Transphobia is pretty clearly against twitters rules. They weren't really banned, they were locked out until they deleted their tweet. All they had to do was delete the tweet.
He could've gotten a lighter sentence if he just accepted the plea deal! Do you understand how silly this sounds.
Moreover, they awarded Rachael Levine "Man of the Year" as a parody because they are a parody website that is right-leaning. Of all the things you could class as so-called "transphobia" this is what you choose? They never deserved to be banned. Additionally, I can go, right now, to Twitter and find a literally gold mine of rule breakers who lean far left that seem to never get touched. Strange, that.
I personally am excited for the reckoning. Twitter is absolute disaster and hopefully the left leaning bad actors get the bans they have deserved since 2016. I've read absolutely disgusting things, especially regarding white people ("white"-phobia in your terminology?) that should be banned and in many times investigated by the FBI. Hopefully we see those bans come down soon. There's a huge difference between Parler and what gets banned on Twitter. To the point you could consider Twitter a very good approximation of Parler for the left. It's time these bad actors get the bans they deserve.
While I agree that the Bee should never have been banned, the answer to this problem is less censorship, not more. It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.
There are already tools you can use on Twitter and other platforms to ignore content you don’t want to see (mute or block, for example). Banning someone should only be done in extreme circumstances like if someone is breaking the law or making literal calls to violence.
> It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.
It only sounds this way because I targeted the left here. I only did that because it’s Twitter. I would rather have the extremes removed from the platform regardless. It’s already enough of a mess as it is.
The argument that a person can be a different gender than the one that all their physical biology points to is absolutely not an open-and-shut case. I know many people believe that it is, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t valid opposing arguments. To me, that means that you shouldn’t be banned for contesting the idea of transgenderism.
I think a more reasonable argument is that people should be allowed to present themselves how they want without prejudice, but that there are still some undeniable facts about the world. Clearly there are people who want to have this discussion and silencing one side of the discussion doesn’t resolve it. It just causes the tension to fester. Get it out in the open and the truth will come out.
> To me, that means that you shouldn’t be banned for contesting the idea of transgenderism.
While I'm mixed on the ban, this is a mischaracterization of what they were banned for. They were banned for misgendering a specific person not questioning transgenderism. There is a significant distinction between questioning an idea and targeting a specific person.
Toleration is a funny thing isn't it? If you have a problem with transgenderism how much do you need to support it to be tolerant? If you have a problem with people who have a problem with transgenderism how much do you have to support them to be tolerant?
There are great yard sticks to this question in theory "I tolerate everything except intolerance. Your right to swing your arms stops when they come into contact with someone's nose." In practice though it's always easy - on every side - to pick out the things we don't like and decide that they're violent or intolerant.
Everyone is tolerant of the things they like - and they ask everyone to join them in that if they like those things or not.
I see what your saying here, and it might be a relevant discussion in a different context, but here it's really not. If they wrote a deep thoughtful article about Rachel Levine, but simply misgendered her because they don't believe in trans people for religious or whatever reasons it'd be worth asking " If you have a problem with transgenderism how much do you need to support it to be tolerant?". But they didn't. The entire point of their post was to misgender her. Not misgendering her didn't require showing any kind of support for transgenderism, it simply required... doing nothing. Instead they deliberately singled out an individual person to mock for being transgender.
If this was some random trans Rachel from Boring, Oregon, I'd call this a clear case of bullying and say the ban was 100% justified and shouldn't remain, but I think there is a much, much higher bar when the target is a government official or celebrity. But that doesn't change the fact that the entire point was singling out an individual for mockery.
Sure. But Twitter has said "we want to make sure that we have trans voices on our platform, so in the interest of a broader marketplace of ideas, we're going to say no to one particular idea - making fun of trans people, who typically face a much higher level of violence, rejection, discrimination, and hate than most".
If Babylon Bee makes a joke about trans people how is that removing trans voices from the platform? If making a joke about a group is the same as encouraging violence or whatever then you can't make any jokes about people.
If you think trans people shouldn't be allowed to be berated online then why not ban berating of Trump or whites? Why should their experience on Twitter be a "shitty experience"?
