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Comment by femiagbabiaka | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a compelling hypothetical, but I can't think of a single person who only said they were in support of strong border protection and limited immigration and was subject to anything like what you're saying. Could you provide an example of what you mean?

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Here are examples of people who were cancelled without even saying anything [1]. One was due to a misunderstanding. Another was due to something a family member said.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

I hadn't heard these stories, thank you! Sounds like we need bipartisan legislation for protecting political speech in the workplace, with some sensible limits.

JK Rowling is a good example of middlebrow views getting you and anyone who can be associated with you in trouble.

She has widely-held opinions like trans-women should be respected, but they are different from women. But if you log on to Twitter, she's vilified so much as a "transphobe" that people have been attacked for merely signing the same open-letter that she signed.

https://twitter.com/emilyvdw/status/1280580388495097856

> She has widely-held opinions like trans-women should be respected

Um no. She has admitted to being part of the known trans hate group GenderCritical.

Edit: not sure why I am getting downvoted. She uses talking points from the GenderCritial group when she writes and even mentions them by name and that group was banned by reddit for being a hate group.

This is the sort of vague "argument"-crafting I expect on Twitter but not on HN where you have unlimited words to make a point and add understanding to the world.

I googled "jk rowling gender critical" and all I see is a great google query if you want to find articles about how supposedly transphobic she is (without explaining what was specifically transphobic about what she said). If you're going to say someone has admitted to being part of a hate group, why not help us out and provide us some links?

The recent opinion essay she wrote:

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...

A rebuttal of that essay with citations:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1270787941275762689.html

And an article talking about the banning of the hate subreddit r/gendercritical:

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/06/29/reddit-bann-transphobi...

JK Rowling is a good example of quite the opposite — someone who uses flowery language to insinuate pretty heinous things about trans people, and then pretend she’s said something innocuous. At any rate, you can’t cancel a multi-millionaire.

example?

I wrote out a graf with an example downthread, I'd copy over, but posting the same thing twice feels a little redundant.

Well, first of all I disagree that her defense of trans women is disingenuous. Her points are well thought out. She points to specific situations where trans women are vulnerable. Just because she has another concern doesn't invalidate her concern for trans women being vulnerable.

So her heinous viewpoint is she has concern for girls in restrooms and locker rooms? Why is she not allowed to have this concern? The rest of the country/world is not San Francisco. Where I live I've never seen anything other than Men and Women restrooms. Sure adding a gender neutral bathroom could help with the issue but they don't exist in the vast majority of locations in the US. I have two high school daughters - one with autism. I'm sorry if its a dangerous trope from half a century ago - but my wife and I would be concerned with a trans woman sharing the locker room with them. Certainly my non-autistic daughter would feel uncomfortable. My daughter with autism wouldn't care because she has trouble with boundaries and being appropriate which makes it more concerning.

So now you'll say I don't care about the fate of trans people. Nope. It's possible to have concern for them and concern for non-trans people.

You'd have to be more specific about the rest of your post. What exactly is heinous?

But the litmus test for whether cancel culture exists isn't whether you can cancel a millionaire, but to see how people react to what she said. Like writing a public letter to your employer to express disapproval for a coworker who signed the same Harper letter.

I'll side with Paul Graham on the matter. Here he replies to AOC: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1281626457693982724 36min ago.

Not to mention the replies on his tweet are full of people arguing nonsense like "it seems you have something to hide" , and "cancelling means shutting down voices", not realising that people would be much less angry if cancellation meant twitter account cancellation and not losing one's jobs.

“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman—and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones—then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

I could annotate her most recent post (and all of them) pointing out all of the dogwhistles, but this paragraph is pretty demonstrative of the style I was referring to. She starts from a defense of trans women, one that rings false because of all of the qualifications she makes which anti-trans activists will pick up on -- "Like women" "Natal girls and women" etc. etc., and then transitions seamlessly into harmful and dangerous tropes (men in dresses are coming to molest YOUR daughters!) from half a century ago. And of course, all of this is an overstated panic, and the solution of gender neutral bathrooms has been working just fine in the Bay Area and elsewhere. To be honest, that isn't even the most offensive dogwhistle in this article: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...

