Free Speech or Censorship: a gender divide?

[Raze]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/opinion/gender-gap-politics.html

https://archive.is/oXFAK

The New York Times has published an article that shows interesting things regarding a growing gender gap in political beliefs

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In one of the most revealing studies in recent years, a 2016 surveyof 137,456 full-time, first-year students at 184 colleges and universities in the United States, the U.C.L.A. Higher Education Research Institute found “the largest-ever gender gap in terms of political leanings: 41.1 percent of women, an all-time high, identified themselves as liberal or far left, compared to 28.9 percent of men.”

The institute has conducted freshmen surveys every year since 1966. In the early days, until 1980, men were consistently more liberal than women. In the early and mid-1980s, the share of liberals among male and female students was roughly equal, but since 1987, women have been more liberal than men in the first year of college.

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Along parallel lines, a Knight Foundation survey in 2017 of 3,014 college students asked: “If you had to choose, which do you think is more important, a diverse and inclusive society or protecting free speech rights.”

Male students preferred protecting free speech over an inclusive and diverse society by a decisive 61 to 39. Female students took the opposite position, favoring an inclusive, diverse society over free speech by 64 to 35.

Majorities of both male and female college students in the Knight survey support the view that the First Amendment should not be used to protect hate speech, but the men were more equivocal, at 56 to 43, than women, at 71 to 29.

Based on this survey it seems young people but especially women value diversity and inclusivity over freedom of speech. 

it’s important to note that the next generation of academics and thought leaders will likely be majority female. Women are now 59.5 percent of college students, and also more likely to graduate then men.

Could this attitude change how academics work and how knowledge is spread?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-antisocial-psychologist/202104/the-gender-gap-in-censorship-support

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For example, a majority of men believe that colleges should not protect their students from offensive ideas, whereas a majority of women believe colleges should. Male students rated advancing knowledge and academic rigor as higher in value and social justice and emotional well-being as lower in value relative to female students. And in a 2021 report by Eric Kaufmann, female scholars in the US and Canada were more likely than men to support firing a scholar for controversial research.

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I have observed similar patterns in some of my own work. For example, in a very recent study I conducted with 440 online adults (I will add a preprint link when it is available), participants rated the offensiveness of excerpts from the discussion sections of five published (and potentially or demonstrably controversial) scientific papers.....

......Women found all scientific findings more offensive than men, [.....]. And broadly, women reported stronger agreement with the statement that some scientific findings should be censored because they are too dangerous.

In an ongoing project, I have found that this gender gap in censorship support might be smaller among young adults, with both young men and young women having censorship preferences similar to adult women.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt reported on noticing a similar pattern when presenting at a private high school

https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/

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A month before the Yale Halloween meltdown, I had a bizarre and illuminating experience at an elite private high school on the West Coast. I’ll call it Centerville High. I gave a version of a talk that you can see here, on Coddle U. vs. Strengthen U. (In an amazing coincidence, I first gave that talk at Yale a few weeks earlier). The entire student body — around 450 students, from grades 9-12 — were in the auditorium. There was plenty of laughter at all the right spots, and a lot of applause at the end, so I thought the talk was well received.

But then the discussion began, and it was the most unremittingly hostile questioning I’ve ever had. I don’t mind when people ask hard or critical questions, but I was surprised that I had misread the audience so thoroughly. My talk had little to do with gender, but the second question was “So you think rape is OK?” Like most of the questions, it was backed up by a sea of finger snaps — the sort you can hear in the infamous Yale video, where a student screams at Prof. Christakis to “be quiet” and tells him that he is “disgusting.” I had never heard the snapping before. When it happens in a large auditorium it is disconcerting. It makes you feel that you are facing an angry and unified mob — a feeling I have never had in 25 years of teaching and public speaking.

After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male. I began to search the sea of hands asking to be called on and I did find one boy, who asked a question that indicated that he too was critical of my talk. But other than him, the 200 or so boys in the audience sat silently.

After the Q&A, I got a half-standing ovation: almost all of the boys in the room stood up to cheer. And after the crowd broke up, a line of boys came up to me to thank me and shake my hand. Not a single girl came up to me afterward.

