Germaine Greer, by David Levine
Quick summery: Germaine Greer, a second-wave feminist famous for her 1970 book The Female Eunuch, was invited to give a speech at Cardiff University. Ms. Greer’s transphobia is well-known, gross, and undeniable. Rachael Melhuish, the Women’s Officer at Cardiff Unversity Students’ Union, started a petition asking for Cardiff to dis-invite Greer (aka “no-platforming” Greer), due to Greer’s bigoted beliefs, which 1346-and-counting have signed. The University said they wouldn’t rescind the invitation, but Greer now says she’s not going to go. And, of course, the usual suspects are calling this “censorship.”
1. Disinviting Greer wouldn’t be censorship.
It’s not censorship for activists to create a petition saying Cardiff University should cancel Germaine Greer’s scheduled speech. On the contrary, debates about who is or isn’t invited to speak are part of free speech. As Angus Johnston tweeted, “Censorship is suppression of speech. Criticism of speech isn’t censorship. Criticism of a decision to host speech isn’t censorship.”1
Greer has a right to free speech. She has no right, however, to be an invited speaker at Cardiff. Nor, once she is invited, does she have a right to not have that invitation questioned or criticized.
2. But it’s not great behavior, either, if we favor a “culture of free speech.”
Just because it’s not censorship doesn’t mean it’s a tactic I agree with. Universities, in general, should create a “culture of free speech” where contested issues – and unfortunately, transphobia is still within the bounds of acceptable beliefs in our society – can be spoken and debated. Pressuring Cardiff to disinvite Greer goes against that ideal. IMO, it would have been better to respond to the Greer lecture in other ways.
3. Attempting to disinvite Greer has been a publicity bonanza for Greer.
In the petition, Rachael Melhuish wrote:
Trans-exclusionary views should have no place in feminism or society. Such attitudes contribute to the high levels of stigma, hatred and violence towards trans people – particularly trans women – both in the UK and across the world.
While debate in a University should be encouraged, hosting a speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups is dangerous. Allowing Greer a platform endorses her views, and by extension, the transmisogyny which she continues to perpetuate.
I agree that trans-exclusionary views should have no place2 in feminism or society. I agree that the existence of bigoted views such as Greer’s make the world more dangerous for trans people.
But getting Cardiff to cancel Greer’s speech (or, as things have turned out, persuading Greer to cancel) does not make the world any safer, or views such as Greer’s any less prominent. In fact, just the opposite. Due to the Streisand effect, dozens or hundreds of media outlets that would have ignored Greer are quoting her views. The petition to revoke Greer’s invitation has given Greer an infinitely bigger megaphone than just speaking at Cardiff could have.
And in a context of a university (or any other forum which makes a practice of hosting a variety of views), allowing someone a platform isn’t the same as endorsement of their views.
I’ve always been mystified by people in traditionally minority positions who think that trying to legitimize the shutting down of speech is a good idea. Censorship and social stigma for saying the wrong things are tools which will be used 1,000 times in support of the dominant ideology for every time it is successfully used in support of minority views. Gay and trans people are much likely to get much further in cultures which have a strong ethos of letting people speak what they want, even if it offends people, than they are in cultures where you shut down expression you don’t like. This goes triple for university cultures.
“No platforming” and “disinviting” are just code words for censorship, used by people who are trying to censor others and avoid the social backlash for doing so. Censorship doesn’t have to involve the violation of someone’s free speech rights. Censorship is any-time a third party prevent or interferes with the communication between a willing speaker and a willing audience on the basis of the contents of the communication.
Discouraging someone from voicing their views by intimidating them with (implied?) threats of harassment and violence is very much a form of censorship.
That said, there are forms for censorship that are generally accepted in a free society. For example preventing young children from viewing violent media or pornography is a form a censorship that most people believe is justifiable. Likewise laws against defamation are a form of censorship, because most people accept its appropriate to censor malicious lies.
However, it’s a cheap rhetorical ploy to call censorship by another name in an attempt to avoid or influence debate about whether it’s appropriate. I think that most people would agree with you that universities should be open to discussing or debating all ideas, including ones that make trans people uncomfortable, which makes it pretty clear why people are pushing language such as “no platforming” and “disinviting” to refer to censorship.
Greer seems to use “thrown at” to refer to harsh criticism (I’ve seen her do this in other articles), not to mean that people are literally throwing physical items at her. I don’t know if this is just Greer’s way of speaking, or if it’s an Aussie expression.
As for the rest, you seem to be saying that no one can ever express an opinion than anyone shouldn’t have been invited to speak, without that being censorship.
As far as I can tell, there are no threats of violence in this case. I’m not sure what you mean by either “implied” or “harassment”; if you want to pursue this line of argument, could you define what you mean better?
Well being Aussie that’s not how I interpreted what she said. We certainly say that “insults”, “words” or “ideas” are “thrown at” people, but if it’s “things” being “thrown at” someone then I would understand that to mean physical things.
There’s a longer quote here which makes it clearly she’s talking about physical things:
As for this part of your comment:
If you’re trying to convince people that it’s not worth their time to go listen, then sure criticise away. If, as a result, there’s a lack of interest and the talk is cancelled then that’s not censorship. On the other hand, if you’re trying to convince someone to prevent people from listening then yes, you are calling for censorship.
Alternatively, if you’re attempting to impose social consequences for people speaking about or listening to certain ideas then you’re attempting censorship. This case seems to fit into the later, because Greer wasn’t even going to speak about the ideas that were of concern to her critics.
I’ve been searching for any articles about Greer being physically attacked. I can’t find anything except that in 2012 someone “glitter bombed” her (photos here).
In any case, I don’t see any justification for your suggestion that someone in this case has attempted to intimidate Greer with threats of “violence.” But obviously, if someone has, that would be appalling and wrong. And I agree, it would be attempted censorship. (I assume you’d say the same about someone sending a rape threat to Anita Sarkeesian.)
Freedom of speech isn’t the same as freedom from “social consequences.” If Charlie Brown says that Linus is a blockhead because of something Linus said last week, that’s a social consequence, but it’s certainly not censorship.
Lucy and Violet are both members of the speaking committee. They can only bring in one speaker this year. Lucy wants to bring in Snoopy, but Violet hates Snoopy’s views and so argues against bringing in Snoopy. Similarly, Violent wants to bring in Woodstock, but Lucy hates Woodstock’s views and argues against bringing in Woodstock. Both Snoopy and Woodstock are willing speakers, with a willing audience in town.
So by your standard, wouldn’t both Lucy and Violet be censors? They’re both trying to prevent communication between willing speakers and willing audiences on the basis of the views of the speaker.
It wasn’t my suggestion, it was Greer’s.
Yes. Specifically because of these bits:
and
So I’ll rewrite the story to illustrate what I wouldn’t consider censorship:
Now, you could argue that by advocating for one speaker they are ‘preventing or interfering’ with the other speaker. So let me clarify my position a little bit by restating it as:
Under this standard, in my narrative, no one is undertaking censorship because they are acting for the purpose of getting their own speaker, not preventing the selection of another. However, if Violet had picked Woodstock, not because she thought we would be a good speaker, but simply as a mechanism to prevent Snoopy from speaking, then her actions would constitute censorship.
There’s a big difference between an individual factoring in someone’s opinions and beliefs into a judgement of their character on one had, and establishing social norms and institutions that impose arbitrary punishments as a means to suppress particular points of view on the other. Disagreeing or disliking someone else’s opinion is not a justification for acting like a bully or an arsehole.
I do, sadly, agree with your 3rd point.
Greer is someone whose early work I find very interesting and thought provoking. Unfortunately her current, unscientific views about transexual people don’t exist in a “my opinion, your opinion, we can agree to disagree” world, but in a context of widespread violence and legal discrimination against transexual people.
I find it particularly disgusting that no one is thinking of the negative impact such a speaker could have on transexual students, many of them at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives.
So when we’re talking about censorship, the narrowest legalistic definition is the only one that matters.
Racism? Well, there is no one real definition, hem, haw, etc…
This incident reveals an interesting tension that many forms of feminism has with transpeople. It is difficult to reconcile trans people with the idea that all forms of gender difference are socially constructed, or with the idea that the only differences between male and female are purely biological.
Back to the main post, there are two major ways to suppress bad ideas that enjoy some level of popularity. First you can try to exclude the idea by trying to avoid letting people get exposed to it or by trying to shame people who espouse it. Second you can try to expose the idea as wrong by engaging it. Both can be legitimate tools in society as a whole, but in a university setting with adults (as opposed to say a kindergarten setting with proto-rational children) the second should be much preferred to the first.
Trying to exclude ideas from discussion is a form of censorship. Shouting down ideas rather than reasoning against them is a form of censorship. Those forms of censorship are a betrayal of the proper operations of a university as normally understood. Universities can’t be a ‘safe place to avoid troubling ideas’ and still operate in the sense that we normally think of. If you are employing the first method at a university, you are taking the position of the Church in anti-Galileo proceedings or of the McCarthyites in more recent history. You are misunderstanding what universities are for if you are trying to protect people from being exposed to ideas which make them uncomfortable–even if they may be wrong.
Feminism’s anti-gender-essentialist position hasn’t fully dealt with trans-people. I’ve seen the anti-gender-essentialist position a great number of times even on this blog. You aren’t going to get to a good place of understanding without hashing it out.
BTW, if it is true that Greer wasn’t going to be talking about the trans issue anyway, the move is even more disturbing. Trying to censor people generally because of a particular issue you don’t agree with them on is much worse than trying to censor them just on the particular issue.
Context:
Q: “Finally, if your safety is guaranteed, will you go to Cardiff?”
A: “I’m getting a bit old for all this. I’m 76, I don’t want to go down there and be screamed at and have things thrown at me. Bugger it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B8Q6D4a6TM
She means people throwing physical objects at her.
LTC FTC:
Actually, the narrowest legalistic definition would say that only an act of government can be termed “censorship.” (e.g., “In its narrower, more legalistic sense, censorship means only the prevention by official government action of the circulation of messages already produced.”) That’s not the definition I’m using.
I’m not arguing that other definitions of the word “censorship” don’t exist. Obviously, they do exist.
But if people attempting to influence a college’s choice of speakers through non-coercive persuasion is “censorship,” then I wonder what makes censorship a thing which is bad and should be avoided? By and large, I consider non-coercive persuasion to be a positive methodology that we should encourage, not a negative one to be avoided.
(Note: There are still things people might try to accomplish through non-coercive persuasion that I disagree with – see, for instance, the OP. But even when people are advocating for something I disagree with, I’d still prefer they advocate through non-coercive persuasion, rather than coercive means.)
Desipis wrote (bold added):
Any definition of censorship that hinges on the motivation of the actors leads to really counter-intuitive results.
For instance, what if an action is being supported and organized by multiple people, whose motivations differ? Example: Schroeder and Pigpen are working together to persuade the speaker’s bureau to not invite Snoopy to speak, by taking turns holding up a “No to Snoopy!” sign. But only Schroeder is acting on the basis of not liking what Snoopy says; Pigpen just doesn’t like Snoopy’s dog breath. Do we say that it’s attempted censorship when Schroeder holds up the sign, but instantly stops being censorship when the sign is passed to Pigpen?
