Colin Wright on Cancel Culture

A very excellent Twitter thread was presented to us by the evolutionary biologist Colin Wright.

It dealt with cancel culture and how it affected him and his career in academia. In another place, he actually tweeted about how cancel culture is not just a thing that affects famous people and is a refelction of what we want to see on our airwaves, but ultimately is something that has victimized thousands (if not tens of thousands) of people that you have never heard of, and probably has actively discouraged many others from certain career paths or choices, knowing that they would not fit in and be potentially prevented from advancement because of their political beliefs.

The link itself (provided below) would be better to read because there are some attached images, but I will post the text here:

1/ What is cancel culture? A few months ago I was a postdoc at Penn State with an soon-expiring contract, job hunting for tenure track professorships.

I posted the following tweet citing the well-known "social contagion" hypothesis forwarded by Dr Lisa Littman's work on ROGD.

2/ Some people thought this was cancel-worthy & attempted to spread word of my "vile transphobia" to my colleagues, even tagging diversity organizations in my field.

"Colin is on the job market. I hope the EEB community is paying attention."

The goal was to limit my employment.

3/ Then some activist posted a "job" on the largest job board in my field, visited by hundreds if not thousands of biologists a day during hiring season, that read:

"Colin Wright is a Transphobe who supports Race Science."

People also told me they contacted hiring committees.

4/ Then, of course, came the absurd gaslighting.

"Heavens no! We aren't trying to prevent anyone from getting a job! We certainly don't want anyone blacklisted! Besides, a graduate student like Kevin Bird doesn't even have that kind of power!"

Yeah, right.🙄

5/ Students at Penn State told diversity committees my essays and tweets made them feel unsafe on campus.

Department chairs at other universities told me they liked my work, but that HR wouldn't approve hiring me due to my public views. Hiring me would be "too risky" they said.

6/ Don't let anyone tell you cancel culture isn't real. It is, and it's ferocious.

All these leftists saying that cancel culture isn't real, or that it only targets the powerful, are gaslighting you just like they did to me when they said they weren't trying to blacklist me.

7/ I ended up deleting the original tweet shortly after they attempted to cancel me, since people were spreading lies about what "social contagion" meant & what it was referring to.

I was concerned it may have been vague enough for people to poison the well regarding my motives.
8/ Looking back, I regret deleting the tweet out of fear that my intent would be intentionally twisted by the mob.

I think it's time to fix that. ⬇️
(he then reposts a Tweet on the massive increase in self-identifying transgender teens as a cause for concern)

9/ I should quickly mention that Penn State was not the problem. They never sanctioned me for my essays or tweets. They never caved in to student complaints.

The problem was how students & others outside the university conspired to trash my reputation to limit my job prospects.

Check out this unrolled thread here, complete with all of the pictures necessary to contextualize this:
https://threadreaders.com/thread/1281793002986336256

@Philokalia
Well, saying transgender kids should play their bio roles, a girl turning into a guy should play with girls. One problem, I see with that is with testosterone treatment it seems to me said girl would get bigger and stronger and therefore have an advantage playing girls. Obviously that is a generality because there are always the Serena Williams type who is naturally powerful and so it might not be THAT big an advantage for a bio girl to the stuffed with testosterone. Any female athlete will gain muscle mass or else they would not be an athlete.

But his argument about contagion and such seems valid considering the Swedish report of the 1500 % increase in trans kids in just ten years. That is 150% per year and it doesn't seem to me it is from kids taking drugs or some such, the seems to me to be a cultural aspect, 'hey, it's cool you want to be a girl Roger' so there would be a social clique associated with that.

On the other hand suppose there is and always has been an urge to trans, and we just didn't know it.

There are folks who refuse to believe gays clock in around 3 to 5 % of ANY population and there are those stupid christian pray away the gay types like our Vice President Pence and their ilk who consider being gay as a disease even though there are ALWAYS a percentage of gays in ANY society in ANY time frame, past, present and future.

THAT is much more of a real problem with those people considering to be gay as a disease rather than Colin saying trans kids should play their bio roles.

