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   Ken White (popehat@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 14-Apr-2023 15:39:07 JST Ken White

   I continue to be mystified by the sentiment that being a First Amendment advocate means *socially* tolerating people I find obnoxious or contemptible. I keep getting “what kind of free speech advocate blocks people?” The kind who doesn’t deal with assholes when not professionally compelled to do so. The First Amendment isn’t a hair shirt.

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     Ken White (popehat@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 14-Apr-2023 15:39:44 JST Ken White

     in reply to

     /3 Sometimes it seems like some sort of stylized cult of manhood, where to be a Real Man you have to constantly surround yourself with people you find completely insufferable. Leave me out of that one Charles Atlas. And it’s not like they really mean it. The dudes wanting me to sit through their right-wing bullshit are not seeking out dialogue with purple-haired Che-shirt wearers screaming at them that meat is murder. Spare me the pretense.

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     Ken White (popehat@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 14-Apr-2023 15:39:44 JST Ken White

     in reply to

     /4 This kind of goes to my whole quarrel with the “complain to kids about cancel culture” approach. The free speech bargain — leave the government out of your beefs and solve them yourselves with speech and association — relies on me feeling free to say when I think people are assholes and shun them. A society that tries to sell me on “oh assholes have a maximum right to speak but we are going to enact a quasi-Victorian set of social rules about how you react” is unappealing to me.

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     Ken White (popehat@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 14-Apr-2023 15:39:45 JST Ken White

     in reply to

     /2 I mean most of these people like to imagine that they’re fuckin Galileo tugging at the hem of my robe asking me to consider their alternative to geocentricity in the name of Science. Guys, that’s just not you. I’ve got plenty of people already yelling at me about how I’m a cuck or wanting to lecture me about whether or not women have penises or about how the incorporation doctrine is wrong. If I need input on those subjects I’m all set, thanks.