Or for that matter, what if the mayor issues an edict saying “anyone who goes to hear my opponent speak will be arrested, because statistics show that a high percentage of people who listen to my opponent are violent criminals, so this is a matter of public safety.” And suppose that Doctor Strange uses his mind-reading magic to confirm that the mayor is really, absolutely sincere when she says this. Under your definition, that wouldn’t be censorship.
Or let’s say that the mayor passes a law forbidding Jews from speaking in public, not because of what the Jews say, but because the mayor is an antisemite. Under your definition, that wouldn’t be censorship.
In addition, what I said to LTC very much applies here – by your definition, simply trying to use non-coercive persuasion to persuade people to invite Sally instead of Shermy could be censorship. If that’s the case, this would lead us either to the conclusion that censorship is not wrong in and of itself, or to the conclusion that it is wrong for someone to use non-coercive persuasion to try and influence decisions.
So if a local Gamergate group had enough money to hire one speaker, and they can choose between Cathy Young and Anita Sarkeesian, it would (by your definition) be censorship for Linus to say “well, I think we all really disagree with Anita’s views, so let’s bring in Cathy instead.” Or, for that matter, even if they had enough money for two speakers, to say “well, I think we all really disagree with Anita’s views, so let’s just bring in Cathy” would be censorship.
To me, it seems to me that Greer’s position – which is that people are whatever sex they were assigned at birth, and nothing can ever change that – is a great deal more
existentialistessentialist than simply accepting that trans women are women.But, more to the point, I don’t think we ARE going to get to a good place of understanding, if Germaine Greer is one of the parties and I am the other. It is the position of most feminists I know that trans women are women, and trans men are men. It is Greer’s position that this is not true. Our positions on this matter are irreconcilable. There’s really nothing more to be hashed out there; there is no compromise to be had. And given the choice between excluding Greer versus excluding trans women – and that is the choice that is forced upon us by the refusal of Greer, and those who share her position, to accept trans women – I choose to exclude Greer. That’s really the conflict being illustrated by this story.
Among those feminists who do accept trans people, there is interesting intellectual work to be done, I agree. Some overly simplistic views on gender have had to be modified. And I think that work is being done, both in academic and popular language. A few example links: Julia Serano’s Holistic Gender Concept; No, The Existence of Trans People Doesn’t Validate Gender Essentialism — Everyday Feminism; Trans Feminism: There’s No Conundrum About It (Serano again – I’m a fan of her work). There are others here who are much more knowledgeable about these issues than I am – most obviously, Grace – who might weigh in if we’re lucky.
Depending on how the “shaming” is done, can’t shaming be a legitimate form of persuasion? Think of Joseph Welch telling Senator McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” That was certainly shaming McCarthy – but it was also something that persuaded many Americans watching on TV that McCarthy’s views were simply too cruel to be supported. In other words, “supporting or advocating idea X is shameful” is, it seems to me, a case that can legitimately be debated and considered, not something which is inherently censorious.
And yet, there is a sense in which shaming can be – if not technically censorship – a huge chilling effect on the exchange of ideas.
Would it be more useful to think of censorship, not as an either-or question, but as a spectrum, running from “persuasion” on one end to “coercion” on the other? If so, I’d say that “shaming” would be in the middle somewhere, with the exact placement varying depending on the particular circumstances.
If two people are shouting at each other, are they both being censors?
This seems to me to be a high enough pitch of hyperbole to be virtually useless, unless your goal is just to demonize those you disagree with. If you see no substantive differences between the trial and sentencing of Galileo, versus a non-coercive petition, then I see no point in discussing this with you.Rephrasing: Do you really not acknowledge an important substantive difference between the trial and punishment of Galileo and a non-coercive petition? Because to me this comparison seems too hyperbolic to be a positive contribution to discussion.
This incident reveals an interesting tension that many forms of feminism has with transpeople. It is difficult to reconcile trans people with the idea that all forms of gender difference are socially constructed, or with the idea that the only differences between male and female are purely biological.
Back to the main post, there are two major ways to suppress bad ideas that enjoy some level of popularity. First you can try to exclude the idea by trying to avoid letting people get exposed to it or by trying to shame people who espouse it. Second you can try to expose the idea as wrong by engaging it. Both can be legitimate tools in society as a whole, but in a university setting with adults (as opposed to say a kindergarten setting with proto-rational children) the second should be much preferred to the first.
Trying to exclude ideas from discussion is a form of censorship. Shouting down ideas rather than reasoning against them is a form of censorship. Those forms of censorship are a betrayal of the proper operations of a university as normally understood. Universities can’t be a ‘safe place to avoid troubling ideas’ and still operate in the sense that we normally think of. If you are employing the first method at a university, you are taking the position of the Church in anti-Galileo proceedings or of the McCarthyites in more recent history. You are misunderstanding what universities are for if you are trying to protect people from being exposed to ideas which make them uncomfortable–even if they may be wrong.
Feminism’s anti-gender-essentialist position hasn’t fully dealt with trans-people. I’ve seen the anti-gender-essentialist position a great number of times even on this blog. You aren’t going to get to a good place of understanding without hashing it out.
BTW, if it is true that Greer wasn’t going to be talking about the trans issue anyway, the move is even more disturbing. Trying to censor people generally because of a particular issue you don’t agree with them on is much worse than trying to censor them just on the particular issue. That is why I invoke McCarthy–you are saying that people with one set of views can’t even be trusted to make movies.
Ampersand:
What I was getting at with the “on the basis of the contents of the communication” phrase was that someone can be against a particular mode of communication (e.g. holding a loud protest at 2am in a residential area) without it being an issue of censorship. Your examples do highlight a missing aspect of my definition. I failed to include that censorship can target people in the same way it can target ideas.
Perhaps it would be better to rephrase that limitation in the inverse way so as to capture things I hadn’t considered. E.g. “on the basis of something other than a reasonable restriction on the mode of communication“.
Given the extent to which many people associated with Gamergate movement have strongly expressed a desire for an opportunity to actually engage with Sarkeesian about her ideas, then yes, I would regard such a move as censorship.
It’s not censorship in itself, it’s a call for censorship. If/when a college makes a choice to exclude certain speakers, or certain ideas, that will be a choice backed up by the coercive powers of the college and will be censorship. What makes it bad is that the actions are about combating ideas by persuading an authority to engage in censorship rather than focusing on being persuasive about the ideas directly.
This second point is close, but you’re missing an important point. Would it be wrong for someone to use non-coercive persuasion to try and influence someone else’s decision about which book to read? Of course not. But would it be wrong for someone to use non-coercive persuasion to try and influence someone else into the decision to commit murder?
A college using its authority to exclude certain view points from being discussed or exclude certain people from taking part in the discussion is bad (in that it is contrary to the purpose of a higher education institution, and against the principles of the enlightenment in general). Attempting to persuade a college to do that bad thing is itself something of a problem, no?
There’s a bit of conflation in this argument, and it makes a difference for me, so I thought I’d highlight it (bold mine):
I have real trouble with treating exclusion of speakers as equivalent (or close to equivalent) to exclusion of ideas. There are very, very many ideas, and only a limited number of invited speakers; most ideas do not have an invited speaker speaking in favor of them in any given year. So most ideas that are discussed get discussed in classrooms and common areas: people teaching and learning, people thinking things through for themselves. Some (not all) invitations to speakers involve a kind of honor or approval: a sense these people are particularly worth listening to. And calls for a speaker to be disinvited do not necessarily mean that a person of that community expressing those same views would be shouted down/shunned/whatever instead of being engaged with. There is a large idea space between “never allowed” and “honored to some extent.”
Greer’s books weren’t removed from the library. Greer’s speeches weren’t blocked from the campus Internet. People who agree with Greer weren’t kicked off campus. Those things don’t happen even when universities disinvite speakers. Whether or not this was censorship of a person, it definitely wasn’t censorship of an idea.
Can calls to exclude a speaker indicate a problem with exclusion of their ideas from a campus? Yes. But it’s not a sure thing, nor is it necessarily a slippery slope to that.
Harlequin:
From the petition:
It’s pretty clear which end of the idea space these people are coming from.
I mean this argument is incredibly reductionist and is equivalently fallacious to arguing that gay rights activists endanger children by implicitly endorsing paedophilia. If we turn back the clock a few decades and there’s a Christian conservative arguing that a gay rights activist should be disinvited because by “endorsing” their views the college is putting children at risk, how would you see their actions?
See this essay for a broader perspective on the issue.
There are ideas with which it is not worthwhile to engage. I would support opposing university funding of a speaker denying the Holocaust, 9-11 truthers, and birthers, to take a few extreme examples. Engaging with such cranks at all implicitly gives them more credibility than they deserve. This is not censorship. It is members of a university deciding which people and ideas it should lend legitimacy to by supporting their speech.
desipis:
I explicitly didn’t come down on a side about what the petition meant:
Instead, I was responding to this argument of yours:
which was about the actions of university administrations, not the writers of this specific petition. So my point stands.
Also, desipis, I’m still chewing over that link–will get back to you later.
Harlequin:
Responding to the more general aspects of your comment:
If argument was made for a speaker with better academic credentials, or for a topic with more relevance then I wouldn’t consider it be a censorship issue. But the argument that I’m labelled as a call for censorship was for the flat-out exclusion of a particular speaker, not an argument that there was a better option for the limited opportunity. To use an example from Kate’s comment, to argue that a professor presenting an speech on the the history of the Holocaust is a better option than a Holocaust denier presenting their argument about the non-existance of the Holocaust because the former has better academic qualifications is fine. However, to call for a biologist presenting their academic research in biology to be disinvited because they also happen to deny the holocaust would be censorship.
Despise:
I’m not sure this is an accurate analogy. It is entirely plausible to argue that Greer’s position on transgender issues, and trans women in particular, has a bearing on her understanding of feminism and “women and power in the 20th century”—the topic of her talk. A more apt analogy might be a known Holocaust-denying biologist who has been invited to speak on the “medical research” the Nazis conducted on Jews during the Holocaust.
Now, the questions about how, in a university setting, one would go about arguing not to invite the person, or to disinvite him or her, without compromising academic freedom are still relevant. I just think it’s important to use an analogy that does not exclude the feelings of the trans people who are most directly impacted by views like Greer’s and the very real impact those views have on their lives.
Amp:
Such as shaming people who have gotten or are going to get an abortion? Or who provide them? Or who refer people to the providers?
Harlequin:
Give them time. You have to start small with these things. “Trans-exclusionary views should have no place in feminism or society” may start with invited lecturers, but there’s nothing in that statement that would prevent it from being extended to the library or the campus internet, or from publicly shaming people who dare express such views in any context.
If you want to learn more, I invite you to review George Orwell’s 1984. He meant it as a warning, but the left these days tends to treat it as an instruction manual.
RonF:
Except that the overwhelming majority of attempts to ban books, or have materials removed from libraries, come from the right. Doesn’t mean the left doesn’t sometimes do it too, i.e. the controversy over the word “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn, but those do tend to be the exceptions (which of course doesn’t make them any less objectionable than when the right does it.)
