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[Reelya]

But that "he could talk over the black guy if he wanted to" could also be applied to women in corporate settings, yet we blame teh menz kultur for that one.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ruchikatulshyan/2015/01/15/why-women-dont-speak-up-at-work/#51a4d1b7353c

Why Women Don't Speak Up At Work

You are missing the point.  "Unable" or "unwilling?"

I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but if we hold that women are passive victims of the identity heirarchy of corporate culture when they choose not to speak, then we have to say that any voices choosing not speaking out in an sjw circle because they've been trumped by the identity markers of another speaker are also a culture which silences a diversity of voices.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yes we blame them.  Without using the words "free speech".  Because you are using those words wrong.  Long as it doesn't veer into unprotected speech (which is its own thing that long predates PC culture), anyone can use their free speech to be sexist.

[Reelya]

If a public college's campus newspaper was to e.g. restrict what viewpoints can appear in the official campus newspaper and the like, then it is in fact a (in a political sense) free speech issue. Are all possible views publishable in the taxpayer-funded campus newspapers? I don't think so, and that would make it a first amendment breach.

Also, when people bully the campus administration to ban speakers, or use peer pressure in publicly-funded public spaces those are also First Amendment free speech issues. Failure to protect the speech of a minority viewpoint in a taxpayer-funded forum is in fact a breach of the constitution, by omission.

By the same logic as if e.g. a public college's campus was to have a 10 commandments monument then it would be a separation of church and state issue.

