Free Speech and the 1st Amendment...is of paramount importance. Without it, no other aspects of an open society, a democracy, can exist. Free speech enables us to question authority, to protest, to vet political candidates, to hold them accountable. Free speech enables us to become educated, to learn and teach, to have an open exchange of ideas, to challenge, to learn, to correct, and to engage.
I love the UK and EU people, and other nations and countries, but some of the laws restricting free speech they have are nuts. And beyond what is written in law, good or bad, is when people attack others, physically, doxxing them, trying to get them fired, sometimes succeeding, ruining careers, ruining marriages and relationships, ruining lives...over words. The problem is when people are more concerned with someone else's feelings, and in order to protect those feelings, facts and science are being silenced. The PC crowd, growing in volume and vehemence, are simply acting like idiots. We can't have a minority, silence the majority. We can't have facts being ignored, just to protect the hurt feelings of others. There is no law or assurance against being "offended" in life, nor should there be. Laws that protect free speech, are designed to protect potentially "offensive" speech, which is always subjective. We don't need laws to protect "unoffensive" speech. Saying "Good Morning" or "Have a nice day" does not need a law to protect those words or phrases. Its only the words that might offend someone else that need to be protected...by laws and by common sense.
Examples:
J. K. Rowling and Transphobic comments.
I'm not sure what all she said, or allegedly said, but she's been catching all sorts of flack. Good, great, fine. She stated her opinion on a sensitive topic, others fired back, she replied, her detractors responded, that's what conversation, even contentious discourse, is all about.
The issue of sex, gender, trans, gender fluid is complex. We all know that. My stance is gender roles are stupid, as are fashion restrictions, and people should be who they are, dress how they want, and no one should be discriminated against because of those choices.
However, lets say the pressure is so strong to stop using the term "trans-female" and it becomes a legal issue wherein its considered bigotry or harassment to differentiate between biological women and trans-women. People that underwent surgical procedures have to now be called "female" and its illegal to call them anything but...female. Continuing with this hypothetical, say the medical community can only write in a persons medical chart that said patient is "female". Females have a higher rate of osteoporosis compared to males. After a time, the CDC, the AMA (or whomever) puts out news articles and studies showing a substantial decrease in osteoporosis in "females". But, there is not a decrease of this disease in females. The stats are skewed because they are not allowed to mention that a certain percent of patients are not biological females, ergo less osteoporosis levels in the "female" population. This would be detrimental (and tragic) in the way the medical community educates, advises, treats and diagnoses women.
Sound dramatic? Not when you consider there is a strong movement in the UK to make it illegal to "discriminate" against trans-females by distinguishing them from biological (or cisgender) women. Given to this PC pressure, it would be illegal to call a trans-female a trans-female, and they could only be called...female.
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People of Color and Colored People.
All human beings, all races, all people have color to our flesh. Whatever hue, whatever tone, whatever shade...we *all* have "color". I'm not aware of anyone that is translucent, transparent or invisible. There is no difference between saying "People of Color" versus "Colored People" other than the arrangement or order of the words. None. Its just stupid.
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Race versus Ethnicity.
I've only recently come across the term "Latinx". What the hell does that even mean? Are we soon supposed to use the terms Asianx, Blackx, People of Colorx, Whitex, Indianx, etc?
Race is not the same as ethnicity. Everyone is accusing everyone else of being a "racist" these days. Seeing a Hispanic lady from the USA, being called a racist because of something she said to a Hispanic lady from Mexico is just...stupid. The word that may apply is bigotry. That's not interchangeable with being a racist.
The 3 main human races are Caucasoid, Mongoloids (including Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and American Indians, etc.), and Negroid. Khoisanoids or Capoids (Bushmen and Hottentots) and Pacific races (Australian aborigines, Polynesians, Melanesians, and Indonesians) may also be distinguished.
Which was then expanded to:
The world population can be divided into 4 major races, namely white/Caucasian, Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black, and Australoid.