Steven Pinker provides an interesting and relevant answer to a question on this issue at a talk he was giving earlier this year. (I found the talk itself and his others answers in the Q&A worth listening to, even if a few of the questions dragged on a bit).
RJN:
I would agree that my analogy doesn’t cover that aspect. However, I wasn’t attempting to provide an analogy equivalent to Greer’s case. I don’t consider her views as problematic (in the academic sense) in the same way as the views of holocaust deniers, truthers, etc. There’s a very big difference between arguing a descriptive position consistently contradicted by objective evidence and holding a normative opinion on the boundaries of a particular concept or label that is only contradicted by other people’s normative opinions.
ETA: A possible analogy comes to mind would be disinviting an experienced obstetrician giving a talk on the complications of Caesarean sections because they had expressed a view that they personally feel that abortions are immoral.
RJN:
The new left has tended to have a more modern focus by attempts to ban online communities and websites.
Desipis, do you consider actions like this from Gamergate to be censorship? Just wondering.
Hey, do you see that thing where, when RJN claimed something had happened, he provided a link to actual evidence? Please do the same, when you make statements like this.
Ron:
This is pure partisan hackery, and not the sort of thing I like to see in discussions on “Alas.”
Ampersand, here’s what I said last year about the gamergate campaign targeted at advertisers:
To clarify, since I didn’t use the word “censorship” then, I do consider those actions to be a form of (attempted) censorship.
Well I was thinking of things such as this and this. However, it was more of a rhetorical criticism of RJN’s choice of using book banning as a measure given it’s somewhat of a dated issue in the modern world. Given the ideological differences between young technophiles (progressive) and older technophobes (conservative), censorial conservatives would be more likely to focus their censorial campaigns on books and hence those statistics might not be reflective of broader patterns.
While not explicitly referenced in this paragraph, let’s remember that Greer’s views at issue here are “Trans women are not real women.” So, your take is that this statement is “a normative opinion on the boundaries of a particular concept or label that is only contradicted by other people’s normative opinions”?
Yuck.
Desipis,
First, my point about book banning was in the context of Harlequin’s statement about Greer’s books not being removed from the university’s library and RonF’s suggestion that it was only a matter of time. (Aside from the fact that I’m not sure book banning is as exclusively old school as you think it is.) So I’m not sure what the point of your rhetorical criticism was in this context.
Second, I wonder why you see someone asking Facebook to take down a Holocaust-denial group as automatically coming from the left. I can easily see such a request coming from a very conservative position within the Jewish community. More, though I might have missed it, I didn’t see anything in the article that identified the political leanings of the people making the complaint.
Third, in each of the two articles you link to, the companies claim they are taking action against specific behaviors, not the ideas put forward in and by the forum, as evidenced by the fact that not all similar groups have been banned. You may have reason not to trust facebook’s and reddit’s account of things, but their claim and the absence of a blanket ban against the ideas involved suggest to me this is not a straightforward instance of what you claim it to be. (And just to be clear, I do recognize the potentially slippery boundary between banning someone because of their behavior and banning them because of the ideas embodied in that behavior. So I’m not saying you’re not pointing to something worth talking about, just that I’m not sure you’ve accurately identified what you’re pointing at.)
I was also talking about flat-out exclusion of a particular speaker, so again this doesn’t really address the substance of my comment. That makes me think my original was unclear, so I’ll try to rephrase. When you say things like “certain speakers, or certain ideas”, in the context of this discussion which started only with the (not-)banning of a single speaker, it makes me think you see little difference between those two concepts: that you think banning a speaker is equivalent to banning the idea that got the speaker banned, or that they’re so similar you can talk about them at the same time. But to me that far overstates the importance of guest speakers to the transfer of ideas on college campuses. Most of the exposure to new ideas happens in classrooms or just through students talking to each other. Even a big symbolic rejection of one person holding a viewpoint doesn’t necessarily mean that that viewpoint isn’t represented in the day-to-day business of the university (though it can mean that). I was disturbed by the elision of that difference in your comment, which seems to imply that choosing to rescind an invitation to a particular speaker for a given belief is equivalent to resigning that belief beyond the line of reasonable conversation for all members of the university community. Again–there are cases, I’m sure, where that’s true; but there’s a big sliding scale of “we’re not going to celebrate this person because they hold opinion X” and “opinion X must never be discussed except to ridicule/reject it” and in typical cases (not all cases) those things are farther apart than you seem to give them credit for.
I still don’t support trying to ban speakers like this, by the way–I do think it’s damaging and I wish it wouldn’t happen. But I don’t think it’s an existential threat to the idea of a university the way actually censoring certain ideas would be. Not putting any air between those two is what bothered me about your comment.
“I was disturbed by the elision of that difference in your comment, which seems to imply that choosing to rescind an invitation to a particular speaker for a given belief is equivalent to resigning that belief beyond the line of reasonable conversation for all members of the university community. Again–there are cases, I’m sure, where that’s true; but there’s a big sliding scale of “we’re not going to celebrate this person because they hold opinion X” and “opinion X must never be discussed except to ridicule/reject it” and in typical cases (not all cases) those things are farther apart than you seem to give them credit for.”
How do you think it works in this particular case? Isn’t the point of the petition to enforce the idea that ‘misgendering’ a transgender person is equivalent to resigning that belief beyond the line of reasonable conversation for all members of the university community? Remember she wasn’t speaking on transgender issues, so “Allowing Greer a platform endorses her views, and by extension, the transmisogyny which she continues to perpetuate.” needs to be read as “Allowing Greer a platform [ON ANY SUBJECT]…”.
This is validated by: “Such attitudes contribute to the high levels of stigma, hatred and violence towards trans people”
That validation clearly isn’t limited to people named Greer. I would tend to think it is meant to censor any person who ‘misgenders’ trans women.
How do you distinguish between “criticize” and “censor,” in this usage? Talking not about Greer’s case in particular, but about students in general on the Cardiff campus.
Desipis, thanks for posting your comments on the Gamergate advertiser boycott campaign. I agree with everything you said, except I don’t think I’d call it “censorship.”
Your examples of “the new left” is attempting “to ban online communities and websites” seem REALLY weak, however, for the reasons Richard outlines.
Harlequin:
Sure. It’s all a matter of context. Censorship in a narrow context isn’t as a big of a deal as censorship in a broader context. Even if certain ideas were entirely banned from being discussed on campus it wouldn’t be as bad as if those ideas were banned from being discussed across all of society. The context can affect both the extent of the effect of the censorship as well as its qualitative impact. However, I don’t think the relative scale impacts on whether something qualifies as “censorship”, even if it impacts its seriousness, appropriateness or other qualities.
I would agree that in itself, it’s not an existential threat to the idea of a university. However, I think it’s a step in the wrong direction in that it is inconsistent with the principles of a university and represents a trend, which if continued, could begin to pose a threat.
“How do you distinguish between “criticize” and “censor,” in this usage? Talking not about Greer’s case in particular, but about students in general on the Cardiff campus.”
Your focus on ‘censor’ seems overly restrictive, especially in a university setting. Traditionally when we talk about free speech problems we talk about chilling free speech. Censorship is the direct single effect, chilling is the even worse indirect effect because it damages the intellectual society. A typical example was McCarthyism. Not only did it directly black list Communists, but it made it so people were afraid to even talk about certain types of social approaches because they thought they might be subject to bad outcomes.
If an important professor type person is supposed to be barred from giving a talk on all topics because she misgenders people and fails to appropriately classify transphobia, a student is very likely to feel that she can’t talk freely on the issue.
Leaving aside, for the moment, the petition’s wording and whether or not trying to get the university to disinvite Greer was the best way to go about dealing with her invitation to speak, I am very curious about the way some people in this conversation are trying to separate the topic Greer was invited to speak on–Women and Power in the 20th Century–from her stance on transgender identity, as if the question of whether or not a trans woman is “really” a woman does not bear on the question of women and power in all sorts of ways. More to the point, how does the fact of Greer’s stance on trans women not shape and otherwise impact her feminism, which is clearly also implicated in the topic on which she was invited to speak?
In other words, while I think it’s important to talk about the issues raised in the original post–and I generally agree with Amp’s positions–I find very troubling the logic behind the assertion that there is no connection between Greer’s stance on transgender identity and the topic her talk and that, therefore, the moves people made to disinvite her had to be about her as a person and not the ideas she would be bringing to campus. Just to be clear: I am referring here to how people in this conversation are talking about this, not to the way the petition frames the issue.
Richard, asking about whether her stance on trans women ‘shapes’ or ‘implicates’ her feminism seems odd. Greer isn’t a young woman, it is virtually certain that she developed decades of experience and thought about feminism without thinking about trans women very much at all.
Her important books are The Female Eunuch (1970, Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991).
She doesn’t appear to have said much of anything about transwomen until 1997 at earliest. Even then, in The Whole Woman, she speaks mostly of society’s understanding of Trans Women–suggesting that it views women as an un-sex, so for outsiders removing the penis is more about un-sexing than becoming a woman.
I’m sure if we wanted to, we could interpret everything she thinks and writes as if it were grounded in an anti-transgender anchor, but I don’t think that is how it actually functions (as opposed to say a Nazi, who very specifically interprets nearly everything through a dominant/weaker race lens). I don’t really see what is to be gained by trying to force everything she thinks through the lens of something she almost certainly doesn’t think much about.
Sebastian:
I just caught the scare-quotes around “misgenders.” (Although in comment 38, you didn’t use the scare-quotes).
Whatever the proper approach on a college campus is, this is a privately owned blog. I’m sure you don’t question that.
If you want to take issue with the notion of misgendering as a concept, or with the use of the term as a verb, kindly do it in the MintGarden, and kindly don’t do it with coy scare quotes.
If it was just a thoughtless error, and you didn’t intend anything by it, then that’s fine – but please try not to do it again.
It wasn’t scare quotes. It was a quote in which I was attempting to use the actual language from the petition to show the precise thing that they said they were trying to get her banned for.
Regarding left wing attempts at censorship, this just came out, which attempts to ban quite a few websites and a huge variety of online campus speech and attempts to censor a huge variety of websites from being accessible on campuses which receive federal aid money.
This is, without exaggeration, the most comprehensive attempt at on-campus censorship in the US I have seen by any side since the McCarthy era.
RJN:
In the context of this discussion I really don’t care. Whether the people who were involved in the effort to keep Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff were of the right or the left or of whatever political persuasion you care to name is not all that important to me. What I see here is an assault on free speech, and I don’t believe in it.
I went to college in a politically charged environment and time. There were often demonstrations against various political figures that came to Boston to speak or meet with people. A couple of them that stand out in my mind was one where Spiro Agnew came to town to speak at a hotel and another one when Henry Kissinger spoke at MIT. In both cases I was present to protest them – but it never occurred to me or to anyone else to protest the fact that they were being given a platform to speak. In fact, no one ever expressed that thought in any demo I ever went to.
