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I wasn't able to speak openly about who I was for the first 27 years of my life. because of transphobic "free speech". here's my response to "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate": https://medium.com/@juliaserano/refusing-to-tolerate-intolerance-f24c1bff513f
...one of the signees of "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" is JK Rowling, who has been mass-spreading disinformation about trans children & health. another, Katha Pollitt, has defended transphobic speech (I wrote this essay in response)... https://medium.com/@juliaserano/how-to-write-a-political-correctness-run-amok-article-9b828d443018
"open debate" is a wonderful platitude, but it ignores the reality that some groups (especially marginalized ones) are always shut out of the debate a priori. signatories seem concerned w/bottom-up pressures (cancel culture) but not top-down (institutional suppression/exclusion).
...calls for "open debate" or "free speech" are never politically neutral – they're always tacitly for some speech & against others (as I explain here: https://medium.com/@juliaserano/refusing-to-tolerate-intolerance-f24c1bff513f). there isn't a single signatory who truly believes that *no one* should be fired for their speech...
..."A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" is merely the signatories' lofty-sounding appeal that *they* not be held responsible or accountable for things that *they* say. no more, no less. instead of vague appeals to "open debate", let's focus on the merits of each individual case.
...btw, that last excerpt is from here: https://medium.com/@juliaserano/cancel-culture-and-political-correctness-have-something-in-common-e82850d20da3
and all my essays on the subject of "Free Speech", "Cancel Culture", "Political Correctness", or whatever the kids are calling it these days, are compiled here: https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2017/09/call-out-culture-identity-politics.html
and all my essays on the subject of "Free Speech", "Cancel Culture", "Political Correctness", or whatever the kids are calling it these days, are compiled here: https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2017/09/call-out-culture-identity-politics.html
...also, I do not have a fancy-pants major-media writing gig, nor an academic position. so if you like what I have written about these issues (& have made free online), please consider supporting me on Patreon, here's how: https://www.patreon.com/juliaserano
hey, I wrote another THREAD about the signatories & what they were likely thinking. here's the last tweet, work your way up! https://twitter.com/JuliaSerano/status/1280608245212565504
okay then, I wrote another THREAD about the hypocrisy of the #harpersletter. you can read it up and down from here: https://twitter.com/JuliaSerano/status/1280676420289613825
