A Place to Argue about Political Correctness & Cancel Culture

itchy

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You have to be pretty militantly anti-religious to rebrand the nation's first YWCA into "YW" to expunge any potential trace of its (now apparently evil) founding mission. I guess they did that in 2012 - hadn't realized. You have to be quite the enormous di** to do that - it just feels petty and punitive.

And sure enough, a skip over to its website suggests this organization is run by the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi staffers. This is the insanity that results when you replace religion and any sense of the infinite with unhinged flavor-of-the-month political gripes as your moral compass. *shiver*

(end rant)
 
It's the War on Christmas 2: Electric Boogaloo. Just one step closer to Shania Law taking over our good, Christian country and turning our good, Christian frogs gay.

Maybe even Northeastern University will become a secular school and shun its YMCA roots! One thing leads to another, and they might even start admitting women!!
 
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You have to be pretty militantly anti-religious to rebrand the nation's first YWCA into "YW" to expunge any potential trace of its (now apparently evil) founding mission. I guess they did that in 2012 - hadn't realized. You have to be quite the enormous di** to do that - it just feels petty and punitive.

And sure enough, a skip over to its website suggests this organization is run by the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi staffers. This is the insanity that results when you replace religion and any sense of the infinite with unhinged flavor-of-the-month political gripes as your moral compass. *shiver*

(end rant)
I think most people are familiar with YMCA and YWCA and know their respective origins as storied gay bathhouses.
 
You have to be pretty militantly anti-religious to rebrand the nation's first YWCA into "YW" to expunge any potential trace of its (now apparently evil) founding mission. I guess they did that in 2012 - hadn't realized. You have to be quite the enormous di** to do that - it just feels petty and punitive.

And sure enough, a skip over to its website suggests this organization is run by the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi staffers. This is the insanity that results when you replace religion and any sense of the infinite with unhinged flavor-of-the-month political gripes as your moral compass. *shiver*

(end rant)


Who would have guessed that our first female member would be Paula White?

Also, ‘Nancy Pelosi staffer’ isn’t really the insult that you think it is.
 
Sorry, Robin D'Angelo - bless me for I have sinned in criticizing my Robespierrean superiors. May they live forever - or not, as they know anything going back more than 5 minutes in history is probably morally reprehensible.
 
Sorry, Robin D'Angelo - bless me for I have sinned in criticizing my Robespierrean superiors. May they live forever - or not, as they know anything going back more than 5 minutes in history is probably morally reprehensible.

:sick:
 
When did Harvard adopt and drop "pro Cristo et Ecclesiam" ?

I am of mixed sentiments on YWCA. If they are no longer Christian, we can consider that separately from whether the CA is a question of ancestory or false advertising?

As an idealist, I generally lament when institutions shed their founding identity. I wish Boston College were more Catholic and Brandeis were more Jewish, BU more Methodist, and Tufts were more Universalist.
 
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Gunna guess it's something to do with the president's twitter getting banned and the conservative social media platform Parler getting taken off the app stores.
 
Can private media be required to do free speech, or is the freedom to found new tech/media sufficient?

Who, if anyone should cancel anything?
 
Oh good. I'll go!

As I've mentioned to many of you before, I currently live in Malaysia so I often feel like I'm visiting a very, very, very familiar foreign country whenever I visit home. I'd argue that I kind of fit in here, but not quite. When I'm back in Mass, I kind of fit in, but not quite.

But I digress. I think that political correctness and "cancel culture" can be problematic, but not just because a bunch of "liberal snowflakes" get their panties in a bunch because you misgendered Ru-Paul, but because the US is such individualistic country, it's hard to know what the "rules" are.

Here in Malaysia, the government has tight rules on speech in the media, in public and online. I know there are a few things that I can't write on my facebook page - not because someone will "check my privilege" but because I could, theoretically, get pinched by the local police. You could get arrested for making a facebook post that criticizes religions (especially Islam), racist comments, positive comments about Israel or communism or promoting homosexuality.

