: Free-speech absolutism, like other types of absolutism, is a naive position, and it's being used against us. You want to eat pie. They want to brain you with a bat as evidenced by their parades, protests, and museum displays. We are looking at the paradox of tolerance tearing society apart and degrading everyone yet again.
It isn't a protest; it's a threat. They are testing the waters, and, like any other bullies, the longer that they go unchallenged, the bolder they will become.
You misunderstand the meaning of the term free-speech absolutist. It is used to indicate a POV that permits all SPEECH, regardless of how repugnant one finds such views, as long as the speech does not incite immediate harm. A famous example is the ACLU advocating for the rights of Nazis to march in Illinois (Skokie case). The ACLU believed (at least at the time) that the views of the Nazi group were vile, but also that they had the right to espouse them under the First Amendment. That is a free-speech absolutist.
This POV is focused on the content of the speech, which is different than what you are referring to, which is physical threats and intimidation. There is no free speech right to brain your opponents with a bat. A free-speech absolutist position requires respect for the right of all speech, which entails not preventing your opponents from speaking by disrupting their events, either through cancellation or physical intervention (noise, threatening behavior, etc). None of this is naive. It is the foundation of free speech.
The key is "doesn't incite immediate harm." So long as someone stops short of saying, "Let's hit that guy right there with a bat!" the free speech absolutists are on board. So these bullies stop short: They launch parades carrying bats and wearing shirts saying, "Kill TERFS" or "Punch a Nazi" or whatever else. They aren't inciting "immediate harm" so they get a pass - but they are terrorizing the local populace. They are not-so-subtly threatening everyone who disagrees with them. All of the nice, tolerant, free speech absolutists look the other way or, maybe, write an article while going out of their way to point out how tolerant they are of their opponent's violent rhetoric by saying, "I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm."
So the bullies strut about like they own the place, emboldened by the lack of real resistance, until they reach critical mass. Then they decide that, while it was awfully convenient that their opponents tolerated their thinly veiled threats and disruptive antics in the name of free speech, they have no such scruples and will gladly and literally curb stomp their opponents. And yet another "tolerant majority" falls to an intolerant minority with a better grasp of realpolitik.
Or, to answer the original author's question, "How much longer will we tolerate this culture of intimidation? How long will we allow one group to forbid another from assembling through threats and harassment?"
It will continue so long as you're a free speech absolutist because the solutions are going to require stifling somebody's speech. As I'm sure you noticed, no arrests were made despite the police being right there. Why? "Free speech."
Again, free speech absolutists believe that the CONTENT of speech is what needs to be absolutely free - no idea is too repugnant to be debated and peacefully expressed in the marketplace of ideas. Because hateful and vile speech needs the disinfectant of sunlight. I don’t see why you are conflating this concept of free speech to encompass the practices of physical intimidation and threats. Free speech advocates are quite careful to distinguish the two. They make clear that free speech encompasses both the right to speak AND the right to be heard. From the University of Chicago’s materials on this topic (which many universities have adopted): “The right of freedom of expression at the University includes peaceful protests and orderly demonstrations. At the same time, the University has long recognized that the right to protest and demonstrate does not include the right to engage in conduct that disrupts the University's operations or endangers the safety of others.”
Here is a section on Counter-protests: “A protest, demonstration, or event on campus may invite another form of protest. When these occasions arise, the expression of all parties is important. Counter-protestors should not engage in actions that deprive others from participating in, benefiting from, and enjoying an activity or event. Counter-protestors should not impinge on space reserved or authorized by the University for use by another group for an event or activity and should not interfere with signs, installations, and other materials associated with the event or activity. A separate protest area may be designated by Campus and Student Life or the Dean-on-Call for those persons with views that differ from the views held by the event organizers. To ensure the safety of all participants, the University Police Department may require the attendance of one or more officers.”
Free speech does not mean tolerating threats and intimidation and if you think that it does, then you really do not understand what a free speech advocate means when they say they are a speech absolutist. They are not tolerant of violent and threatening rhetoric. In an event, from a strictly practical matter, it is entirely obvious what will happen is we do start “stifling somebody’s speech”. We see it all over the world, where people are arrested and incarcerated for calling males men. Why you think this cudgel is only going to fall on TRAs?? The clear evidence from the last decade is that it is the non-believers in the cult of gender that will stifled (and more).
In this case, the threats and intimidation are the content. If that's not to be tolerated, the author should say, "I will defend anyone’s right to speak, except threats and intimidation," and this could have been a much stronger article. Instead, she wrote, "I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm." Intimidation and incitement are not the same.
I used to be a politically active libertarian, and I thought that the best ideas would rise to the top in the arena of free speech - but that isn't what happened. I'm talking practicalities, and you're talking theory even going so far to cite a university's free speech code at me. When universities have consistently shown themselves to be some of the least free places in the country.
While we've been crying, "But free speech!" They've been suppressing research, capturing institutions, blacklisting dissident professors and authors, doxxing people, intimidating, assaulting, and outright murdering people - but only after decades of their cancerous ideas being allowed to fester thanks to "free speech" and a glut of public money. They weren't stopped when they should have been, and now they hold power, but they have no intention of letting dissidents enjoy the "free speech" that they themselves abused. We're only in this situation because of past indulgences.
I never said that "this cudgel is only going to fall on TRAs." I'm not that naive. I realized something though: "Free speech" is cheap speech, and it hasn't been the best ideas that have risen to the top but the worst.
The best ideas in this country were bought with blood because people were willing to sacrifice even their lives for the truth. It was their principled stands despite the consequences that won over observers. Now that "free speech" is really free, now that everyone has a platform, now that nothing is forbidden except the truth, now that academics have had decades to discuss their terrible ideas at length... We find the ideas that rose to the top are less than worthless.
Make speech cost something again, and let's see where people stand.
