Milk-Drops
Member
- Apr 10, 2012
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Thank you for providing this, this is mostly what I wanted to see because we can talk hypotheticals all day, but without referencing specific laws we can go anywhere.I'll be quoting from this information update from the Canadian government.
There are two laws being used in tandem. This first is called OHRC.
The second is BIll C-16.
And finally,
We should recall that this is Canadian law and we were talking about US law originally with the 2 congress personnel and then about the election of Donald Trump. Canada and the US differ mainly on the stances on free speech. The US is one of the most protective when it comes to free speech and harassment laws, hate speech laws, and discrimination laws are very hard to enforce due to how US law demands that the injured party demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the hate crime, harassment, or discrimination took place.
Saying all you have to do is prove the person is harassing you is a large burden of proof. To date no one has been prosecuted under bill C-16 and the bill was ratified 7 years ago. Its no easy feat demonstrating harassment.There is law which can be used to compel compliance at the risk of criminal offence. All you have to do is prove the person is harassing you. I agree that harassment is a real thing that really happens. There really are hateful people acting out, and it is not acceptable. Harassed people do need to be protected. I don't think even the strongest opponents of compulsary use of preferred pronuns would agree with harassment.
As I mentioned before, you seem to want to make a protection for trans and gender non conforming people about you. The situation would have to be you finding a trans person, declaring to them you will not use their pronouns, purposely call attention to you not using their pronouns, and repeated behavior.But, is it really harassment that I may choose not to participate in your ideals about yourself?
That would fall under harassment in that situation. If you did it in passing or by accident it wouldn't be harassment. Harassment usually demands that you are doing a behavior on purpose or a grand gesture where you call attention to your behavior so its known that its because of a person's identity. Jordan Peterson who got his first notoriety in online political spaces was a large opponent to the bill and was not charged with anything related to harassment. You are even using some of his talking points verbatim. This is not a knock on Peterson because I remember when he started getting attention and I watched his youtube channel and several of his lectures. I fell away when he started becoming more of a political talking head. The man is clearly intelligent, but he was wrong about Bill C-16 and many called him out for it. He ended up losing his professorship not due to harassment, but due to his misrepresentation of the bill itself and causing multiple protests at the University of Toronto.
I had a feeling when you were using Dr. Peterson's arguments this would go this way. As I already mentioned I'm not hating on the man. Some context for the video is that Dr. Peterson misunderstood the bill because he is not compelled to do anything unless he puts himself into a situation where he would call attention to the person. His argument is so far in the abstract that it requires a perfect storm of situations to happen to get to a point where Peterson would get accused of legal harassment.I mean, if you come to me in a friendly way, I might choose to participate out of care for you, especially since the way a person wants to be identified isn't a moral issue.
But, I don't want to be compelled to. You can see this happening in the Jordan Peterson video that propelled him into the spotlight, where he's arguing with all those young people at a university. Even staunch advocates for lgbt protections expressed some embarassment for how the students behaved, shouting Jordan down and getting in to personal attacks.
But, in one particilar part, One of the kids asks if someone politely requested him to use their preferred pronouns, would he, and he replied, "I'd consider it, though it'd depend on the manner in which it was asked" and the kid immediately shouted back, "So, no!?!?" Becasue Jordan did not conform immedately, without reservation, the kid concluded that he was being stubborn. The comment was framed as a question, but in his mind he was thinking of it as an ultimatum; if you don't comply, you're bad.
I think this is an area where the harassment can work in the opposite direction. Sometimes these nonconforming people are dressed in a way the brings confusion, like a woman dressed like a man and then getting upset when someone uses a male pronoun for her.
Lets also remember that this video is of a protest with young college students. Demonstrations are a very bad place to have thoughtful dialogue due to emotions running high and large groups egging each other on. Its basically chaos. Not to mention Peterson is talking to young kids who don't have much power on their own to do anything to him.
Peterson comes out looking good because he is older, well spoken, and kept a level head. The college students were amped up and full of intention, but don't have the nuance or experience to fully argue their point, nor are in the proper headspace to be receptive.
I'm very well aware of sjw cringe compilations. I remember when those videos got a lot of attention on the youtube algorithm from 2014 to 2017. Its similar to other cringe compilations where the humor is we are seeing videos specifically of people (usually young people) being cartoonish. Karens became the big ones after that. Left wing freak out vids and right wing freak out vids. Any demographic is going to have jerks.And, then there's people who sometimes want to be called he and sometimes want to be called she, and then at times some other thing. If you're not familiar with the outrage some people express at being misgendered, sometimes from the first interaction, you can try a search for it on youtube, as there are many examples. If the offender doesn't immediately apologize for the mistake, the nonconformist gets offended and then it becomes a domination game where, if you don't apologize, then you could be cited for harassment.
The main takeaway is that no has been prosecuted under c-16. Probably because its very expensive to sue someone, let alone sue someone for harassment. Unless your case is very solid lawyers won't waste their time unless you throw a lot of money at them.
I mean, consider this quote from the article:
The obvious implication here is that choosing not to adhere to a person's demands about what they should be called could amount to incitement of genocide. I mean, rationally, no of course it is not, but when so much of the discussion is based on the way a person feels about themselves, it is not a streth for emotional people to argue that they are victims of genocide. It would be foolish of them, but the damage is already done when other people identify with those feelings and themselves start promoting the genocide argument. The word evokes big feelings.
You don't win court cases on feelings. You need to demonstrate that harassment took place. Even in the court of public opinion the person getting "harassed" has to be somewhat noteworthy.
For example, Dave Chapele made some trans jokes and it upset some people. It didn't hurt his career, his specials on Netflix were very sucessful. Its like I said in an earlier post the only people who can cancle you are your audience. Trans people were a very small part of Chapel's audience. It didn't matter.
ABC was clarifying that even though many were offended by what Rowling said, it wasn't illegal. She still ended up causing a lot of damage to her own fanbase because she kept doubling down and eventually may have actually gotten into legal trouble recently for spreading misinformation about an olympic athlete based on rumors. She still tweets, but she hasn't had anything happen to her as far as we know now.There was a huge kerfuffle over the years because of J.K. Rowlings comments on trans, to the point that abc news had to release a statement assuring the world that J.K. would not be arrested for her comments. Because, that many people were calling for her to be arrested, with abc itself needing to retract some of their comments about her, because they'd hopped on the outrage bandwagon.
So, yeah, the trans community has suffered a lot over the decades and that is not right, but now they are going the opposite way.
No one has been proecuted under the law you cited thought. Its been around for 7 years.