Both are legitimate First Admendment arguments.

~~~

The other side of this debate is about self-censorship (basically peer pressure to regulate speech or for targeted subgroups to not speak).

You can argue that it's not a problem for free speech (in the loosest sense of free expresssion)
because "it's not what The First Amendment covers", but that doesn't really change the nature or scale of what's been talked about. Which is that social heirarchies crush dissent and diversity of expressable opinion. And it doesn't matter whether that's corporate culture's social heirarchy or it's the sjw "victim points scorecard" social heirarchy. Both are just different types of poison.

[Neonivek]

The problem with excessively victimizing people are two fold
1) You exclude them from the conversation. YOU are being their voice, while not allowing them to speak.
2) You are failing to EMPOWER them.

You can see this a lot more in how say, people with disabilities are treated.

How many interviews of disabled children, for example, are just interviews with the parents and how hard it is for them?

[Tack]

You are missing the point.  "Unable" or "unwilling?"

It's a violent cult, dude. You don't want to be on the podium and go from oppressed to oppressor. That would very quickly not be a safe place to be.

Spoiler: Quote from Tack (click to show/hide)

I remember seeing parts like "Men being forced into certain stereotypes or gender roles" being preached by MRA's as a MR issue, and me thinking 'Aren't feminists saying the same thing?'

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think one possible issue is that many feminists flip-flop on what feminism is for. Is it an advocacy thing just for women, or is it about helping both genders? Some of them say it's for both genders when men-specific issues are brought up, so you can shut-the-fuck-up talking about any men's issues since feminism has you covered, but then ... they don't address those issues as part of feminism, in actuality, and then feminism is all about advocating for just women. It's not a coherent position on the intersection of women's and men's issues.

It's the very fact that feminism has left a void in the discussion space that's allowed MRAs to even exist. Feminism doesn't allow a space for the discussion of the issues that MRAs bring up. If it did, there would be no dissonance. If feminism did in fact "have you covered" then they could say "we have you covered now here's the literature about how we're helping you" rather than "we have you covered now let's never talk about your problems at all, we're too busy discussing my problems".

e.g. the very high rate of male suicide. The feminist answer is merely to quip "well women attempt suicide more often so shut the fuck up. Destroying the patriarchy will solve that. Like magically. Let's never speak of it again". This is the exact response you'd get if you brought this up anywhere near feminists. It's not exactly engaging the issue in any way shape or form, and the issue is provably a real issue. Almost all feminists refuse to analyse the issue of sky-high male suicide rates any deeper than this other to blame guns. However that doesn't explain the gender gap in suicides in all cultures regardless of guns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement#Movement

The modern men's rights movement emerged from the men's liberation movement, which appeared in the first half of the 1970s when some scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. The men's liberation movement acknowledged men's institutional power while critically examining the costs of traditional masculinity. In the late 1970s, the men's liberation movement split into two separate strands with opposing views: the pro-feminist men's movement and the anti-feminist men's rights movement. Men's rights activists have rejected feminist principles and focused on areas in which they believe men are disadvantaged, oppressed, or discriminated against.

It's a victimhood cult based on the same social theories that radical feminism is based on. People might say they "rejected" feminism principles, but all the language and logic of the MRA is based on the same type of social critiques that feminism is based on. It even shares the same parallel logic and coded language.

Maleness is defined as being part of a victim class, that's not traditional masculinity at all, it's derived from post-modern marxist studies of gender as class. MRAs talk about the "feminazis" and institutionalized "misandry", radical feminists talk about "the patriarchy" and institutionalized "misogyny". Radfems talk about "not sleeping with the enemy" "political lesbianism", while MRAs talk about "men going their own way" etc. Both sides also talk a fair bit about intersectionality. Radfems and MRAs might be mirror images in a number of ways.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I agree there's a disconnect there.  Indeed for a movement like feminism its odd that men even call themselves feminists, normally people like that are called allies.

People constantly try to rectify this problem by making or remaking menimism.  But the truth is I don't need menimism, no one needs menimism.  Part of the language of feminism is to talk about oppression, but how are men oppressed?  You can say men are raped and no one helps them or acknowledges it, but well, true for women.  You can say men are more likely to die in wars, but... feminists wanted women to be soldiers.  You can say men are poorer or sicker or less happy than women, you can say they have less authority or they get more respect, but to me that just sounds wrong.  The unpopularity of MRAs even among people that don't like feminism would seem to suggest I'm not the only one.

I'm reminded of a great Cracked article about what homelessness myths.  Things like why people become homeless and what its like.  One of the things they said was that the reason there are so few homeless women is because most of them die quickly.  To paraphrase the article, "when night falls, homeless men have to look for a place to sleep; homeless women have to look for a place to hide."  And so this creates the bizarre situation where that homeless dude lying on a bench who's hungry and tired and cold?  He has male privilege, because if he were a woman instead, he'd be abducted or raped or killed for being on the bench.  The guy that has only the public park bench, would still have something to lose for being a woman.  And that's not a nice thing to say to someone, which is why most feminists leave it as an implication instead of saying it outright.  But, well, its true, and its progressive movements aren't about making friends.

Additionally, precisely because most of the progressives that care about this issue have rightly or wrongly latched on to feminism as the answer, most MRAs don't even know what intersectionality means much less follow it.  While MRA sentiments likely come from all creeds and income levels, the actual movements themselves inevitably spring up around the hangouts of white people.  MRAs don't acknowledge there's more than one way to be a man, they don't create a welcoming place for gay men and trans men.  They don't acknowledge that fighting poverty benefits all men, and they don't manage to attract people from other cultural backgrounds, or respect them.  "I can't believe I'm such a cuck my girl picked an Asian dude with a tiny dick over me", you might see an MRA on Reddit type.  Does that seem inclusive to you?  Does anything about that help men?  No, and I'm not denying you knew that already.  But this is the problem; to make an MRA group is like making a white rights group.  Even if you aren't using it as code, even if you 100% agree men are an oppressed group, no one will listen to you.  Oh, sure, the people that *are* using it as an excuse for unjustified hatred of women, those guys will agree with you.  But they won't agree with an actual sentiment like "we need to help men in a particular way for men and make this about just men, even tho we're still going to be discussing gender issues."  Anymore than anyone would agree in good faith with "let's have an honest discussion about race, solely for helping white people in a way particular to white people".