I believe the Pie Social was co-organized by Massachusetts Women for Sex Based Rights and that most of those who attended were women, and many lesbians. Women have for decades been raising the alarm about the dangers of the non scientific, non-evidenced "gender identity" ideology. We have spoken, written and organized about the harms to women's and girl's sex based rights, lesbian and gay rights and children's safeguarding. We have been silenced, cancelled, doxed whenever those courageous enough have spoke out. Women's rights, which we have fought for for over a century, are in shambles due to men pretending to be women invading our sports, prisons, changing rooms, shelters, etc: erasing our boundaries. The so called left enables this, and enshrines it in law and policy. What could be more undemocratic, and regressive? Trantifa appears at our grassroots events to shut us up, bully, threaten and close us down. This is not free speech. This is intimidation and often violence expressed by their actions and signs. Historically, whenever and wherever women have fought for our rights, men have been there to try and stop us.
JFC. I was looking forward to attending that pie social, until they notified us a couple of days beforehand that the violent Trans panic mob had learned the location. I'm a survivor of sexual assault, so I can't afford to risk violence over being a woman. I had to give up my hope of meeting new women friends there, for fear of being assaulted by men who hate women.
This is the first I've learned what happened. I'm pretty sure I know Renee--one of the sweetest, kindest, most grounded people on Earth. I'm horrified to learn that they terrorized her.
I would have been permanently traumatized.
This is the weapon that male violence holds above all our heads: they have the physical and social power to terrorize us.
This description sounds eerily familiar to what happens when groups of Jews get together. The Pro-Hamasniks are masked, draped in keffiyehs, shrill and threatening.
The TRA’s are as bad as the SS ..blackshirts were, and interestingly, they not only wear black, but black masks, because basically they are cowards! The trans ideology is the most dangerously authoritarian ideology of this century.
Good God. Why do you keep focusing on trivia like this. In case you haven't noticed, your Trumpian henchmen are violently suppressing free speech and free assembly in Chicago and other the (Democrat) cities. Stop pretending you are anything other than a MAGA tool.
Look at you demonstrating your intolerance and bigotry for everyone to see. It’s exactly why we need articles like this, to counter your Leftist arrogance and intolerance. Not to mention lies. No one in Chicago is having their free speech suppressed. What’s being suppressed is the violence inflicted by Leftwing radicals in the murder capital of the nation.
You are mistaken. I have a compelling argument, but MAGA minions like yourself don't want to hear it. My argument is that Trump and his MAGA followers are systematically destroying our republic and that the obsessive MAGA focus on disrupted anti-woke tea parties is just a pathetic distraction.
Oh, also, Indianapolis has a higher murder rate than Chicago. I don't recall troops being deployed there. As you well know, this is not about crime. This is all politics and power; the Fascixt military takeover of the electoral system.
Hahahaha! Look at you arguing you have slightly less murders than the highest rated, and no idea how pathetic that sounds.
Plus you don’t seem capable of understanding why it’s necessary to save cities like Chicago from themselves. You do not comply with law enforcement, you instead resist them and call for them to be attacked and their families doxed and threatened. Meanwhile, “Indianapolis does not have sanctuary city policies and is subject to state laws that prohibit local governments from limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Recent legislation in Indiana reinforces this stance by allowing legal action against municipalities that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement.“ Indianapolis doesn’t need the troops, understand that now?
Very few murders are committed by undocumented immigrants in Chicago or anywhere else, as you know. Anyway, I'm from New York, the nation's safest city except maybe for San Diego and Boston. Nonetheless, troops will be deploying there soon.
'Violently suppressing'.... Buy a Websters. "Free Speech" applies to EVERYONE, since you obviously missed that. Including people who want to eat pie and discuss current cultural practices. What are you afraid of having people say??
'Free Assembly' - to throw rocks at people? And other objects? To block the right to free passage? Honey, that is not 'assembly'. That's a riot.
YOU are a democrat Useful Idiot. Yay for you, I guess
In the pictures, I don't see any protestors throwing rocks. That would be assault. If rocks were thrown, were charges filed? They don't even seem to be on private property. Free speech applies to everyone. It's a shame they were evidently loud and rude, but MAGA folks aren't paragons of etiquette, as evidenced by their much admired leader Donald Trump, the rudest man who ever lived
Hello Charles, I am the woman who was at the event in Cambridge and I was yelled at and yes threatened by the group of 60 plus demonstrators this past May.
I have to make a correction in Alex's quote from me. I was not scared of the individuals, but I was extremely concerned about the escalating hate that they were acting out.
I could care less if people give me the finger it is childish, especially as they no nothing about me. Same with yelling fuck you. What I find disturbing is the mindlessness of their actions.
One of the trantifa crowd had a long flag pole with a large trans anarchy flag on it. That is a potential weapon. Then, for no reason ( it was a one hour protest and it was not a hot day ) the group organizers began handing out water bottles. Another potential weapon, as a young woman proved by staring me down whilst repeatedly slamming her water bottle into her palm.
At another point a woman hiding her face behind a khafia and trying to get closer to me started cricking her neck at me as if she was ready to engage me in a sparring match. My response to all of this was to shrug my shoulders and record as much as possible. And then there was a moment.
This can happen in any crowd that is whipped up to feel self-righteous anger.
There was a break in the minds of several demonstrators right in front of me, including the one with the flag. They started to surge towards me. At that moment there were still only a handful of Cambridge police, to the far & left of where I was standing. I had my left hand resting on a metal chair that was there for outside dining. As the individuals in front made to move at me I was not scared. I was ready. These kids do not know me or what I have been through in my 50 plus years of being an out lesbian.
I yelled from the depth of my voice " BACK THE FUCK OFF " 3 times. And so they did.
And why you ask are there no photos, no videos to prove to YOU that what I or any other person went through is truth ?
