The "White Knights" of the First Amendment

[niyad]

(a lengthy, excellent read on a very difficult subject)

The White Knights of the First Amendment

In June 2016, faculty defenders of the First Amendment faced off against University of Oregon administrators and staff in a symposium originally intended to educate people about the work of the campus’ Bias Response Team. At places like Emory University, University of Oregon, University of California, Santa Barbara and over 100 additional institutions, Bias Response Teams were created to “provide targets of bias a safe space to have their voices heard, to promote civility and respect, to effect change around these important issues in a quick and effective manner and to ensure a comprehensive response to bias incidents.” But according to First Amendment advocates, when the BRT contacted faculty members to talk about complaints that had been made to the BRT concerning—to take one example, derision about the use of gender-neutral pronouns—this created a climate that undermined their freedom of speech. There was little room for discussion at this symposium, recorded for the purpose of podcasting, but a great deal of conversation about the dangers of “safe spaces,” “politically correct thought police” and the “chilling” effects of institutional responses to bias. What happened on the University of Oregon campus was not an isolated incident, but part of a string of similar incidents that have unfolded over the past two years—in which mostly white, cis men have transformed criticism of their speech and the ideas they propagate from women, queer people and people of color into challenges to their freedom.



As Alice Marwick and Ross Miller point out in an article about online harassment, hateful, defaming or harassing speech is protected by the First Amendment—which has made it extraordinarily difficult for women, people of color and queer people to protect themselves from online harassment. In attacks on campus BRTs and so-called “social justice warriors” (SJWs), conservative students on college campuses are now extending Men’s Rights Activists’ use of the First Amendment to protect their ability to harass and discriminate against marginalized folks.
We asked Ms. if we could publish this article using a pseudonym because of our concern that we will be harassed by Men’s Rights Activists and those who sympathize with them. Our desire for anonymity is at once a symptom of the climate we go on to describe and a by-product of an emphasis on free speech that is proving to be a screen for unethical and vicious on- and offline harassment. These attacks are part of a longer tradition of conservative attacks on campus activists aimed at ridiculing and undermining critiques of sexist, racist and homophobic utterances and practices under the guise of protecting freedom of speech.

Political Correctness, GamerGate and Defenders of the First Amendment

The current attack on campus social justice activists has its roots in the early 1990s, when “political correctness” entered popular culture. The term, originally used on the sectarian left, was revived in 1991 by conservative Allen Bloom in his The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom followed the longstanding anti-communist tradition of suggesting that liberals were policing speech on college campuses. In the subsequent series of articles written by conservative journalists, the 1990s moral panic about political correctness re-animated an older anti-communist trope that saw threats to systems of power from which they had long benefited in struggles for civil rights, economic equality and gender equity. Transforming victimizers (those espousing racist or sexist beliefs that understood people of color and women as being genetically inferior to White men, as in The Bell Curve), critics of political correctness represented themselves as champions of free speech and First Amendment Rights. They were, they claimed, being silenced by left wing criticism when, in fact, they were intent on silencing their critics.

In the summer of 2014, the inheritors of this political legacy once again rallied around the belief that they were the beleaguered defenders of free and open speech and journalistic ethics during a series of incidents that became known as GamerGate. The Men’s Rights Activists campaigns mobilized during GamerGate began in the wake of the suicide and mass shootings perpetrated by Elliott Rodgers in Isla Vista, California in May 2014, notably online protests against the hashtag #yesallwomen. Online attacks against women gained momentum later that summer, with an aggressive online attack on independent game developer Zoë Quinn. Quinn released the interactive fiction game Depression Quest in February 2013. The game was intended to draw attention to the challenges of living with this illness, but it also drew the ire of male gamers who made it their business to police what counted as a legitimate or “serious” games. When Quinn’s game received positive reviews, online protectors of the integrity of games understood to be serious (e.g. manly) began to grumble and then take shots at Quinn. Motivated by the belief that praise for Quinn’s game resulted not from the merits of her design, but because of Quinn’s relationships with journalists writing about games, the situation erupted in August 2014, when Eron Gjoni, Quinn’s former boyfriend, published an inchoate, meandering post. In it, Gjoni claimed that a favorable review of Depression Quest on the gaming blog Kotaku resulted from Quinn’s presumably sexual relationship with the reviewer.

. . . .