There is a right way to do it of course.  And that is to leave women out of it.  Don't make it a gender thing, or make it about how men act in their own lives or how men treat each other.  But the thing is that its pretty easy to find your own little corner of feminism that's totally willing to listen to you talk about toxic masculinity and unfair social pressures.  And its not hard to reconcile either, the pressures on men to be the breadwinner and badasses and sexually aggressive, those hurt women.  Thus in the process of helping women by dismantling those attitudes, men are helped by coincidence.  It still a little contrived but its a better solution than making your own feminism with blackjack and hookers that sucks compare to real feminism.  And this brings me to my final point.  If you truly want to make gender issues a part of your political discourse, a part of your life, even become an activist.  How could you in good conscience focus on men?  Like I could see "oh I'll make an abuse hotline for both genders" (which is... a thing already) but I would really struggle to see "let's make an abuse hotline just for men".  Do people make charities like "oh I know minorities are statistically poorer but I'm white so *this* soup kitchen just gives food to white people, even tho we don't begrudge everyone else their soup kitchens."  No, they don't, because no one would genuinely think that.  And that's why, even tho I care about the particular struggles of men, I don't care about those struggles even a third as much about that as I do about the oppression of women.  If rape bothers you, if reproductive control and bodily autonomy bother you, if income inequality bothers you, if sexism bothers you, if pressure to conform to gender roles bothers you, why would you focus on helping the poor oppressed men?  You wouldn't.  Any more than you would break the cycle of poverty by focusing just on white people.  You can say something like "I want to stop ALL rape" or "I don't think anyone should be treated differently based on gender."  But the people who are saying that every day are the liberals, the college snowflakes, the PC crusaders.  And it is feminists.  The people that actually want MRAs, that populate them, that cheer them on.  Those are the people that want to be able to laugh at others for whatever they want.  The people that draw Tumblrites as fat and androgynous and parse it as an insult.  Well you know what?  If real menimism existed, not actual in practice menimism but and equal but opposite version of feminism, its members would fucking hate you for making fun of fat people.  They would try to remove pussy as an insult to men, they would tell you that trans men are real men.  And yeah, part of their answer to male suicide would be filtering conversation, the same thing that you yourself have repeatedly said that you hate.

Side not: I have nothing to say about radical feminism.  There's no gatekeeper for feminism, its not an centralized organization.  So radical feminists get to keep the title, but I don't agree with them.  To be honest I don't think they're common at all.  People on this forum like to point to for example radical feminists that hate trans people or are against hijabs, but I can't accept that representing feminism in general when the entire third wave was ABOUT that.  I think the castrate men stuff is mostly an non sequitor to feminism that gets exaggerated as conservative sources only repost that, but I don't know that for sure.  I went to an ultra liberal school and while there was some of the throwing other oppressed groups under the bus stuff, the castrate men stuff was pretty much absent.  A few people went through phases where they joked about it but they got over it well before graduation.  Maybe that's an age difference and the rad fem crowd is older; I know the original feminists were a lot more radical but they're all dead from old age at this point.  So... again, I actually don't have a strong opinion on this.  I don't agree with them, I don't think they represent feminism as a whole, but yes they are out there and I couldn't pin down exactly what they think or how many there are.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A lot of that stuff came up in the documentary.
One of the arguments was that the wide sweeping changes made by the feminist movement have caused men to be disadvantaged in certain areas, and so there does actually need to be an opposed advocacy group in order to temper that.
Again, I both a) Vaguely disagreed with and b) didn't finish it, so I can't really sell it to you.
Maybe just pirate it and grab some popcorn.

But it was certainly a big disconnect between seeing articles on a dude's site called "Why women want to be raped" and then seeing the site creator talk for ten minutes about completely different, far more tame and incredibly reasonable men's issues, and completely ignore the horrible shit which got him the interview in the first place.

Also: (doublespoilers)
I found the difference in posture between interviews to be symbolic. It probably wasn't intended at all, but when she interviewed the feminists they were sitting both on chairs facing eachother, with no recognisable differences between them.
Meanwhile when she was interviewing the site owner, he was sitting with open legs and wide stance, taking up his whole space and sitting front-on to his coffee table, whilst she was perched on the edge of the couch with her legs tucked up underneath her.
Comfortable probably, but my hindbrain also saw "submissive", which is not a good take.

[Reelya]

www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/seven-forces-facebook-to-remove-sunrise-interview-with-the-red-pill-director-cassie-jaye/news-story/4af823200a65df31925e5e2f6ebe1dbe

Interesting news just came out, Cassie Jaye (The Red Pill director) was interviewed by Australian media and said she'd never been subjected to such hostile and biased interviewers anywhere else. The interview video was posted on Facebook, and after waves of people put comments critical of the reporters involved and supporting Cassie Jaye, the TV network involved pressured Facebook to remove all copies of the interview. Cassie Jaye uploaded the interviews to her own site instead.

“For those of you that don’t know, I did an interview on the Australian TV show Weekend Sunrise on June 11. The hosts, Andrew O’Keefe and Monique Wright, chose to not watch The Red Pill before the interview, but they decidedly hated the film and aimed to smear my name. Since it was a live interview, they looked foolish and Aussies saw through it.

That sort of smugness isn't really going to fly in today's connected world. Basically the interviewers decided that the opinions are so fringe that they could smear the creator of the film without even lowering themselves to watch it or learn anything about the issues discussed therein. Note that I haven't seen the film myself so I have no opinions about the film, but either slamming or praising something you didn't even watch is idiotic.

[Tack]

Yeah, The Project were big on that as well. Apparently a 15 minute interview got cut down to five, and it was pretty slammy.
I guess opinion news is just that popular, one of the downsides of today's connected world.

[Reelya]

Also, the anti-Red Pill people clearly don't understand the Streissand Effect. I had no plans to watch the film, but because of the negative press and the machinations around the Facebook thing, I'm more curious to watch it than i would be otherwise.

if someone says "this documentary says XYZ don't see it!" and other people point out "well no it actually doesn't say that at all" then naturally your curiosity is going to be more pronounced. e.g. defaming the content in some notable way that might not be accurate only heightens the amount it gets talked about.

[EnigmaticHat]

If a public college's campus newspaper was to e.g. restrict what viewpoints can appear in the official campus newspaper and the like, then it is in fact a (in a political sense) free speech issue. Are all possible views publishable in the taxpayer-funded campus newspapers? I don't think so, and that would make it a first amendment breach.

Also, when people bully the campus administration to ban speakers, or use peer pressure in publicly-funded public spaces those are also First Amendment free speech issues. Failure to protect the speech of a minority viewpoint in a taxpayer-funded forum is in fact a breach of the constitution, by omission.

By the same logic as if e.g. a public college's campus was to have a 10 commandments monument then it would be a separation of church and state issue.

Both are legitimate First Admendment arguments.