It is because in that moment we are thinking of self preservation and either fight or flight.
I do not wish what I experienced on anyone, including those people who hated me so much on that Sunday morning.
Someone whom they neither know nor wish to have a reasoned conversation with. discussion.
2. Your article kind of got caught in the crossfire of a personal objection I have to FAIR’s political biases. I was one of FAIR’s earliest members. I joined because I thought it would be an impartial defender of free speech and enlightenment values. But it turned out to be not much more than a MAGA tool, castigating (albeit often justifiably) the WOKE left but giving Trump’s fascist mob (let’s be honest) a free ride. I have always believed that the WOKE left was misguided and profoundly annoying, but never an imminent danger to our Republic. In contrast, I knew that given the chance, Trump would do exactly what he is doing now – destroy everything that had made our nation the "shining city on the hill" it had always been. But then, I know Trump better than most people.
3. In general, I believe that most people, including trans people should be allowed to live the lives they choose at long as they don’t hurt anyone else. I don’t know you at all and I can’t possibly know your heart, but I don’t understand why anyone would object to a trans person pursuing the path in life they believe will allow them to flourish. I have known a couple of trans people and it seems to me that their lives are difficult enough without third parties intervening. I’m sure there are some confused people who have transitioned at least partly because of the WOKE zeitgeist, but I suspect such people are few. It is a very difficult road.
4. The behavior of the people you describe is unforgivable. As I stress in my Substack post, I deplore the pervasive incivility that characterizes today’s America. I no longer recognize the country I have always loved. But I would point out that the scene you describe is played out every day outside hundreds of abortion clinics throughout the country. I know this because I have volunteered at these clinics. You don’t mention death threats, but abortion clinics get plenty of those. To my knowledge, FAIR has never written a piece about violence at abortion clinics.
Anyway, I hope this helps you better understand my position. Stay well, Charlie.
Men assault women at our women's rights events all the time. They have broken our bones and put us in hospitals. In New Zealand, a mob of them very nearly killed a woman simply for holding events called Let Women Speak. They even beat gay rights icon Fred Sargent and put him in the hospital for holding up a sign supporting women's rights at the Burlington Pride Parade that HE created.
You disgusting homophobe.
And you're a brainless gorm if you think any of the women of DIAG are MAGA. We are ALL against Trump.
Only YOU are here shilling for James Pritzker, who in 2016 gave Trump a quarter millions dollars. You idiot MAGA sucker.
If you want people to stop focusing on trivia like this, then shift the Democrat ideology on the subject and return the status of trans to an extremely rare and inadvisable treatment for acute and persistent gender dysphoria, rather than presenting it as a lifestyle choice, and admit that trans women have no business invading female only spaces.
At the time the DSM-5 was written MTF trans was 1 in 20,000, FTM trans was 1 in 80,000, and non-binary people were simply gender non-conforming rebels who were far happier for not having their own set of classifications.
Dems suffer from survivorship bias on trans. They never talk to or sympathise with the 80% of kids who went through gender dysphoria and worked through it to become far happier and less likely to commit suicide as gays or lesbians.
The Dems got it horribly wrong and they need to admit it, just like sane and more socially advanced European countries. Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and the Netherlands can't all be wrong.
Sure, I've been saying for years that Democrats were grossly exaggerating the WOKE agenda. See my substack. But WOKE was never the real threat. Even if your numbers are correct, that's 80k people in a nation of 330 million. The real threat is Trump's MAGAts and their fascixt contempt for the constitution and rule of law. Among immigrants alone (both legal and illegal, MAGA don't care) that's millions upon millions of people whose rights are being spat on. https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
I don't think most Americans were fond of 2020. Any nostalgia was related to the Blue Collar Boom experienced in 2018/2019. Biden even began on a note where he sought to emulate tight labour market policies, at least until a combination of the cultural Left and the corporate interests pushed him to return to the neoliberal policies of unlimited labour supply.
And I get you're Open Society. It's a noble belief, but it's not backed up by the evidence of history as a proposition which does anything but immiserate the blue collar and middle classes.
FDRs New Deal was probably necessary to restore confidence, at least initially, but it wasn't the factor most responsible for the most sustained growth in prosperity in American history. The key factor was tight labour markets. In 1924 the American government massively reduced inward migration in response to populist rumblings. By 1945 the rate of foreign-born citizens had fallen from 15% to 10.3%. By the end of the prosperity era the figure was down to 5%.
Here's the other aspect. In plentiful labour market conditions businesses and corporations prioritise expansion and or advertising/PR to gain market share in a saturated market. In tighter labour market conditions capital investment and productivity growth become a priority.
Loose labour markets inevitably result in Gilded Age dynamics. The only difference in Europe during this period was that land enclosures and the like created a massive shift from rural to urban. It was simply a different source of unlimited labour. Tight labour markets create the opposite effect, producing productivity growth as employers fear being unable to recruit or pay for labour. The dynamic goes all the way back to the Black Death in Europe. Not a good thing, but it did produce amazingly good results.
And don't get me wrong. I don't find the pictures of otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants being arrested at all savoury. I feel deeply conflicted over the issue as a Christian. But I do understand the rationale behind the policy. The problem is that America is divided between rule utilitarians and act utilitarians with the latter believing that the core tenant of the social contract should be that citizen's needs are placed far above the needs of other people.
And whatever you may feel about Trump's policy there can be little doubt it's having a huge effect and delivering for his blue collar voters. In the first 5-7 months of the Trump admin real wage growth, after inflation, was higher than it's been since the category was invented in 1964. As 1.4 million undocumented workers have left the economy, 2 million Americans have joined it. As an interesting side note, it's worth noting that only between 0.1% and 0.4% of American inflation is labour cost push, a far cry from the 50-70% seen during the seventies.