It seems to me his enemies are overplaying their hand when he made an academic argument, scientists make observations and opinions all the time but don't get put on blacklists.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I see he has some sci fi books, called the Power series, so far 3 volumes of some kind of dysfunctional near future, like 2027, but it looks like he missed out adding Covid to the affair.....Of course when he started writing that series, like 2017, nobody on Earth could have foreseen this pandemic, except Obama's advisors warned him we have to be on the lookout for the next pandemic but Trump killed that team, not wanting to deal with Covid on a national level which is what we really needed, leadership from the top, not this 'anyone who wants the test gets the test' and it will all go away by EASTER.
This is not leadership, this is abrogation of responsibility.

It's funny how they are whining now about a thing that has been around since human civilization began.

You say the wrong things, you suffer the consequences. Over time, we changed those consequences, and rightfully so, to no longer be "burn at the stake" or "hanging" to "i am not inviting that guy over for dinner next time."

In the 60's, 70's, 80's, whatever, in a democratic society you still couldn't say anything you wanted without consequences. You had to read the crowd. If you are invited at a dinner party and you aren't sure all the guests are racists, keep your damn racist thoughts for yourself or you'll be asked to leave. However, even if you stroke out with a group, there were still plenty of people who never heard of you and your views, willing to invite you into their clubs.


Aaaand this leads us to today. You are still suffering consequences for voicing your views just like before. The problem is if you're voicing those views online, they are for EVERYONE. Everyone sees just who you are and more people than before will all shun you at once.
Treat Twitter just like you would 5 people at a party you are invited at. You aren't sure how your views will go down? Keep them to yourself. Go to a private club filled with people who share your views.

Don't whine that you don't understand how society works.

Here is an excerpt from the Posting Guidelines:

Hate speech is not permitted. Content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity and serious disease or disability is forbidden.

(emphasis added)

@kazetnagorra said
Here is an excerpt from the Posting Guidelines:

Hate speech is not permitted. Content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity and serious disease or disability is forbidden.

(emphasis added)

Where was violence or hatred promoted against transgender people?

... Are you basically saying that transgender people are so fragile that merely quoting a a series of tweets about cancel culture from a person who criticized the prevailing trend of the mainstreaming of transgenderism when it may not be a fitting diagnosis will bruise them?

If this were the standard to employ to determine what constitutes hate speech, then every atheist in the whole Spirituality forum would be guilty of it.

@sonhouse said
@Philokalia
Well, saying transgender kids should play their bio roles, a girl turning into a guy should play with girls. One problem, I see with that is with testosterone treatment it seems to me said girl would get bigger and stronger and therefore have an advantage playing girls. Obviously that is a generality because there are always the Serena Williams type who is natur ...[text shortened]... t' and it will all go away by EASTER.
This is not leadership, this is abrogation of responsibility.

Oh, sure, we can discuss the concept of transgenderism and sexuality as well, but I was actually more interested in Colin Wright's take more in regards to cancel culture.

But this line jumped out at me:

There are folks who refuse to believe gays clock in around 3 to 5 % of ANY population and there are those stupid christian pray away the gay types like our Vice President Pence and their ilk who consider being gay as a disease even though there are ALWAYS a percentage of gays in ANY society in ANY time frame, past, present and future.

Sure, there will always be some people who experience same sex attraction or gender dysphoria.

The percentage of people who actually engage in it, and their attitudes towards that engagement, will vary wildly.

40, 50 years ago, there wasn't really a term for a gay person in Korean. Of course, there existed the clinical term of 'homosexual' directly translated over, but there weren't even curse words designed for LGBTQ people because the society generally thought of it as merely some generalized perversion and was referred to with the word 'pervert,' along with people who were into any sort of unconventional practices.

Likewise, I remember a conversation with a Persian friend about 10 years ago when then President of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, stated that no Iranians are gay. My friend was raised in the UK and generally has an outlook that is all in reference to the West, but said that he isn't really wrong...

This is because the Persian who experiences same-sex attraction simply engages in the activity, as he wishes, but never thinks of himself as gay necessarily, and will even proceed to get married and perhaps continue to have homosexual flings... But, again, only viewing this as a strange thing he does on the side, rather than identity. The concept of LGBTQ as an immutable identity that has to be reified into identityis fundamentally Western.

There is a great article by Jonathan McCormack out there on this topic where he even talks about a book that dealt with homosexuality in the Muslim world in regards to this.