 

Interestingly it seemed the boys were hesitant to give their opinion

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After my main lecture, the next session involved 60 students who had signed up for further discussion with me. We moved to a large classroom. The last thing I wanted to do was to continue the same fruitless arguing for another 75 minutes, so I decided to take control of the session and reframe the discussion. Here is what happened next:

Me: What kind of intellectual climate do you want here at Centerville? Would you rather have option A: a school where people with views you find offensive keep their mouths shut, or B: a school where everyone feels that they can speak up in class discussions?

Audience: All hands go up for B.

Me: OK, let’s see if you have that. When there is a class discussion about gender issues, do you feel free to speak up and say what you are thinking? Or do you feel that you are walking on eggshells and you must heavily censor yourself? Just the girls in the class, raise your hand if you feel you can speak up? [about 70% said they feel free, vs about 10% who said eggshells ]. Now just the boys? [about 80% said eggshells, nobody said they feel free].

Why is this? It’s possibly related to this explanation from the NYT article:

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From an early age, women clearly dislike group hierarchies of same-sex individuals more than men do. Thus, while boys and men are more willing to compete directly with both higher and lower status individuals, girls and women prefer to interact with same-sex individuals of similar status. This does not mean however that girls and women don’t care about status as much as boys and men do. For both sexes, high status increases the probability that one lives longer and so do one’s children. The result of these two somewhat conflicting motives is that girls and women seek high status but disguise this quest by avoiding direct contests. This gender difference likely impacts how women seek to shape organizational culture.

The strategies Benenson and her colleagues describe, Haidt pointed out,

lead to a different kind of conflict. There is a greater emphasis on what someone said which hurt someone else, even if unintentionally. There is a greater tendency to respond to an offense by mobilizing social resources to ostracize the alleged offender.

On one hand a stage green society should be more interested in diversity and inclusion and not offended minorities, however censorship support can sometimes be misused by those in power or lead to important information being hidden.

What are your thoughts on this? 

[Leo Gura]

Pretty obvious result.

The feminine values communion more while the masculine values autonomy more.

Freedom and truth are rarely a woman's highest priorities.

[Seth]

You can unify both genders by understanding that diversity and inclusiveness require free speech.  Or am I not understanding?

[soos_mite_ah]

It's simple. In order to have free speech, there needs to be a certain degree of censorship to ensure that marginalized groups are protected so that they too can have free speech. If you have white supremacists and misogynists go around spewing their hate and radicalizing people, women and minorities will be silenced and will become the target of violence. 

The question isn't whether should we have free speech or censorship. The question is whose free speech are we looking to protect. 

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Pretty obvious result.

The feminine values communion more while the masculine values autonomy more.

Freedom and truth are rarely a woman's highest priorities.

Isn't truth rarely a man's highest priorities? After all, there are just about as many men as there are women who are dishonest. 

Also, even if the masculine values autonomy, it often wants to take away other people's autonomy by controlling them. 

[Leo Gura]

Very generally speaking, the masculine values truth more than the feminine.

That doesn't mean men aren't dishonest. It's not that simplistic.

[Windappreciator]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

 

Freedom and truth are rarely a woman's highest priorities.

what does that even mean

[puporing]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The feminine values communion more while the masculine values autonomy more.

Freedom and truth are rarely a woman's highest priorities.

A large part of this is a result of conditioning rather than from one's own natural tendencies if it were permitted/nurtured. If you read some feminist texts, it's a recurring theme that girls are more restricted in their upbringing and by society throughout their life relative to boys, and mothers (the primary caregiver) parent daughters much differently than they do sons, no matter what stage on the spiral the society is in. A woman who first conceives of the importance of freedom and truth above all and exercises them in reality can find almost no allies and would be lucky to not be persecuted especially when such truth is perceived as taking away a male's ability to survive, nonetheless, some do and persist. I just think it's important to consider/point out the bigger picture when making generalized statements like this.  