I subscribed to you though. I actually enjoy engaging with people with differing views through civil discourse. It's altogether far too rare these days.
Sure, and thank you for your polite response. It should be noted that I'm certainly not against immigration, merely the fact that the West has got the strategy wrong. We could have been using the university system in the developing world to train people in the skills and knowledge that the developed world needs 40 years ago. Not only would this have operated as a benign selection model for selecting individuals with more cosmopolitan values, but for every one migrant to the West this approach would have educated it also would have produced 1-2 high value workers and specialists for the developing world, accelerating the global shift away from poverty.
Software engineers, data scientists, AI and machine learning specialists, cybersecurity experts, nurses, physicians, web developers, cloud computing architects, blockchain developers, renewable energy engineers, financial analysts, accountants, digital marketers, project managers, and civil engineers are all examples of the types of roles which can be trained and selected for in universities.
One of the main positives is that as one selects for educated and higher income groups, the extent to which the inbound population will self-segregate drastically reduces. The modern left dislikes the notion of integration/assimilation but it's worth noting that integration and economic success are highly correlated and intrinsically linked. I dislike the framing around cultural erasure- people can be bicultural, and learning a new culture is like learning a language.
I should also mention that I'm not an idealogue on the issue of wage dilution and labour supply. At more modest levels of inward migration studies have shown that immigration improves economic outcomes for the native population. However, there is a limit to this upshift- government retraining programs achieve around an 8% success rate. Labour is pretty inelastic in terms of ability. Some non-selective immigration is good for the prospects of locals, but there is a limit, and beyond a certain threshold the effects become negative, especially in terms of absorptive capacity (increased costs areas like housing/rents have twice the effects of labour dilution).
I' m sorry I didn't heed your advice, but I will now!
Good God, why do we keep focusing on trivia like the rights and safety of half the ENTIRE human population? When there are all those fake-"leftist" entitled male supremacists forcing their way into women's spaces, whom we could be catering to instead?
Leftist women have led the fight against your woman-hating gender-ideology enforcement lobby from the beginning. In fact, it was originally mostly leftist lesbians. The right only got in on it after they realized the Dem Party was destroying the very women's rights activists who BUILT the damn thing.
Look up Magdalen Berns. Look up JK Rowling's opinion of Trump. Read Janice Raymond's 1979 feminist exposee The Transsexual Empire.
And while you're at it, say hi to your Republican billionaire best friend, James Pritzker, who is FINANCING your stupid misogynist homophobic Trans moral panic. Misogynist men like you are the problem. You're nothing but a Republican billionaire's tool.
Cool your jets. I really can't make sense out of this tirade of tired cliches. But for starters, I don' know why you think I know James Pritzker.
My comment clearly said that it was stupid for FAIR to get so riled up over what seems to have been a legal protest against an anti-trans gathering when there is so much going wrong in our country that is worse. Do you really object to that?
I sometimes forget that the extreme left is as loony as the extreme right. Very depressing.
If you want jets cooled, you can cool your own. Nobody invited you here to insult women for standing up for ourselves.
James Pritzker is the man financing your stupid homophobic misogynist lobby. If you don't know who he is, you can look him up. Are you too dim to know how to look something up on the Internet? Or just afraid to find out you actually ARE a Republican billionaire's tool?
You're here pushing James Pritzker's dangerous lobby against gay people, women, and children. That makes you the loony extreme "left."
We're just women who want you and James Pritzker the hell out of our lives. And we will win. We had to fight just to be able to vote for our own democratic government.
You may tell people not to care about issues they care about because you think other issues are more important if you like, but you will likely not get very far.
I have to concede that you are correct. The nation is collapsing around us and most Americans only care about the over / under on their college football bets. (The games are all fixed anyway.)
I run a sex-realist women's group in NYC and this is a massive problem. Kellie-Jay Keen couldn't attend her own protest here because the threats got so bad. Here's what we have to deal with: https://odysee.com/@Skirt_Go_Spinny:7/a-record-of-our-dissent:f
Apparently this is not a problem around abortion clinics. Use that as a model. Arrest them. This is just their “violence is speech” bs. They are childish and malevolent and shouldn’t be tolerated in a free society. They’ve been coddled too long. But there may be no solution in deranged blue cities.
The abortion clinic model isn't possible in some cases. If the town is heavily pro-trans, police turn a blind eye and avoid getting involved at all unless something finally breaks out.
And that , right there, is the problem.
Rather a lot like conservative communities during the Reagan-blinded era when this nonsense was going down. Was just wondering this myself as I read this article: What happened to Clinton's RICO anti-racketeering law to protect women going to abortion clinics. And it's Trump and the Republicans who would put a stop to this crap, if someone put the bug in their ear. Because the Democrats certainly won't. They're okay with shutting down women's speech as long as it's a guy in a dress.
Yes, it’s a problem when townspeople have lost their minds in blue states. The rule of law is in jeopardy. It’s astonishing how quickly American values of fairness and decency can be lost.
You never saw segregation and Klan rallies and flags smashed through bus windows. And the people fueling these are, if not the same ones, almost exactly alike.
Thank you for this. Having been on the receiving end of such abuse myself, I can relate.
Jews need security at all our events.
"I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm."
Honestly, this is the problem: Free-speech absolutism, like other types of absolutism, is a naive position, and it's being used against us. You want to eat pie. They want to brain you with a bat as evidenced by their parades, protests, and museum displays. We are looking at the paradox of tolerance tearing society apart and degrading everyone yet again.
It isn't a protest; it's a threat. They are testing the waters, and, like any other bullies, the longer that they go unchallenged, the bolder they will become.