~~~

The other side of this debate is about self-censorship (basically peer pressure to regulate speech or for targeted subgroups to not speak).

You can argue that it's not a problem for free speech (in the loosest sense of free expresssion)
because "it's not what The First Amendment covers", but that doesn't really change the nature or scale of what's been talked about. Which is that social heirarchies crush dissent and diversity of expressable opinion. And it doesn't matter whether that's corporate culture's social heirarchy or it's the sjw "victim points scorecard" social heirarchy. Both are just different types of poison.

I'm not using the loosest sense of free expression.  You're using a flawed one, for a few reasons but one of them is the idea that free speech applies one layer deep.  By your definition, I should be able to say anything I want provided I'm the first one to speak.  But if I'm replying to someone else, free speech means I cannot say certain things.  I cannot "shut down the conversation", or suddenly instead of exercising free speech I'm violating it.  So if the conversation goes "antifa are on drugs" then "yeah ok" that's fine, if the conversation goes "fascists are evil" then "you're on drugs bro", that's a free speech violation.

It is definitely true that college campuses that take taxpayer money do need to be held to certain standards.  That being said... there were no teachers there.  Are you suggesting that by paying tuition to a taxpayer funded organization, students have become part of that organization?  That they become employees, recipients of the money, rather than clients of a subsidized private organization?  That by watching late night talk shows (that are held to the same standard of showing both sides that you're talking about), the VIEWERS must also give both sides of the conversation fair time?  I mean hell, if my speech is to be controlled or limited, directed down certain paths, because i'm in a public space on a taxpayer funded campus... what the hell happens when I walk in the DMV?  Does the DMV have an obligation to censor people?  Do I have to take my "Trump 2016" bumper sticker off of my car when I take my drivers test?  Or no wait of course, balance.  10% each of the people taking the driver's test each day need to have a Bernie 2016 sticker, a Hillary 2016 sticker, and a Trump 2016 sticker.  I guess we could give Ted Cruz 5% if we're being generous.

