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I completely agree that you (and most mods here) strongly value free speech. I think that explains why their moderation serves two masters, rather than the single foundation that they're supposed to serve.
If the purpose of TheMotte was to be a place where the English and the Irish can have peaceful discussions, there's no reason to let the English call the Irish "Micks". It's completely unnecessary to discuss any meaningful ideas and only serves to increase tension. If you do allow it then you are sacrificing your purported mission for some other value (e.g. free speech). If you start with 80% English and two years later you have 95% English I think it would be fair to ask why you're still letting the English call the Irish "Micks" when you say you want to encourage peaceful discussion.
Free Speech is cool. There are other communities that prioritize free speech and I have nothing against them. But in this community our purported foundation is not "Free Speech", so "I strongly value free speech" is not a valid justification for a moderation decision.
Given that our terminal value is purportedly fixed, Free Speech is merely one tool to achieve it, so I ask: how is this specific usage of Free Speech (allowing people to use slurs) helping us achieve our terminal value?
I feel like your thought experiment is overly simplistic.
The members of the Motte consist of dozens of overlapping in-and-out groups. There are some sections of society, most notable the progressive liberals in the US, who take umbrage with any effort to define them and their ideology with a single moniker. Think of how Woke went from an ingroup identifier, to a pejorative. Or how they fought a battle to declaim being Social Justice Warriors, which was an acceptable if hyperbolic term once. Or the claims that CRT doesn't exist, or can't be defined, though their ideological opponents can easily point to relatively well defined behaviors that it constitutes and legislate against it.
At the end of the day, people don't even agree on what can be a slur. And others attempt to chill the debate to the freezing point with linguistic prescriptivism, including by making entirely benign words suddenly gain negative connotation overnight.
Since some can and will abuse their control over language to make certain classes of discussion unacceptable (look at why we left Reddit in the first place), I am strongly against letting that process take root here. That is entirely in keeping with the Foundation, given that some demand policing of language to the degree that other groups are forced away. It's all about striking a balance.
When avoiding a derogatory term makes discussion more difficult you will have a leg to stand on. “Tranny” doesn’t, yet you insist on sheltering under free speech.
So I ask: how is this specific usage of Free Speech (allowing people to say “tranny”) helping us achieve our terminal value?
Yes, it takes judgement to decide what speech to allow. But here’s a simple heuristic:
If a word drives some people away and is unnecessary for communicating ideas, then modding its usage helps one aspect of the foundation and doesn’t hurt the other.
“Tranny” drives away certain perspectives and makes no ideas easier to communicate. So how is allowing it helping achieve the foundation?
It is a regrettable aspect of modernity that people can and will take umbrage to just about any word, and we had to come up with the Euphemism Treadmill to describe the process occurring so rapidly that people with good intentions who aren't precisely up to date with what's in vogue, are left bemused when attacked for using what they remember as a benign term. "Wait, I thought they wanted us to call them Negroes?" A bemused old lady says as she's heckled outside a grocery story. "But what do you mean, Colored People is bad? Isn't that the same thing as People of Color??" A confused activist says as he's actively being canceled.
It is not a myth that some people object to the use of the word "mother" instead of "birthing person", or the word "retard" instead of "mentally handicapped" (and wouldn't you know it, some people even find the latter or merely "disabled" bad), even if you call someone with clinically diagnosed mental retardation a retard instead of trying to imply your opponents are so.
My rebuttal is that such a level of word and tone-policing also drives away people who prefer free speech, or at least those who are dismayed by the Treadmill sweeping them off their feet. It is not a costless tradeoff as you imply.
Tranny might well be offensive to the majority of forum users (I don't think so, but it certainly is to a large fraction). It is, however, a word that can be applied precisely to the same set of people who can be more politely called trans or transfolk. I resent every linguistic imposition placed on me, regardless of whether I want to use the term, and as you can see, there are plenty of people who wish to use it. Trans people are also, despite their overrepresentation in online discourse, a very small minority in absolute terms.
But I am not interested in litigating every word anyone can potentially object to, because there are thousands of them. The matter has been internally discussed within the mod team, and so far, the closest we have to a consensus is:
This is not an official rule because it isn't an official rule. If explicit moderation guidelines emerge that rule out anything that a relatively well-defined set of the mods or users consider a slur, no matter the rest of the comment, I will enforce it in my remit as a mod. Until then, you are welcome to advocate for your stance, to the extent that I have some leeway to interpret the Foundation, I happen to disagree and will personally not moderate on that basis alone until the mod consensus says I should. Or we have a formal rule to that effect.
*formulated by the ever-eloquent @FCfromSSC, and personally endorsed by at least me and @raggedyanthem, but as I stress, not a binding declaration or even outright consensus.
It's not costless, but is absolutely a requirement for hosting a space with diverse viewpoints that people treat each other politely. It's a contradiction to want a place with diverse viewpoints, but also a place that wants to accommodate Englishmen who just can't help themselves when they see an Irishman.
Why yes, what counts as a weapon isn't a well-defined problem. I'm sure even Stephen Hawking could assault you, by the legal definition, if only by hawking a lob of phlegm in your general direction.
Consider me the equivalent of a Second Amendment advocate who is OK with concealed carry of pistols on public grounds, but not the private ownership of nuclear weapons.
No matter what you say or do, a non-zero number of people will consider it hostile. Inaction is no shield, wasn't "silence is violence" a popular shibboleth for a bit?
This is still a matter of active debate within the mods, so I am ready to reverse my stance and swallow my minor discontent if necessary. But everything we do is subjective, unavoidably so, and I'm trying to find a way of moderating things that isn't actively contradictory or against the way it was done before.
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What's your assessment of the word "Homophobe"?
Bad word. "Doesn't like gay people" communicates the exact same thing but with less heat.
Why not "homosexual-critical", or some other more neutral construction? Do you think most "homophobes" don't like gay people as people, as opposed to objecting to some action or aspect common within the gay community?
Should we ban the use of "homophobe" here? After all, you claim that banning such words is "absolutely a requirement for hosting a space with diverse viewpoints that treat each other politely".
It’s doesn’t matter what I think. “The group of people who don’t like gay people” is a valid set of people to talk about. Referencing that group is allowed, and people are welcome to argue how large it is.
Referencing that group in a deliberately inflammatory way should not be allowed.
I’m sure there are awkward edge cases you can catch me up with, but the existence of edge cases doesn’t justify ignoring the non-edge cases.
“Tranny” exists as an inflammatory way to say “transgender person”. It is not an edge case and not defensible.
The people who use it are using it to demonstrate their disdain for transpeople which is not “writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion”.
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Do you think "nigger" or "tranny" are words that "people don't agree can be slurs"?
Declaring "tranny" to be a slur feels like something recent and artificial, though admittedly I'm not a linguist, and it's been a while since I hung out with the LGBT crowd.
It's the euphemism treadmill. In a society that values agreeable politeness, any term used to describe a undesirable concept will sooner or later come to be seen as a slur. What do you call a cripple nowadays? I honestly lost track.
Was "tranny" ever a neutral way to call a transsexual (compare and contrast, btw)/transgender person, like "cripple" was for people with disabilities?
My standards are fairly simple I think - if it isn't a word my grandma would have used when trying to be polite, it is not acceptable for a polite discussion. This allows words like "colored" or "cripple", but not "nigger", "tranny" or "faggot".
Tranny was very much a neutral word, in the vein of Jap for Japanese we still see for arborists casually referring to Jap Maples. It's a natural diminutive.
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