You misunderstand the meaning of the term free-speech absolutist. It is used to indicate a POV that permits all SPEECH, regardless of how repugnant one finds such views, as long as the speech does not incite immediate harm. A famous example is the ACLU advocating for the rights of Nazis to march in Illinois (Skokie case). The ACLU believed (at least at the time) that the views of the Nazi group were vile, but also that they had the right to espouse them under the First Amendment. That is a free-speech absolutist.
This POV is focused on the content of the speech, which is different than what you are referring to, which is physical threats and intimidation. There is no free speech right to brain your opponents with a bat. A free-speech absolutist position requires respect for the right of all speech, which entails not preventing your opponents from speaking by disrupting their events, either through cancellation or physical intervention (noise, threatening behavior, etc). None of this is naive. It is the foundation of free speech.
I don't misunderstand at all.
The key is "doesn't incite immediate harm." So long as someone stops short of saying, "Let's hit that guy right there with a bat!" the free speech absolutists are on board. So these bullies stop short: They launch parades carrying bats and wearing shirts saying, "Kill TERFS" or "Punch a Nazi" or whatever else. They aren't inciting "immediate harm" so they get a pass - but they are terrorizing the local populace. They are not-so-subtly threatening everyone who disagrees with them. All of the nice, tolerant, free speech absolutists look the other way or, maybe, write an article while going out of their way to point out how tolerant they are of their opponent's violent rhetoric by saying, "I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm."
So the bullies strut about like they own the place, emboldened by the lack of real resistance, until they reach critical mass. Then they decide that, while it was awfully convenient that their opponents tolerated their thinly veiled threats and disruptive antics in the name of free speech, they have no such scruples and will gladly and literally curb stomp their opponents. And yet another "tolerant majority" falls to an intolerant minority with a better grasp of realpolitik.
Or, to answer the original author's question, "How much longer will we tolerate this culture of intimidation? How long will we allow one group to forbid another from assembling through threats and harassment?"
It will continue so long as you're a free speech absolutist because the solutions are going to require stifling somebody's speech. As I'm sure you noticed, no arrests were made despite the police being right there. Why? "Free speech."
Again, free speech absolutists believe that the CONTENT of speech is what needs to be absolutely free - no idea is too repugnant to be debated and peacefully expressed in the marketplace of ideas. Because hateful and vile speech needs the disinfectant of sunlight. I don’t see why you are conflating this concept of free speech to encompass the practices of physical intimidation and threats. Free speech advocates are quite careful to distinguish the two. They make clear that free speech encompasses both the right to speak AND the right to be heard. From the University of Chicago’s materials on this topic (which many universities have adopted): “The right of freedom of expression at the University includes peaceful protests and orderly demonstrations. At the same time, the University has long recognized that the right to protest and demonstrate does not include the right to engage in conduct that disrupts the University's operations or endangers the safety of others.”
Here is a section on Counter-protests: “A protest, demonstration, or event on campus may invite another form of protest. When these occasions arise, the expression of all parties is important. Counter-protestors should not engage in actions that deprive others from participating in, benefiting from, and enjoying an activity or event. Counter-protestors should not impinge on space reserved or authorized by the University for use by another group for an event or activity and should not interfere with signs, installations, and other materials associated with the event or activity. A separate protest area may be designated by Campus and Student Life or the Dean-on-Call for those persons with views that differ from the views held by the event organizers. To ensure the safety of all participants, the University Police Department may require the attendance of one or more officers.”
Free speech does not mean tolerating threats and intimidation and if you think that it does, then you really do not understand what a free speech advocate means when they say they are a speech absolutist. They are not tolerant of violent and threatening rhetoric. In an event, from a strictly practical matter, it is entirely obvious what will happen is we do start “stifling somebody’s speech”. We see it all over the world, where people are arrested and incarcerated for calling males men. Why you think this cudgel is only going to fall on TRAs?? The clear evidence from the last decade is that it is the non-believers in the cult of gender that will stifled (and more).
In this case, the threats and intimidation are the content. If that's not to be tolerated, the author should say, "I will defend anyone’s right to speak, except threats and intimidation," and this could have been a much stronger article. Instead, she wrote, "I’m a free-speech absolutist. I will defend anyone’s right to speak, short of inciting immediate harm." Intimidation and incitement are not the same.
I used to be a politically active libertarian, and I thought that the best ideas would rise to the top in the arena of free speech - but that isn't what happened. I'm talking practicalities, and you're talking theory even going so far to cite a university's free speech code at me. When universities have consistently shown themselves to be some of the least free places in the country.
While we've been crying, "But free speech!" They've been suppressing research, capturing institutions, blacklisting dissident professors and authors, doxxing people, intimidating, assaulting, and outright murdering people - but only after decades of their cancerous ideas being allowed to fester thanks to "free speech" and a glut of public money. They weren't stopped when they should have been, and now they hold power, but they have no intention of letting dissidents enjoy the "free speech" that they themselves abused. We're only in this situation because of past indulgences.
I never said that "this cudgel is only going to fall on TRAs." I'm not that naive. I realized something though: "Free speech" is cheap speech, and it hasn't been the best ideas that have risen to the top but the worst.
The best ideas in this country were bought with blood because people were willing to sacrifice even their lives for the truth. It was their principled stands despite the consequences that won over observers. Now that "free speech" is really free, now that everyone has a platform, now that nothing is forbidden except the truth, now that academics have had decades to discuss their terrible ideas at length... We find the ideas that rose to the top are less than worthless.
Make speech cost something again, and let's see where people stand.
Punch a terf IS a direct threat of violence
100% correct, these people are psychos who should never be given a voice.
