"Progressive" Journalistic Standards

The particulars of this story are unremarkable, but it's just another banal example of how progressive orthodoxy and its accompanying standard practices are rife for abuse by bad actors.  

This WaPo piece on the Queer Appalachia account includes these quotes illustrating the progressive tendency to not ask for evidence and take things on trust when it comes to marginalized people and good causes, as asking for and supply evidence is itself an injury:

"As the account picked up followers — 276,000 and counting — it received coverage from NBC News, Slate and USA Today, among many others....

"In a 2018 Bitch Magazine article, author Kristina Gaddy described QA as a collective of 15 people, a number that Gaddy attributes to Mamone....

"I spoke to nine people who donated material for the Electric Dirt zine, five journalists who have covered Queer Appalachia, and nine representatives of small nonprofits who received or were supposed to receive money from QA. They all said they’d never communicated with anyone at QA except Mamone....

"Journalists, perhaps eager to support what they perceive as a worthy cause, have written stories built only on interviews with Mamone...

"The rhetoric Mamone and Queer Appalachia use make them somewhat criticism-proof. “They have a lot of clout, and everyone is so afraid of backlash, being accused of not being supportive,” says Kayleigh Phillips. “I did feel a level of compassion [for Mamone],” she says of their time working closely together. “But ... they’re preying on the people that they’re supposed to be helping.”...

"“They presented themselves as a leftist and an anarchist,” says Leo. “But at the end of the day, it’s capitalism. And it’s been exploitation of all these people who really believe [in] and maybe have projected what they’ve wanted onto this project.”"

Same as with Erdley's Rolling Stone UVA sexual assault story, when she didn't try to corroborate certain facts, even when the public assumed she had--including her supportive audience, i.e. Anna Merlan etc.

Freedom of Speech: What's the Standard of Harms of Speech Rights?

Some people say that there is no, and can be no, threat to free speech from cultural mores.  That's just consequences for your speech, which is other people using their speech to criticize you, or call for your firing or institutional/associational severance, or fire you or boycott you--which in themselves are just people exercising their rights not to associate with or support people they take to be bigots.  

None of this harms your freedom of speech, because it's not the government and people exercising their own freedom in this way does not stop you from speaking.  It's not true that these things means there are things that you can't say.  You can still say them.  These are just consequences of your speech.

But let's remember that government can't actually stop you from speaking either.  They can also only change the incentives, and provide consequences to do so.  

So those who argue that such cultural mores can't threaten freedom of speech are using the wrong standard to measure whether something harms freedom of speech, since under it even government imprisonment for stating certain propositions is not a speech injury since people can still choose to speak.

Refuting the Content by Focusing on the Speaker=Identity Politics?

Regarding the Harper's Letter, and the response that, for instance, Andrew Sullivan cheered on the Iraq War and was intolerant of those with dissenting views...

this is an argument for the truth of the Letter, surely.

That was bad then, and it produced bad consequences by tilting the public discourse against the side that would have made some move to deescalate. 

Only with an excessive focus on identity could this be seen as a response to the Letter, as opposed to a requisite focus on consequences and principles. 

Free Speech's Problem of Self-Reference

Most people, people who still broadly support free speech, maintain that some content-specific exceptions are justifiable, even obligatory.  They just disagree exactly on what those exceptions should be.

So can you really apply an exemption from free speech to the exemptions from free speech themselves?

Incongruous

I often seek out Jill Filipovic's opinion on matters I'm interested, especially lately on some of the internecine left-of-center disputes like on "identity politics", the 2016 campaign, and Democratic strategy.  It's an application of the cherished principle that truth-seeking requires seeking out the best possible case for the other side.  I find her contributions to the discourse valuable and appreciate her insights and the clarity she brings in expressing them.  I almost always find her pieces persuasive, even if I don't find myself fully persuaded by them to exchange my own opinion for hers.  And I am especially appreciative of her habit of doing all this in from her particular perspective and working from her priors that are far from my own on certain dimensions, as I've endeavored greatly lately to address and incorporate the contributions that can be made from a perspective such as hers into my own views.

But--and this is not to talk Filipovic at all but only observe of the larger culture--I find it jarring to try and click through the author's page to read other of Filipovic's pieces and encounter this pop-up soliciting me to join their email list.  To the extent that the persistent gender gaps in areas of social concern as well as problems of sexual assault and health (and more) result at least somewhat from cultural cues telling girls that their only worth is their attractiveness, and in general being bombarded with images the inculcate a very particular and very difficult to attain beauty standard...

