I agree with most of that, but it seems to me that respecting homosexuality is mostly a passive action; if you ignore what other people do, you are already maybe 90% there. Homosexuals don’t change their names or pronouns after coming out. You don’t have to pretend that ten years ago they were something else than they appeared to you at that time.
With transsexuality, you get the taboo of deadnaming, and occasionally the weird pronouns.
Also, the reaction seems different when you try to opt out of the game. Like, if someone is uncomfortable with homosexuality, they can say “could we please just… not discuss our sexual relations here, and focus on the job (or some other reason why we are here)?” and that’s usually accepted. If someone similarly says “could we please just… call everyone ‘they’ as a compromise solution, or simply refer to people using their names”, that already got some people cancelled.
Shortly, with homosexuals I never felt like my free speech was under attack.
It is possible that most of the weirdness and pushing boundaries does not actually come from the transsexuals themselves, but rather from woke people who try to be their “allies”. Either way, in effect, whenever a discussion about trans topics starts, I feel like “oh my, the woke hordes are coming, people are going to get cancelled”. (And I am not really concerned about myself here, because I am not American, so my job is not on the line; and if some online community decides to ban me, well then fuck them. But I don’t want to be in a community where people need to watch their tongues, and get filtered by political conformity.)
I think there should be more spaces where controversial ideas can be debated. I’m not against spaces without pronoun rules, just don’t think every place should be like this. Also, if we create a space for political debate, we need to really make sure that the norms don’t punish everyone who opposes centrism & the right. (Over-sensitive norms like “if you said that some opinion is transphobic you’re uncivil/shaming/manipulative and should get banned” might do this.) Otherwise it’s not free speech either. Will just produce another Grey or Red Tribe instead of Red/Blue/Grey debate platform.
I do think progressives underestimate free speech damage. To me it’s the biggest issue with the Left. Though I don’t think they’re entirely wrong about free speech.
For example, imagine I have trans employees. Another employee (X) refuses to use pronouns, in principle (using pronouns is not the same as accepting progressive gender theories). Why? Maybe X thinks my trans employees live such a great lie that using pronouns is already an unacceptable concession. Or maybe X thinks that even trying to switch “he” & “she” is too much work, and I’m not justified in asking to do that work because of absolute free speech. Those opinions seem unnecessarily strong and they’re at odds with the well-being of my employees, my work environment. So what now? Also, if pronouns are an unacceptable concession, why isn’t calling a trans woman by her female name an unacceptable concession?
Imagine I don’t believe something about a minority, so I start avoiding words which might suggest otherwise. If I don’t believe that gay love can be as true as straight love, I avoid the word “love” (in reference to gay people or to anybody) at work. If I don’t believe that women are as smart as men, I avoid the word “master” / “genius” (in reference to women or anybody) at work. It can get pretty silly. Will predictably cost me certain jobs.
Well, the primary goal of this place is to advance rationality and AI safety. Not the victory of any specific political tribe. And neither conformity nor contrarianism for its own sake.
Employees get paid, which kinda automatically reduces their free speech, because saying the wrong words can make them stop getting paid.
What is an (un)acceptable concession? For me, it is a question of effort and what value I receive in return. I value niceness, so by default people get their wishes granted, unless I forget. Some requests I consider arbitrary and annoying, so they don’t get them. Yeah, those are subjective criteria. But I am not here to get paid; I am here to enjoy the talk.
(What annoys me: asking to use pronouns other than he/she/they. I do not talk about people’s past for no good reason, and definitely not just to annoy someone else. But if I have a good reason to point out that someone did something in the past, and the only way to do that is to reveal their previous name, then I don’t care about the taboo.)
Employment is really a different situation. You get laws, and recommendations of your legal department; there is not much anyone can do about that. And the rest is about the balance of power, where the individual employee is often in a much worse bargaining position.
Agree that neopronouns are dumb. Wikipedia says they’re used by 4% LGBTQ people and criticized both within and outside the community.