I believe the Pie Social was co-organized by Massachusetts Women for Sex Based Rights and that most of those who attended were women, and many lesbians. Women have for decades been raising the alarm about the dangers of the non scientific, non-evidenced "gender identity" ideology. We have spoken, written and organized about the harms to women's and girl's sex based rights, lesbian and gay rights and children's safeguarding. We have been silenced, cancelled, doxed whenever those courageous enough have spoke out. Women's rights, which we have fought for for over a century, are in shambles due to men pretending to be women invading our sports, prisons, changing rooms, shelters, etc: erasing our boundaries. The so called left enables this, and enshrines it in law and policy. What could be more undemocratic, and regressive? Trantifa appears at our grassroots events to shut us up, bully, threaten and close us down. This is not free speech. This is intimidation and often violence expressed by their actions and signs. Historically, whenever and wherever women have fought for our rights, men have been there to try and stop us.
JFC. I was looking forward to attending that pie social, until they notified us a couple of days beforehand that the violent Trans panic mob had learned the location. I'm a survivor of sexual assault, so I can't afford to risk violence over being a woman. I had to give up my hope of meeting new women friends there, for fear of being assaulted by men who hate women.
This is the first I've learned what happened. I'm pretty sure I know Renee--one of the sweetest, kindest, most grounded people on Earth. I'm horrified to learn that they terrorized her.
I would have been permanently traumatized.
This is the weapon that male violence holds above all our heads: they have the physical and social power to terrorize us.
This description sounds eerily familiar to what happens when groups of Jews get together. The Pro-Hamasniks are masked, draped in keffiyehs, shrill and threatening.
What's up with DIAG private security not showing? That's suspicious af.
The TRA’s are as bad as the SS ..blackshirts were, and interestingly, they not only wear black, but black masks, because basically they are cowards! The trans ideology is the most dangerously authoritarian ideology of this century.
UK journalist Andrew Doyle just posted about how violence has been normalized in the trans community. We must somehow break the silence of mainstream media on this! https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewdoyle/p/violence-has-become-normalised-within-bb7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3ffpq
Transqueers are a danger to society, they're never to be trusted in ANYTHING. Hopefully this cult dissipates soon so we can focus on real issues.
These people are violent and repugnant.
Good God. Why do you keep focusing on trivia like this. In case you haven't noticed, your Trumpian henchmen are violently suppressing free speech and free assembly in Chicago and other the (Democrat) cities. Stop pretending you are anything other than a MAGA tool.
Look at you demonstrating your intolerance and bigotry for everyone to see. It’s exactly why we need articles like this, to counter your Leftist arrogance and intolerance. Not to mention lies. No one in Chicago is having their free speech suppressed. What’s being suppressed is the violence inflicted by Leftwing radicals in the murder capital of the nation.
You are delusional
Truth hurts, we get it, especially when all you have is insults and no argument to make. It’s why the Left turns to hurling epithets and rocks.
You are mistaken. I have a compelling argument, but MAGA minions like yourself don't want to hear it. My argument is that Trump and his MAGA followers are systematically destroying our republic and that the obsessive MAGA focus on disrupted anti-woke tea parties is just a pathetic distraction.
Oh, also, Indianapolis has a higher murder rate than Chicago. I don't recall troops being deployed there. As you well know, this is not about crime. This is all politics and power; the Fascixt military takeover of the electoral system.
Hahahaha! Look at you arguing you have slightly less murders than the highest rated, and no idea how pathetic that sounds.
Plus you don’t seem capable of understanding why it’s necessary to save cities like Chicago from themselves. You do not comply with law enforcement, you instead resist them and call for them to be attacked and their families doxed and threatened. Meanwhile, “Indianapolis does not have sanctuary city policies and is subject to state laws that prohibit local governments from limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Recent legislation in Indiana reinforces this stance by allowing legal action against municipalities that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement.“ Indianapolis doesn’t need the troops, understand that now?
Very few murders are committed by undocumented immigrants in Chicago or anywhere else, as you know. Anyway, I'm from New York, the nation's safest city except maybe for San Diego and Boston. Nonetheless, troops will be deploying there soon.
'Violently suppressing'.... Buy a Websters. "Free Speech" applies to EVERYONE, since you obviously missed that. Including people who want to eat pie and discuss current cultural practices. What are you afraid of having people say??
'Free Assembly' - to throw rocks at people? And other objects? To block the right to free passage? Honey, that is not 'assembly'. That's a riot.
YOU are a democrat Useful Idiot. Yay for you, I guess
Thank you.
In the pictures, I don't see any protestors throwing rocks. That would be assault. If rocks were thrown, were charges filed? They don't even seem to be on private property. Free speech applies to everyone. It's a shame they were evidently loud and rude, but MAGA folks aren't paragons of etiquette, as evidenced by their much admired leader Donald Trump, the rudest man who ever lived
Hello Charles, I am the woman who was at the event in Cambridge and I was yelled at and yes threatened by the group of 60 plus demonstrators this past May.
I have to make a correction in Alex's quote from me. I was not scared of the individuals, but I was extremely concerned about the escalating hate that they were acting out.
I could care less if people give me the finger it is childish, especially as they no nothing about me. Same with yelling fuck you. What I find disturbing is the mindlessness of their actions.
One of the trantifa crowd had a long flag pole with a large trans anarchy flag on it. That is a potential weapon. Then, for no reason ( it was a one hour protest and it was not a hot day ) the group organizers began handing out water bottles. Another potential weapon, as a young woman proved by staring me down whilst repeatedly slamming her water bottle into her palm.
At another point a woman hiding her face behind a khafia and trying to get closer to me started cricking her neck at me as if she was ready to engage me in a sparring match. My response to all of this was to shrug my shoulders and record as much as possible. And then there was a moment.
This can happen in any crowd that is whipped up to feel self-righteous anger.
There was a break in the minds of several demonstrators right in front of me, including the one with the flag. They started to surge towards me. At that moment there were still only a handful of Cambridge police, to the far & left of where I was standing. I had my left hand resting on a metal chair that was there for outside dining. As the individuals in front made to move at me I was not scared. I was ready. These kids do not know me or what I have been through in my 50 plus years of being an out lesbian.
