Free speech

If you have been looking on twitter in the past few days there have been a lot of high profile people complaining about the “attacks on free speech” and how there are people trying to silence others when there should be a free and frank discussion about certain topics, mostly the rights of transgender people.

It has been both funny and slightly worrying to watch this happen, with certain people with large followings decrying that they have had people try to silence them. With their followers claiming that people are losing their jobs over speaking out in support of people pushing pseudo-science and long debunked theories about trans people.

If it was any other group of people such a “debate” would not be happening, well maybe with some extremist people but not by people who are in the public eye with a high profile. Imagine if the debate itself was about say should Muslims have the right to practice their religious beliefs, or should black people be allowed to access the same spaces as other people.

Such debates like that you would imagine these high profile people would be opposed to, decrying those people as rightly being people displaying bigoted beliefs, pushing ideas that were rebuked over 50 years ago. Not complaining if there were consequences for people arguing for segregation or the denial of religious freedom.