My Wall Street Journal Article on Compelled Speech and Gender in BC

Tolerating offensive claims is the price of freedom, because outlawing falsehood allows governments to outlaw truth as well.

(getty images, Credit: Juj Winn)

In British Columbia recently former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld was fined $750,000 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal for asserting that a man can’t become a woman.

Whatever one’s views on sex and gender, this decision is an affront to anyone who values freedom of speech. As I note in the Wall Street Journal piece that posted last week, one reason we need freedom of speech is that the government can as easily outlaw truth and falsehood.

I should note that I don’t agree with Neufeld’s assertions as he stated them, but I will defend as strongly as I can his right to assert them without penalty. I think he confuses the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ with ‘male’ and ‘female’. For many people these terms are equivalent. However, I prefer to use the terms male and female, which are biological definitions, rather than man and woman, which often conflate biology and with more culturally charged issues associated with gender. A human male cannot become a human female and in this sense a man cannot become a woman, as these terms were traditionally defined.

However certain transgender individuals have effectively transitioned their appearance, and, with the assistance of hormones and surgery, have effectively become indistinguishable from individuals of a gender that is different than their biological sex. I count here friends of mine, including the well-known author Jenny Boylan. I view and comfortably completely treat Jenny as a woman, even if I accept that she is a biological male. I will also defend her request to be treated as a woman, and I think it is appropriate in her case for society to follow suit in essentially all public circumstances.

I explained my view to a colleague recently by using a theological analogy. As most of you know, I think the tenets of organized religion are in general nonsense. However, first, I respect the separation of church and state. Second, I understand that in certain cases people can reasonably act in ways that appear to be inconsistent with scientific truth in the process of carrying out their psychological commitment to their faith. For example, the Catholic Church claims that a wafer actually turn into body of Christ during communion. This is obvious nonsense. However, for people of the Catholic faith, they can choose to treat the wafer as if it does transubstantiate when receiving communion if this helps them be reinforce their religious belief in the divinity of Christ. They don’t actually have to believe the scientific untruth in order to respect the idea and actions behind it. And so can I.

I think, however, that neither I, nor society in general, are under any obligation to respect the claims of every man who claims to be a woman, or vice versa. Doing so can cause harm, as it clearly does in sex-segregated sporting events, and also in other circumstances.

Whether or not one chooses to agree with my nuanced version of the sex vs gender issue—namely some individuals who have gender dysphoria and who have effectively transitioned their appearance and their hormonal regulation are appropriately viewed in almost all public circumstances as having a gender opposite to that of their biological sex, while society is under no obligation to honor the claims of every individual who chooses to view themselves as having a gender opposite to that of their sex. (The same goes for individuals who claim to identify with a non-human species…something that is more obviously universally nonsense)—what is unambiguous is that society must not compel everyone to publicly agree in their statements with what is scientifically or politically correct. However disagreeable one’s views are, as long as one does not act the physically harm, or advocate physical harm to others based on their identity, tolerating these views is the price of freedom.

I point out in the article that the US constitution, with its clear definition of the right of free speech, is almost unique in the Western world, and this fact may account for the transgressions against free speech we are now witnessing in Canada, the UK and elsewhere—where politically incorrect speech has been labelled as hate speech, and outlawed.

With these ideas in mind, here is a link to my Wall St. Journal article, the first few paragraphs of which are appended here.

Advocates of free speech often find ourselves having to defend the indefensible, or at least the right to say it. Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories, bogus scientific claims and racist doctrines are all false and sometimes dangerous, but tolerating them is the price of freedom.

One reason we need freedom is that the government can as easily outlaw truth as falsehood. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four,” said Winston Smith in George Orwell’s “1984.” Recently the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal fined former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld 750,000 Canadian dollars (about US$530,000) for asserting the obvious truth that a man can’t become a woman or vice versa….

Here again is the link to the full article.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/men-women-and-free-speech-b7cc2237