University head says free speech does not override transgender safety

[Jimmy Higgins]

So is calling a pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection in the classroom or campus? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" to her face unpopular enough for protection as free speech?

Condemning people for who or what they are isn't particularly speech we need to protect.

This.... this reads as if you're saying that the pregnant student was literally a prostitute.

Well, yeah, there is that comprehension deficit issue you deal with.

What = pregnant

 

[Emily Lake]

So the excuse is "I was ignorant of the impact of my statement and demand my right to remain ignorant"?

Wait - hit the brakes and back the truck up.

Statements made that are not malicious, not denigrating, and not intentionally insulting are ones that you're referring to here. You seem to be implying that because some transgender people's feelings are hurt regardless of intent, it is acceptable to proscribe such speech.

Where do you stand on terms like "uterus haver", "menstruator", "ejaculator", and "fish"? Are those allowable personal expression to be protected as free speech, or are they ignorant harmful speech that should be prohibited and curbed?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Freedom of speech is about protecting unpopular speech. Popular speech isn't threatened in the first place.

So is calling a pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection in the classroom or campus? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" to her face unpopular enough for protection as free speech?

Condemning people for who or what they are isn't particularly speech we need to protect.

It is appropriate to prohibit the school authorities from doing it.

Other than that it's a form of bullying--something we should be trying to limit but there's no hope of stomping out every incident nor should we be trying to.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In Washington state, the ACLU - the fucking ACLU! - has acted to BLOCK access to PUBLIC INFORMATION to a woman who requested to know how many male prisoners were currently housed in the female prison, and how many of those had committed violent crimes against women or children.

The data being asked for could easily reveal their identities.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So the excuse is "I was ignorant of the impact of my statement and demand my right to remain ignorant"?

Wait - hit the brakes and back the truck up.

Statements made that are not malicious, not denigrating, and not intentionally insulting are ones that you're referring to here. You seem to be implying that because some transgender people's feelings are hurt regardless of intent, it is acceptable to proscribe such speech.

Where do you stand on terms like "uterus haver", "menstruator", "ejaculator", and "fish"? Are those allowable personal expression to be protected as free speech, or are they ignorant harmful speech that should be prohibited and curbed?

I seem to be implying? You haven’t even answered my question.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Freedom of speech is about protecting unpopular speech. Popular speech isn't threatened in the first place.

So is calling a pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection in the classroom or campus? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" to her face unpopular enough for protection as free speech?

Condemning people for who or what they are isn't particularly speech we need to protect.

It is appropriate to prohibit the school authorities from doing it.

Other than that it's a form of bullying--something we should be trying to limit but there's no hope of stomping out every incident nor should we be trying to.

So a college is capable of addressing bullying faculty but not by students?

 

[Jarhyn]

Freedom of speech is about protecting unpopular speech. Popular speech isn't threatened in the first place.

So is calling a pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection in the classroom or campus? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" unpopular enough to warrant protection? Is calling a specific pregnant student a "whore" to her face unpopular enough for protection as free speech?

Condemning people for who or what they are isn't particularly speech we need to protect.

It is appropriate to prohibit the school authorities from doing it.

Other than that it's a form of bullying--something we should be trying to limit but there's no hope of stomping out every incident nor should we be trying to.

So it's bullying to prevent bullying; intolerance to prevent intolerance; injustice to prevent injustice...

The paradox of tolerance rears its ugly head once more!

I reject that kind of tripe. We stomp out every incident we see. That is the prescription.

 

[Emily Lake]

In Washington state, the ACLU - the fucking ACLU! - has acted to BLOCK access to PUBLIC INFORMATION to a woman who requested to know how many male prisoners were currently housed in the female prison, and how many of those had committed violent crimes against women or children.

The data being asked for could easily reveal their identities.

It's a matter of PUBLIC RECORD already. And the request was for a count, not for names or anything else.

Looking at the count of people in a particular subforum doesn't tell you who those people are.

 

[Emily Lake]

So the excuse is "I was ignorant of the impact of my statement and demand my right to remain ignorant"?

Wait - hit the brakes and back the truck up.

