> Yes. I would support this ban for same reason I support Kanye being banned.

Twitter banned Kanye for exactly this, were heavily criticized for it, and Musk reinstated him when he took over. So what is different now? If anything his recent tweets are milder (remember going "death con 3 on jewish people")?

And why is trans hate okay but Jewish hate grounds for an instant ban?

Today's hate speech is yesterday's "position on a controversial issue."

(I don't think this is a simple question at all, but this particular tack is not as sound as it might appear. There was a time not so long ago that vitriolic antisemitism, even in the US and western Europe, was pretty much the consensus view.)

I get where you're coming from, but there are few issues with this.

Most importantly, I think as a practical matter, there is a big difference between "I do not think gender is subjective; instead, it is determined by observable biology" and "Jews are a treacherous race who control the levers of power and do not properly belong in our society".

Obviously, there is real hate speech against transgender people; but basic criticisms of that lifestyle choice (including the very labelling of it as a "lifestyle choice"), without more, cannot reasonably count as such.

I would be interested how many people who want to deplatform or censor criticisms of the phenomenon of transgenderism would agree with critcising Sam Harris in similar fashion. His criticisms of religion, in particular Islam, are very virulent and strident, and don't seem logically that distinct from "denying" that a man can become a woman. Doesn't he basically say that religion is a kind of mental disorder and that society should ban it? In fact, things like complaining about calling women "birthing people" seem quaint in comparison the stuff he says.

IMO there are so many differences between a religion and a gender decision/behavior/whatever you'd like to call it that they're really hard to compare in this way.

That said, I don't think there's much banning going on of people who are truly just stating their position "x is not y." In fact if that were the case, you'd see e.g. JK Rowling booted immediately. So why isn't she? In my view, platforms and individuals are making assessments of other people's intents and the likely impacts of their words in totality.

It's a deeply inconvenient fact that the words "a b c" uttered by one person to one audience can yield completely different results than the exact same words "a b c" uttered by a different person to a different audience. This is inconvenient because it makes consistent-appearing regulation basically impossible, but the reality is that everyone does this every day. We get it wrong a lot, but on net, it's obvious that a neo-Nazi with disgruntled, armed, lonely young men followers saying, "the Jews are overrepresented in media" is completely different from Pew Research saying "the Jews are overrepresented in media." These two phrases are different in basically every single way that matters!

So this is why IMO JK Rowling and Sam Harris kind of get passes. It's very obvious they're not calling people to arms. It's obvious their fans are not about to go raid a mosque or a gender-affirming care clinic. This is not so obvious for, as far as I can tell, many of the people who've gotten hit by Twitter's moderation.

Edit: And just to be crystal clear, I don't think Twitter or anyone else has gotten this exactly right. Idk what that'd even look like. It's a ridiculously hard problem. But that's why I never bought a website with 160MM DAU declaring that free speech is back.

JK Rowling gets a pass because she doesn't explicitly say "transwomen are men" or "$NAME is a man" even though that is clearly what she believes. She comes close, e.g. with tweets like https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1597611298728337408, but doesn't cross the line.

Whereas others who just go ahead and say it will eventually get their accounts suspended.

It's the dogwhistle versus the foghorn.

This reply might be too late for Hacker News, so I'll keep it concise since I think convo is dead anyways.

I would say that there are a couple ways in which religion and gender decision/identity are quite comparable in specific contexts like this; namely, they both involve people adopting assertions or beliefs that are empirically untrue (and I say this as someone who does believe in God and is somewhat religious), and asking for varying degrees of deference to such beliefs.

In the free speech context, we have the issue of when something is criticism of these subjective beliefs, versus when it is hate speech. I believe I can furnish at least one other, more clear example of a context in which, to me at least, they are pretty comparable.

I think your point about "who is saying it" is like...I agree with your example, but I don't see that can be a rule lol. That's just discriminating on the basis of who is saying it--and besides, how do you necessarily know whether someone is armed and lonely?

Does JK Rowling get a pass? She wasn't banned on Twitter, but she gets routinely dragged by a lot of people nowadays. IDK what most people think of Sam Harris. I am just glad he isn't more well-known and popular.

I also agree that it is a complex problem lol.

Gender is performative, religion is belief, neither performance or belief are innate qualities.

Not relevant to the convo but thanks for your thoughts.

That’s in response to you writing:

> there are so many differences between a religion and a gender decision/behavior/whatever you'd like to call it that they're really hard to compare in this way.

Since you seem to have forgotten or are having difficulty reading the thread.

Me: It's very difficult to compare an elephant to an aspirin for the purpose of this conversation.

You: They're both round-ish you absolute moron.

Seems you have a bone to pick with aspirins and/or elephants. Have a good weekend!

Yes that’s a very accurate summary of my response. Sorry for that part where I insulted you, and for being the first one in the conversation that was rude to the other. Well done.

I think a closer equivalent would be saying "marriage is between a man and a woman"

I disagree; I think saying God doesn't exist is much closer. Some people have a subjective belief God exists. Some of them admit it is subjective, others assert that God objectively exists. People who do not believe in God typically say no, it's not subjective, and, as a descriptive matter, we have no evidence God exists, etc.

Similarly, some people believe gender is subjective, and that people can "be" another gender if they feel like it (if I am getting this wrong lmk; it's obviously a simplistic statement of that position). Others believe the question is purely objective and determined by observable biology--i.e. "it's not subjective, and as a descriptive matter, you are x gender".

In contrast, "marriage is between a man and a woman" is basically purely normative. It is not a statement about what "is". It is a statement about what should be.

"Trans people exist" is an objective statement of fact (though some people would say it's just a "choice").

But also, "trans women are women" is normative, since it seeks to prescribe how trans people are treated by society.