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2016/09/14/the-white-knights-of-the-first-amendment/

[malthaussen]

1. One would hope that the rising generation would mark an end to this...

... but it appears, unfortunately, that a solid segment of them are not just perpetuating it, but aggravating it, which is one reason university campuses appear to be turning into hellholes. Dunno about you, but I'm glad I was an undergraduate before this whole imbroglio started.

One might wonder how the atomizing of society, in particular the trend towards privileged families to inter their precious offspring in private schools where they don't have to mix with lesser orders, informs the rise of outrage politics and pretended First Amendment defense. It is so much easier to demonize the Other when one has had no contact with him. And such demonization and isolation serves to prop up the privilege of those who commit it.

I wonder, though, how much validity there might be to the whining, not of the leaders of the MRA movement, but to the masses of fellow-travellers who may have encountered unexpected enthusiasm, or even bias, from those who may have sought to raise their consciousnesses. Presumably the "male ego" is no less tender now than forty years or so ago, when it was first suggested (by males) that it needed to be protected at all costs. While the first reaction to being informed that one is showing bias, bigotry, or expressing privilege might be confusion or startlement, it can easily mutate into either guilt or anger, neither of which are particularly productive or desireable attitudes, since both might evoke combative responses. People afflicted with such disorientation are easy pickings for demagogues who hope to manipulate them for personal gain. Which, one would be tempted to argue, is their problem, if they weren't so intent on making it ours.

How the hell we have reached the point where someone could threaten to rape a woman's six-year-old child and be championed as a symbol of "free speech" amazes me. But it is, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophecy: you may recall that the first opponents to the Free Speech Movement claimed that lowering standards would lead to any and all manner of filth being acceptable. One wonders if, over the past fifty-odd years, they have set themselves to prove it, especially as the most egregious examples of filth have all come from their end of the socio-political spectrum.

-- Mal

[Igel]

2. Such articles are typically badly written.

There's a problem with conflating questionable incidents with rock solid incidents, and merging them all into the category "rock solid."

Many incidents are questionable: "I'm offended because of X, and I shouldn't have to say anything about having my personal grammatical standards upheld." A simple comment might lead to a conversation, might lead to a change, but we can't have that. Instead, we need the institution to intervene because, well, the offendee is worried, concerned, upset, sensitive, neurotic, insecure, or has just grounds to worry because several such incidents did ended badly. Can we tell the difference? No.

In some cases, like the "Bell Curve," it was dealt with reasonably. That is, using reason. But many wanted it banned as speech that's too offensive or too dangerous to be allowed to exist. This shows deep insecurity or an extreme will to power. That's not an exclusive or, by the way.

I've seen--not recently--such things evolve. "This happened. Was it bad?" And it takes days or weeks for some to convince themselves that it was racist/sexist/etc. It wasn't obvious. But in the end it's obvious and conclusive evidence of racism/sexism/etc. It goes from "not an issue" to "maybe" to "obviously" over a short period of time. Except if it wasn't obvious to them, the defenders of the oppressed, how could it have been obvious to the erstwhile oppressor? Even civil-rights champions, it seems, require their consciousness raised to a whole new level of offendedness. And there's the rub.

Offenses grow. As soon as newfound power is available to a powerless group (or a powerful group), it gets used. And it feels good to use it. Not only do you push people around, you get an ego boost out of it. You control things, and can still claim to be marginal. New ways of gaining power is found. I've seen far more offensive speech from the mouths of the oppressed, and far worse behavior, than from traditional oppressors. They're fairly untouchable, because they lack institutional power (or have less institutional power than established oppressors, or manage to shame their challengers or simply rely on institutional shaming--why's a white male with good connections challenging a person of color? Gotta be racist/sexist/etc. Most young college kids fold fairly quickly unless they have a coterie of supporters, and most oppressors don't have an oppressors guild. Even frats have a different purpose.)

If the actual speech isn't a problem, the denotative meanings, then it's the implication. The way neutral speech supports oppressive structures. The way it might or could or possibly will be interpreted. Even unlikely readings are to be considered offensive, even if it requires thoroughly ignoring the context and re-imagining that utterance in another, different context. "X" must refer to African-Americans or women in a derogatory way, even if substituting "African-Americans" or "women" in for its alleged synonym results in total nonsense. One can take the authorial fallacy too far.

The point for that paragraph is that freedom of speech is bad until limits and restrictions affect you more than your foes, unless you can tailor the requirements to censor "deplorables" and reward the Brights. It's not a right. It's not a value by itself. It's a tool, a weapon--to defend yourself and attack others.