If you think you’re tolerant and that you defend freedom of speech just because you claim that it’s fine for someone to declare themselves “trans-species” or for a man to be able to marry a tree, but at the same time you demand anti-discrimination laws, you are mistaken. You are far from being tolerant.
Defending freedom of speech and being tolerant involves, for example, if you are a homosexual, not asking for punishment or fines for those who think your sexual orientation is deviant. Being tolerant involves recognizing the rights and freedoms, including the freedom of speech, of those who do not share your own values or don’t approve of your lifestyle.
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When it comes to hypocritically extolling the virtues of tolerance and falsely presenting themselves as defenders of free speech, collectivist feminists are true experts. They claim that they fight to liberate and empower women, but any time a woman dares to say something that bothers them, they try to censor her in hordes.
Last week, I published a video in which I spoke of “the tyranny of collectivist feminism.” Naturally, the video was online for less than one day because the social medium in which I had published it decided to delete my account due to “massive complaints” about my viewpoint. The feminists who argue that I’m wrong and that they want to establish no kind of tyranny managed to remove my video from the air simply because they didn’t like it.
This incident is a small sample of feminists’ great intolerance and their constant struggle against freedom of speech. Recently, a Mexican singer called Gerardo Ortiz was arrested for “advocating crime.” The arrest warrant was issued because hundreds of women accused Ortiz on social media of “promoting femicide” in one of his music videos. Both Ortiz and the video’s producer were found guilty and even the property in which the scenes were filmed is under the authority’s custody.
The “crime” in question is Ortiz’s thespian assassination of two fictional characters. In the video, the singer finds his couple with another man and murders both of them. The question that arises is: how far will this nonsense go?
In a few years time, all screenwriters will have to modify their scripts so that no woman is murdered in a film. From now own, they can only kill men. If they refuse to follow this rule, screenwriters will be accused of “promoting femicide” and end up in jail.
The degree of censorship and false victimization which collectivist feminists use to advance their agenda is such that, on many occasions, it results comical. In 2014, Brown University held a debate between a feminist and another woman who questioned the existence of a “rape culture” on US college campuses. In order to carry out the event, Brown had to create a “safe space,” a room where women who felt offended could recover from their shock by resorting to coloring books, relaxing music, blankets, pillows, and videos showing puppies at play. They could also receive attention from specialists in treating trauma.
I could devote much more ink to cite examples of how feminists are incapable of tolerating opinions contrary to their own. However, I shouldn’t mention them alone since intolerance is, in general, a characteristic of the left. Thanks to cultural Marxism, progressives have won the battle of ideas, so that their opinions are widely accepted in society. In truth, the left faces very little censorship, and it’s fine that leftists can speak freely. What is not right is for lefties to be able to express themselves in liberty while they attempt to silence others who think differently. Today, the bien pensant leftist roams the world thinking that he is a god-like figure with the moral authority to suppress any opinion he dislikes.
The left fights not for freedom of speech, but for the freedom for their ideas alone to be heard. The ideas of others are indifferent to leftists. They even engage in legal warfare so that whoever proclaims a contrary point of view is duly punished. Noam Chomsky once said that even Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech, but only for the ideas of which he approved. This is exactly how the modern left thinks. They once suffered under censorship; now, they try to censor their ideological enemies.
Tolerance and the struggle for liberty are some of the causes that leftists falsely claims as their own. Feminists shouldn’t only defend their own idea of the good life, but rather the freedom of each woman to do what she wants, even if someone decides to be an obedient housewife. Progressives who claim to defend freedom of speech shouldn’t demand anti-discrimination laws.
If leftists are allowed to penalize discrimination in a restaurant, tomorrow they will be able to determine whom we allow into our homes. Only men will ever die in the movies. If, for any reason, you reject a person who belongs to a minority in any type of relationship, you will go to jail. Your children will be forced to speak in what Hugo Chávez called “inclusive language.”
Censorship is dangerous and it has to be stopped. It isn’t ethical to defend someone who says exactly what you think. Rather, it’s correct to defend anyone’s right to speak his own mind, no matter how offensive or unacceptable you consider his views.