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Preferred Pronouns or Prison


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2019 Apr 15, 7:04am   2,096 views  9 comments

by cmdrda2leak   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

I agree with this take on the subject: I'm all for politeness as a personal choice, but "compelled speech" is a step down a very, very dark road.



If you want to control people's thoughts, begin by controlling their words. That's totalitarian thinking. It was once completely foreign to America. Not anymore.

Increasingly, Americans are forced to use language against their will or even their conscience or be prepared to suffer the consequences. And those consequences can be dire.

Take, for example, the issue of transgenderism, the newest "civil rights battle" of our time. A decade ago, few people could even tell you what the word "transgender" meant. Today, expressing the "wrong opinion" on the issue can cost you your business or job – or both.

Consider recent state and local actions punishing those who decline to use an individual's pronouns of choice. In 2017, California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation threatening jail time for health-care professionals who "willfully and repeatedly" refuse to use a patient's preferred pronouns.

Under guidelines issued in 2015 by New York City's Commission on Human Rights, employers, landlords and business owners who intentionally use the wrong pronoun with transgender workers and tenants face potential fines of as much as $250,000. That's a steep price for saying "he" instead of "she" or "she" instead of "he," or even "he" or "she" instead of "they."

What about the vast majority of citizens who hold the biology-based view that chromosomes determine your sex--male or female? Or those who have a deep-seated religious conviction that sex is both biological and binary – God's purposeful creation?

In December of 2018, Peter Vlaming was fired from his job as a French-language teacher in a Virginia school district because he refused to refer to a transgender student by the student's preferred pronouns. Vlaming's Christian belief prevented him from bowing before the notion that the student, who had been a "she" in his class the year before, was now suddenly a "he." Vlaming was willing to use the student's chosen new name, but he avoided using any pronouns when referring to this student. That wasn't good enough for the school district; they needed to hear him say the words.

You don't have to be religious to believe that one person can never be a "they." The Supreme Court has clearly decided that compelled speech is not free speech.

In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the Supreme Court upheld the students' right to refuse to salute an American flag. Justice Robert Jackson wrote, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, religion or other matters of opinion." And, Jackson went on to say, the state can't force people to say things they don't believe.

But this is precisely what's happening. People are forced to refer to others as "ze," or "co," or "thon" – yes those are now considered pronouns. What might otherwise be a courtesy now has criminal consequences.

In most contexts, I would have no problem addressing others in any manner they chose, and I'm sure most Americans feel the same. But the Constitution's protection of free speech neither begins nor ends with good manners. It extends all the way from rudeness to meekness, protecting those who hurl insults and those who would prefer to say nothing at all.

If the state can compel the use of certain words, it can force those who differ into silence. It can force its citizens to parrot beliefs they do not hold.

The Fairfax County School District in Virginia removed the phrase "biological gender" from its curriculum and replaced it with the phrase "sex assigned at birth." This is how the left legislates away the concept of biological sex without ever having to make the argument. Without ever having to convince anyone. They're trying to make "sex assigned at birth" as trivial and malleable as "name assigned at birth" – as if some doctor arbitrarily chose for you on the day you were born.

To the extent that the transgender movement seeks to promote compassion for those who struggle with their biological sex, we should be grateful for it. To the extent that it seeks to use government power to regulate our perspectives – commanding that we ignore biology and common sense – we should resist it.

This is no small issue. The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech so that political issues can be worked out in the public square. But the activist left doesn't want that conversation to occur. They want to force the adoption of their conclusions before the argument even begins. Compelled speech is the tactic they've chosen. It's unconstitutional. It's undemocratic. And it's wrong.

If gender activists prevail, we may be left with a world we neither recognize nor like very much. We won't be able to communicate our displeasure. We will have lost the words.



www.youtube.com/embed/cn5opUFNs-I

Comments 1 - 9 of 9        Search these comments

1   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2019 Apr 15, 7:25am  

But the same idiots that support this call president Trump a facist!
2   cmdrda2leak   2019 Apr 15, 7:44am  

CovfefeButDeadly says
But the same idiots that support this call president Trump a facist!


Though this particular thread isn't Trump-related, it is true that highly authoritarian societies (including those with fascist characteristics) often get their start first by restricting speech, then by compelling it.
3   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 15, 7:59am  

Funny thing was in the news last week.
They said one of the American Revolution military leaders could have been a Transgender.
I guess the story didn't stick I can't get a Google hit on is now.

Here's the thing about that assumption. There was a 200 year old Memorial Tomb that some bones were found in. The story was it "Could have been" the bones of this person but they weren't sure. How ever, and this is important and proves what I have said all along. They said upon examining the bones, they noticed the Pelvic bones were female.
So they assumed these bones could have been this person. Could have been for sure, but could have been. So the Liberal History revisionists ran with it as a definite maybe.

What stuck me odd, is how for sure they were the bones were female when there's supposed to be 300 genders. One huge assumption, was the assumption of this person's identity. But the scientific fact was the bones were female.

I guess Liberals are allowed to assume genders, but the rest of us, have to ignore Scientific facts.

But even for Liberals Bones don't Lie!
4   Ceffer   2019 Apr 15, 11:29am  

"Surely you jest!"
"Don't call me Shirley!"
5   marcus   2019 Apr 15, 12:09pm  

It's good that this battle is playing out. It can not be won by those in favor of compelled speech.

What do you say we pretend that all liberals are for compelled speech. You know, because right wingers never lie.

Closer to the truth to say that no true liberals are for it. Just a fairly small minority of confused and not very intelligent far left wingers.
6   marcus   2019 Apr 15, 12:13pm  

Haha, "his majesty."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/michigan-university-his-majesty-grant-strobl-lgbtq-pronoun-gender-roster-policy-a7339866.html

That was back in 2016. Compelled pronouns have gotten little traction since then. (THanks in part to Jordan Paterson).

Considering the importance of the aphorism "you've got to pick your battles," one can't hap but wonder how it is that the left gets behind this issue. What are transgender people, something like one half of one percent of the population ? It's almost as if they want to let the right politically own the current state of affairs until it is a proven failure. Because the left won't win elections with this nonsense.

If not that, then it's really tough to fathom what they could be thinking politically. It lends credence to Jordan Peterson's thesis about postmodernism, and cultural Marxism.
7   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Apr 15, 12:16pm  

this pronoun shit is hella unconstitutional.
8   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Apr 15, 12:43pm  

HEYYOU says
MULTIPLE ADULTERER!


best pronoun so far?
9   Ceffer   2019 Apr 15, 3:26pm  

Now, would you refer to The Queen as Your Royal FUCK!FACE!?

On second thought, don't answer that.

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