Edited January 15, 2022 by puporing

[Bobby_2021]

9 minutes ago, puporing said:

A large part of this is a result of conditioning rather than from one's own natural tendencies if it were permitted/nurtured. If you read some feminist texts, it's a recurring theme that girls are more restricted in their upbringing and by society throughout their life relative to boys, and mothers (the primary caregiver) parent daughters much differently than they do sons, no matter what stage on the spiral the society is in. A woman who first conceives of the importance of freedom and truth above all and exercises them in reality can find almost no allies and would be lucky to not be persecuted especially when such truth is perceived as taking away a male's ability to survive, nonetheless, some do and persist. I just think it's important to consider/point out the bigger picture when making generalized statements like this.  

It's not conditioning. It's life. ?

The countries which are most egalitarian have the women choose occupations which are generally considered traditionally feminine.

This is the design by birth.

[Apparition of Jack]

Here’s a question - what does “freedom of speech” even mean? To me it’s a nonsense term than can be used to justify practically anything. 
 

Freedom from government censorship? You could argue that, but then that doesn’t explain why the government bans child porn or info on how to make bombs. These are forms of speech, after all. 
 

People hide behind the phrase to hide the fact their tongues are like snakes and their ideas are like poison.

[mememe]

@Leo Gura

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Very generally speaking, the masculine values truth more than the feminine.

That doesn't mean men aren't dishonest. It's not that simplistic.

this is the biggest bullshit you ever told yourself. and it seems like you are finally outing yourself, as the suspected misogynist you probably are.

this sentence you should value it as a male. if you can’t you probably are not a male.

if you can appreciate that, your claim might be occasionally true. if you cannot, its false.

[Pavement]

I guess it would make sense as to why there are more male conspiracy theorists  

[Space Lizard]

It's explainable from evolutionary psychology.

Men are reproductively incentivized to take risks and be outrageous, because if they succeed they can have harems and large numbers of offspring. So they value risk-taking, competition and freedom. The successful male risk-taker gets all the women. This explains why men are more prone to extremes in general (intelligence, politics, behavior, etc.)

Women are incentivized to be safe and seek social consensus, because they have to bear and rear children, and can't have harems. There's no reproductive pay off for women to take risks, be extreme and value freedom like there is with men.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Space Lizard

[How to be wise]

1 hour ago, mememe said:

@Leo Gura

this is the biggest bullshit you ever told yourself. and it seems like you are finally outing yourself, as the suspected misogynist you probably are.

this sentence you should value it as a male. if you can’t you probably are not a male.

if you can appreciate that, your claim might be occasionally true. if you cannot, its false.

Most women I know are more interested in ‘feeling’ than in ‘truth’. If you ever debated your girlfriend, you’ll know this. Logic flies out the window for them.

[mememe]

6 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

Most women I know are more interested in ‘feeling’ than in ‘truth’. If you ever debated your girlfriend, you’ll know this. Logic flies out the window for them.

yeah def in this context and that logic, some logic flies and other logic doesn’t. generally speaking truth seems to make people more stupid than intelligent, who‘s interest is that?

[How to be wise]

2 minutes ago, mememe said:

truth seems to make people more stupid than intelligent,

You have a strange definition of intelligence.

[mememe]

10 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

You have a strange definition of intelligence.

do you generally include consciousness into intelligence or not? or with what do you start counting intelligence?

Edited January 15, 2022 by mememe

[Kshantivadin]

2 hours ago, mememe said:

@Leo Gura

this is the biggest bullshit you ever told yourself. and it seems like you are finally outing yourself, as the suspected misogynist you probably are.

this sentence you should value it as a male. if you can’t you probably are not a male.

if you can appreciate that, your claim might be occasionally true. if you cannot, its false.

Notice the distinction between masculine-feminine and man-woman. Also, try to notice the feeling that arises that gives birth to the reply.

[Kshantivadin]

@Raze I just want to express my appreciation and thanks for such a quality thread.

[mememe]

8 minutes ago, Kshantivadin said:

Notice the distinction between masculine-feminine and man-woman. Also, try to notice the feeling that arises that gives birth to the reply.

pre-post-trans fallacy, if you don’t know what that is you can’t be aware or conscious of it.