Yet here we are where people at a university hold that a given person’s views are – in their view – “problematic and hateful views” – and on that basis the platform to speak that she had already been given should be taken away. It justifies it with the absurd argument that “Allowing Greer a platform endorses her views”. Their claim is that doing so is dangerous – but I say that this proposition is dangerous in itself. It would establish that speakers given a platform to speak by the University can only be drawn from those whose views the University endorses. It would become impossible for the University to present speakers whose views would challenge the prevailing opinions. That seems to me to strike at the heart of what a university is all about.
Whether or not this can be classified as censorship I’m not clear. But it’s an all-out assault on free speech with the explicit aim of removing the speech from discourse. Will it prevent people from hearing those ideas if they care to seek them out? No. But it puts the stamp of official authority behind the idea that such ideas should be suppressed. It imposes an official moral judgement. That should not be a university’s role (especially a public one). They should be encouraged to seek out ideas that challenge their students, because that’s what develops the ability to critique and analyze and to learn to use logic and reason. Brains must be exercised to grow.
In case it’s useful, so that people don’t have to speculate about some of the parameters of this particular incident, here’s one of the authors of the petition, in their own words over at Jezebel:
Grace
Sebastian,
I know who Greer is, and I know how important her earlier work was. But it’s not–especially after you read what she said at this link (the one in Grace’s post doesn’t work for some reason)–as if her stance towards trans people needs to be inferred by its omission from her otherwise important work. She has made the comments she has made, been called on them, and, as far as I understand it, doubled down on them. In other words, those ideas are a part of her world view, which includes her ideas about feminism, etc. I’m not suggesting that we should go back and condemn her other work for not including trans issues, nor am I suggesting that she, by definition, therefore no longer has anything of value to say, or that she shouldn’t be heard, even if she does say transphobic things. To be clear: I was commenting on a trend in this conversation in which some people are treating the issue of Greer’s transphobia as if it were entirely separable from her feminism, as if it did not call into question the inclusivity of her feminism, and as if it is not therefore reasonable to connect those two things and object to having a transphobic person, who has made blatantly transmisogynist statements, speak–not debate, not be part of a classroom, etc.–but give a talk unchallenged about an issue that clearly concerns trans women.
From Grace’s link, it appears that the petitioners are using the concept of a “safe-space” (not scare quotes!) to justify their position. Universities can and should have safe spaces within them, but an entire University can’t be a safe-space for everyone. People like Chait and Scott Alexander have written quite a bit about the weaponization of triggers and safe spaces, often implying that there is a hidden motive behind these concepts. This is definitely a weak-man argument, but these women just came out and said it: “Your speech makes us unsafe and threatens our rights, so it must be silenced.” I’m all for the creation of safe spaces and trigger warnings, but young people (and a few older ones, I suppose) need to be taught that these things aren’t weapons. As it stands, people are incentivized to express that they are triggered, threatened or victimized, and that incentive needs to be removed.
Also:
Germaine Greer is being paid £2,500 – £5,000 to appear at this event hosted by Cardiff University
This seems carefully worded in such a way as to imply that the university is paying Greer without actually saying that. Does anyone know if the university was planning to foot the bill? If so, I think it is somewhat reasonable for students to protest on the grounds that they don’t want to see their tuition money going to support Greer.
RJN:
There are a number of points I’ll make in response to this:
1) The fact that Greer holds a particular views that others find offensive doesn’t inherently mean that her other views depend or are significantly influenced by the offensive views.
2) The fact that Greer holds views that others find offensive has no impact on the academic merit or significance of her work.
3) The university should select speakers purely on the basis of the academic merit and significance. Presenting a view point that challenges the dominant existing views (in the academic field, or the wider community) with the appropriate level of academic rigour should be considered of more, not less, significance.
4) The opportunity to give a talk at a university is not a prize that ought to be politically fought over in order control a significant platform to promote particular political views or exclude others. Framing a university as inviting a particular speaker as some sort of political support of the speaker’s ideas is an approach that fundamentally fails to take into account the importance of engaging with controversial or unpopular ideas as a part of higher education and the advancement of human knowledge. Selecting speakers on the basis of political support or desirability is entirely incompatible with the function and purpose of a university.
5) In conclusion, the fact that Greer holds (or indeed intended on talking about) views that others find offensive is not a factor that should influence whether she is chosen to give the speech.
Free speech at colleges is just a mess these days, and there’s overt strategies to punish wrongthink and make sure it’s not articulated on campus. Take the case of the Wesleyan Argus. This campus newspaper was founded in 1868 and claims to be the oldest campus newspaper extant. They published a op-ed that criticized the tactics (but not the principles or objectives) of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The reaction? First, outright censorship. Hundreds of copies of the newspaper were physically destroyed. After that, the Argus groveled in print, offering the usual nonsense about making sure the newspaper was “a safe space for students of color”. Apparently decrying the tactics of Black Lives Matter threatens the safety of “students of color”. Then, in clear retribution, the Student Assembly Senate cut their funding by more than half. Apparently Wesleyan University is not a safe space for opinions that are at odds with rightthink.
WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH COLLEGES THESE DAYS?
When did it become the job of colleges to make sure that they did not present ideas that might upset left-wing oriented students? And why don’t they worry about presenting ideas that would upset right-wing oriented students? When did it become acceptable to destroy newspapers and threaten people in the name of social justice?
I must be getting old. I can remember when students and the faculty didn’t trust government power and were in favor of presenting unpopular ideas on campus. Now they hate presenting unpopular ideas on campus and embrace the use of the power of government and other authorities to prevent it.
This reminds me of Hobby Lobby.* It’s the claimed right to never be forced to pay for anything you disagree with, no matter ho matter how small the individual financial impact.
Hobby Lobby’s complaint is that some of their money goes to fund something they consider murder. These students’ complaint is that the speaker may challenge, by statement or omission, the ideological strictures and shibboleths that they believe are necessary to their well-being or the well-being of a group with which they claim allyship.
We’ve all heard the truism that the farther left or right you go, the more the left and right start looking alike. Why do you think “but the other side does it too” argument comes out so early and often?
* Yes, I know that Hobby Lobby has the added twist of whether or not a for-profit corporation can have “beliefs,” but similar arguments have been made by individuals and religious orders. I chose HL as an example because they are the best known of the ACA birth control objectors.
WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH COLLEGES THESE DAYS?
I’ve heard two theories that explain it.
One theory (Chait’s) is that free speech provides more benefit to privileged classes than it does to aggrieved classes. From a marxist perspective, free speech is one more tool the privileged use to keep the underprivileged in check, and therefore, why defend it? I don’t really like this theory, because I don’t think most people look at this through a marxist lens, even at the most liberal universities.
The other theory is that many people don’t really value a culture of free speech that much and they never have. During parts of the 20th century, expressing pro-communist viewpoints got people “shamed” in much the same way that expressing sexist or racist viewpoints will get someone shamed now. Certain progressive viewpoints are starting to become mainstream, in much the same way that anticommunism became mainstream.
I vastly prefer the second theory
I didn’t manage my time well today – I replied to something on Tumblr, and now I have to get work done and I don’t have time to reply to all the stuff I want to reply to here.
So instead I’ll quote what I just wrote on Tumblr, because it does relate directly to this discussion, and I’m the original poster so I can get away with doing stuff like this. :-p
So first Thirqual wrote:
Then Tropylium wrote:
Then Fierceawakening wrote:
(The rest of this comment is what I wrote.)
The quote comes from VanguardVivian’s Twitter account.
In context, VanguardVivian is criticizing people who use “free speech” to mean “the concept that other people should be coerced into not criticizing or refusing to listen.” She goes on to say: “TERFs tell trans women to just accept that they’re male like antigay Christians tell gay people to just accept that they’re sinners. And both of them consider it their sacred free speech right to have their victims keep listening to them.“
Today, continuing the same line of thought, VV wrote: “After all, to these people, all you have to do is call something “free speech” to render it sacred and immune from criticism. Doesn’t matter what free speech actually, originally meant — the ability to say what you want without the /government/ punishing you for it.“
So that’s what she’s talking about when she’s criticizing the way free speech is used as a banner. If you don’t acknowledge that, your argument is dishonest.
The context for all of this is people who say that it’s a violation of Germaine Greer’s free speech rights for VV and others to have signed a petition asking Cardiff University not to change its choice of Greer to give an annual, highly-paid, highly-prestigious speech.
And in that context, VV is correct. Free speech should not mean that Greer has a right to be a paid speaker without students criticizing her or objecting to Cardiff’s choice or asking Cardiff to change its choice of speaker. No one should have a free speech right to somebody’s else’s platform. And the students and others who have signed that petition, should have a free speech right to ask Cardiff not to invite Greer to speak. (At least, that’s my view of what “free speech” should mean, and if I understand her views correctly, it’s more-or-less VV’s view as well).
If “free speech” means being against shutting people up by coercive means, then I’m for free speech.
But if “free speech” means that Cardiff University has a free speech right to not be criticized for their choice of speaker, or a free speech right to not have anyone ask them to change their choice of speaker – which is apparently what many people nowadays believe “free speech” means – then it’s a bad idea and I’m against it.
Desipis:
It also doesn’t mean that the offensive views don’t significantly influence the other views. My point is that there is a thread in this conversation in which people seem to be taking for granted that they don’t; and I find this troubling, especially given that what we are talking about a prominent feminist, invited to talk about an important aspect feminism, who has an at best highly contested view about who is and who is not a woman, which seems to me a pretty central issue in feminism and in issues of women and power—which, I will say again, is what Greer’s talk was supposed to be about.
To suggest, without providing any evidence, that her notion that trans women are not “really” women has nothing to do with how she understands the issue of women and power is implicitly to agree with her transphobia.
This is what I have found troubling about this conversation because it then colors the argument of those who are criticizing the petition writers.
For the record, I think the university did the right thing by not disinviting Greer, though I would want to know a little more detail about the parameters mentioned in the Jezebel article Grace quoted from before I come to any firm conclusion about the nature of the student protest. If the money being spent on Greer came from student activity fees, for example—as such honoraria often do—then it would seem to me the students have a right to say something about, and try to influence, how that money is being spent. But I don’t know enough yet so I don’t want to say more right now.
I second Richard on this in particular. Especially because we’re talking about Cardiff, so it’s completely possible that none of my general background knowledge about how Universities work (all of which comes from the US) is at all applicable.
Basically, everything I know about Cardiff comes from Torchwood. Which, again, probably not applicable.
The majority of Cardiff University’s budget comes from the Welsh and British governments. So in a sense, every UK citizen has a right to try to influence its decisions.
“Now they hate presenting unpopular ideas on campus and embrace the use of the power of government and other authorities to prevent it.”
While most of Greer’s views re: feminism may well be unpopular, her views on transmen are actually extremely popular in the broader society.
Her being shunted off campus is akin to the reception somebody boosting the Vietnam war would have got in the 60s. Presumably the people arguing to give Greer a pass here would have told the 60s anti-war protesters to shut up and let some Air Force General speak about how Vietnam has to be bombed to save it.
Moved LTL FTC’s partisan anti-left rant to the open thread. LTC, please try to remain more-or-less on topic.
This is an important point.
