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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21545 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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it has not been demonstrated that this relationship is so direct as to make the peddlers of violent rhetoric legally responsible for the shootings to a degree that nullifies their First Amendment rights.

I'm quite explicitly not demanding the arrest of anyone posting violent, hateful rhetoric in trans subreddits, nor claiming that anyone posting such content could be found criminally liable for incitement to violence. Innumerable subreddits have been banned over the years without any of the moderators or posters facing legal action. If Reddit decides to ban a subreddit which consists of nothing but people ranting about how much they despise "femoids" (or black people, or homosexuals, or Jews etc.) and openly fantasising about how much they'd like to assault and torture them, they should adopt the same standard when it comes to subreddits consisting of people ranting about how much they despise TERFs, "cis scum" or similar. Or we can do the modus ponens and say that if trans-identified males are allowed to share their creepy fantasies about murdering TERFs on Reddit, then incels, racists and homophobes should be allowed to as well.

I think you're constructing a strawman in an effort to make me sound like an authoritarian and an opponent of free speech (particularly laughable when I've racked up multiple QCs for loudly condemning the censorious approach adopted by several Western governments). I don't appreciate it.

I made this point at greater length in the linked post: if you think I'm getting too worked up about trans-inspired violence, that logically implies that Western governments are getting far too worked up about incel-inspired violence. Can't have it both ways.

Or we can do the modus ponens and say that if trans-identified males are allowed to share their creepy fantasies about murdering TERFs on Reddit, then incels, racists and homophobes should be allowed to as well.

That would be my view, yes. (As befitting a Mottizen, I should think, almost by definition.)

I think you're constructing a strawman in an effort to make me sound like an authoritarian and an opponent of free speech (…) I don't appreciate it.

I didn't intend to, and apologize for giving that impression. I didn't refer to you by name and, indeed, wasn't directly replying to you at all, but to Maiq, himself replying to magicakittycat. My purpose was to pick apart the epistemics of the question; I wasn't trying to specifically condemn any one position, let alone any one poster.

that logically implies that Western governments are getting far too worked up about incel-inspired violence

Yes, as per the above, I would agree with that. Certainly, with respect to school shooters, I think it's such a specific behavior, shared by people from such disparate ideological backgrounds, and so far from what a vast majority of those ideologies would recommend even when they endorse some forms of terrorism (!), that trying to blame any particular movement for a given shooting is almost always a mistake.

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