I yelled from the depth of my voice " BACK THE FUCK OFF " 3 times. And so they did.
And why you ask are there no photos, no videos to prove to YOU that what I or any other person went through is truth ?
It is because in that moment we are thinking of self preservation and either fight or flight.
I do not wish what I experienced on anyone, including those people who hated me so much on that Sunday morning.
Someone whom they neither know nor wish to have a reasoned conversation with. discussion.
Hello Renee . Thank you so much for your thoughtful, measured response. There is so much to write but I will try to be succinct.
1. To understand where I am coming from, I encourage you to take a look at my Substack, especially my 2018 post “The Tribe has Spoken.”
https://charles72f.substack.com/p/the-tribe-has-spoken
2. Your article kind of got caught in the crossfire of a personal objection I have to FAIR’s political biases. I was one of FAIR’s earliest members. I joined because I thought it would be an impartial defender of free speech and enlightenment values. But it turned out to be not much more than a MAGA tool, castigating (albeit often justifiably) the WOKE left but giving Trump’s fascist mob (let’s be honest) a free ride. I have always believed that the WOKE left was misguided and profoundly annoying, but never an imminent danger to our Republic. In contrast, I knew that given the chance, Trump would do exactly what he is doing now – destroy everything that had made our nation the "shining city on the hill" it had always been. But then, I know Trump better than most people.
3. In general, I believe that most people, including trans people should be allowed to live the lives they choose at long as they don’t hurt anyone else. I don’t know you at all and I can’t possibly know your heart, but I don’t understand why anyone would object to a trans person pursuing the path in life they believe will allow them to flourish. I have known a couple of trans people and it seems to me that their lives are difficult enough without third parties intervening. I’m sure there are some confused people who have transitioned at least partly because of the WOKE zeitgeist, but I suspect such people are few. It is a very difficult road.
4. The behavior of the people you describe is unforgivable. As I stress in my Substack post, I deplore the pervasive incivility that characterizes today’s America. I no longer recognize the country I have always loved. But I would point out that the scene you describe is played out every day outside hundreds of abortion clinics throughout the country. I know this because I have volunteered at these clinics. You don’t mention death threats, but abortion clinics get plenty of those. To my knowledge, FAIR has never written a piece about violence at abortion clinics.
Anyway, I hope this helps you better understand my position. Stay well, Charlie.
Men assault women at our women's rights events all the time. They have broken our bones and put us in hospitals. In New Zealand, a mob of them very nearly killed a woman simply for holding events called Let Women Speak. They even beat gay rights icon Fred Sargent and put him in the hospital for holding up a sign supporting women's rights at the Burlington Pride Parade that HE created.
You disgusting homophobe.
And you're a brainless gorm if you think any of the women of DIAG are MAGA. We are ALL against Trump.
Only YOU are here shilling for James Pritzker, who in 2016 gave Trump a quarter millions dollars. You idiot MAGA sucker.
If you want people to stop focusing on trivia like this, then shift the Democrat ideology on the subject and return the status of trans to an extremely rare and inadvisable treatment for acute and persistent gender dysphoria, rather than presenting it as a lifestyle choice, and admit that trans women have no business invading female only spaces.
At the time the DSM-5 was written MTF trans was 1 in 20,000, FTM trans was 1 in 80,000, and non-binary people were simply gender non-conforming rebels who were far happier for not having their own set of classifications.
Dems suffer from survivorship bias on trans. They never talk to or sympathise with the 80% of kids who went through gender dysphoria and worked through it to become far happier and less likely to commit suicide as gays or lesbians.
The Dems got it horribly wrong and they need to admit it, just like sane and more socially advanced European countries. Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and the Netherlands can't all be wrong.
Sure, I've been saying for years that Democrats were grossly exaggerating the WOKE agenda. See my substack. But WOKE was never the real threat. Even if your numbers are correct, that's 80k people in a nation of 330 million. The real threat is Trump's MAGAts and their fascixt contempt for the constitution and rule of law. Among immigrants alone (both legal and illegal, MAGA don't care) that's millions upon millions of people whose rights are being spat on. https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
At this point, it’s not even the“Trump MAGAts” who are deranged it’s liberal extremist like you who are worse.
Nope, no help for you. Severe Trump derangement will do that. Bye.
I don't think most Americans were fond of 2020. Any nostalgia was related to the Blue Collar Boom experienced in 2018/2019. Biden even began on a note where he sought to emulate tight labour market policies, at least until a combination of the cultural Left and the corporate interests pushed him to return to the neoliberal policies of unlimited labour supply.
And I get you're Open Society. It's a noble belief, but it's not backed up by the evidence of history as a proposition which does anything but immiserate the blue collar and middle classes.
FDRs New Deal was probably necessary to restore confidence, at least initially, but it wasn't the factor most responsible for the most sustained growth in prosperity in American history. The key factor was tight labour markets. In 1924 the American government massively reduced inward migration in response to populist rumblings. By 1945 the rate of foreign-born citizens had fallen from 15% to 10.3%. By the end of the prosperity era the figure was down to 5%.
Here's the other aspect. In plentiful labour market conditions businesses and corporations prioritise expansion and or advertising/PR to gain market share in a saturated market. In tighter labour market conditions capital investment and productivity growth become a priority.
Loose labour markets inevitably result in Gilded Age dynamics. The only difference in Europe during this period was that land enclosures and the like created a massive shift from rural to urban. It was simply a different source of unlimited labour. Tight labour markets create the opposite effect, producing productivity growth as employers fear being unable to recruit or pay for labour. The dynamic goes all the way back to the Black Death in Europe. Not a good thing, but it did produce amazingly good results.
