Silencing discussion is self-destructive

Re: Intellectual assault on WLU campus. Barbara Kay, Nov. 22

Barbara Kay is right, free speech deniers need to wise up. Shutting up those whose speech they disagree with is selfdestructive. In silencing Lindsay Shepherd, Wilfrid Laurier University ruined its reputation with its well intentioned but inept, irrational and ultimately malicious defence of transgender minority rights.

Only those ignorant of the logistics of free speech would choose to void it. Such is the profit and attention seeking nature of the media that often the few receive more media attention than the many. Consequently, silencing any discussion of minority ideas makes no sense from the point of view of the minority itself. Instead, knowledgeable minorities should be the champions of free speech. The more of it there is the more their views will be aired and their inherent validity will eventually affect change.

Moreover, minorities need to rethink claiming victimhood and using emotional persuasion to get their rights. A political strategy based on emotional appeals, pleading hurt feelings and fear won’t change the minds of the majority. The majority have no experience of painful discrimination, consequently they can’t always identify with the debilitating minority experience. It is better to have logic address the selfinterest of the majority in respecting the rights of the minority — to make clear that minorities are not getting extra rights that don’t apply to the majority. Thus, protecting the naming rights of the minorities is mutually beneficial to the majority.

Actually the question — who owns your naming rights, you or another party — has been asked and answered by history. That’s why minorities should not be silencing but getting the word out about Prof. Peterson’s current preferred thinking against new pronouns proposed by the transgender. His ideas are wrong biologically and grammatically. In fact, others in the past refused to address women with their new preferred name Ms., instead of the binary Miss or Mrs. Ironically, what was once resisted as a travesty of compelled speech — the neologism Ms. — is now part of our lexicon. Nobody would protest using it.

Eventually preferred pronouns will become the norm. Protected free speech and debate will make sure of that.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

TYLER ANDERSON / NATIONAL POST Wilfrid Laurier University is at the centre of a storm over free speech.