Abigail Schrier recently deliver an impassioned speech to various organizations at Princeton. Her speech included this quote: “You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down.”
I invite you to read her entire presentation. I responded in the comments:
You’ve got me thinking, what will I do next time I’m asked to provide my “pronoun”? Perhaps I’ll say something like: “To do that would suggest that hundreds of years of biological science got it wrong in fundamental ways. Instead, you are free to assume which one of the two sexes I am.” Thank you for your heartfelt essay/speech. Your money quote: “You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down.” I’m trying to do what you do on a much smaller scale–you take 1,000 times more abuse than me and you seem to be thriving. This seems to prove your statement that speaking the truth to those who hate you is freeing. You, along with a couple dozen other highly visible people who have given themselves permission to speak what they believe, have given me more courage to say “no” whenever the the SJW tribe demands that I confirm that up is down. Thank you for your hard work leading up to your book and ever since. BTW, I am a classical liberal without a political home, yet you speak for me and many others like me. Please don’t overlook that. Yours is not a “conservative” position. It is a thoughtful position anchored in reality.
I have an all-purpose pronoun, he or she or it, abbreviated h’orsh’it.
Works every time.
In it’s newsletter, Princetonians for Free Speech had this to say about Shrier’s Speech:
The speech was by Abigail Shrier, author of the much-acclaimed, much-assailed book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters. The speech was sponsored by the Princeton Tory and the Princeton Open Campus Coalition. Shrier spoke at Princeton on December 8, while the Princeton Pride Alliance hosted a simultaneous teach-in in collaboration with the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center as a form of protest.
Shrier began her talk: “The question I get most often—the thing that most interviewers want to know, even when they’re pretending to care about more high-minded things—is: What’s it like to be so hated? . . . What’s it like to be on a GLAAD black list? What’s it like to have top ACLU lawyers come out in favor of banning your book? What’s it like to have prestigious institutions disavow you as an alum? . . . Why wouldn’t I prostrate myself before the petulant mobs who insist that my standard journalistic investigation into a medical mystery—specifically, why so many teen girls were suddenly identifying as transgender and clamoring to alter their bodies—makes me a hater?”
The Princeton Tory and the Princeton Open Campus Coalition explained in the Princeton Tory in a joint statement their decision not to disclose the location until the day of the event “to ensure the safety of attendees,” in light of the “visceral and censorious reaction we correctly anticipated from many community members.”