And don't get me wrong. I don't find the pictures of otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants being arrested at all savoury. I feel deeply conflicted over the issue as a Christian. But I do understand the rationale behind the policy. The problem is that America is divided between rule utilitarians and act utilitarians with the latter believing that the core tenant of the social contract should be that citizen's needs are placed far above the needs of other people.
And whatever you may feel about Trump's policy there can be little doubt it's having a huge effect and delivering for his blue collar voters. In the first 5-7 months of the Trump admin real wage growth, after inflation, was higher than it's been since the category was invented in 1964. As 1.4 million undocumented workers have left the economy, 2 million Americans have joined it. As an interesting side note, it's worth noting that only between 0.1% and 0.4% of American inflation is labour cost push, a far cry from the 50-70% seen during the seventies.
I subscribed to you though. I actually enjoy engaging with people with differing views through civil discourse. It's altogether far too rare these days.
You will not be surprised that I disagree with almost all of this, but thank you for your cogent response. I guess we'd better leave it at that.
Sure, and thank you for your polite response. It should be noted that I'm certainly not against immigration, merely the fact that the West has got the strategy wrong. We could have been using the university system in the developing world to train people in the skills and knowledge that the developed world needs 40 years ago. Not only would this have operated as a benign selection model for selecting individuals with more cosmopolitan values, but for every one migrant to the West this approach would have educated it also would have produced 1-2 high value workers and specialists for the developing world, accelerating the global shift away from poverty.
Software engineers, data scientists, AI and machine learning specialists, cybersecurity experts, nurses, physicians, web developers, cloud computing architects, blockchain developers, renewable energy engineers, financial analysts, accountants, digital marketers, project managers, and civil engineers are all examples of the types of roles which can be trained and selected for in universities.
One of the main positives is that as one selects for educated and higher income groups, the extent to which the inbound population will self-segregate drastically reduces. The modern left dislikes the notion of integration/assimilation but it's worth noting that integration and economic success are highly correlated and intrinsically linked. I dislike the framing around cultural erasure- people can be bicultural, and learning a new culture is like learning a language.
I should also mention that I'm not an idealogue on the issue of wage dilution and labour supply. At more modest levels of inward migration studies have shown that immigration improves economic outcomes for the native population. However, there is a limit to this upshift- government retraining programs achieve around an 8% success rate. Labour is pretty inelastic in terms of ability. Some non-selective immigration is good for the prospects of locals, but there is a limit, and beyond a certain threshold the effects become negative, especially in terms of absorptive capacity (increased costs areas like housing/rents have twice the effects of labour dilution).
I' m sorry I didn't heed your advice, but I will now!
Literally proving the article.
Say what? I don't follow.
Do you have comprehension issues?
How does that literally prove anything?
Good God, why do we keep focusing on trivia like the rights and safety of half the ENTIRE human population? When there are all those fake-"leftist" entitled male supremacists forcing their way into women's spaces, whom we could be catering to instead?
Leftist women have led the fight against your woman-hating gender-ideology enforcement lobby from the beginning. In fact, it was originally mostly leftist lesbians. The right only got in on it after they realized the Dem Party was destroying the very women's rights activists who BUILT the damn thing.
Look up Magdalen Berns. Look up JK Rowling's opinion of Trump. Read Janice Raymond's 1979 feminist exposee The Transsexual Empire.
And while you're at it, say hi to your Republican billionaire best friend, James Pritzker, who is FINANCING your stupid misogynist homophobic Trans moral panic. Misogynist men like you are the problem. You're nothing but a Republican billionaire's tool.
Cool your jets. I really can't make sense out of this tirade of tired cliches. But for starters, I don' know why you think I know James Pritzker.
My comment clearly said that it was stupid for FAIR to get so riled up over what seems to have been a legal protest against an anti-trans gathering when there is so much going wrong in our country that is worse. Do you really object to that?
I sometimes forget that the extreme left is as loony as the extreme right. Very depressing.
If you want jets cooled, you can cool your own. Nobody invited you here to insult women for standing up for ourselves.
James Pritzker is the man financing your stupid homophobic misogynist lobby. If you don't know who he is, you can look him up. Are you too dim to know how to look something up on the Internet? Or just afraid to find out you actually ARE a Republican billionaire's tool?
You're here pushing James Pritzker's dangerous lobby against gay people, women, and children. That makes you the loony extreme "left."
We're just women who want you and James Pritzker the hell out of our lives. And we will win. We had to fight just to be able to vote for our own democratic government.
We can and WILL defeat sexist haters like you.
You may tell people not to care about issues they care about because you think other issues are more important if you like, but you will likely not get very far.
I have to concede that you are correct. The nation is collapsing around us and most Americans only care about the over / under on their college football bets. (The games are all fixed anyway.)
And yet we nasty women keep caring about the rights of girls and women.
We don't give a shit about men's football.
But you wouldn't know that, since you apparently don't know women exist.
Women's right are not maga at all. The transactivists keep framing it as right wing but women's rights are anything but
Now we have to pick between reproductive rights and sex based spaces because the left has abandoned women who are female.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Oh, Charles. Dear, poor, deluded Charles.
I used to get upset at comments like yours; now I just laugh. You're a fool and will have to learn the way all fools do.
Eventus stultorum magister est.
#NotMyFaultYours
I run a sex-realist women's group in NYC and this is a massive problem. Kellie-Jay Keen couldn't attend her own protest here because the threats got so bad. Here's what we have to deal with: https://odysee.com/@Skirt_Go_Spinny:7/a-record-of-our-dissent:f
Thank you. Yes, the goal of these "trans" activists is to silence us. They don't believe in free speech, ONLY FOR THEM.
Here's a ONE MINUTE VIDEO of me speaking while they try to shut me down. The sign I am holding says "C.I.S.=Can't Imitate Sex":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqGIescVvxE
They do it because they are allowed to. Local governments are more of the problem than any solution.