Additionally, the only reason talk show hosts have to give time to both candidates is because they can influence elections.  The government regulates channels, if they could just give out TV time to only Republicans or only Democrats that would be an obvious freedom of the press violation.  But general purpose TV shows can express whatever the hell opinion they want.  And very frequently throughout US history, all or most TV channels have expressed similar opinions on an issue.  Despite the fact that a government agency regulates who is allowed to be on the air.  I mean think about it, how would you even produce balance outside of the electoral context?  In an election there are two sides.  In the general cultural conversation of American there are millions of sides.

So college campuses can't just host liberal opinions.  We can't shelter our students.  We need hard hitting conservative ideas.  Ok... should a science school teach creationism?  Must an LGBT friendly school invite someone who's going to tell the students gay people are going to hell?  That's a very common view among Americans.  Must a historically black school invite a racist speaker even if they don't want to?  I mean if they always tell their students black people are just as valuable as everyone else, that's not a very balanced view.  Not representative of the US at all.

And like where's the line for balance?  Ok, conservative and liberal, Democratic and Republican.  What about third parties?  Foreigners?  Regional balance? Racial balance?  What about vocational balance, I mean clearly if students must be exposed to the perspectives of different political parties to preserve free speech, they must be exposed to the perspectives of different jobs.  I was taught by a 747 pilot in school and an anthropologist but I was never taught by a plumber or a computer programmer.  I don't wanna be a shielded little snowflake SJW, I need to know what everyone thinks.  To have anything other than a balanced, representative perspective in the conversations of our schools would be violating free speech.

Oh, if you want to take a purely rules lawyering definition of free speech here and say that school faculty must be balanced because they're taking government funds... that's actually the opposite of true.  If the government tried to use its funding as leverage to tell schools what balance of liberal or conservative their professors had to be, that would be an extremely direct free speech violation.  The states aren't supposed to do that, they're supposed to use their funding purely to produce colleges that provide effective education and place students in jobs.  Obviously the liberal or conservative government of a state should not be allowed to have a say in how liberal or conservative a college faculty is, both because that college faculty are free humans, and because education should not be a tool of indoctrination by the state.  Even if all the government did was say "you must have 10% of your guest speakers be from conservative sources" that would still be trying to have a say in a conversation that should be free of the arm of the state.

[Reelya]

None of those things you wrote a cogent to what I actually wrote:

If a public college's campus newspaper was to e.g. restrict what viewpoints can appear in the official campus newspaper and the like, then it is in fact a (in a political sense) free speech issue

when people bully the campus administration to ban speakers, or use peer pressure in publicly-funded public spaces those are also First Amendment free speech issues.

Those are clear cut and where I said the first amendment comes into things.

"no teachers present" is in fact a weak argument. It is the college's fault if e.g. homophobic attacks aren't prevented on college whether or not a teacher is present. So it's not that much different to say that if the college does zero to ensure that publicly owned spaces at the college are safe for all viewpoints to be discussed without being shouted down by an angry mob, then they're also liable for that.

The other argument I made is that various subgroups systematically oppress dissenting opinions. And they don't get a free pass on doing so because it's "for a good cause" or "the other guys also do it".

It's not about "who spoke first" it's systematic based on an identity label heirarchy. Your argument about "who spoke first" implies all opinions would be fairly considered and not prejudiced based on the identity of who said them and that all opinions would be fairly considered. Those are pipe dreams in real social situations.

However ... not all social groups are quite as toxic as others. I'd argue that the so-called sjw crowds are in fact in the higher-rungs of this sort of toxicity. The heirarchy of who's speech trumps whom's in sjw circles is in fact fairly rigid. Let me point you back at the blog written by someone who had been part of that. Note the large number of commenters agreeing:
https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and-finding-myself-1a6769b2f1ff

[martinuzz]

The post itself appears to be from 2016, the image is likely older. Feeding animals things so they'd get hurt and die is unfortunely a rather old practice, its just the whole mentality behind the post that I found baffling.
Not that I didn't already consider antifa to be made entirely out of actual fascists in denial and dumbfuck-level anarchists, that is.