Statements made that are not malicious, not denigrating, and not intentionally insulting are ones that you're referring to here. You seem to be implying that because some transgender people's feelings are hurt regardless of intent, it is acceptable to proscribe such speech.

Where do you stand on terms like "uterus haver", "menstruator", "ejaculator", and "fish"? Are those allowable personal expression to be protected as free speech, or are they ignorant harmful speech that should be prohibited and curbed?

I seem to be implying? You haven’t even answered my question.

Of course not. I don't answer "when did you stop beating your wife" questions.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So you don’t have a response to a question regarding labels and how they apply to human beings and instead rather respond with derailing passive aggressively retorts.

Yes, I should know better by this point:

 

[Emily Lake]

So you don’t have a response to a question regarding labels and how they apply to human beings and instead rather respond with derailing passive aggressively retorts.

Yes, I should know better by this point:

Dude, seriously? You're deriding me for not answering a "when did you stop beating your wife" question that you asked SOMEBODY ELSE?

Your question was:

So the excuse is "I was ignorant of the impact of my statement and demand my right to remain ignorant"?

You asked this to Ahab, not to me. So don't go getting all snooty because I didn't give you an answer to something you asked a different person altogether.

Secondly, that's not even an actual question - it's an insinuation of ignorance and careless disregard wrapped in the trappings of a query format. There is no possible answer to that question, indeed it doesn't even merit a response at all. You're mind reading Ahab's motivations in a malicious way, and then framing it in a way that cannot be answered without granting some element of accuracy to your malign interpretation... when no such accuracy exists.

But if it pleases you to simply condescend and dismiss as "I should have known", then hey - you do you.

I'll simply note that you seem to be perfectly fine with reducing women to their body parts and bodily functions, and referring to them in a derogatory fashion as "fish". I don't see how that's helping you keep the moral high ground here, but whatever.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Malign interpretation?

Trans say it is a problem.

The school says we should address this.

Metaphor *whines*

So either they don’t care or they want to demean. There is no viable alternative interpretation.

People complain, the response is, but “my free speech”. It is apathetic at best.

 

[Metaphor]

Malign interpretation?

Trans say it is a problem.

If trans activists say declarations of fact (such as that humans cannot change sex) are a "problem", then it is they who are the problem, not the utterance of facts.

 

[laughing dog]

It would be nice if there was a link to the draft policy. The OP article is a rather one-sided report. It only quotes one sentence from the draft policy -

"“Where the university determines that an activity or event poses an unacceptable risk of harm to [transgender and gender-diverse] members of the university community, it may determine not to conduct or host the activity or event on those grounds (in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Speech Policy).”

So, the key is what is the standard of "unacceptable risk of harm".

The OP and the quoted professor appear to be more of a preemptive airing of fear rather than a cogent criticism of the draft policy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In Washington state, the ACLU - the fucking ACLU! - has acted to BLOCK access to PUBLIC INFORMATION to a woman who requested to know how many male prisoners were currently housed in the female prison, and how many of those had committed violent crimes against women or children.

The data being asked for could easily reveal their identities.

It's a matter of PUBLIC RECORD already. And the request was for a count, not for names or anything else.

Looking at the count of people in a particular subforum doesn't tell you who those people are.

The number of people involved is small. Combine that with months and you narrow it down to a few individuals, maybe even one individual.

This is unacceptable data leakage.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It's a matter of PUBLIC RECORD already.

My inclination straight away is to agree with you due to transparency and in particular records of the existence of prisoners ought to be public so that governments do not create secret torture prisons. However, in this case, there are a couple of nuances. First, if your assertion that it is a public record already were true, then all the requestor would need to do is a manual count of those public records. Since that hasn't been done, there appears to be something more to it. Perhaps you could comment on what is different? That brings me to the second point, ought the public have a right to know which persons born male are now female or in transition or have had particular medical interventions? I think the answer to that is no. From a legal standpoint there are also some privacy laws such as HIPAA and so forth that block the particulars of knowledge of specific people but there are also discrimination laws that relate to privacy as well. And I don't even know what else. So, third, at work, they'd publish to public info various statistics, like gender and race breakdowns of salary and whatever. However, when the occupation had like 1 or 2 people or the race had like 1 or 2 people, they'd not report it because then it would risk that the public could infer which individual received what salary or benefit or whatever. And it is plausible that the ACLU is blocking this for a related reason that there are so few persons in this class that reporting whatever has been requested violates privacy. Now you said it's already public, but I am thinking that the entirety of the request probably isn't. Otherwise, the ACLU would not have this stance. Perhaps you could provide a link to the ACLU's website and their stance on this issue so we can have a reputable source rather than just chatter and my reasonable speculations about it?