I'll try to find it later.

@philokalia said
Where was violence or hatred promoted against transgender people?

... Are you basically saying that transgender people are so fragile that merely quoting a a series of tweets about cancel culture from a person who criticized the prevailing trend of the mainstreaming of transgenderism when it may not be a fitting diagnosis will bruise them?

If this wer ...[text shortened]... t constitutes hate speech, then every atheist in the whole Spirituality forum would be guilty of it.

Criticizing [...] transgenderism huh? Don't you mean "transphobic bigotry"?

@kazetnagorra said
Here is an excerpt from the Posting Guidelines:

Hate speech is not permitted. Content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity and serious disease or disability is forbidden.

(emphasis added)

Hate speech is not permitted. Content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity and serious disease or disability is forbidden.

Here... let me correct that for you.

@zahlanzi said
It's funny how they are whining now about a thing that has been around since human civilization began.

You say the wrong things, you suffer the consequences. Over time, we changed those consequences, and rightfully so, to no longer be "burn at the stake" or "hanging" to "i am not inviting that guy over for dinner next time."

In the 60's, 70's, 80's, whatever, in a de ...[text shortened]... illed with people who share your views.

Don't whine that you don't understand how society works.

(1) Well, yes, it was around forever.

Very famous people in history were openly gay.

King James I, of the King James Bible fame, was famous for his homosexuality, and his favorite lover, a page named Robert Carr that he eventually elevated to Knighthood, then to a Lordship, and even arranged for the forced divorce of another guy to give this guy the wife of his dreams (!!!) because Lord Carr apparently swung both ways, or at least did not believe that his primary identity was gay.

King James is said to have cried at the weddings of all of his lovers, and his court was full of likeminded men.

This is the early 17th century.

Nobody denies this; everybody knew this when people were better educated.

It is even said that the Puritans were very motivated partly because of this situation with King James I.

Christians simply do not believe that the practice of homosexuality is a net gain for society and do not want to see it endorsed or mainstreamed.

(2)

If you are invited at a dinner party and you aren't sure all the guests are racists, keep your damn racist thoughts for yourself or you'll be asked to leave. However, even if you stroke out with a group, there were still plenty of people who never heard of you and your views, willing to invite you into their clubs.

What if someone said "If you are at your work place and you are not sure that your boss approves of your sexual perversion, keep your dang perversion to yourself![/i]

This is literally illegal.

Perhaps some people would suggest that political thoughts should also be protected just as religious thoughts are protected.

Aaaand this leads us to today. You are still suffering consequences for voicing your views just like before. The problem is if you're voicing those views online, they are for EVERYONE. Everyone sees just who you are and more people than before will all shun you at once.

Something tells me that you would not have this opinion if Muslims and gays were the ones on the other end of the stick.

Why not equal protection for all?

Personally, I cant wait until they burn all historical scientific works because keeping them pays homage to "white supremacy". I'm going on social media later to start the movement.

Darn...it seems the seeds of my great movement are already being sown.

" Petiver wasn't unique. By examining scientific papers, correspondence between naturalists, and the records of slaving companies, historians are now seeing new connections between science and slavery and piecing together just how deeply intertwined they were. "The biggest surprise is, for a topic that has been ignored for so long, how much there was once I started digging," says Kathleen Murphy, a science historian at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo who's writing a book about the topic. She adds, "There's a tendency to think about the history of science in this—I don't want to say triumphant, but—progressive way, that it's always a force for good. We tend to forget the ways in which that isn't the case." "

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/historians-expose-early-scientists-debt-slave-trade

@philokalia said

Likewise, I remember a conversation with a Persian friend about 10 years ago when then President of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, stated that no Iranians are gay. My friend was raised in the UK and generally has an outlook that is all in reference to the West, but said that he isn't really wrong...

This is because the Persian who experiences same-sex attract ...[text shortened]... as an immutable identity that has to be reified into identityis fundamentally Western.

Of course the way we conceptualise our sexuality is socially constructed to a degree.

However, I find it difficult to believe that the Persian with same-sex attraction has a completely different experience of it from the experience I have as a gay Western man. He may have similar desires without having the same name for them.

