zlacker

>>tosh+(OP)
I find it weird that so many people seem to think that "attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity" (I guess this is a fancy way of saying cancel culture?) is a big problem, because frankly I have no idea how big a problem it is. Where are the statistics on this? How many are actually impacted by it? There are many articles citing examples and saying how dangerous it is (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/25/online-shaming-d...), and yes there are certainly such examples, but are these just outliers? Is this like air travel, where really for the most part it's ok for people to speak their minds and people get overly freaked out because of rare events?

Actually curious to hear what people on here think about this.

>>andrey+AN
If you'd like to see how big of a problem it is, post "males are not females" or "males do not have periods" or "all lives matter" or "we should not be giving hormone blockers to children" to your Twitter or Facebook accounts. Go right ahead. If you feel even the slightest bit of trepidation over publicly stating any of those things, then you will see first hand how big of a problem it is.

*edit

this very post will be down-voted

>>HeroOf+2P
If I were to post one of these things, I would certainly get some side-eye, but I very much doubt I would be fired or the like. And since when is feeling some trepidation over saying something controversial (because people might dislike you for it) unnatural? I mean, is your stance "it should be ok for me to say whatever I like publicly"?

I guess you think these are all examples of perfectly rational things to say that cannot be disputed, but let's just take "all lives matter". Sure, no one can disagree that "all lives matter", but saying this implies that you think this in response to "black lives matter" , and Pinker himself articulates the issue with this well:

"Linguists, of all people, should understand the difference between a trope or collocation, such as the slogan “All lives matter,” and the proposition that all lives matter. (Is someone prepared to argue that some lives don’t matter?) And linguists, of all people, should understand the difference between a turn in the context of a conversational exchange and a sentence that expresses an idea. It’s true that if someone were to retort “All lives matter” in direct response to “Black lives matter,’ they’d be making a statement that downplays the racism and other harms suffered by African Americans."

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/07/05/the-purity-posse-p...