I’m trying to figure out how a publicly funded university can justify giving one speaker a platform over another and avoid angering the tax-payers, and it is hurting my brain. I think all of us here can imagine a speaker who we would rather not help promote.
On the substantive point of Greer’s overall views, from a distance her version of feminism would initially seem more open to the idea of trans people than my current understanding of the main stream of modern feminism. Her version of feminism believes in serious differences between men and women, and that women are oppressed because of those differences. Unless you believe that all of those differences are found in the mere having of a vagina or penis, it seems perfectly possible that trans people could have many/most of the essential features of one gender despite being born the other.
The dominant strand of modern feminism believes that most/all of the differences between men and women are social constructs, which leaves trans people in an odd place of insisting upon differences which feminists classify as not really being real.
So a talk on Greer’s feminism might be very enlightening and useful even for trans people, despite the fact that Greer herself doesn’t seem to think that her mode of thought lends itself to understanding trans people.
Though I could be misunderstanding.
Your version of considering how Greer’s views incorporate trans people seems to involve ignoring everything Greer has ever said about trans people. As well as ignoring what many, many trans people (including trans feminists) have said about Greer’s views.
There’s no need for us to speculate about whether or not trans people believe that Greer’s version of feminism is “more open” to them. Many trans people have already addressed this question, with great clarity and vehemence. Listen to them.
Here’s the thing: I suspect you of working off of stereotypes or assumptions about what most trans people believe, or working off of what trans people were saying decades ago, rather than having read many current trans writers. And especially, I suspect that you haven’t read many trans women feminists’ writings, which are really the essential thing that you have to read if you want to understand what feminism needs to do to be useful and open to trans people.
But the only way to find out for sure would be to question you closely and nail down what you mean when you say things like trans people are “insisting on differences.” And doing that would be a huge digression from the subject of this thread, imo.
Did you read any of the links I mentioned in my previous reply to you on this subject? Do you seriously maintain that Julie Serano’s views (a trans feminist writer I linked) are a better fit with Greer’s current views than with, say, the current writers at popular feminist sites like Feministe and EverydayFeminism?
In any case, this is really feeling off topic to me. If you want to pursue this question further, I’d ask you to take it to the Mint Garden.
Tamme @ 56:
I was a ’70’s anti-Vietnam war protester. I recall people protesting the war and the people associated with it. I don’t remember them actually trying to prevent them from speaking.
People have a right to say anything they want – including the view that someone else’s views should not be allowed to be heard in any or all contexts. But that doesn’t mean that doing that is a good idea, nor does it mean that such people should themselves be free from criticism.
I also think that it’s one thing to say that Ms. Greer should not be invited to speak. It’s rather another to hold that she should be prevented from speaking in a given venue after she had accepted an invitation to do just that. it seems to me that smacks more of censorship.
I read Sebastian’s quote a little differently. When he says “from a distance her views….” I read that to mean that it is possible to agree with many of Greer’s priors and come to an entirely different conclusion on whether or not trans people should be embraced by feminists.
Free speech is the banner used by oppressed groups to yell back – to expose and turn back the harm done to them by the groups interfering with their rights. Without free speech civil rights legislation would never have come about.
RonF:
That’s not an accurate description of what’s going on with the funding for the newspaper. Which is not to say that there are no problems with the what’s happening–just that that’s not an accurate description. Short version, there was a proposal to deal with some issues raised by the protests against the newspaper–in a broader sense than just with respect to the newspaper itself. The senate A) passed a resolution in support of the non-funding-related portions of the proposal and b) set up a period of study for the funding parts that will take a year to complete. So, as it stands, the funding has not been touched, and may not be touched, and even if it was some fraction of the funds would go back to the newspaper through a different program–though not all of it. Which, again: not great; but certainly not cutting the funding by more than half.
desipis@37: Thanks, we’re more or less in agreement then (apart from some semantic things probably).
Argh, Amp it feels like you are almost going out of your way to uncharitably misinterpret me. I meant it exactly the way Jeffery explains it: that the underlying logic of Greer’s approach doesn’t have to lead to transphobia, and actually looks “from a distance” (and by that I mean as someone who hasn’t studied her deeply) like it could lead to a useful understanding of some trans experience as opposed to the mainstream feminist social construction approach. I also feel strange that you want to shut down the conversation that was a response to Richard Jeffery Newman’s insistence that Greer’s theories and trans thoughts are likely inseparable and that we need to talk about that.
Well I tried to, only to have my words twisted into almost 180 degrees from their meaning.
Yes I read all of your links yesterday, and the important thing to notice about them is that they are all arguing with mainstream feminism and allowing a lot more room for underlying deep differences than the social construction model suggests. In that respect they are drawing on models closer to Greer than they are to the dominant West/Zimmerman theories (e.g. gender as accomplishment). See also Judith Butler (gender as performative acts) or Monique Wittig (aiming to make gender vanish).
I’m not trying even remotely to argue against trans people. I’m trying to say that Greer’s underlying theories (some important gender differences are real) allow more space for trans people than the dominant feminist theory of near total social construction of gender. The writings you refer me to agree with me on that, because they feel the need to argue against the dominant feminist theory in order to explain how trans experience fits into feminist theory.
Now it may be that I’m not up on what counts as the dominant feminist theories. Maybe social construction fell out of favor when I wasn’t looking. I’m happy to admit that I might have missed it as I tend to be more up on things which directly effect my own life like gay experience, S/M power exchange discussions or how the trans people in my own life deal with friends who don’t get them. It is perfectly possible that I’m really just describing the dominant thought circa 2005 or whatever. If so, I apologize for sowing confusion but it would be easier to just say “that isn’t dominant feminist thought” rather than twist my pro-trans argument into an anti-trans one.
I’m sorry I misunderstood you, Sebastian. It’s not on purpose. (Also, I didn’t say you were making an anti-trans argument.)
I continue to think this is off-topic, and will respond a bit more at The Mint Garden.
RJN:
I didn’t say “nothing to do with”, I said “significantly influenced by”. If you look at the broad trends of women and power over the 20th century, of women progressing from being denied to the vote and denied jobs to becoming CEOs, prime ministers and serious presidential candidates, what observations would be different depending on whether trans women were included or excluded from the analysis?
Amp:
Given what you’ve said about Sebastian’s response to how he read my comments being off topic, I’m not sure if you think my comments have been off topic as well. So I’m going to try one more time to make clear what I think I have been trying to say and why I think it’s relevant to this discussion. If it doesn’t work, or if what I’m writing really does belong in another thread, just let me know and I will stop or move the conversation over to The Mint Garden.
Sebastian:
Just to be clear, since I think probably have not been as clear as I could have: My point was not that they are inseparable. I get that Greer’s theories, looked at apart from what she has to say about trans people, could be more hospitable to notions of trans identity than other theories. (I mean this not as agreement with your analysis–I haven’t thought about that enough yet–just that I get that it’s possible.) What I was responding to was what seemed to me the implication I read in desipis’ comments–and there may have been a couple of others–that one ought to take for granted that they are already separated within her and that her ideas about trans people therefore had no bearing on what she was scheduled to talk about, since it did not bear directly, explicitly, on trans issues. Depisis, if I understood correctly, then used this reasoning to argue that the people protesting her appearance and trying to get her disinvited were in fact using an essentially irrelevant issue (in the relation to the subject of her talk) to impinge on her free speech rights and compromise the university’s mission as a place for the free exchange of ideas.
I find this line of reasoning troubling because it essentially validates the anti-trans positions Greer has taken and invalidates the very reasonable concerns–as expressed in the Jezebel piece Grace linked to–the petition writers had, making it seem like they are simply unwilling to/afraid of hearing ideas that they find hurtful and offensive. Based on what they say in the Jezebel piece, they want a debate; they want a free exchange of ideas. It seems to me that what they do not want–among other things–is the university’s imprimatur (which they understand the forum of the talk to be giving) on a feminist stance that, in their view, is at the very least compromised by transphobia.
In other words, I think this line of reasoning trivializes, unfairly dismisses, etc. the petition writers and does so from a position that is at least implicitly transphobic.
I don’t know if that’s any clearer. I have been neck deep in grading and my brain is a little stewed right now. Either way, this is probably the last I will say about this, since I have another pile of papers waiting for me tomorrow.
RJN and Sebastian, let me put it this way, having given the matter more thought: I didn’t see any way I could respond to Sebastian, in which my response would remain on topic for this thread.
For that reason, I’ve responded to Sebastian on the Mint Garden.
However, by doing that I’m not saying that either of your posts here have been off-topic. Just that I felt unable to continue that conversational thread with Sebastian while remaining on-topic.
Jeffrey:
Thanks for your point about how to interpret Sebastian’s post.
I think the answer is that there is no way to avoid angering the tax-payers with the specific choices. No speaker could be chosen who will not anger somebody; even if the University only chooses bland choices, some taxpayers will find a program of nothing but safe, bland speakers infuriating.
However, this can be justified if we accept that it’s not the government’s mission to avoid ever angering a taxpayer. In the case of the University, the mission is probably something like “enrich the community and foster a good intellectual and learning environment.” Exactly what that means is open to dispute, but I think a university could accept that it is pursuing that mission in good faith even while angering some of the taxpayers.
Sebastian:
Here’s my current thought: Any coherent concept of “censorship” must include a significant degree of coercion. If it’s not coercive, it’s not censorship.
Your discussion avoids considering that; so to you, McCarthyism – in which people were afraid to speak out because speaking out could (and in too many cases did) lead to permanent unemployment, losing one’s home, and even starvation – and a student feeling that they can’t talk freely because they fear, what, being criticized? Social rejection? – are identical.
But the problem is, there is no possible way that such so-called censorship can be avoided. After all, seeing people petition against Greer isn’t the only possible way that “a student is very likely to feel that she can’t talk freely on the issue” without risking criticism or social rejection. It’s perfectly possible, for instance, that if a pro-life student is seated at a lunch table with all her friends, and all her friends start talking about how little they respect pro-choice, then the pro-life student will feel that she can’t talk freely on the issue. Is that censorship? Well, it seems to be, by your standard.
But if that’s “censorship,” then the only possible solution is for all the pro-choice students – or, bringing it back to reality, all the students who think Cardiff should uninvite Greer – to shut up. And saying that people should shut up to avoid censorship seems incoherent.
What am I missing here?
A couple of other points.
From the petition (and repeated by others, e.g. RJN @46):
The very existence of the petition clearly demonstrates Greer’s view would not go unchallenged. The challenge can come from protesters who hold their signs outside the venue. It can come from the questions and comments that occur after the talk. It can come from petitions or articles written in response (or evidently pre-emptively) to the talk. And it can come from subsequent speakers who critique Greer’s views or simply present an entirely different perspective on the issues.
To suggest that the views one opposes ought to be limited to a debate format rather than being allowed to be presented clearly to stand on their own merits is, to take Harlequins point, less bad than suggesting that they not be presented at all. However, to suggest that the views on opposes ought to be excluded from being presented on their own merits when other views are regularly presented in such a way is still a suggestion that runs contrary to the free exchange of ideas.
