> I can also show you the recent amendments to the Ontario law in which it is now illegal to not use non-gendered pronouns.
No need, I'm familiar with it. Here's what they themselves say about it:
---
Is it a violation of the Code to not address people by their choice of pronoun?
The law recognizes that everyone has the right to self-identify their gender and that “misgendering” is a form of discrimination.
As one human rights tribunal said: “Gender …may be the most significant factor in a person’s identity. It is intensely personal. In many respects how we look at ourselves and define who we are starts with our gender.”[1] The Tribunal found misgendering to be discriminatory in a case involving police, in part because the police used male pronouns despite the complainant’s self-identification as a trans woman.
Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity, or purposely misgendering, will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education. The law is otherwise unsettled as to whether someone can insist on any one gender-neutral pronoun in particular.
Gender-neutral pronouns may not be well known. Some people may not know how to determine what pronoun to use. Others may feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral pronouns. Generally, when in doubt, ask a person how they wish to be addressed. Use “they” if you don’t know which pronoun is preferred.[2] Simply referring to the person by their chosen name is always a respectful approach.
---
This is completely reasonable. I identify as male, and if someone kept using she/her/hers pronouns or it/its pronouns to refer to me I'd be offended and rightly so. There's a lot of misinformation about this specific issue, all of it pushed by right-wing "news" outlets. Don't fall for it.
> Peterson and his crusade...
Please don't give this rage merchant any more air time. He purposefully distorts and reduces complex issues for self-aggrandizement. If you're really curious about the issues he raises, just dig into to gender and race studies.
> Assaults, organized campaigns to harass...
I'm not going to minimize the assaults. I am gonna say that they don't compare to the KKK or any of a number of radical right groups. The left simply has nothing with the scale or history of those groups.
But re: organized campaigns to harass, ruin people's lives online, etc., again a twitter campaign is nothing like bills to deny you control of your body (reproductive rights). It's nothing like a racist criminal justice system. It's nothing like a society where LGBT people experience mind numbing levels of sexual assault (https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-co...).
Again I'm not saying there aren't excesses on the left. I'm sure there have been cases where someone didn't deserve to be fired, and the assaults are inexcusable. But there is simply no equivalence between the left and the right in modern western societies.
> I'm sure there have been cases where someone didn't deserve to be fired
Also, I just wanted to note that I don't really buy into this argument. I don't see why someone "deserves to be fired" for their political views, no matter how racist, as long as they don't let their views impact the performance of their duties. So the Kim Davis' of the world absolutely deserve to be fired, but the plethora of other examples I can dig up for you, not so much.
The justification is often that such shaming campaigns are natural corrective measures, but I think more often the complete opposite happens: people are driven from moderate positions to the opposite extremist positions, because the people harassing them are just so unreasonable, and moderate leftists like yourself have zero sympathy for them. This is one way radicalization can happen.
> I don't see why someone "deserves to be fired" for their political views, no matter how racist, as long as they don't let their views impact the performance of their duties.
I agree if by "political views" you mean things like monetary policy or foreign policy. But I personally couldn't ask women to work with people who think they shouldn't be in the workplace, or LGBT people to work with people who think they're irredeemable abominations, or people of color to work with people who think they're inferior because of their race. To me, these views disqualify you from being a productive member of society and I don't really classify them as political views. For example, I don't think anti-semitism is a political view, I think it's just hatred and bigotry. Further, I'm mildly offended when I see people equating "bigotry against conservatives" with "bigotry against historically oppressed groups", because those oppressed groups have suffered intense physical harm. Conservatives really have not. Another reason this whole thing is a false equivalence.
> people are driven from moderate positions to the opposite extremist positions, because the people harassing them are just so unreasonable, and moderate leftists like yourself have zero sympathy for them. This is one way radicalization can happen.
Mostly I agree, but I don't think that in general "the people who are harassing them" are being unreasonable. I think culture in the US is largely sexist, racist, and homophobic and we've gotten used to it as we've grown up in it. It's not hard to find someone saying something offensive. I do think it's a shame that otherwise good people are caught up in stuff like this. But I think it's worse that women, LGBT people, and people of color have had to live in this culture.
> But I personally couldn't ask women to work with people who think they shouldn't be in the workplace, or LGBT people to work with people who think they're irredeemable abominations, or people of color to work with people who think they're inferior because of their race.
I understand the distaste, but as long as they don't actually harass, abuse or otherwise mistreat them, what's the real problem here? That you don't like their thoughts? Are we policing people's thoughts now?
> I don't really classify them as political views.
Fine, cultural views, philosophical views, the game doesn't matter because you change the words. If you were working with someone from another culture, say, Saudi Arabia, you'd make allowances for cultural differences. Right and left really are different cultural perspectives, and your position is that we should make no allowances here simply because we were all raised geographically close to each other, despite our cultural differences. Or you're saying we can make some allowances, but not others, but then I would ask, why those allowances specifically?