While I do not approve of Antifa, I don't believe they have anything to do with that obviously fake post made by alt-right trolls, meant to frame antifislam / left in general.

[wierd]

If they want to decry fascism, they need to decry the aggressive lobbying of big business, big banking, and pals-- and be very opposed to corporate powers in general.

The way US corporations are run is very much fascist in structure. They should be championing for radical change in US business culture, radical change in lobbying law, radical change in what constitutes quid-pro-quo, radical change in porkbarrel politics, etc.

Instead, they are just yelling and screaming at people they dont like.

[EnigmaticHat]

None of those things you wrote a cogent to what I actually wrote:

If a public college's campus newspaper was to e.g. restrict what viewpoints can appear in the official campus newspaper and the like, then it is in fact a (in a political sense) free speech issue

when people bully the campus administration to ban speakers, or use peer pressure in publicly-funded public spaces those are also First Amendment free speech issues.

Those are clear cut and where I said the first amendment comes into things.

"no teachers present" is in fact a weak argument. It is the college's fault if e.g. homophobic attacks aren't prevented on college whether or not a teacher is present. So it's not that much different to say that if the college does zero to ensure that publicly owned spaces at the college are safe for all viewpoints to be discussed without being shouted down by an angry mob, then they're also liable for that.

The other argument I made is that various subgroups systematically oppress dissenting opinions. And they don't get a free pass on doing so because it's "for a good cause" or "the other guys also do it".

It's not about "who spoke first" it's systematic based on an identity label heirarchy. Your argument about "who spoke first" implies all opinions would be fairly considered and not prejudiced based on the identity of who said them and that all opinions would be fairly considered. Those are pipe dreams in real social situations.

However ... not all social groups are quite as toxic as others. I'd argue that the so-called sjw crowds are in fact in the higher-rungs of this sort of toxicity. The heirarchy of who's speech trumps whom's in sjw circles is in fact fairly rigid. Let me point you back at the blog written by someone who had been part of that. Note the large number of commenters agreeing:
https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and-finding-myself-1a6769b2f1ff

I'm sorry, when did expressing an opinion become oppression?  And no, don't say "a-ha but that's what SJW think!"  Expressing hatred for an identity can be oppression if its backed up by some kind of larger context, verbal disagreement with a viewpoint is not oppression.  Speaking of which, I'm noticing some pointed vagueness as to "homophobic attack."  I'll be generous and assume you just mean slurs or something.  Look, are we seriously doing this?  Calling someone a "faggot" isn't the same thing as calling someone an asshole, or telling them they're wrong, even if you tell someone they're wrong in a mean way.  You wouldn't expect to get away with calling a coworker a slur on a job, you wouldn't expect to continue living with someone that constantly called you a racial slur.  And it actually would be grounds to request the landlord evict them or even sue to get them or both of you evicted (although the specific legal recourse would vary wildly by state).  Why would you expect the publicly funded business that is also your landlord, to allow you to badger their other clients, on said businesses' property?  Like you're aware that policing the behavior of people on your property, even government property, is a very common procedure.  Of course you need to be able to explain your logic in court; a "homophobic attack" would be a good explanation, "told me they didn't like my worldview" would not be unless something about the context made it bad.

Its not particularly amusing that you are holding a "homophobic attack" directed at an individual for that individuals idendity, and a peaceful protest directed at an entire movement with voluntary participation, to the same standard.  Hate speech is explicitly not protected by the first amendment in the US context.  Yet your argument hinges on the idea that non-hate, thus, protected speech should work the same way as a form of unprotected speech.  As in... it shouldn't be protected.  You are arguing that speech at a protest should be censored because a thing that isn't protected by the first amendment is censored.