 

[Jarhyn]

It's a matter of PUBLIC RECORD already. And the request was for a count, not for names or anything else.

Looking at the count of people in a particular subforum doesn't tell you who those people are.

The number of people involved is small. Combine that with months and you narrow it down to a few individuals, maybe even one individual.

This is unacceptable data leakage.

You're talking to someone who doesn't seem to understand that common use of 'male' and 'female' on the street, to reference people on the basis of which genital they were born with and to expect usage of "man" and "woman" to be used equivalently is essentially is an insult to the privacy of everyone.

Just saying out loud "that person is male" or "that person is a man", by those people, says "that person has a penis". They really don't see the problem with that revelation, and in making and demanding that these revelations of others' privates on a regular basis.

What hope do you have of showing her that this thing is a violation when one of the most clear cut violations, of the nature of someone's private parts, is not considered an unacceptable data leakage?

 

[Emily Lake]

Malign interpretation?

Trans say it is a problem.

The school says we should address this.

Metaphor *whines*

So either they don’t care or they want to demean. There is no viable alternative interpretation.

People complain, the response is, but “my free speech”. It is apathetic at best.

There is a viable alternative interpretations.

On is that the affront is largely imagined and the offended are dramatically exaggerating. Another is that the offended is far to delicate to function in a normal society.

As an example... I'm rather seriously offended by Midol deciding to make an entire series of ads referring to "menstruators". I am insulted that a company has taken to degrading their customer base by reducing women to bodily functions and robbing us of our humanity in order to pander to a small few people who are so insecure that they can't handle being included under the polite term "women" because they don't identify as such.

But somehow, the offense that I feel, as well as many, many other women... well... that's not a problem at all.

Should I then assume that Midol is ignorant and wants to remain ignorant? Or that Midol is intentionally trying to demean women?

 

[Emily Lake]

It's a matter of PUBLIC RECORD already. And the request was for a count, not for names or anything else.

Looking at the count of people in a particular subforum doesn't tell you who those people are.

The number of people involved is small. Combine that with months and you narrow it down to a few individuals, maybe even one individual.

This is unacceptable data leakage.

She didn't ask for months.

Beyond that... is it "unacceptable leakage" for ALL incarcerated individuals, whose crimes, terms, and placement are all public records as well? Or is it just a select few that need to be protected from the public having access to public records?

 

[Emily Lake]

It's a matter of PUBLIC RECORD already.

My inclination straight away is to agree with you due to transparency and in particular records of the existence of prisoners ought to be public so that governments do not create secret torture prisons. However, in this case, there are a couple of nuances. First, if your assertion that it is a public record already were true, then all the requestor would need to do is a manual count of those public records. Since that hasn't been done, there appears to be something more to it. Perhaps you could comment on what is different? That brings me to the second point, ought the public have a right to know which persons born male are now female or in transition or have had particular medical interventions? I think the answer to that is no. From a legal standpoint there are also some privacy laws such as HIPAA and so forth that block the particulars of knowledge of specific people but there are also discrimination laws that relate to privacy as well. And I don't even know what else. So, third, at work, they'd publish to public info various statistics, like gender and race breakdowns of salary and whatever. However, when the occupation had like 1 or 2 people or the race had like 1 or 2 people, they'd not report it because then it would risk that the public could infer which individual received what salary or benefit or whatever. And it is plausible that the ACLU is blocking this for a related reason that there are so few persons in this class that reporting whatever has been requested violates privacy. Now you said it's already public, but I am thinking that the entirety of the request probably isn't. Otherwise, the ACLU would not have this stance. Perhaps you could provide a link to the ACLU's website and their stance on this issue so we can have a reputable source rather than just chatter and my reasonable speculations about it?

https://www.womensliberationfront.org/aclu-lawsuit-public-records