Regardless, you didn't answer my question: "If Babylon Bee makes a joke about trans people how is that removing trans voices from the platform?"
People voluntarily leaving is not removing voices.
> People voluntarily leaving is not removing voices.
This is naive. If a Klan bar doesn't literally throw out Black people, they still are preventing Black people from being there by making the environment so unpleasant they cannot remain.
Galileo wasn't really under house arrest. All he had to do was recant.
The comparison seems apt because while the magnitude of the punishment is out of proportion the refusal to yield to orthodoxy by taking the simple way out is similar.
Babylon Bee isn't under house arrest. This analogy is absurd. They weren't allowed to target hate towards a specific, named individual on their Twitter account. Everything else they were saying was more or less ok.
And they still had plenty of other outlets, including their very successful website.
This is like a single book publisher telling Galileo, "we won't print this one page, but the rest of the book is ok".
It's hateful in the sense that it's very derisive in the culture of the target and Babylon Bee has a large enough audience that the individual is likely to receive targeted threats as a result.
Reach and influence are important, because they impact the magnitude of what a derisive comment can do to a target.
You saying, "lol, man!" In your living room has no reach, it won't cause harm. The Bee saying it has huge reach, and when aimed at a specific minority individual can lead to serious harm.
> derisive in the culture of the target
> the individual is likely to receive targeted threats as a result.
Obvious and simple solution here:
1. Allow people to say whatever offensive jokes they want.
2. Keep banning the actual problem: those who make the targeted threats.
The entire concept of "incitement" is ridiculous. We have agency. Nobody can force me to go threaten someone. Go after the ones who commit actual harm, not the ones who make jokes.
This is true for you and me, but when we're dealing with the laws of large numbers I can guarantee there are folks who are not able to understand that these are "just jokes".
Looking at what the families of Sandy hook victims suffered at the hands of mentally ill viewers of Alex Jones is heartbreaking. When you have an audience of millions, I believe you have a responsibility to be intentional about what you publish, because you know that someone might take you very seriously and do awful things.
Sure, we can catch the people who make threats often enough, but the damage has already been done. It's far better to ask folks to be considerate and intentional about who they target, rather than try and sweep up the wreckage of someone's life after the fact.
They targeted a public person who exists at the upper echelons of power and privilege. For a group of people so obsessed with comedy only “punching up” it’s ironic to see the justification.
And they didn’t which means they’ve earned gobs of respect because of their principled and dignified stance to refuse to be bullied. They won and showed the world you don’t have to lick the boots of elitist corporate oppressors.
A joke about trans people may or may not be transphobia. There's a ton of context to consider - who is telling the joke, whi is the punchline, etc.
But this case was not that. This case was specifically targeting a specific individual and making fun of them being trans. That's absolutely transphobia.
>A joke about trans people may or may not be transphobia.
That is good. A lot of people don't agree.
>who is telling the joke,
Not true.
>whi is the punchline, etc.
Maybe. The problem is the inconsistent standards on that. Punch lines that are anti white or anti male aren't considered sexists or racist, but anti trans ones are.
We need a consistent standard and we don't have it.
>But this case was not that. This case was specifically targeting a specific individual and making fun of them being trans. That's absolutely transphobia.
That was not the case. They were parodying the newspaper or magazine that said Levine was the woman of the year.
He could've gotten a lighter sentence if he just accepted the plea deal! Do you understand how silly this sounds.
Moreover, they awarded Rachael Levine "Man of the Year" as a parody because they are a parody website that is right-leaning. Of all the things you could class as so-called "transphobia" this is what you choose? They never deserved to be banned. Additionally, I can go, right now, to Twitter and find a literally gold mine of rule breakers who lean far left that seem to never get touched. Strange, that.
I personally am excited for the reckoning. Twitter is absolute disaster and hopefully the left leaning bad actors get the bans they have deserved since 2016. I've read absolutely disgusting things, especially regarding white people ("white"-phobia in your terminology?) that should be banned and in many times investigated by the FBI. Hopefully we see those bans come down soon. There's a huge difference between Parler and what gets banned on Twitter. To the point you could consider Twitter a very good approximation of Parler for the left. It's time these bad actors get the bans they deserve.