Rape Jokes, Free Speech, and Inclusion

My train of thought on freedom of speech inspired by the unpleasant rape jokes in family Guy:

Dialogue:

A: rape jokes are wrong, you shouldn't make them. On top of that, they're not even funny.

B: sure, they're funny. Who are you to decide what's funny and what's not for everyone? And likewise, who are you to decide what's right and what's wrong (for everyone). I don't think they're wrong; I think they're fine.

A: fine, maybe I can't prove that they are wrong or not funny across the board, and maybe you're right that they are not wrong. But regardless of whether they are ultimately right or wrong, they still means that sexual assault survivors/victims and others sensitive to the issue will avoid your show. In essence then, the inclusion of rape jokes in your show is a method/means excluding sexual assault victims/survivors. That what you want?

For Sake of Liberty, Not Competing Values: Regulation

Hoisted from the draft queue from 3/6/14:

We pretty much take it for granted these days that regulation, a standard government regulation prohibiting some commercial activity under threat of financial or criminal penalty, impinges on liberty.

Those right of center argue that because of this such regulations are wrong. Those left of center generally concede that these regulations impinge on liberty but that they still might be justified by reference to other values, whose (force is stronger/weight is greater) in some instances.

On the other hand, I'd argue that many such regulations can be justified on grounds of liberty, without having to introduce other competing values.

Examples: trigger warning, nutritional information, anti-gay religious exemptions, etc.

This is a good demonstration of why I once called myself a libertarian and why I still have feelings for the label.

Free and Public Speech and Value-Neutrality: Public Sex & Nudity, Body Image, Social Roles, Sexual Assault, Media and Other Representation, and General Activism

David Frum scoffs at efforts to remove or change a large public billboard advertisement for a fitness product that features a sexy, fit woman in a small bikini
as obviously wrong

But if we already have and accept laws against public/the public presentation of drug use (public drinking) and public nudity and public sex actions and even depictions, pictures or video, of nudity and sex acts, then surely we've already violated value-neutrality, and certainly have violated (freedom of speech's) content-neutrality of/for (regulation of) public speech and expression.  

So what's the problem then with further restricting public speech some degree tighter than it is now, even if just to include images and media that uphold/propagate social roles and impossible ideals, and lead to body negativity, body image health issues and psychological issues in high numbers, and sexual assault issues, and gender identity issues, and economic and educational and racial bias/racist prejudice,
given how bad we know these things are right now (and how bad the various ideas to address them are right now, and how bad the general politics of the issue is--not amenable to good solution/policy/practical conclusions/choices and very amenable to false accusations, bad arguments, etc.)

I oppose regulating all speech that is contained to those who positively consent to hearing it, but unless you want to be forced to allow public nudity and public sex acts and/or depictions of them, (etc)...


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dafd
My little reading on culture has shown how people pass down values and attitudes (culture) intergenerational and socially/in a socially diffuse way.
To the extent that the culture passed down can be the CoP
it may be inferred that people need positive role models, since they need "models for life"/examples of living, etc.
This is why gender and racial and queer representation is important, especially with regard to not only positive examples but much less negative stereotypical examples that reinforce negative stereotypes.

Purely Malicious Expression and the Limits of Free Speech?

Does free speech and 1st amendment protect purely retaliatory claims-speech and legal actions?

Retaliation Charges Menace Freedom of Speech

According to this link, the courts mostly say yes, but some new opinions may differ. 

That this apparent consensus gives way to the newer interpretation would accord with some of my thinking elsewhere that, (following) from the falsity of the speech-action distinction (without a difference), free speech cannot justify intentionally (and purely?) malicious hurtful speech. 

PC vs. Fair Notice and Retroactive Legislation

I believe that at least some of the hostility to PC, especially from those otherwise inclined to support civil rights causes on the left, comes from the same impulses that underlie the (legal) doctrines/maxims of 'fair notice' and against/prohibiting retroactive legislation, and not without reason.  Many standards, like against micro-aggressions, erasure, and invalidation, and other forms of discursive violence, are not only higher than they used to be--which is certainly very plausibly the right thing to do--but vaguer and more fluid than they used to be (both there's more variability of them between different people, and they change more/faster over time [I suppose, for each person and for populations as a whole]).

Conor Friersdorf talked about "concept drift" (I think) in The Atlantic.  

Catherine Rampell reported on "sombrerogate" and Bowdoin.  Her second report included the detail that the school administration itself had committed the same discursively violent violation itself only the previous year, with even additionally offensive fake mustaches.  

Conor also reported on the case of the micro-aggressing email and response.  

Does Speech Have a Regulable Effect on an Unconsenting Audience?