Which was then expanded to:
The revised standards contain 5 minimum categories for race: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White. There are two categories for ethnicity: "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino.
Soon, some people might want to expand the above list to 9 "races". Then 37. Then 462. Then 7914 and on and on. I will stick with the original definition of 3 races, but which actually means nothing to me as there is really only one race....the human race.
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Hitler, Nazis and Jews.
Hitler was psycho. So were the Nazis. The Holocaust happened.
People say that 6 million Jews were gassed during WW2. That's not correct. The commonly accepted estimate is that roughly 6 million Jewish people were executed during WW2. However, they were not all sent to gas chambers. Unknown numbers were shot, hung, starved to death, worked to death, some froze to death..but all were murdered in innumerable horrific ways. However, if someone states this, if they point this out, they are accused of being a "Holocaust Denier" or called "Antisemitic". Instead, what they are...is educated, accurate, correct, right, spot on, and knowledgeable.
And on the topic of Antisemitism...that word too has become a way to try to stop any criticism of Israel, Zionism and the horrible mess going on in that part of the world. And those that use it in the context they usually do are...you guessed it...just stupid.
A "Semite" is a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including Jews and Arabs. The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East that are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, other small pockets, as well as in often large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe and Australasia. The most widely spoken Semitic languages today are (numbers given are for native speakers only) Arabic (300 million), Amharic (~22 million), Tigrinya (7 million), Hebrew (~5 million native), Tigre (~1.05 million), Aramaic (575,000 to 1 million largely Assyrian fluent speakers) and Maltese (483,000 speakers).
People also need to remember that WW2 was not about Hitler and Jewish people. It was also about Japan and Pearl Harbor. And Russia. It was about, over 30 countries and by some estimates over 85 million people that were killed. Hence why was called a World War.
And people should also remember that by some estimates pushing 100 million Native Americans (North, South and Central America) were killed or died of diseases over a few hundred years, brought on by Europeans invading those respective continents.
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Retarded.
I sometimes use the word "retarded". I am not, never have, and never would use the word in regards to those with Downs Syndrome. Never. However the PC idiots start frothing at the mouth if they hear the word. The problem with this is those people, the hyper PC people...are themselves "retarded".
Retarded: less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age.
The word, or variations of it, has many definitions and applications.
Flame "retardant".
Paint "retarder".
You can "retard" the gasoline to a carburetor.
You can "retard" the oxygen or acetylene on a welding torch.
(Learned the last two examples from my "mechanic-y-ish" husband.)
Enough. People have lost the point in all these debates, protests, social media diatribes, blog missives, the rants, the Cable news bobble-heads and news articles. The focus should be...education, infrastructure, healthcare, environmental issues...and equality. People have strayed off the path, lost their way, and are bogged down in stupid stuff that in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really even matter.
Egalitarianism is the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
This is a doctrine I push for, support, advocate for, and promote. I'm not going backwards where we spend *more* time and energy differentiating between races, sub categories of races, sexes, genders, sub sections of sexes and genders, ethnicity, sub sections of ethnicity, sub sections of biracial, or mixed race, semi-gender-fluid, bisexual, trisexual, pansexual, people who want an "X" at the end of their perceived specified ethnic/racial/sexual mix. Nope. Not going to happen.
The "left", progressives, Democrats, whatever... loathe and despise Trump and the "right", conservatives, Republicans, whatever...with their "alternate facts". As they should. And politically correct "alternate facts" that stem from the left are no better than those spewed by Trump and the Trumpians. Right is right. Accurate is accurate. Correct is correct. Science is science. Facts are facts. History is history. Geography is geography. I will stick with science and facts, and I don't care who it pisses off. I simply don't.
I'm Vanessa Chaland.
I'm politically incorrect, and don't give a fuck.
I'm also not proofreading this...and on that point, I still don't give a fuck.
I approve this message, I am unanimous in it...
And I'm not wearing pants. :)