But for people struggling with normal pronouns (he/she/they), I have the following thoughts:
Contorting language to avoid words associated with beliefs… is not easier than using the words. Don’t project beliefs onto words too hard.
Contorting language to avoid words associated with beliefs… is still a violation of free speech (if we have such a strong notion of free speech). So what is the motivation to propose that? It’s a bit like a dog in the manger. “I’d rather cripple myself than help you, let’s suffer together”.
Don’t maximize free speech (in a negligible way) while ignoring every other human value.
In an imperfect society, truly passive tolerance (tolerance which doesn’t require any words/actions) is impossible. For example, in a perfect society, if my school has bigoted teachers, it immediately gets outcompeted by a non-bigoted school. In an imperfect society it might not happen. So we get enforceable norms.
Employees get paid, which kinda automatically reduces their free speech, because saying the wrong words can make them stop getting paid. (...) Employment is really a different situation. You get laws, and recommendations of your legal department; there is not much anyone can do about that.
I’m not familiar with your model of free speech (i.e. how you imagine free speech working if laws and power balances were optimal). People who value free speech usually believe that free speech should have power above money and property, to a reasonable degree. What’s “reasonable” is the crux.
I think in situations where people work together on something unrelated to their beliefs, prohibiting to enforce a code of conduct is unreasonable. Because respect is crucial for the work environment and protecting marginalized groups. I assume people who propose to “call everyone they” or “call everyone by proper name” realize some of that.
If I let people use my house as a school, but find out that a teacher openly doesn’t respect minority students (by rejecting to do the smallest thing for them), I’m justified to not let the teacher into my house.
I do not talk about people’s past for no good reason, and definitely not just to annoy someone else. But if I have a good reason to point out that someone did something in the past, and the only way to do that is to reveal their previous name, then I don’t care about the taboo.
I just think “disliking deadnaming under most circumstances = magical thinking, like calling Italy Rome” was a very strong, barely argued/explained opinion. In tandem with mentioning delusion (Napoleon) and hysteria. If you want to write something insulting, maybe bother to clarify your opinions a little bit more? Like you did in our conversation.
I agree with most of that, but it seems to me that respecting homosexuality is mostly a passive action; if you ignore what other people do, you are already maybe 90% there. Homosexuals don’t change their names or pronouns after coming out. You don’t have to pretend that ten years ago they were something else than they appeared to you at that time.
With transsexuality, you get the taboo of deadnaming, and occasionally the weird pronouns.
Also, the reaction seems different when you try to opt out of the game. Like, if someone is uncomfortable with homosexuality, they can say “could we please just… not discuss our sexual relations here, and focus on the job (or some other reason why we are here)?” and that’s usually accepted. If someone similarly says “could we please just… call everyone ‘they’ as a compromise solution, or simply refer to people using their names”, that already got some people cancelled.
Shortly, with homosexuals I never felt like my free speech was under attack.
It is possible that most of the weirdness and pushing boundaries does not actually come from the transsexuals themselves, but rather from woke people who try to be their “allies”. Either way, in effect, whenever a discussion about trans topics starts, I feel like “oh my, the woke hordes are coming, people are going to get cancelled”. (And I am not really concerned about myself here, because I am not American, so my job is not on the line; and if some online community decides to ban me, well then fuck them. But I don’t want to be in a community where people need to watch their tongues, and get filtered by political conformity.)
I think there should be more spaces where controversial ideas can be debated. I’m not against spaces without pronoun rules, just don’t think every place should be like this. Also, if we create a space for political debate, we need to really make sure that the norms don’t punish everyone who opposes centrism & the right. (Over-sensitive norms like “if you said that some opinion is transphobic you’re uncivil/shaming/manipulative and should get banned” might do this.) Otherwise it’s not free speech either. Will just produce another Grey or Red Tribe instead of Red/Blue/Grey debate platform.