As far as Paul goes, I wonder who exactly he sees to be the powerless? To circle back to Rowling, is it the multi-millionaire author? Or trans people in the U.K.? These wealthy folks are not simply advocates, they're partisans. And not for a generic free speech, but simply the speech they believe is right.

> As far as Paul goes, I wonder who exactly he sees to be the powerless?

Why are only millionaires your candidates for who people who could be powerless in this situation instead of the vast majority of the non-millionaire population?

As for JK Rowling's essay, it's one of those things everyone should read for themselves. The vast majority of people reading it will not come to the conclusion that Rowling is anti-trans, and they will probably agree with her. Rather, there seems to be a lot more smoke than fire when you read it after hearing how anti-trans Rowling obviously must be.

I'm not a fan of the "dogwhistle" accusation. I just see it as a fashionable way to accuse someone of saying something that they didn't say. Like people claiming the Harper letter is clearly anti-trans when the only "trans" in it is "transgression": https://twitter.com/LLW902/status/1280547024014905346/photo/...

Evaluating words without context doesn't work. You have to evaluate the words people say in the context in which they say them. Language is socially constructed and the meanings of words change over time. "We must secure the existence of our people" doesn't really sound particularly ominous on its own, but I want to avoid someone who says that because there's a nonzero chance that association with them will put me in actual, physical, danger.

> Why are only millionaires your candidates for who people who could be powerless in this situation instead of the vast majority of the non-millionaire population?

I don't believe that's who Paul is advocating for, that's precisely the point. This piece by Osita Nwanevu is quite good on this point: https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-rea....

> As for JK Rowling's essay, it's one of those things everyone should read for themselves. The vast majority of people reading it will not come to the conclusion that Rowling is anti-trans, and they probably agree with her.

That's the exact purpose of the language she uses. Morality is not as simple as gentle and convincing rhetoric, designed to play on the fears and sympathy of people who know nothing about trans people. The rhetoric that China uses to describe the Uighur population to the rest of the Chinese populace is quite similar.

> I'm not a fan of the "dogwhistle" accusation fad. I just see it as a fashionable way to accuse someone of saying something that they didn't say. Like people claiming the Harper letter is clearly anti-trans when the only "trans" in it is "transgression".

There's quite an extensive field of research into dogwhistle politics. Not reading into it doesn't mean it isn't real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics.

The claims that the letter itself is transphobic are people over-reacting and over-extrapolating. But what precisely do you think Rowling signed the letter in service of?

For people that have been aware of her it's entirely obvious that Rowling is not engaging in the issue in good faith.

For example, before she published under her own name she published under the pen-name of "Robert Galbraith".

So far so what, right?

Well that's the name of an infamous psychologist who experimented on gay people - often people in the criminal justice system who did not or could not consent to treatment - in order to try and convert them to heterosexuality.

Rowling has also been a vocal defender of Maya Forstater who lost a case at the Employment Tribunal in a case about how she described trans people for "[violating] their dignity and/or [creating] an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment". That's not the view of some random trans rights campaigner, that's a judge who must take in to account freedom of expression as provided for in the European Convention on Human Rights.

There's much more when you scratch the surface of Rowling's transphobia.

Those opinions are currently stigmatized as “racist dogwhistles” and “white supremacy”. I’m generally pro-immigration myself, but I believe it’s possible to advocate for limited immigration without being a racist.

> Could you provide an example of what you mean?

The CEO of Goya foods called Donald Trump a "great leader" and there's an active boycott of the brand as a result.

To be fair, that sounds a lot more reasonable. A CEO represents their company and their actions leading to people boycotting their company is just people voting with their wallet. People have boycotted small businesses due to the opinion of the business owner's children, even after persistent apologies by the business owner. In this case I don't even think there is anything significantly wrong. This isn't much different than a company sanctioned advertisement gone wrong.

While people are free to Boycott for any reason they want

A person that has respect for the concept of Free Speech WOULD NOT boycott a business simply because the CEO of that business supports the current president of the US.

