• alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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    1 year ago

    yeah speaking purely about the link here (and not OP, who i’m sure has normal reasons for posting it) i was initially interested in what this had to say but immediately seeing a site with Bari Weiss involved is a red flag, because she has nothing interesting or principled to say about free speech or where it’s being violated. unfortunately, this site also strikes me as yet another uninteresting, right-wing one that primarily peddles articles like “Free Speech Is Being Destroyed On College Campuses By Woke Libtards And Cucked Teachers” that conveniently ignores the concerted political effort by Republicans to ban queer people from the public space and libraries and other venues of public speech from acknowledging their existence. and the article here doesn’t really dispel my presumption.

    • haxe11@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      I’ve never visited this site before today and don’t know who Bari Weiss is. I saw this on another news aggregation site, thought it was interesting, and I am curious about what this community thinks about it, bias of the website aside.

      • alanine96@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        It’s impossible to discuss topics like this and leave the bias of the website aside; further down in the article, when they’re not talking about the tweet, they say asking people to refrain from using gendered language when they don’t know the gender of their opponent is “creating an atmosphere of fear”:

        The irony of the NSDA’s obsession with “safety” is that it actually fuels an atmosphere of fear among students—the fear that they will lose if they once said the wrong thing on Twitter or accidentally refer to their competitor as Miss. This fear is palpable. The NSDA debates—once a forum for the open exchange of ideas—have become a minefield of political correctness, says NSDA student Briana Whatley, 15, of Miramar, Florida.

        That makes it clear that this isn’t about high school debate at all; it’s about the ongoing push to scapegoat trans people. And that isn’t a topic that is up for debate or discussion.

        • haxe11@beehaw.orgOP
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          1 year ago

          I don’t necessarily agree that the existence and effect of social media on young people is the same thing as the marginalization of transgender people.

          • alanine96@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Me, neither. That’s why the article loses credibility to me by positioning the two side-by-side.

      • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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        1 year ago

        I’ve never visited this site before today and don’t know who Bari Weiss is.

        ah, lucky you! Weiss apparently runs this site (just checked) and is generally infamous for being what amounts to a free speech concern troll. she most infamously resigned from the New York Times (where she previously was an op-ed columnist) over what amounted to people criticizing her takes both inside and outside the newspaper. i’d generally characterize her as interested in free speech only when it’s conservatives saying heinous things being shut down, and never when the aforementioned queer people are actually having their free speech and right to exist threatened by an entire political party. she’s also a very ardent, self-described Zionist and seems to suspend that interest in freedom of speech when it comes to people critiquing Israel. it’s… corny, to say the least.

        • haxe11@beehaw.orgOP
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          1 year ago

          I believe everyone has their blind spots, but yeah, it appears that this person is too big of a distraction for people to look past. Personally when I read anything I view it from the lens that a human with bias wrote it and that it could potentially be propaganda. But just dismissing everything everyone writes as “fake news” is something I don’t agree with either. It’s a tough thing nowadays, deciding who and what to trust.