And yes, those restrictions are archaic and unfortunate, but at least Malaysians "know the rules," so to speak.

The US, for our part, is much more individualistic and freedom of speech is guaranteed, but that has opened the door for individual corporations to control public speech. Misgender someone at work, that's a firing. Support a conservative candidate (these days), that's a firing. Talk negatively about the military in the media, and watch the response.

So yes, I'd argue that, to a certain extent, "cancel culture" is real and we should be weary of it. I don't necessarily think that cancel culture is all bad - I think we can agree that if the CEO of NIKE came out with a Nazi t-shirt, we'd all want to boycott their products. That's fine. But from what I see on the left AND the right, is a certain hypersensitivity towards certain individual topics and that makes it harder to have important discussions.

Even with Malaysia's restrictions on free speech, I've had far more interesting conversations on race, immigrations or other social issues here than I ever did living and working in Cambridge or Billerica. That's because the people I was talking weren't looking for one strangely worded sentence and trying to find ways that it offends them. Truth be told, I find myself biting my tongue more often when I'm in the US than when I'm Malaysia, and that's unfortunate.
 
Can private media be required to do free speech

Corporations are people, and therefore are free to do whatever they want.

I think we can agree that if the CEO of NIKE came out with a Nazi t-shirt, we'd all want to boycott their products.

Are you talking about ArchBoston posters or Americans as the "we"? In the case of the latter, I really don't think the response would be as unified as you think.
 
Corporations are people, and therefore are free to do whatever they want.



Are you talking about ArchBoston posters or Americans as the "we"? In the case of the latter, I really don't think the response would be as unified as you think.

I think that if a CEO came out as an actual Nazi, most people in the US would demand he step down or most people would boycott.
 
A board of directors would have that CEO out on his ass pretty damn quickly.
 
I think that if a CEO came out as an actual Nazi, most people in the US would demand he step down or most people would boycott.

Most? Yeah probably, but at least 20 million people* would actively rally behind his right to be a Nazi and at least another 50-100 million would quietly think that Nike overreacted by firing him and resent the majority who spoke out against him for being oversensitive and intolerant of different viewpoints.

*Of that 20 million, only 5 million (if that) are openly KKK/neo-Nazi members or sympathizers. The other 15 million are free speech advocates who believe that no one should ever be fired from their job for expressing a controversial opinion.
 
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The other 15 million are free speech advocates who believe that no one should ever be fired from their job for expressing a controversial opinion.

Who gets to define what constitutes a "controversial" opinion?

Society has come a long way from "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" to "You better not say anything I disagree with or I'll mount a social media campaign to destroy your life as much as possible". The arc of the moral universe bending towards justice is truly a wonder to behold.
 
Who gets to define what constitutes a "controversial" opinion?

The mob. As it has always been. It's just that the mob is now somewhat disconnected from the elites. "Cancel Culture" isn't anything new. All societies have norms of behavior and speech, the violation of which will get a violator shunned by society. Social media and revisionist understandings of history and sociology have changed the social enforcement mechanisms and the moré violations that'll get a person shunned.

Easy to forget that the existing free-speech maximalism that we prescribe to in the US today was only codified in the post-WWII era. As federal courts applied the Bill of Rights to states the First Amendment's Speech & Expression provisions came along for the ride. Free speech was severely restricted, not just by private actors, but by state governments well into the 1960s and 1970s.
 
The whole term "cancel culture" should be cancelled. It's a ridiculous notion that everything should always be set in stone. If a business changes behavior or branding to embrace a changing market, that's just smart PR. In the case in question here, was there a boycott of the YWCA forcing them to drop the CA? Or did they, in their strategic planning, realize that it no longer matched their overall goals and mission? Either way, what difference does it make? Can a Christian no longer avail themselves of the services provided at the Y? No. Everybody should piss off, then, and work out some of their frustrations at the Y gym.
 

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