I know where you think the first amendment comes into this.  I just don't agree with you.  People can write as many angry letters to college administrators as they want, that's covered under free speech (and also by how much tuition costs nowadays).  Really angry letters might qualify has harassment but it would hardly be a free speech violation.  This is what I mean by "unable, or unwilling?"  No amount of angry letters will cause students to gain control of the faculty's mind.  They're independent adults, if they invite or decline a guest speaker that's their choice and if that choice is influenced by words, well, that's the lively discussion free speech is supposed to encourage.  As for peer pressure in public spaces... you mean freely expressed opinions?  Like, you're telling me that if I walk into another college's bar on game night, wearing the other team's jersey, and tell them their team sucks, and then they all boo me... that's oppression?  That's violating my first amendment rights?  No its not, everyone involved is practicing their first amendment rights.  I have a right to my unpopular opinion, they have a right to tell me where to stick my opinion.  That pressure may make me choose to not speak, but at no point does the mind control set in and my decision making power to speak or not get taken away from me.  If they threatened me with something other than shame, sure that would be bad, but its already illegal anyway for reasons other than free speech.  As for school newspapers, you're right that that would be bad but its a non sequitor.  I'm sure you're referring to a specific incident which I'm not aware of but I guarantee you most official school newspapers lean left because the student body leans left.  Sometimes when people have a free platform to speak on they say something you don't want to hear.

Look.  Every, single person in the world.  More than seven billion people.  Can stand one of those flat rolling escalators at an airport, and float by you.  And every single one can calmly say as they go by:  "You're wrong."  "I disagree with you."  "You should feel bad for saying things like that."  "Shut up."  "You're an idiot."  And that would not oppression, and it cannot be oppression, and it is not a free speech violation.  And it doesn't matter that the overwhelming amount of voices is against you, and it doesn't matter that they're trying to shut you down, and it doesn't matter that its in a public space funded by taxpayer money.  And it doesn't even matter, from a free speech perspective, that they're being rude to you.  And unless they break the law, they're allowed to be rude to you!  That's fucking free speech baby.  Nothing is stopping you from talking back to them, but more importantly, whatever it is you said to have the entire world so riled you can still say it.  You can say it to every one of them as they go by.  And they don't have listen to you.  And you don't have to listen to them, you can get up and leave whenever you want.  Indeed, unless they got up in your personal space, the government wouldn't be allowed to tell those people to stop criticizing you.  To make them stop would violate their free speech.  You think the black kids that went to that school in Alabama didn't have to listen to shit while they passed by the protesters?  Even with the national guard right there.  Hell, even nowadays people have to listen to all kind of abuse walking into a planned parenthood, and the government can't and won't stop it.  Free speech means you get to say things even if you make people unhappy.  Even if what you're saying is objectively a shitty thing to say, still covered.

[Descan]

All the prior violence didn't accomplish anything.

On the contrary. The widespread racial violence and threats of a black uprising gave King the steel fist needed to get anyone accept his velvet glove, just as the threat of a nasty Indian uprising got the British to listen to Gandhi.

Yeah... Malcolm X and co. were the civil rights movement's "big stick," to MLK Jr.'s "speak softly."

[Reelya]

I'm sorry, when did expressing an opinion become oppression?

Uhh ... since like always. If you constantly shout at black people "n.... go home" would that  be "just expressing an opinion" or would it be oppression?

I'm sorry, but this seems fairly disingenous. What I'm talking about is the full range of social exclusion tactics, domination of the discussion etc. it amounts to bullying. And it's rife within the campus activist community. People who are/were strong supporters of the goals are talking about how toxic it has become. Enforcing groupthink through the full range of psychological abuse tactics. That's what it's evolved into.

It's no different to the Stanford Prison Experiment - people come up with all sorts of psychological abuse tactics to get what they want and take control of the situation. People who happen to join a mob who are doing it in the "name of social justice" aren't automatically excluded from the "lord of the flies" type bullshit that goes on. Mob mentality can be applied to literally anything, any cause, any rhetoric.

Boiling that down to "just expressing an opinion" is not a fair caricature of how social peer pressure works. You could justify just about any fucked up shit short of throwing punches as "just expressing an opinion".