All this time, I have/we've been arguing that homosexuality is OK and should be treated the same as heterosexuality, and so should not be criminally punished or criminal he singled out/prohibited, even in a purely expressive way, at all, because it doesn't affect anyone other than the willing consenters:

But arguing this implies that receiving into one's mind/mental experience  information/sights/sounds/accounts of it don't count as affecting.

Now, some parts of the left want to argue that sights and sounds and words and ideas can count as affecting. So which is it?

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Next step in the homosexuality dialectic discourse: 

I rely on my argument about if you don’t/didn't know about it, then it doesn't/couldn't have been affecting you. 

And nobody is suggesting legalizing it in a way that you would receive experiential information about it: like in public.

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The response, I imagine, the only one possible: 

Even just knowing about it, without experiencing/seeing or hearing it, it affects me, it's mere existence of affects me.

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And we who were pro gay rights, remember we were arguing over its mere legality/legal existence less than 15 years ago during Lawrence movie Texas, and who must continue to advocate for gay rights and freedom of homosexuality in the US and--importantly--internationally, must/must have rejected all these concerns of social conservatives, and rejected the idea that not only sight and sound button mere knowledge of X/homosexuality affects unconsenting participants.

((Sight and sound versus knowledge of X, homosexuality in this case, comes into play in both/all the free speech cases/scenarios because the organizers of the controversial speech/presentation on campus are confining their speech to a single location a single time and publicizing the nature of its content and those facts about setting, and thereby allowing people to choose/control/determine whether they admit this controversial content into their mental experience, and attempting to restrict the scope/reach of their content/speech to only those who affirmatively choose to experience it/opt in--this means making sure the audience/recipients of your speech/content have consented to do so and not only that people who have affirmatively rejected/refused to consent to receiving/experiencing it, but also that people who have not consented or refuse/projected receiving/experiencing it are prevented from receiving/experiencing it; no one can receive/experience it accidentally, Without their knowledge or explicit consent--(doing this by restricting their speech to a certain place and time, and publicizing it)

((publicizing the speech deserves some consideration, because if the warning of the events content includes any of the controversial content itself, then it does no good and compounds the problem. This is exactly the problem with

(((At least part of peoples problems with sights and sounds and ideas and information and speech about it, it is for the effect this will have on kids slash their kids/teach them about it/ruin their ignorance on the existence of this.)))

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So student activists/protesters can and do argue that: we are still not satisfied that the speech is confined to a single space and a single time that is announced in advance in a way that does not include/communicate/express any of the controversial content, and actually purely safe trigger warning ((Im imagining if the term trigger warning were explicitly attached, and perhaps looks like they were agreed to reluctantly by the controversial speaker and the controversial organization that invited them to use the term trigger warning, then confining the speech to one place and time and announcing those facts in advance would probably suffice)). In other words, we are not satisfied that the speech is regulated enough such that only people who affirmatively consent to receive/hear/experience/see it in fact do so.

Just knowing that that speech is going on on this campus, and maybe additionally that there are people who wanted to go hear it, and agree with and like it, on this campus is enough. It's enough to make me not feel safe knowing the mere existence of it.

Are we sure we want to set this standard/principle about what speech may be regulated legitimately/justifiably?

(((especially because the speech on campus does not cause those views in the people on campus who chose to go to it and or agree with hand or like it; preventing the speech will not do anything about those views that may be/may have been said to be part of the reason for opposing the speech/wanting to prevent the speech from happening. But maybe the speech happening will foment those forces/the people with those views, and connect them with one another and lead to an increase in it, either in their intensity and possible action derived from it, and or the growth of it through the conversion of undecideds/New believers. If that's what they're trying to prevent, send that might be legitimate/has a prima facie case for legitimacy/being right, but we would need empirical information that this causal relationship occurs. To the contrary, I think my views on persuasion--how to do it and what does it in people--all right, and they are incompatible with this possibility.

… In general, at the most basic level, I just want to argue for value neutrality/content neutral free-speech/speech regulation policy. 

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Why do I want it so badly? Because we need something in common, if we're going to have a polity together at all with people we disagree with, and that's the only candidate for a possible compromise for policy here on this issue.

If the center doesn't hold, there will just be war/majority/force/numbers.

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(((((((oh my God, all of the schools having all of these slightly different but largely similar protest movements/student activism/demands provides me a great/perfect opportunity/the perfect opportunity to illustrate all the iterations in thought experiments on free speech questions, and are perfect examples for many of the theoretical ideas ideas I've previously analyze only theoretically and because it makes them easier to see for others and makes it easier to communicate them with others))))))

Free Speech: Speech vs. Action and Intentional vs. Accidental Offense

Leiter’s paper arguing for the limits of free speech and against the speech-vs-action distinction—> 

—> leads to —> 

—> idea that incidental/accidental offense is ok and/or must be tolerated, but not intentional offense.  

