self-loving-vampire: TERF “freedom of speech” is rich people being able to say tran
self-loving-vampire: TERF “freedom of speech” is rich people being able to say transphobic things and then threatening to sue anyone who points out that they’re saying transphobic things. I’m not a lawyer but feels like you should be fine calling someone a TERF, right? Like, ‘transphobic’ is contestable/ hard to prove and British libel laws favour defendants, but the literal meaning of TERF isn’t insulting unless you already believe trans people shouldn’t be excluded (although it might be hard to prove that many ‘TERFs’ are radical feminists). Like, to be clear, this is bad what’s happening here. But it’s somewhere that I think my intuitions for what could improve the clarity of one’s own thinking* might line up with what would win you the libel case - which is to say, to refer to peoples’ political stances over assigning them traits. * I also think there could be a benefit to one’s argument being sympathetic to and capable of winning over fence sitters in this. ‘This politician is a racist’, for instance, probably just sounds like name-calling to people who aren’t up on the debate, whereas ‘this politician is always opposing legislation that seeks to address racial inequality’ is both provable and communicates something. (This of course isn’t to say that any random on the internet should feel obliged to follow these discourse norms. There is a reason I prefer social media where one’s commentary on the rich and powerful is unlikely to come to the attention of them or their lawyers.) -- source link
#discourse