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by pmalynin 3743 days ago
Yup.

Is their belief system so fragile, that letting a person speak will destroy it???

2 comments

I'd say they have enough integrity to not support a parent organization that has made an odious decision.

There's a different between "allowing someone to speak (anywhere, at all)" and "providing them a platform." The parent org has decided to provide a platform, which has consequences.

You can disagree about the decisions made, but your "belief system so fragile" is a strawman.

The author has chosen to make a public statement with arguments X Y and Z, everyone else is free to critically evaluate those statements.

And yes, fragility I believe is the right word to describe killing a technical conference because he doesn't like another speaker.

It reminds me of this quote, which I believe is attributed to GRRM.

“When you cut out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

A is free to make or not make controversial statements, B is free to provide or not provide a platform for A, C is free to support or not support B.

No ones rights have been abridged, and everyone's freedoms have been preserved.

Nope, not about fragility at all. It's about creating spaces where a large chunk of people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker. What's the problem? Free speech can also mean no speech. I have no problem with people pulling out if they disagree so strongly with the social views of another participant. This isn't the government smashing someone's printing press, this is people voluntarily deciding not to share the stage with someone whose views they abhor.
people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker.

Was that actually the content of his talk? If so.. okay, this makes perfect sense.

If not, it's crap.

Nope, talk content doesn't matter. If I know you believe that "rape doesn't exist" and you regularly publish about it, but you are giving a talk on 'advanced garbage collection in Ruby", I can still feel totally ostracized from the conference knowing what you've said in other spaces is literally an attack on my safety.
A speaker's personal views are not and cannot be an attack on your safety.