The reasons he gets married may include a) the fact that same-sex activity carries heavy legal penalties in Iran, as in many Middle Eastern countries, so it needs to be hidden, and b) that there's a strong social pressure in Iran, as in many conservative societies, for people to marry and bear children.

I guess the real question is, does he desire his wife? Or does he fantasise about male lovers while having sex with her, cherish her companionship, nurture his children, and satisfy his actual sexual urges on the side? If the latter, then I think he's gay whether or not he consciously identifies as such. If the former, he's presumably bisexual, whether or not he identifies as such.

Fundamentally, "gay" is a term that describes desire, rather than the practice which often follows from that desire.

@zahlanzi said
And this leads us to today. You are still suffering consequences for voicing your views just like before. The problem is if you're voicing those views online, they are for EVERYONE. Everyone sees just who you are and more people than before will all shun you at once.
Treat Twitter just like you would 5 people at a party you are invited at. You aren't sure how your views will go down? Keep them to yourself. Go to a private club filled with people who share your views.

All very well, but there's an increasingly prominent discourse judging us for not expressing our views. The slogan "Silence is violence" is, precisely, an assertion that it is not enough to keep your views to yourself. You are expected to repeat the approved views, whether or not you actually agree with them. You can be chastised for diverting from the approved script by quite a small margin - for instance, if you don't think that positive discrimination is the most productive way of dealing with an agreed problem. The obvious consequence is lots of people publicly parroting views that they don't actually believe.

In any case, there have always been people who have expressed controversial views in public - journalists, writers and media personalities. In free societies people traditionally responded with robust debate, if they disagreed, rather than by shunning.

@teinosuke said
All very well, but there's an increasingly prominent discourse judging us for not expressing our views. You are expected to repeat the approved views, whether or not you actually agree with them. You can be chastised for diverting from the approved script by quite a small margin. The obvious consequence is lots of people publicly parroting views that they don't actually believe.

I'd add - this situation is not only problematic because people don't feel able to express what they actually think, nor even because it encourages everyone to reduce their thoughts and arguments to bumper sticker simplicity.

It's problematic in addition because it creates over-confidence among those who happen to share the views predominantly "approved" on social media; in the absence of evidence to the contrary, they assume that everyone, apart from a few eccentrics, agrees with them, and that therefore the cause is nearly won. This has led to disastrous complacency in many quarters. For instance, the gay rights movement, over fifty years, worked pretty hard to try and make homosexuality acceptable to most people - creating positive role models, devising positive media representations of gay life, arguing for socially acceptable goals, such as civil partnerships, rather than unacceptable ones such as trying to overthrow the traditional family (an early, misbegotten priority of the radical gay rights movement in the 1970s) or over-ambitious ones (going straight for marriage and adoption - which, however, followed after civil partnerships helped to shift public assumptions). The trans rights movement seems to have done none of these things; they have relied substantially, in the scant five years since trans rights emerged as a major issue of public discussion, on accusatory rhetoric. I inhabit a progressive milieu and almost all my friends are social liberals, avowedly anti-racist and pro-gay. Many of them, in private, have serious misgivings about the trans agenda; none of them feel able to voice these in public. I also have friends who think that identity politics is a really dangerous and counterproductive way of going about improving the situation of minorities, since its logical corollary is that majorities will gravitate to their own form of identity politics... particularly those who are not obviously privileged in economic terms. Again, these friends, who have always been supportive of minority rights, feel that they may be shouted down or ostracised if they express the conviction that the relevant groups are pursuing a counterproductive strategy.

These people, I emphasise, are mostly lifelong left-wingers and progressives. If they have qualms, how do you think centrists and swing voters feel? And of course, if you don't feel able to voice your opinions in public, you can voice them in private at the ballot box. I suspect that's how the populist right keeps winning elections.

@teinosuke said
All very well, but there's an increasingly prominent discourse judging us for not expressing our views. The slogan "Silence is violence" is, precisely, an assertion that it is not enough to keep your views to yourself. You are expected to repeat the approved views, whether or not you actually agree with them. You can be chastised for diverting from the approved script by qu ...[text shortened]... eties people traditionally responded with robust debate, if they disagreed, rather than by shunning.

I see you don't agree with Popper's paradox of tolerance.