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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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I firmly believe everyone has the right to live freely and to find their own path, provided they don't harm others. Hate speech and violence have no place in our society, and I wholeheartedly stand with the trans community in advocating for their protection.
Nonetheless, here's a viewpoint I have that I know is not accepted, but I'll share it anyway. I believe the compulsion of speech, particularly insisting that all of society adapt their language to accommodate individual identities, is a terrible approach. The notion of forced speech is problematic to me, and worries me greatly.
That said, I believe it's important to work towards a society that respects every person, but without mandating how we perceive them. Life's journey is all about confronting adversity, and part of this involves learning to navigate the world as it is, not necessarily as we'd like it to be. Instead of dictating specific definitions, it might be more beneficial to cultivate a culture of empathy, understanding, and open dialogue around these issues. This perspective is unpopular and contentious, but it is a conversation that we should be willing to engage in.
Anyways that's what I see as the moderate take, and it's what I believe. I had to tiptoe pretty hard there and I'm sure what I said still comes across as hate speech to some but I don't feel it is. It's just my opinion. I wish there was a place I could express it and have an open debate with people about it. We can't eliminate half of society, and we're going to have to learn how to empathize with people we disagree with in order to actually see where they are coming from.
Is this the fucking Jordan Peterson position? Whose speech has been compelled? A man walked into a Philosophy of Gender class this week in Canada and stabbed three people, so sorry if I'm a lot more concerned with the constant hate speech being levied against LGBTQ+ people than I am with the anomalous concept of "compelled speech" which has not as of yet been an issue and only exists in the fever dream of transphobes who want to actively misgender people while working in public positions in Canada.
I agree with you, but this is a really bad counterargument to what they said. Even widely agreed politeness conventions to a degree 'compel' speech, so the debate is really around what speech is acceptable for society to encourage/suppress, rather than whether cultural changes are changing what people are compelled to say. Also, I don't think they said anything that suggested they are more concerned by that than hateful violence?
It's actually even stupider than they're presenting it to be. The speech that was being "compelled" was explicitly not intentionally and repeatedly misgendering someone after being informed of their identified gender while working in a publicly funded position. I.e. when someone is acting as an agent of the government of Canada, they're not allowed to intentionally misgender people.
They can literally quit their jobs if they don't want to do that, our speech is constantly compelled in similar ways in the workplace but they never care about that, because that's how jobs work. I may want to tell customers to go fuck themselves if they're rude, but I'm compelled to smile and nod and keep that for the break room afterwards if I want to keep my job.
That's a lotta words for "I don't respect what people want to be called". When you call someone by the wrong name and they correct you, is that also compelled speech to you? Because that's all pronouns are. By your definitions all of language is compelled speech, because you're being forced into using specific words to communicate.
It can be your opinion all you want, but it's one you should evaluate and change, because it doesn't make any goddamn sense.