Free Speech

Many people do not know that the First Amendment only protects individuals speaking in public. It doesn’t cover business preventing employees talking about the business while they are on the job. It doesn’t prevent newspapers from prohibiting dissenting opinions but it does allow newspapers from printing their views.

So when I block a comment I am not infringing on your First Amendment rights because it is my blog and I can decide what to print and what comments to allow. But that power comes at a price.

Free speech is the natural ally of transgender rights
The Spectator
By Dan Hitchens
October 27, 2015


Enter the student censors, this time in Cardiff, who have decided that because of her crude remarks about trans women, Germaine Greer should be banned from speaking, even on a different subject. To his credit, Cardiff’s vice-chancellor Colin Riordan came out in support of the event going ahead, but Greer seems to have chosen not to turn up. It’s another bleak moment for free speech – and it may not be a particularly great moment for transgender rights, either.

For one thing, it makes the activists look as if they don’t trust their own arguments. It also allows Greer to seem a fearless speaker of truth to power, which may be more than she deserves. Her offensive – and increasingly foul-mouthed – remarks about trans people suggest that she finds this subject an awkward one. It’s not entirely clear why that is – though it’s interesting that The Female Eunuch attacks the belief in a distinction between male and female psychology, and that trans people’s inner lives sometimes seem to revolve around just such a distinction; but the point is that she doesn’t sound like somebody winning a debate. Banning Greer allows her an easy victory: it stops people asking why she might find this issue so problematic.

Bingo! By banning her it makes us look like the villain. We should welcome the debate, we should have been out in front of the auditorium handing out flyers telling our side of the story and why she is wrong. It would be different if it was hate speech using derogatory or hurtful words

Helen Boyd wrote on her blog en|gender,

Germaine Greer is wrong. And her speech, whether she admits to it or not, carries a greater resonance – and a greater burden – because we expect such remarkable feminism and knowledge from her. She is not dismissable nor stupid, but she is still wrong. Because everything I know as a feminist is built on inclusion; ‘woman’ is an alliance, not an identity you choose; it is the sum of all of the parts of what it is to live in a patriarchy and to feel no power and a tremendous threat of violence if you don’t follow the rules. And if there is anyone in the world who is experiencing those things right now, it is trans women. She is not just upsetting people by saying what she says. She is giving those who hate trans women permission to make their lives more miserable. And there is nothing, NOTHING, feminist about asserting the rights of the oppressors over the dignity and value of the oppressed.

She didn’t attack Ms. Geer but stated her reasons why she felt Ms. Geer was wrong.

We should avoid ad hominem attacks in the comments and instead state the reasons why we disagree with a person. We should not use derogatory words or call the other person names in our comments.

Ms Geer should have been allowed the right to speak at Cardiff, the college administration should not have had to step in to allow her to speak. College is about the intercourse of ideas and not just one sided discussions.