> It's not hard to find someone saying something offensive. I do think it's a shame that otherwise good people are caught up in stuff like this.
But why the focus only on good people? My point is that harassing even the bad people just drives them further into a badder circle that will take them in and shelter them, because they see themselves as victimized. Whether they're right or wrong is immaterial, because it ultimately leads to more polarization, not understanding and reconciliation.
I think you're focusing too much on "bigotry against conservatives" as some kind of wrong in and of itself, the way you view bigotry against the historically oppressed, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that bigotry of any kind probably yields just more bigotry, and eliminating bigotry can only be achieved by exposure and intermingling among people with differences. If you're continually driving away people who initially hate you, they will simply continue to hate you, instead of coming to see you as a person.
> I identify as male, and if someone kept using she/her/hers pronouns or it/its pronouns to refer to me I'd be offended and rightly so.
I agree, you'd be right to be offended. But "offence" is not the real problem, the problem is that you can then have someone charged and fined just because you were offended. How do you justify that additional step? Why am I not free to identify you as a Datsun, if I so choose? Is it really a human right, a moral imperative, that I must address you in a way that you prefer, rather than simply a matter of etiquette?
I'm familiar with the gender and race issues at play, and about the issues surrounding C16 and various people's takes on it, and Peterson was actually right about this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o01ebidd1IU
And he's hardly the only one that raised concerns about it. And I don't mean sources from right wing news outlets. There are already a few cases of comedians being fined for jokes which, while probably a little cruel, still seems like a troubling implication of these kinds of laws.
> The left simply has nothing with the scale or history of those groups.
Indeed they don't have the history. The scale has been increasing though, and the ultimate trajectory should be obvious, and you should find this trend troubling.
> But re: organized campaigns to harass, ruin people's lives online, etc., again a twitter campaign is nothing like bills to deny you control of your body (reproductive rights). It's nothing like a racist criminal justice system. It's nothing like a society where LGBT people experience mind numbing levels of sexual assault
Except you're being disingenuous in ascribing all of these to the right, and also to some form of organized or malicious intent.
While I think abortion restrictions are stupid, from the right's moral framework it's literally murder. So this is not a malicious campaign to restrict women's reproductive rights the way you've framed it. You're simply not dealing with their philosophy on its own terms.
And while the racial disparities in the criminal justice system are absolutely alarming, are you suggesting it's overtly, maliciously and intentionally racist? As in, right wing policy makers specifically crafted laws to keep minorities down because they believe them to be inherently inferior? Or is it possible that there are certain puritanical beliefs emblematic of the right, like disapproval of mind altering substances, that just so happen to correlate more strongly with minority demographics?
Which isn't to say that that overt, explicit racism isn't also present and influencing such policies, but you're grouping a lot of people into this malicious category and calling them all "right wing", and I'm not convinced that that's warranted.
No need, I'm familiar with it. Here's what they themselves say about it:
--- Is it a violation of the Code to not address people by their choice of pronoun? The law recognizes that everyone has the right to self-identify their gender and that “misgendering” is a form of discrimination.
As one human rights tribunal said: “Gender …may be the most significant factor in a person’s identity. It is intensely personal. In many respects how we look at ourselves and define who we are starts with our gender.”[1] The Tribunal found misgendering to be discriminatory in a case involving police, in part because the police used male pronouns despite the complainant’s self-identification as a trans woman.
Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity, or purposely misgendering, will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education. The law is otherwise unsettled as to whether someone can insist on any one gender-neutral pronoun in particular.
Gender-neutral pronouns may not be well known. Some people may not know how to determine what pronoun to use. Others may feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral pronouns. Generally, when in doubt, ask a person how they wish to be addressed. Use “they” if you don’t know which pronoun is preferred.[2] Simply referring to the person by their chosen name is always a respectful approach. ---
This is completely reasonable. I identify as male, and if someone kept using she/her/hers pronouns or it/its pronouns to refer to me I'd be offended and rightly so. There's a lot of misinformation about this specific issue, all of it pushed by right-wing "news" outlets. Don't fall for it.
> Peterson and his crusade...
Please don't give this rage merchant any more air time. He purposefully distorts and reduces complex issues for self-aggrandizement. If you're really curious about the issues he raises, just dig into to gender and race studies.
> Assaults, organized campaigns to harass...
I'm not going to minimize the assaults. I am gonna say that they don't compare to the KKK or any of a number of radical right groups. The left simply has nothing with the scale or history of those groups.
But re: organized campaigns to harass, ruin people's lives online, etc., again a twitter campaign is nothing like bills to deny you control of your body (reproductive rights). It's nothing like a racist criminal justice system. It's nothing like a society where LGBT people experience mind numbing levels of sexual assault (https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-co...).
Again I'm not saying there aren't excesses on the left. I'm sure there have been cases where someone didn't deserve to be fired, and the assaults are inexcusable. But there is simply no equivalence between the left and the right in modern western societies.