She's A Despicable, Man-Bashing Asshole -- Whose Speech Should Be Free
To maintain a healthy society -- a healthy democracy -- ugly speech needs to remain free. It's only when the ugliness is voiced is there a chance to challenge and debate it.
A London woman, Bahar Mustafa, a student diversity officer at Goldsmiths, University of London, has been charged by police for sending threatening communication for her disgusting tweet, #killallwhitemen.
But I think it's pretty obvious that this was anything but a meaningful threat. I think it's valuable to know what this woman thinks -- especially because a lot of people probably don't know and have a hard time believing this sort of hatred toward men exists (of course, in the name of "equal rights").
Jessica Elgot writes in The Guardian:
Mustafa was initially accused of racism for asking white men not to attend a students' union meeting intended for ethnic minority women and non-binary attendees.She then became embroiled in a separate row, accused of using the hashtag #killallwhitemen on her Twitter account, which has since been deleted.
A Met police spokesman said in a statement: "A woman interviewed under caution regarding a complaint of racially motivated malicious communication made on a social media network has been summonsed to court."
Mustafa is neither an employee of Goldsmiths nor a student, but an employee of the independent students' union, elected by union members.
Mustafa remained in her position as welfare and diversity officer after a petition for a motion of no confidence fell short of the 3% of union members required to trigger a poll.
After the furore, Mustafa denied that her initial request for white men to stay away from a union meeting was racist or sexist, and said she had received rape and death threats.
via @DJGrothe
"Non-binary?" Dare I ask what that means?
Conan the Grammarian at October 7, 2015 1:01 PM
"Non-binary" refers to gender issues. Gender activists claim that it's more than male and female, that whole spectrum of genders exist. I think that's politically correct bushwa and pretty much fodder for drama queens, but that's what it refers to. . .
Keith Glass at October 7, 2015 1:25 PM
"But I think it's pretty obvious that this was anything but a meaningful threat. "
Ok. Now tweet "Kill all black women" and see what happens.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at October 7, 2015 3:04 PM
Well, this reminds me of a joke:
American tourist in Mexico: I demand my Miranda rights!
Mexican cop: Oh, we know of your Miranda. But in this country, Miranda wears a funny hat and dances on tables.
While I don't disagree with your assessment of letting her reap the harvest of her words, she does live in Ye Olde England, were free speech isn't all that.
I'm going to guess about something, but I think it is a safe guess: she would applaud such an arrest had some dirty cis white male had tweeted #KillAllWomen. Ms. Mustafa, let me introduce you to Mr. Petard and his hoist. Some assembly required.
I R A Darth Aggie at October 7, 2015 3:32 PM
"Gender activists claim that it's more than male and female, that whole spectrum of genders exist. I think that's politically correct bushwa and pretty much fodder for drama queens, but that's what it refers to...
Not a "gender activist" here, but gender is NOT binary. Here's an explanation: be sure to follow the link.
Johns Hopkins and other hospitals have long been forced to deal with the spectre of children born with more of less than the poliically-correct (!) number of genitals.
Radwaste at October 7, 2015 9:50 PM
Gog: "Kill All Black Women"
Yep, I agree. I've never heard of this woman before, so, I don't know much about her, or even about this story.
But, I suspect that it is that word "kill" that is causing the problem.
Sorry, Amy, but, I will disagree with you on this. This is NOT a freedom of speech issue. Joking or not, tweeting a "threat" message is something that should NOT be dismissed.
Now, if she had tweeted something like "White men suck" or "White men are evil" I'd be okay with it. But, she did include the word "kill."
Just like that asshole who tweeted George Zimmerman's home address (got the wrong George Zimmerman BTW); was she hoping that someone would follow through?
You can bet that if I were to serve on a jury for this case I would be looking at all her previous actions/words to see how much she wanted follow up action on that "kill."
Oh, and she is a "diversity officer"? Yep, that sounds about right.
charles at October 8, 2015 5:57 AM
Let me pose a question here. This sort of abridgment of civil rights is one that is widely advocated when it comes to my particular identity group -- people like me (white hetero male) are held to be the source of most of society's problems, and lots of people like Mustafa are working to see to it that I get second-class citizenship, or worse. So if I stand up for Mustafa's rights, I am standing up for someone who is working diligently to abridge my rights. At what point do I cross over from virtuous to chump? At what point do I say, "these weapons are effective, and if the other side is willing to deploy them, I'm a fool if I don't do the same"? (That's assuming their weapons are in fact effective, a point which I'm not ready to concede, but assuming for the sake of argument.)
At what point did the Jews in 1930s Germany say to themselves, "this turning-the-other-cheek stuff isn't working, we have to try something else"? At what point did they decide that their only options were either to fight as dirty as their opposition, or flee? And how many chose each option? (We know that a lot of them chose the latter, and that a good bit of the Jewish population of the U.S. and Canada stems from that.)
Cousin Dave at October 8, 2015 8:57 AM
As someone pointed out the other day, 'Sooner or later the speech police, the PC patrols, the "I'm 'x', therefore I cannot be racist/sexist/whatever!" are going to find out that all those restrictions on 'hate speech' and 'hurtful speech' they wanted bite both ways. And it's going to hurt."
Firehand at October 8, 2015 9:37 AM
I agree gender is not binary. If I recall correctly there are some 21 genders.
Sex, however on average is binary as those born "third" with both sex characteristics comprise a very small segment of the population
lujlp at October 8, 2015 4:36 PM
"Sex, however on average is binary as those born "third" with both sex characteristics comprise a very small segment of the population
Gonna have to explain that - and you have missed the percentage born with "neither". If you have just one outlier, the average is still not in the middle of the collected data. These people are:
1) Still US citizens with rights appertaining thereto
2) Also a naturally occurring fraction of the population.
Radwaste at October 8, 2015 11:19 PM
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