The Gender Equality Checkpoint

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Originally Posted by DanaC

I don't suggest that it should be.



Freedom of speech is about having the right to express your opinion without fear of state reprisal or judicial response. It is not the right to express yourself without any social consequence.

Social - yes.
Legal - no.

It's a key difference, our rights aren't a guarantee that everything we do within them is right, just that it isn't right to prevent us from doing it. On that level I have no problem with cat calling becoming consciously rude - maybe to be treated a few decades from now the same we do now with elders using racial slurs. But that's on a level of cultural adaptation.

Still, the general trend this is part of is... Troubling & interesting. We are culturally blocking more and more of the old natural mediums of initiation just at the time we've become remarkably good at consolidating human interaction artificially.