I do think progressives underestimate free speech damage. To me it’s the biggest issue with the Left. Though I don’t think they’re entirely wrong about free speech.
For example, imagine I have trans employees. Another employee (X) refuses to use pronouns, in principle (using pronouns is not the same as accepting progressive gender theories). Why? Maybe X thinks my trans employees live such a great lie that using pronouns is already an unacceptable concession. Or maybe X thinks that even trying to switch “he” & “she” is too much work, and I’m not justified in asking to do that work because of absolute free speech. Those opinions seem unnecessarily strong and they’re at odds with the well-being of my employees, my work environment. So what now? Also, if pronouns are an unacceptable concession, why isn’t calling a trans woman by her female name an unacceptable concession?
Imagine I don’t believe something about a minority, so I start avoiding words which might suggest otherwise. If I don’t believe that gay love can be as true as straight love, I avoid the word “love” (in reference to gay people or to anybody) at work. If I don’t believe that women are as smart as men, I avoid the word “master” / “genius” (in reference to women or anybody) at work. It can get pretty silly. Will predictably cost me certain jobs.
Well, the primary goal of this place is to advance rationality and AI safety. Not the victory of any specific political tribe. And neither conformity nor contrarianism for its own sake.
Employees get paid, which kinda automatically reduces their free speech, because saying the wrong words can make them stop getting paid.
What is an (un)acceptable concession? For me, it is a question of effort and what value I receive in return. I value niceness, so by default people get their wishes granted, unless I forget. Some requests I consider arbitrary and annoying, so they don’t get them. Yeah, those are subjective criteria. But I am not here to get paid; I am here to enjoy the talk.
(What annoys me: asking to use pronouns other than he/she/they. I do not talk about people’s past for no good reason, and definitely not just to annoy someone else. But if I have a good reason to point out that someone did something in the past, and the only way to do that is to reveal their previous name, then I don’t care about the taboo.)
Employment is really a different situation. You get laws, and recommendations of your legal department; there is not much anyone can do about that. And the rest is about the balance of power, where the individual employee is often in a much worse bargaining position.
Agree that neopronouns are dumb. Wikipedia says they’re used by 4% LGBTQ people and criticized both within and outside the community.
But for people struggling with normal pronouns (he/she/they), I have the following thoughts:
Contorting language to avoid words associated with beliefs… is not easier than using the words. Don’t project beliefs onto words too hard.
Contorting language to avoid words associated with beliefs… is still a violation of free speech (if we have such a strong notion of free speech). So what is the motivation to propose that? It’s a bit like a dog in the manger. “I’d rather cripple myself than help you, let’s suffer together”.
Don’t maximize free speech (in a negligible way) while ignoring every other human value.
In an imperfect society, truly passive tolerance (tolerance which doesn’t require any words/actions) is impossible. For example, in a perfect society, if my school has bigoted teachers, it immediately gets outcompeted by a non-bigoted school. In an imperfect society it might not happen. So we get enforceable norms.
I’m not familiar with your model of free speech (i.e. how you imagine free speech working if laws and power balances were optimal). People who value free speech usually believe that free speech should have power above money and property, to a reasonable degree. What’s “reasonable” is the crux.
I think in situations where people work together on something unrelated to their beliefs, prohibiting to enforce a code of conduct is unreasonable. Because respect is crucial for the work environment and protecting marginalized groups. I assume people who propose to “call everyone they” or “call everyone by proper name” realize some of that.
If I let people use my house as a school, but find out that a teacher openly doesn’t respect minority students (by rejecting to do the smallest thing for them), I’m justified to not let the teacher into my house.
I just think “disliking deadnaming under most circumstances = magical thinking, like calling Italy Rome” was a very strong, barely argued/explained opinion. In tandem with mentioning delusion (Napoleon) and hysteria. If you want to write something insulting, maybe bother to clarify your opinions a little bit more? Like you did in our conversation.