From Ampersand:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen any calls for the people behind the petition to be punished, or for the petition to be taken down. All I’ve seen is people pointing out that the conclusions in it are problematic and arguments that following their suggestions would contradict the philosophy of a free speech and would be a negative thing. If people have been suggesting that the those behind the petition should be punished (formally or informally) or that the petition should be forcibly blocked or taken down, rather than simply being rejected as the university did, then I would agree that what those people are suggesting is wrong.
I read this, from Payton Quinn:
…and then I read this, from Jeffrey Gandee:
…and my mind boggles. They call for a debate, for a panel discussion including trans people, and your understanding is that what they want is a safe space where they can be protected? Yes, the words “safe space” appear in Payton’s comment, but they appear in reference to a measurement of performance issued by a third party. I think it’s pretty clear that in this context, Payton’s notion of a “safe space” is one in which there is a robust debate among approximate equals, not one in which people are protected from hearing something they don’t want to hear. Which is, I would think, how free speech advocates would define a safe space — a space where you are able to meaningfully speak.
Because it sounds to me like they want… a debate. It sounds to me like the want… a participatory panel discussion. It sounds to me like they want an open exchange of ideas. It sounds to me like they want a space which is not safe… for Greer. It sounds to me like they want a space where they’re not safe, but more equal. How censorious of them!
Where they draw the line is at paying an influential writer to take up a megaphone and speak unchallenged when they know from past experience that she’s reasonably likely to espouse bigoted views.
They’re actually looking for the dialogue and exchange of ideas which RonF and others want them to be agitating for.
Everyone seems to want a nice, easy, black-and-white definition of censorship. It’s clear to me that sometimes controls on speech are okay (falsely crying “fire!” in a crowded theater gets you charges from the government), and sometimes consequences for speech are okay (you say something hateful but not illegal, and people speak in order to provide you with negative feedback), and that “consequences for speech” is a spectrum including such steps as “I disagree and here’s why” and “I will now shun you” and “I will now advocate that you not be hired by institutions of which I am a part”, and “Though you have been hired for this gig, I will advocate for the hiring institution of which I am a part to reconsider, or to consider a change in format”, and many other steps. It’s all censorship in some sense, in the same way that anything a human being does to limit another human being is coercion, in some sense. It’s not all black-and-white.
But people do love their binaries, and there’s something about a spectrum that just offends people who want a solution which is simple and neat…
Grace
Grace:
So why didn’t they just organise a participatory panel discussion? A panel discussion or formal debate, and a unilateral talk are not mutually exclusive events in that across a large organisation like a university only one could possibly occur. If they had organised (or proposed) a debate panel in addition to the talk then I doubt there would be anywhere near as much opposition to their proposal.
Imagine if a sociology academic, who also happened to be a Muslim, was invited to give a talk on social policy. Then others protested the talk on the basis that they objected to particular Islamic beliefs which they find offensive and argued that since these beliefs will unavoidably impact the academic’s views on social policy, the talk shouldn’t go ahead and instead there needs to be debate on the merits of those Islamic beliefs. Would you find such a position reasonable or problematic?
“But the problem is, there is no possible way that such so-called censorship can be avoided. After all, seeing people petition against Greer isn’t the only possible way that “a student is very likely to feel that she can’t talk freely on the issue” without risking criticism or social rejection. It’s perfectly possible, for instance, that if a pro-life student is seated at a lunch table with all her friends, and all her friends start talking about how little they respect pro-choice, then the pro-life student will feel that she can’t talk freely on the issue. ”
Again you seem to be hyper-focused on the word censorship, while I am more concerned about free speech and expression in a university environment. It seems to me that there is a significant difference on the chilling scale between “friends say they are pro-choice” and “university cancels a prominent semi-famous author’s ability to speak on any topic at the university based on her views on a side issue”.
Maybe a part of the difference in opinion is based on what the petition wants the university to do. They NOW say that they want to open up a dialog. But that isn’t what the petition asks for. It says:
The petition that they circulated doesn’t say they want a debate with Greer. It says that hosting her is dangerous?!?! and that she should therefore be denied a platform to endorse ANY of her views because some of her views include transmisogyny.
If they had circulated a petition saying that her views were wrong and that they wanted a chance to counter them in debate, that would have been a totally different discussion. That would have been a discussion that fits well with a university level understanding of free speech.
If they had circulated a petition drumming up support for a counter-talk, that would have been a totally different discussion. That would have been a discussion that fits well with a university level understanding of free speech.
The petition they actually circulated was about shutting her off because the ideas are dangerous. They invoke fear that letting her speak (on any subject) will increase hatred and violence. That is an approach that is precisely against a university level understanding of free speech.
Your mind boggles? I think the problem is how you define “safe-space,” and how it is often used in the context of these discussion on identity politics. Whatever your definition is (I honestly can’t tell) it looks nothing at all like the definitions on pages like “geekfemism,” “the safe space network,” or the wikipedia entry for “safe space.” She seems to be including “safe space for trans people,” in the category “trans rights,” but you read it differently. Your interpretation may be the correct one, but I’m not a mind reader.
Though I can’t read minds, I can read her second comment directly below the first one. It starts with:
“To me, the safety of trans people always comes before the desires of cis people. If anyone would like to listen to Germaine Greer talk about any of her past accomplishments in feminist history, there’s plenty of book and articles for them to mine through and thousands of hours of speeches for them to find online. Her rhetoric has been largely unchanged for decade, so too has her transmisogyny been, it would seem.”
That statement is a little less vague and much less defensible. Perhaps when she writes “safety,” she is only talking about physical safety, but I doubt it given the context.
The problem with advocates from all sides is the never ending cascade of imprecise and emotionally charged language. This is a real problem any time identity politics comes up. I literally have no idea what you or Quinn mean when you say “safe,” or “safe-space,” or when an antiracist says “privilege” “violence,” or “racism.” Not only do advocates use these words in ways that differ from general usage, but these words aren’t even used consistently within movements. It may be the case that I’m misreading Quinn, but that’s her fault.
Anyway, considering she also wrote this sentence at HuffPo, I’m inclined to agree with my initial perception:
For me the answer is clear: The safety of trans people outweighs the right of cis women to question the validity of their gender expression.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/payton-quinn/germaine-greer_b_8366838.html
I want to share a relevant story.
In my high school, we had an incredible class with an incredible teacher. I still think about it almost daily, and it changed the way I see politics forever.
It was called “Political Radicalism,” and it was taught by an ex-hippie socialist guy who also taught Native American Studies. The class was structured as follows. The first quarter was all reading and discussion. Terms like Reactionary and Progressive were explained and politcal viewpoints were plotted on charts. It’s what you’d expect to learn in any poly-sci 101 class. The next quarter was altogether different, and in a High School setting, it sounds totally insane. Almost every day, political radicals came and talked to us. I mean really really radical people.
The grand dragon of the KKK spoke at my high school.
We had racist skin heads. Anti-racist skinheads, nazis, commies, libertarians, anarchists, really weird christian fundy extremists, democratic socialists, greens, the black panthers… the list goes on. It was nuts. We weren’t ever allowed to raise our voices at these people, but they could raise theirs. I went to school with many Jewish kids, and they had to sit there and listen to the Grand Dragon speak without yelling back.
The class was elective, and at anytime anyone could walk out during a talk. We were also allowed to skip talks altogether, but no one ever did that I saw. It was waaaaay too interesting. All of us got to see what radicalism looks like, and we all learned a little bit about extremist thought, and the workings of an extremists mind. It was enlightening, and I’m so thankful I took the class.
Anyway, I find it really strange that my highschool could host the Grand Dragon, and abunch of college kids are unwilling to host Greer.
PS: I imagine some people will refuse to believe that a public high school would host the grand dragon, so here is a story from my home town’s local paper: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/10/29/ann29_ART_10-29-08_B1_NDBNVQ8.html)
“They’re actually looking for the dialogue and exchange of ideas which RonF and others want them to be agitating for.”
Good for them. Let them arrange such, if Ms. Greer is so inclined. But the fact that they are looking for a debate doesn’t mean that a presentation given without opportunity for debate should not enjoy free speech protections. Free speech means that they have every right to arrange and hold a debate on any topic they choose. It does not mean that every speech has to provide opportunities for debate – or that, in general, any single group has a right to impose on others the conditions under which they may express certain ideas.
This whole concept that the expression of certain ideas (other than a direct threat of violence) makes others “unsafe” and therefore on that basis both can and must be suppressed is outrageous. It threatens freedom and liberty.
Jeffrey Gandee @ 76
It’s an approach that is precisely against ANY understanding of free speech.
The left has carried the day on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, etc. because of the free speech protections guaranteed under the First Amendment. But now that they have won these battles, they wish to destroy the First Amendment and make sure that only ideas they approve of can be spoken in academia. It’s despicable.
So, this started as a reply to Jeffrey, and then became a bit of a manifesto. I hope that it will help to shed light, and not heat. Onward.
Jeffrey Gandee:
I’ve been thinking of this conversation on Alas as mainly a discussion about censorship. Since you were explicitly talking about Payton Quinn and their comment on Jezebel, I was trying to use “safe space” in the sense that Payton appeared to be using it, in a sidebar summarizing an outside organization’s burnishing of Cardiff’s credentials “promoting a safe space for trans and qu**r students and staff”. It wasn’t central to Payton’s argument — she could have lauded Cardiff in any number of ways for being supportive — and yet you appeared to me to be assigning it primacy.
But since you focused on it, I went on to the rest of Payton’s comment to figure out what they meant by it. And in that comment, Payton is talking about debates. Discussions. Exchange of ideas.
So, I was referencing Payton’s comment at Jezebel, which a friend pointed out to me in a different discussion, because it seemed like it might help the discussion here by providing some useful information. I haven’t read the petition; working long hours and trying to stay healthy which, for me, means I have learned to keep a careful eye on my daily poison intake, and it’s easy to overdose and get frustrated and angry when I read again the dehumanizing bullshit which Greer has repeatedly and emphatically asserted about trans people. I’m slightly interested in this debate because I’m trans, aware of Greer’s views about people like me, and an advocate of free speech. But this is an old debate, and debates like it happen every day on the Internet, so I may not have much more to say.
Speaking more generally, what people mean by “safe space” is contextual. Spaces can be safe for one thing and not for another, safe for this person and not safe for that person, and some safe spaces are mutually exclusive, like (a) trans people being able to go to the bathroom without being assaulted or charged with a sex crime and (b) Germaine Greer being unable to feel comfortable around trans people because when she sees us she experiences a sense of loathing.
Trans people are relentlessly subjected to a level of societal pressure which I think is beyond the comprehension of most people because you can’t get it without having experienced something very like it. The attempted suicide rate among trans people is in the range of 42%, which is astronomical. When you’re talking about an environment so toxic that almost half the people living in it have tried to escape it by killing themselves, the question of whether a well-off academic with a prestigious academic background got censored by a student petition to rescind a paid speaking engagement … frankly, that question can seem a bit precious. Yes, it’s a Big Question, the sort of question I loved to debate into the wee hours in college, the sort of question it’s important to debate in an academic setting so that we can raise another generation of free speech advocates. A colleague of mine, a 20-year military careerist, once told me sincerely that the Dixie Chicks “should not be allowed to say thing like that” after one of them expressed a political opinion critical of the serving US president. We need to raise lots of free speech advocates so that we can all outvote people like my colleague when he tries to get that opinion enacted into law.