That is simply NOT a reasonable reaction to learning of said support.

So no it does not "sound a lot more reasonable", it sounds like a perfect example of society losing respect for free expression

Well here is a sample for you:

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/a-new-low-in-...

Except its not I have seen people called Neonazis just for being Republican or siding with Trump whether or not they are "Trump supporters" on issues. Even saying the name "Trump supporter" is evidence alone that there is an element of cancel culture. A woman was rejected from a college recently for posting a MAGA video on Tik Tok. Some developer is being called a Neonazi for protesting against an open source org that banned someone from a conference for wearing a MAGA hat.

I say this too often on HN: today they silence the voice of those you disagree with, tomorrow its your voice.

Not to mention: master-slave throughout tech, master branch in git, are all examples of absurd cancel culture. Meanwhile minorities shake their head.

Has any individual faced consequences for refusing to rename a branch? Are you saying that cancelling a word is a thing, and a dangerous one?

At this point people are diluting the phrase "cancel culture" to mean "thing I don't like that is vaguely related to politics or political correctness". That's not a useful concept. It's just a thing to be angry about.

That's not what cancel culture is, but it's usually the precursor to it. People who are upset over things that are not yet causing negative side-effects know that they eventually will because already what's happened is a bit much in many cases. You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

Why not? And are you claiming that this is simply a moral standpoint, or do you want to legally prevent employers from firing employees for off-work behavior?

There's plenty of companies that don't fire employees for the things they do outside of work, it's been like this for ages, why should this become a normal standard all of a sudden? Just to appease the ever changing feelings of others? Unless I actually breach my company contract in some fashion I don't understand why what I do outside of work has anything to do with my company, in fact, unless I'm some executive, it shouldn't ever matter.

That's not what I asked. You stated companies shouldn't do this. Just because some entities have chosen to act in a certain way doesn't mean that it is morally correct for all entities to act in that way.

Certain companies have been founded based on religious beliefs forever, that doesn't mean that it is morally correct for every company to have religious foundations. If you want to run your company that way, you're absolutely welcome to, but upon what reasoning do you claim it is wrong for me to act differently than you choose to?

If what someone does, does not actually affect a company negatively aside from a few emails or calls, I don't see why it should fire somebody. People will find someone that disagrees with them in virtually every single company.

Again, that's fine for you to act that way. But what you stated was the rule:

> You shouldn't be fired for things you do and say outside of work, period.

Which would presumably apply to all companies. Under what ethical basis is this a good rule? What if I want to fire someone for what they did outside of work? Why shouldn't I be allowed to do that? Why should your belief about how you would run your company affect how I run mine?

It's not any different from republicans calling liberals libtards, antifa and communists whenever someone talks about medicare for all. Both sides do it to each other, right wingers just complain about it more because the majority of people who control social media platforms tend to be left leaning.

In general, people only want free speech for things they want to say, but not for things they disagree with.

Yes, but has an open Antifa supporter ever been denied college entrance or attending a conference because of that support? Or lost their job?

Not quite Antifa but here's an example of a Harvard grad losing her consulting job due to threatening violence against people who say "all lives matter" [1]

https://nypost.com/2020/07/01/harvard-grad-claira-janover-lo...

Yes, but you have to admit all the vast majority of firings lately are for people not having the proper left wing viewpoint.

Threatening violence, yes that will get you in trouble (hopefully). A little different than just minding your business wearing a MAGA hat.

You mean like Trump saying he could shoot someone and not lose voters in 2016? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTACH1eVIaA

We've all heard this, but did he actually go out and shoot someone and do it? He was talking out of his *ss about how confident he was about his supporters. English isn't even my first language and I could tell that's what he meant.

Did the girl who threatened to stab "all lives matter" people actually go out and do it? No, but she got fired anyway.

Free speech does not mean that your words have no consequences.

Yes naming calling is very different from an organized effort to up end someone life.

Calling someone a "libtard" is not the same as 1,000 angry mob members calling a persons work place to get them fired

Companies aggressively take action against its employees who are pro-union, pro-labor, or anti-corporate. Example amazon 2 months ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-fires-warehouse-worke...

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