Gavin McInnes Makes a Great Argument Against Censorship

By | August 22, 2014

Last week, performance artist, professional agitator, and
Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes took to Thought
Catalog
—a publication known for and millennial musings—to speculate about how “transphobia
is perfectly natural.” People were outraged. People demanded the
piece be removed. Thought Catalog responded by slapping on
a big old trigger warning—if you go to the , you’ll get a notice that “the article
you are trying to read has been reported by the community as
hateful or abusive content” before being allowed to proceed—but
like hell it was going to take down such spectacular
clickbait. 

And it shouldn’t. A publication can choose what to publish, but
it shouldn’t pull content that’s already been published, now matter
how much outrage that content provokes. It’s a matter of
accountability. Let McInnes and Thought Catalog stand
by the ideas they chose to espouse. In fact, , McInnes inadvertantly
provides the perfect argument against social
censorship:

Go ahead and Google around or plop the link to his piece into
Twitter. The large majority of the reactions he’s gotten have been
some combination of anger or ridicule. His argument hasn’t gotten
any traction. On the contrary: it’s gotten a lot of people talking
about transphobia and how mainstream it can still be. His piece has
been undone by the reaction to it. That’s the way it’s supposed to
work. If we were to forbid him from expressing his opinions, we
wouldn’t know how dopey he and they are.

Some of the sillier corners of the online
social-justice-warriorsphere have , because: hate speech!
And sure, McInnes’ piece was an angry, vulgar,
deliberately-offensive, and only semi-coherent mess. But nobody
has to read it. Nobody has to visit Thought
Catalog
. You could have the same lack of exposure to the
article that its disappearance would accomplish by simply not
exposing yourself to the article. The only difference would be that
no one else could be exposed to it either. People couldn’t judge
for themselves whether this was an insightful social critique or
the ranting of a sad, silly man. (In case it needs to be said, I
vote for the latter.)

“It’s not the media’s job to use its iron fist to enforce social
norms in our society,” . Nor should progressives (or anyone) want it to be!
At least not if they care more about achieving actual change than
getting points for saying the right thing on Twitter. Shifts in
thought and social stigma occur not by those with the “wrong” ideas
keeping quiet while those with the right ideas sit around
congratulating themselves. If the wrong ideas really are that
abhorrent, we shouldn’t need to hide them to discredit them.

Category: Liberty
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