Please note: There is nothing wrong with feeling offended or hurt by anything that is said and saying so. The problem arises when people believe that their feelings of upset & hurt mean that other people have to stop saying the things & merit punishment if they don't.

This is the same kind of confusion as when people believe there is some kind of inconsistency or hypocrisy when people who defend freedom of speech don't approve of some speech, argue against some speech or choose not to listen to some speech.

Please try to understand that the liberal concern here is about authoritarianism. It is wrong to ban or punish certain kinds of speech. There is no liberal concern with people feeling any way about anything, saying so or making their own decisions about what they'll engage with.

This thread inspired by someone observing that I'm not currently coping very well with being told I think horrible things I don't think for horrible motivations I don't have & thinking this is inconsistent with my position that we need a norm that people must tolerate speech.

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem I am addressing which is a social one & not a personal one. The problem is not, say, a trans person feeling very upset about being misgendered & saying so. The problem is trying to legislate protecting her from that.

When I say that we need a norm where people accept they have to deal with other people having ideas they don't like, I don't mean that they have a moral responsibility not to have any feelings about them. I mean they have to not try to punish them.

Eg,
Arsehole: The holocaust is a myth.
Jewish person: You are an arsehole.
JP: You are an idiot.
JP: *leaves*
JP: *leaves & cries*
JP: *leaves & punches a pillow*
JP: *tries to have person arrested*
JP: *punches person*

When I say we all have to deal with other people saying things we don't like, this refers to a kind of liberal contract of tolerance on a societal level. It doesn't mean you have to stay friends with them, shut up or have no strong feelings about it.

I consider myself to be dealing with the rapid increase in negative attention that is coming my way by having the odd rant about it, limiting Twitter time, exercising a lot, sleeping well, seeing a psychologist & complying with my doctor's recommendation to take antidepressants.

What I am not doing: Trying to ban anybody from saying anything, get anyone fired, get anyone beaten up, get anyone arrested. Therefore, I am upholding the liberal contract of toleration & there are no grounds to accuse me of hypocrisy for not feeling great about it

Although the things that upset me are caused by other people's behaviour - it's the sheer volume of people accusing me of all sorts of horrible shit - it's still my responsibility to resolve the problem. I can't make everyone in the world be polite & honest & see my point.

My solutions are:
Plan A:(currently) Do sensible things to reduce stress -exercise, sleep, short-term medication, down-time, social media limitation.
Plan B: Leave social media.
Plan C: Stop writing about things that make people lose their shit.

It's not great that people who write or talk about sensitive issues get so much vitriol poured over them regularly that the only people who can deal with this on a grand scale are either almost superhumanly zen or have a skin like a rhinoceros.

And this isn't a 'Woe is me. Poor innocent victim of the wicked SocJus tribe' narrative. Large anti-racist, feminist, trans activist accounts also get this & no matter how strongly you disagree with them, they are also human beings who are usually trying to make the world better.

Social media is quite horrible. The culture wars are quite horrible. These work together to boil up a big toxic stew of bile. But as we negotiate this unprecedented weirdness, let's not get confused about what the liberal contract of tolerance is and is not.

It's this.
https://twitter.com/HPluckrose/status/1300544646658097152

We can have strong feelings about things. We can express them or not. We can choose to listen to other people's or not, who we are friends with or not. These are all liberal freedoms that require allowing other people to have them too.