But our budding free speech advocates may have trouble hearing the message when they’re having to spend significant energy on survival. A trans person bitching about being misgendered may seem a bit precious, too, when you don’t apprehend the pile of sand which is under that newest grain. And it’s easy to pooh-pooh the relentless toxicity which this society directs at trans people by pointing to one instance and talking about how trivial it is, but size and time matter. A downpour is not just “a lot of raindrops”. A standard dose of Tylenol won’t fry your liver, but three times the standard dose will. They have different impacts, and so they are qualitatively different things.
Also, people who are at the threshold of self-harm (all such people, not just trans people at that stage) are quite correct to look to applying their own tourniquet before they worry about whether someone else has sunscreen. Many trans people (not all) have to look to our own safety in a way which is outside the experience of most people. (“Yes, but why can’t you hand me the sunscreen.” “Well, I’m using both hands to keep pressure on this spurter I’ve got going, here.”)
Times are changing. As more people actually demonstrate, in real terms, that they’re willing to hire us as fast as anyone else, that they’re willing to associate with us as fast as anyone else, that they’re willing to let us use the bathroom as much as anyone else, that they’re willing to decry murder of us as much as anyone else, and all that is just for starters… as more people do that, more trans people will have more energy to spare for Big Questions.
Getting back to the Big Question of censorship: speech doesn’t have to be either/or. Everyone can speak. We can take turns. Greer can publish books. Others can publish books. Serano and Boyd can publish books. Greer’s financially stable, since she’s apparently on record as donating speaking fees to charity. The question in this case is who’s going to get paid a lot of money and handed a microphone with some prestige. Payton Quinn didn’t like the idea that that person would be Germaine Greer. Since Greer manifestly has plenty of ways to get her message out, and has done so successfully, I have a hard time getting my free speech dander up about her missing out on this particular paid gig. The fact that her message is hateful really only enters into the question at the, “Yes, but is Payton Quinn right?” stage. The question of whether a petition to disinvite a paid speaker is censorship is a different question, and I’m not persuaded that it is.
And that’s close to the end of my energy on this topic for now.
Grace
Ron, just for the record, that quote isn’t mine.
desipis:
I don’t know. It tragic; if only they had consulted us…
That depends. Has your hypothetical sociology academic espoused those particular objectionable Islamic beliefs in a profanely emphatic and dismissive manner, arguing that those beliefs should control where a persecuted minority can go to the bathroom, or whether a persecuted minority has a right to medical care?
If her talks on social policy have, on previous occasions, amounted to advocacy against the persecuted minority’s rights and welfare, I’d certainly be willing to carefully consider what the persecuted minority had to say about how they have been harmed, and how they anticipate being harmed in the future, and to consider that information in my cost/benefit analysis as I decide whether I think the university is making a sound choice to hire this particular academic to speak.
I think part of the disconnect, in this discussion, is that the people who think the petition was wrong view this situation as a debate about principles, while the people who are more sympathetic to the petition view this situation as more of a debate about trans’ people’s humanity and equality.
And now, I really do have promises to keep, so this is is from me for awhile.
Grace
Grace, I’m in agreement that denying a platform isn’t censorship, but as is so often the case, this is really going to come down to semantics again, and how everyone here chooses to define the words “censorship.” One’s politics are likely to play a role in how they choose to define words like “censorship,” and “free speech.”
I’d rather debate whether or not disinviting a particular speaker is a good idea, and that means taking on the arguments of those who would or wouldn’t have Greer disinvited. You linked to a page with three comments by Quinn, and in my opinion, there were two arguments there. The “there should be a debate” argument is just a red herring (go have one then?), so I ignored it. The other argument about safe spaces may have been implied rather than explicitly stated but my intuition was right, and Quinn really does have horrible anti-free-speech reasons for wanting to disinvite speakers.
I think the concerns over funding are justified, though. I’d want to weigh the costs/benefits more, but I’m willing to admit that in some cases certain speakers should not be publicly funded. I just have a hard time deciding when this is and isn’t the case, especially when I look back on my political radicalism class, and the way it helped shape my peers and me.
Here is another example. At Brown University, the Daily Herald published a couple of op-eds that many people found offensive. One discussed purported biological differences among the races and the other was a defense of Columbus Day. Apparently a number of people protested the ideas presented in those op-eds. But the students in the link above went further – their position is that publishing those op-eds brought pain and harm on the community and therefore should not have been published.
The Brown University administration did not directly defend the publication of those op-eds – their statement was essentially “People who run student publications sometimes make mistakes, which we need to permit if there is to be an educational process here.” Typical cowardice on the part of university administrators. But what seems to me to be the key point in the students’ response to that statement is the following:
Stunning! After 12 years in what I will presume was the American public school system and what is apparently the middle of 2 and 3 years at what is reputed to be one of the best universities in America and they still don’t understand the concept of free speech and why it needs to be protected. Given the jargon they use, I’m thinking that not only did the schools fail to teach them that, they taught them something quite different – something that might appeal to a Communist or a Marxist (I’m not all that familiar with Marxism, so I could be wrong there), but that quite contradicts the actual facts of how and why those protections were made explicit in the Bill of Rights.
RonF wrote:
RonF, about a year and a half ago:
I really don’t think there’s anything new about students either objecting to a speaker, or (as in the case of Greer today, and Kissinger in 1972) objecting to a speaker giving a paid and prestigious speech. I also don’t think there’s anything new (at least since the 1980s) about students trying to censor student newspapers, either through prior restraint, or through throwing away copies, or by other means. (I’m quite certain all these things happened in the 1980s, based on my anecdotal memory).
What is new, I suspect, is that the internet makes these stories available to us in a way that similar events in the 1980s (or 70s, or 90s) aren’t available to us.
RonF is appalled by this statement, by some students at Brown:
RonF, that quote is actually a pretty mainstream idea about what “the right to free speech” in the Bill of Rights means, although to be as technically correct as possible the word “state” would need to be inserted before the word “abuse.” But if that one word was added, then I think someone like Eugene Volokh would have no problem agreeing with the quote you singled out.
The right to free speech is not a guarantee of a platform. I don’t have a free speech right to be published in the Brown student paper, or in the New York Times. I don’t have a free speech guarantee that I get my own platform (as it happens, I do have a platform – this website – but that’s not a guarantee.)
What I do have is the right to not be, say, thrown in jail for what I say. Or for what I say to be shut down by the power of the state. These things would be “abuse of power,” and it’s what the right to free speech protects me against.
There are things said in that letter to the editor that I disagree with. But the particular quote that you singled out as being shocking and a sign that Marxists Have Taken Over The University!, is completely unremarkable, and fits comfortably within long-standing mainstream understandings of what the First Amendment means.
I also feel like pointing out that it’s still rare. There are 30,000 students at Cardiff University; when I checked the petition a couple of days ago, there were 2500 signatures, but 3/15 top comments were from students, and 0/15 recent comments were from students. So probably only a few hundred signatures from Cardiff students–1-2% of the student body.
There are ~13 million students attending 4-year universities in the US this year at ~3,000 institutions. How many of these stories have you heard? How many were successful campaigns?
Not to say that it’s not a problem when it happens, or that we shouldn’t discuss it–I’m (sometimes) enjoying reading this thread. I’m also sure some of you would say the proper number of times this should happen is 0. But we’re talking the difference between “none” and “very occasionally”, not “none” and “prevalent.”
Grace:
I think it’s possible to be sympathetic to the burdens trans people have in dealing with their own personal issues and the harsh treatment they face from others, while at the same time think that trans people’s limited ability to deal with comments like those from Greer should be something that limits trans people’s participation in the forums where those ideas a present, and something that acts as a limit on society as a whole.
To me a “safe space” is a space where the broader interests of the community are set aside or given lower priority for the benefit of a subgroup who might have some form of difficulty within the larger community. I think it’s inappropriate to try to restructure the community at large to be a safe space for a particular subgroup where doing so it inherently undermines the interests of the broader community.
I recently read the American Association of University Professor’s response to trigger warnings, and although about trigger warnings and not selecting speakers, it makes important points about how it’s not the role of universities to only present ideas that are “safe” or present them in a way that makes them “safer”. While trans people’s humanity and equality are incredibly important, the role of universities is further human knowledge and foster rational and critical thought, not to protect people’s humanity and equality. The role of protecting people’s (trans or otherwise) humanity and equality falls to families, friends, counsellors, support groups, advocacy groups and medical professionals.
To use your own words against you, I think it’s “easy to pooh-pooh the relentless [attempts to curtail academic freedom/free speech] by pointing to one instance and talking about how trivial it is”. I don’t think the people criticising the petition are particularly concerned about the single grain that is this particular speech, Greer or her views generally. I think their level of concern stems from the increasing pile of sand that is the collection of ideas and individuals that people acting under the broad banner of social justice have attempted to exclude from being included debates and discussions (successfully or not).
That’s why people are evoking language focused on principles (“free speech” or “censorship”) and not language that emphasises Greer’s humanity, even though somewhat ironically, the reason people value those principles so much is that history has shown them to be the strongest protectors of humanity and equality.
Ampersand:
You’re correct in stating the “what” of the first amendment. I don’t think there’s much debate or confusion about that. RonF was talking about the “how” and “why”, or to put it another way, the culture of free speech. Under the free speech guaranteed by the first amendment, the government can’t “no platform” speakers and say that banning ideas from magazines is acceptable because people can still discuss those ideas in the back of the public bar. If the reasons why permitting the government to do so would be a bad idea are understood and those reasons are applied as a culture of free speech to institutions such as a university, as I think they really should, then it leads to the conclusion that it is a bad idea for the university to be “no platforming” people or ideas. I dare say RonF is appalled at the lack of appreciation for the how and the why, not the what of the first amendment. “Free speech” is not an idea limited to the first amendment as that letter implied.
RonF’s claim was clearly that the statement he quoted shows that the letter-writers didn’t understand “the actual facts of how and why those protections were made explicit in the Bill of Rights.” Perhaps Ron made a mistake and didn’t write what he intended (which, if so, is totally understandable and happens to all of us); but what he wrote was explicitly about the Bill of Rights, not about “the culture of free speech.”
I’m about as antimarxist as they come, and I really have no problem with this quote:
The right to free speech is a protection against the abuse of power, not a guarantee of a platform for all ideas.
But then there was this part…
White people in particular are taught that our voices are always worth being heard. When we believe in free speech, we do so because it works in our favor. The problem is that freedom of speech is not a universal reality. Free speech assumes a level playing field among speakers that does not exist. Power always affects interactions and what people can and do say in the context of a given relationship, institution or society.
… a quote only a marxist could love.
A big part of this discussion revolves around what a university is for. Universities are places that are intended to be safe spaces for ideas, even controversial, scary, wrong, or potentially harmful ones. We make universities a safe space for ideas by enforcing very strong norms about letting people voice their ideas even if they might be controversial, scary, wrong or potentially harmful. Trying to get an event cancelled because you disagree with the speaker violates that.
