Two Petitions

It is instructive to compare the petition in support of Mary Bryson with the petition in support of Jordan Peterson. By signing the latter, you are petitioning the University of Toronto not to punish Peterson for expressing his views, nor restrict his ability to do so. By signing the former, you are petitioning the University of British Columbia to "to express their clear and unequivocal support for Dr. Bryson" and "to condemn the intentional and malicious attacks that have been directed at Dr. Bryson in public and in private." Notice the very important difference. While UBC is being asked to "express support" and "condemn attacks", UofT is merely being asked not to punish someone for exercising their academic freedom.

The most telling part of the Bryson petition addresses Christine Blatchford's column in the National Post. Blatchford, the petition tells us,

intentionally refused to use Dr. Bryson’s pronoun ‘they/them’ in the article, referring to Dr. Bryson instead as ‘she’, thus self-consciously violating the terms of the Ontario Human Rights Code. The extent of expressed hate in the National Post article Comments sections provides extensive evidence of the efficacy of incitement of hate towards LGBT people.

To me, this reads as an indictment of Blatchford's column as hate speech. UBC's administrators are presumably being petitioned to "condemn" this column as well, and to do so with reference to the Ontario Human Rights Code. I think this makes it starkly clear that Jordan Peterson was onto something when he worried that refusing to use preferred pronouns was indeed implicitly covered by C-16, and that those who support it do, in fact, intend to use it to compel compliance in this regard.

The worry here for me is that if Blatchford can be accused of "inciting" the "hate" expressed in the comments to her articles, then surely Peterson can be similarly accused. The Tim Hunt case made it very clear to me that the universities have an obligation to the scholars they employ to protect them from mobs stirred to action by hurt feelings. What we're trying to do here is maintain a sense of decency. That means that when a reasoned, principled refusal to use particular words, or, for that matter, a reasoned and principled request to use such words, elicits angry responses and even hateful rhetoric, we cannot hold the person who was, indeed, reasoned and principled responsible for the least thoughtful members of their audience.

One last thing. I had never heard of Mary Bryson before the U of T forum. Bryson, I soon found out, is "not 'gay' as in happy but 'queer' as in fuck you." This was in a video profile on YouTube that has since become inaccessible, no doubt because it was discovered by trolls [update: it's back up]. Now, while I wouldn't ordinarily use such language myself, I'm happy to let public discourse include strong language. But I don't quite understand why someone who does talk this way would find it particularly distressing (or even surprising) to be called, say, a "dyke bitch". That seems to be merely an equal and opposite reaction. "Queer as in fuck you?" the trolls might well have been thinking. "Well, fuck her!"