The fact that accidental/incidental vs intentional offense matters is why Milo is indefensible and not a good character for my vision of free speech.

—for example, in this case, I think the protestor has the better of the argument than Milo does, since Milo has previously admitted to speaking purposefully to offend and shock—sometimes as a means to fight PC and sometimes for its own sake, it seems—which does go against the school standards:

““With that, I’ll leave you with a quote from DePaul’s guide of Freedom of Speech and Expression, the bylaws that say ‘we accept that there’s a distinction from being provocative and being hurtful. Speech whose primary purpose is to wound is inconsistent with our Vincentian and Catholic values. The university community must meet these situations by reasserting our fundamental values and by fostering educational opportunities, where appropriate.’ Thank you.”” (http://depauliaonline.com/2016/06/05/students-express-anger-demand-change-town-hall-holtschneider/)

Thus, Free Speech activists should wait for a case of dispute/controversy on one on which they have substance in their offensive speech, not just whatever offends. (which also, as noted, contradicts his idea that he’s just/people should just say whatever they want without consideration of other people’s taking offense at it).

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Of course, I need to get into Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance".

Racism & Free Speech

I would have no problem in principle with hate speech laws and banning racist speech even over free speech arguments; after all, my primary argument for free speech is the Millian one that it allows us the chance to improve and progress/make progress.  

Thus, speech that only serves to advocate for/support policies/practices that are racist in their abridgment of individual rights and equality before the law can be banned without cost; we are not going to and shouldn’t make such change regardless.

(Of course, it could be objected that I am contravening Mill’s argument by saying that it’s settled at the outset that such change ought not be made, and that Mill’s argument that free speech promotes/enables progress is based on the idea of human fallibility.  This may be so/this is true, but I believe we can admit this as the only (or one of the few) exceptions to the Millian logic for a few reasons.  

The logical reason is that a sound deductive argument/proof cannot be refuted with more information and dialogue, so keeping questions open that have already been supplied with an argument of this standard for the sake of correction in case of error is pointless.

The constitutional reason is that these questions on equality are already settled at a constitutional level so deciding banning such speech to be permissible at the same constitutional level is not an issue; in order for the Millian argument to imply that racist speech should be constitutionally protected, it would have to be the case that the policy/practical changes such speech would enable would be constitutional possibilities, but they’re not.)

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So, no, I do not oppose criminalizing hate speech or racist speech for such high intellectual considerations on justice.  

I do oppose it for much more mundane reasons: that I don’t believe we can draw the lines delineating prohibited racist speech clearly and specifically enough, and fear that they would move and encroach more and more on speech I think ought to be legal.

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There is also the not negligible consideration that campus speech codes have punished more black people than white people and there is no reason to think that civil/criminal law would be any different—Henry Louis Gates Jr. found this in his analysis of speech codes on campus.

—

I could definitely support regulating speech for hate speech and or racism is the letter of the law spelled it out specifically not categorically, such that there is no matter of interpretation and uncertainty of permissibility (which is a problem of course because it can be/lead to/become retroactive legislation, or at least is wrong/bad for the same reasons as retroactive legislation).  

Free vs. Regulated Speech and Campus Protests, Platforms, and Heckler's Veto

The people who's slogan is in favor of free speech in the recent campus protests to shut down a speaker or presentation is actually a position in favor of regulated speech, totally free speech waiting include the heckler.

These groups trying to give talks book for a specific space and the specific time in advance, and publicize about it including at the entrance, to allow people control/free choice/freedom in whether they experience it. And they favor using coercion forced to shut down other people speech, in that space at the same time, to preserve the existence/integrity of their own speech. So they are not pro free-speech as far as meaning anarchy and no legislation on speech at all, but are pro regulated speech to enable/promote/protect a difference, deeper, more important type of free speech, one in which the individual with a unique opinion can be heard and the diversity of speech/of views/of expressed views this condition entails.

This is just like the Lockean notion of restricting some freedom, to some property that is legitimately taxed away, to the right to catch and punish wrongdoers/rights violators, and certain other things, to secure liberty in other areas and make them more reliable, which must be a more valuable type of liberty.

So these are both examples of the principle that it can be legitimate to sacrifice some liberty of a smaller amounts or less or type for the sake of a greater or deeper liberty.

Socialists want to take this one step further, and say it's legitimate to sacrifice further on liberty so conceived when it comes to taxes and regulation, property rights in general, in order to secure a deeper freedom, positive freedom that is, for everyone.