The university can’t be a safe space for people who can’t handle exposure to ideas that they disagree with without abandoning its essential mission.
Saying that isn’t abandoning compassion for those who really will have trouble being exposed to ideas they disagree with. We can do all sorts of things to try to mitigate the trouble they will have. We should support them, but we can’t do violence to the safe space for ideas. If you think colleges should be a safe space FROM ideas, we need to reevaluate the whole thing (tenure for example wouldn’t be needed).
Gay and trans people should understand that. If colleges had been a safe space for Christians who were going to be repulsed by our ideas and our existence, we would have had lots of trouble getting as far as we have. Letting universities be VERY open about ideas has served progressive and liberal ends far more than insisting that they be closed and protective ever has.
I agree, but I don’t think that’s really relevant in this discussion. There’s a huge difference between “academic discussion of transphobic feminism” and “paying Germaine Greer to speak on campus” just as there’s a huge difference between “academic discussion of racial prejudice” and “paying David Duke to speak on campus.”
I think it’s pretty silly to suggest that either racial prejudice or transphobic feminism are ideas that these students, especially trans or racial minority students, have not been exposed to, or that the objection to Ms. Greer was based in ‘not wanting to be exposed to conflicting views.’
—Myca
“I think it’s pretty silly to suggest that either racial prejudice or transphobic feminism are ideas that these students, especially trans or racial minority students, have not been exposed to, or that the objection to Ms. Greer was based in ‘not wanting to be exposed to conflicting views.’”
We have to unpack this a bit.
The objection in the petition very much is something along the lines of ‘not wanting to be exposed to conflicting views’. That’s the point of saying that holding these views means you can’t be invited to speak on campus on any topic if you hold those views.
Further you’re defining Greer entirely by her view on trans people. The petition wants to bar her from speaking on any other topic purely on the fear that she might say something scary about trans people. She is now apparently all about “transphobic feminism” as opposed to a feminism about differences between men and women. Why do you get to define her that way? Communism has been far more damaging in the world than the hyper narrow “transphobic feminism” but I suspect you wouldn’t be ok with a push to cancel a Chavez speech if he were alive, right? We define him as ‘potentially murderous communist’ and keep him from speaking? You getting to define what a speaker is ‘about’ is part of the problem. Greer is lots of things, most of them having nothing to do with trans issues in any direct sense. Likening her to David Duke, a person who actively defines his public persona as all about race hate seems very unfair to Greer.
Pluralistic tolerance doesn’t mean anything if it only protects the people you like. That isn’t tolerance at all.
The petition doesn’t speak to paying them. I would tend to think paying them to defray their costs of travel and such is totally appropriate. This isn’t the kind of ex-president ridiculous pay that you get rich off of. Are you paying them the regular amount for a speaker in a content neutral way? Then I don’t see the issue. If you paid transphobic people more than trans people I could understand the objection.
Myca @92 managed to say more succinctly what I was trying to get across in earlier comments, so thanks. :)
Sebastian H.:
It’s the practice everywhere I’ve been that honoraria (the fees paid to the speaker; the few thousand pounds to be paid to Greer according to some reports) are in addition to covering the cost of travel. I suppose that doesn’t mean it’s true at Cardiff, but I would be surprised. (There are also plenty of speakers that have travel reimbursed but do not receive pay for the talk–though I think that is more common in the sciences, which are generally better funded, and so can pay for more speakers in general.)
People can be more than one thing at once; Greer is definitely about feminism as a women’s issue, but by her own words she is also about feminism that excludes trans women as women. Why is it unfair to judge Greer on the stuff she’s actually said and by the views she seems proud to hold?
For many students, a university is a necessary means of attaining credentials for employment. This thread assumes that the mission of a university is relevant to the conversation and that the mission of a university requires engaging the students with a variety of new ideas but any such mission must account for that need. If engaging with new ideas becomes only engaging with an particular accepted canon of ideas then it is indistinguishable from the accumulation of the cultural capital forming a secondary set of credentials.
Either the speakers of a university must be vetted for their ideas in the same way that the lecturers and the contents of their courses are already and this discussion is merely about what should and should not be considered cultural capital (and the usual partisan rule apply). Or there is some other purpose of the university that subsumes the need for credentials, that doesn’t conflict with the agreed restrictions on publicly funded organizations (e.g. the BBC), and that allows for a principled discussion on what is too extreme to be allowed. If it’s not derailing, I’d love to hear some candidates for the second.
Great conversation, btw.
“People can be more than one thing at once; Greer is definitely about feminism as a women’s issue, but by her own words she is also about feminism that excludes trans women as women. ”
Ok, so we have to get why that is allegedly sufficient reason to exclude her from speaking on any topic.
Most Muslims and Christians (and many Jews) exclude trans women as women. Shall we ban any of those Muslim or Christians or Jews from speaking on any topic? Only those who have mentioned that they exclude trans women as women? Can we make a trap where we try to get them to say that their religion excludes trans women as women so that we can ban them from speaking?
Here is the thing that makes me crazy about this issue. If this is a weapon that gets to be used against people like Greer, how much easier is it going to be for some pro-life people (who vastly outnumber trans people) to find some women who can claim that allowing Planned Parenthood speakers on campus contributes to a culture of marginalizing unborn babies and traumatizes women who care about unborn babies. You going to defend them too? How are you going to distinguish it other than “people who agree with me get to talk, those who don’t get excluded?” Weaponizing safe spaces like that isn’t going to end up well.
Amp,
This may be a derail, and I am happy to move it to an open thread or turn it into a separate post, for a separate discussion, if you think that makes sense.
Desipis:
Hogwash. Leaving aside, for example, all the rules that govern the ethics of using human test subjects, that are designed precisely to make sure people’s humanity and equality are not compromised in the pursuit of ideas, one of my primary responsibilities as a college professor is to create in my classroom an environment where everyone feels their humanity and equality are respected and where they trust me to protect them if those things are threatened; and I reserve the right to shut down all kinds of speech if I feel it will compromise the integrity of my classroom–by which I mean, broadly speaking, my ability to teach and the ability of my students to learn. This speech includes, of course, all the obvious things like racial, sexual, gender, etc. insults and epithets, pseudo-intellectual arguments that rely on disparaging stereotypes/theories about race, sex, gender, etc., and other such things. But it also includes, for example, Evangelical Christians who try to impose Christian religious readings of the Bible on a class where I am teaching the Bible as literature, or students who try to turn a class discussion into a soap box for whatever their political agenda might be, especially (but not only) when it has nothing to do with the class I am teaching.
The university is also responsible for being responsive to questions raised in the name of people’s humanity and equality about what knowledge is, how it is valued, taught, etc. This is why, in my own field, the scope of the literary canon has been broadened to include literatures that people just didn’t read before, that reflect precisely the humanity and equality of people who had not been previously included. It’s why medical research, for example, was broadened so that it included research specifically into women’s health concerns, which had been previously overlooked precisely because their full humanity and equality were not recognized.
In other words, the university is not a place for the disinterested furthering of knowledge–as if such a thing were possible. The knowledge that gets furthered has always served the interests of some groups and not others. The progressive movement in higher education has been about finding ways to include more and more groups. (Which is not to say that everything done in the name of that movement has been hunky dory.) Indeed, people who argue that knowledge is disinterested tend, in my experience to be people who are more interested in excluding certain groups than in finding ways actually to further knowledge. (This is not an accusation leveled personally at you, desipis.)
And when a university brings in a keynote speaker, giving its imprimatur to that person and the positions that person holds, the university is accountable and responsible for whether or not that decision indeed furthers knowledge in the progressive sense of that term. (And I hope it’s clear that I don’t mean, therefore, that all speakers should be left wing.) Now, regarding the decision to invite Germaine Greer, I think one can make the argument that the discussion she would provoke–about trans issues and other issues as well–would indeed further knowledge; but I think one can also make the argument that her explicit and unapologetic transphobia ought to disqualify her from giving this kind of talk–not part of a classroom, not part of a larger program about these issues, etc.–at an institution and under the banner of an organization that claims to be opposed to precisely those transphobic values.
To argue this second position, even to advocate for it with a petition, is not, as Sebastian suggests, something that “violates [the university’s role as a place intended to be a safe space for ideas].” Because the university also needs to be a safe space for that argument; it needs to be able to have a conversation about itself, to be able to question itself from within.
The students who wrote the petition got to have their say. I think it’s crucial to remember that they didn’t get their way, in terms of the institution. The university, in my opinion, did the right thing by not disinviting Greer. That Greer made the decision not to speak is essentially no different than if Henry Kissinger had come to speak, taken a look at the protest RonF has told us about, said, “I’m tired of dealing with these people every time I walk in and out of a place where I give a talk,” then turned around and went home. It was Greer’s own decision, based on her own feelings about whether or not she wanted to deal with people who vehemently disagree with her.
So if the university had in fact dis-invited Greer would that have made the petition to dis-invite Greer retroactively wrong? That seems like an odd result.
Sebastian,
No, it would just mean that the university had made what I consider to be the wrong decision.
RJN:
The control an academic has over their classroom is entirely different to the control a university administration ought to have over the academy.
If the petition was arguing for inclusion, that is arguing for someone to give an academic talk that promotes the idea that trans women are women, then I don’t think it would have caused as much controversy. If certain avenues of knowledge are being arbitrarily excluded from academic study then I would agree we should seek to include them. However, to argue for the exclusion of views that many believe are important to the cause of humanity and equality is not about progressing human knowledge, even if you profoundly disagree with those views. To argue for that exclusion under a banner of inclusion is rather quite Orwellian.
I’m not arguing for a completely disinterested approach to knowledge. I’m arguing for academic freedom, where individual academics are able to determine for themselves which ideas are worth pursuing and will best serve the interests of humanity in the future. I’m arguing that the net benefit to humanity from knowledge will be greater where academics are left to choose which ideas to pursue than where a centralised university administration makes those choices. Thus, the criteria that a university administration ought to apply to selecting a speaker is if there is sufficient interest within the academic community to listen to them, and not based on the administrations opinion on whether those ideas are worthy or not.
Would the mathematics department get a look in if the university was forced to decide whether a presentation on abstract mathematics or a presentation on sociological views on racism better served the pursuit of humanity and equality? What about the astronomy department, if the university was forced to decide whether a presentation on supermassive black holes or a presentation on the latest cancer treatments for women better served the pursuit of humanity and equality?
ETA: The above question aren’t all that analogous to Greer’s case. Here’s a different one: If two set of mathematics academics were in disagreement over a mathematics principle, say a particular cryptographic theory, and one set asked the university administration to exclude other from giving a talk due to the belief that the promotion of those flawed ideas could result in them being applied in industry and leave people vulnerable to breaches of privacy, while the other set believes the opposite, is that a dispute that the university administration ought to insert itself into?
In my experience its the people who want to make universal declarations of what and who is worthy are the ones who are more interested in excluding certain groups than finding ways to actually further knowledge. (And likewise, I’m not making accusations against anyone in this thread).