[okareaman]

You're bringing the law into this but I'm not. That's a different issue. I support laws for trans people to have equal rights.

The world won't stop saying negative things about people like me and I accept that. Just last night I was watching Amazon's Bosch and the lead character called someone a "worthless alcoholic." As Vonnegut used to write, "so it goes."

[aeturnum]

I mean, fair enough, we can set the law aside.

Again, my point is that trans people are not complaining about "people saying negative things" in a vacuum. They are complaining about a specific situation that is happening which goes beyond just the context of the Chapelle special. I don't believe you are actually responding to the most common trans critique of Chapelle and, in not doing that, you dismiss the actual critiques they are making.

Let me put it this way: we don't have to agree about if the Chapelle special is a problem (I don't happen to worry too much about it but I understand why people are angry). But, I want you to imagine that the loudest and most alarmist trans folks are correct - Chapelle is helping a trend of violence against trans people. If that were the case (which again, is not exactly my belief tho things are pretty bad out there) disagreeing with them would be supporting violence against them. The best way, in my view, to avoid accidentally supporting that kind of thing is to start your personal thoughts (and public arguments) from the POV of the vulnerable community. That's how we can all avoid accidentally erasing an important critique.

[mpalmer]

So...assume the most extreme views are correct and start forming our own personal thoughts based on this assumption. Just in case they do turn out to be correct. I'm just not buying that.

Side note: I have yet to see a satisfying definition for this sense of the word "erasing". As best I can tell, it's just an emphatic way of saying "disagreeing with a position of personal importance to X".

[fsociety]

If you want to see the TERF mindset, and I recognize that the word is thrown around too easily, check out Lily Cade’s speech against trans people. It does advocate for violence.

There are also very real statistics and accounts of violence against trans people. The numbers are shy in comparison to COVID deaths, but you have to account for the number of people who do transition and do not hide it.

Is this priority #1 in the world? No. But we could all show some more god damned humanity to people.

[actual-terf]

No, if you want to actually understand the radical feminist position on this (and other topics), read the works of radical feminists, not furious ranting blog posts.

I'd recommend these books to start off with - two classics, for the historical perspective, and two more recent ones, that discuss the modern transactivist movement that's so controversial right now:

* Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male

* Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism

* Julie Bindel, Feminism for Women: The Real Route To Liberation

* Kara Dansky, The Abolition of Sex

[sascha_sl]

> The problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.

> All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.

You mean that book by Janice Raymond?

> So, what I think is very fascinating is that there's a connection between the very jolly Blair government and their Gender Recognition Act and Iran. They love transgenderism because it does help to get rid of this serious problem of homosexuality and it enforces gender. Right? So we do need to be fighting, I think, transgenderism as a state 'project' in terms of gender.

That's uh, Sheila Jeffreys being delusional about how supportive the UK government is towards trans people because Iran's very exceptional asymmetry in how accepting they are of trans people and not gay people.

Counter suggestion: Read Gender Trouble.

[mpalmer]

That is indeed an abhorrent speech, and it includes an unambiguous, direct call to violence.

There are indeed very real statistics of violence against trans people. Also abhorrent and inhuman.

In what way would you say we are failing to show humanity to trans people that we _are_ showing to other groups of people whose identities cause them to be the subject of humor as well as the victim of deadly hate crimes?

[aeturnum]

> So...assume the most extreme views are correct and start forming our own personal thoughts based on this assumption

This mis-represents what I said.

This thread started with "how to disagree without being accused of being bigoted."

You can form your beliefs however you like. That's a different situation than being in conversation with another person. If you "respond" to someone in a way that does not acknowledge the content of what they said, they may reasonably accuse you of not taking them seriously. There are many reasons to not take someone seriously - including having bigoted views. If you want to avoid being accused of being bigoted, I find it helps to acknowledge (even to just say you don't buy them) even the most extreme views of someone in a vulnerable population. It is polite and it keeps you in conversation with the other person.

If you don't want to be in conversation with someone then, of course, you don't need to acknowledge what they say - but they may be upset with you and accuse you of bias. That's just...life.

I think it's good practice to be skeptical of the views held by powerful people and give more slack to more marginal views I find less credible, but that's a personal belief and it has limits.

> I have yet to see a satisfying definition for this sense of the word "erasing". As best I can tell, it's just an emphatic way of saying "disagreeing with a position of personal importance to X".

It's choosing to make a public statement on an issue in a way that leaves out ('erases') something that an impacted group thinks. How big a deal that is depends on the groups involved and the seriousness of the topic.

For example, when okareaman said "[t]he world won't stop saying negative things about people like me and I accept that" they are implying that trans people are upset about people saying negative things. That is probably true - but that's not the complaint about Chapelle's jokes. By pretending that the complaint is simpler (and focused on personal preference rather than an environment of violence and criminalizing of trans identity) - they 'erase' those complaints in how they discuss it. Another example could be when people ignore the different economic conditions that Millennials and Baby Boomers face and complain that any lack of Millennial success is due to personal flaws. We could talk about more extreme examples, but I hope this makes what I mean clearer.

[mpalmer]

Separately from my other reply, I'm curious whether you'd agree with the statement that the solution to bad speech is more speech. Because along with the most extreme views tend to come the most extreme solutions, most commonly suppressing undesirable speech. Boycotts are the most widely accepted ways of achieving this, but they don't usually work when the public doesn't agree with the boycotters.

And it's clear (to me anyway) that if one believes speech leads to violence, and if less extreme measures don't achieve the results you want, one will eventually attempt to have speech such as Chapelle's comedy routine legally defined as incitement of violence.

It is decidedly not incitement, according to the current legal definition, which I endorse. What do you think?

[aeturnum]

> It's clear (to me anyway) that if one believes speech leads to violence, and if less extreme measures don't achieve the results you want, one will eventually attempt to have speech such as Chapelle's comedy routine legally defined as incitement of violence.

I don't think this follows from the current jurisprudence on speech at all. I.e. we have a long a successful-ish tradition of sorting out speech that does or does not lead to violence without making blunt judgements like you describe. There's a long legal history of untangling legally censurable speech from speech that might incite violence but that incitement is not clear enough to use the law to restrict it.

I do not personally feel that Chapelle's comedy routine invokes violence (FWIW I have never spoken to anyone else before, it just did not seem like a big deal) - the root of this thread was "I feel like I can disagree with someone without being hateful" and I was just pointing out how they could do that (and also that the view they disagreed with wasn't generally held by the group they attributed it to). So...if you don't want to be viewed as transphobic, it's a bad strategy to claim staw-man the arguments trans people are making.

That said there's a lot to talk about here and clearly I haven't been fully successful in communicating what I want!

In general, I would say that the idea of "a solution" to bad speech is kind of questionable. Speech acts are part of a tapestry of ideology and rhetoric that can be engaged to all sorts of ends. Treating it as an isolated action feels out of sync with reality to me. Different kinds of bad speech will have different responses - often depending on how much power and influence the speaker has. For instance, there are many people who advocate pretty extreme reactions to Chapelle that I don't think are warranted - but the chance of them going into effect seem very small so I don't spend much time on it. It's not enough info to just look at the text - you have to also look at context.

P.s. sorry for the late response, I had a busy day yesterday.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

> If that were the case (which again, is not exactly my belief tho things are pretty bad out there)

The point is, this is a very big if.