Tag: censorship

The National Association of REALTORS® to start policing private lives of members.

The newly Woke National Association of REALTORS® has long had requirements that you behave in a professional manner while on the job.

“The recommendations propose a new Standard of Practice, 10-5, that states: ‘REALTORS® must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

Sure, a list like that can be problematic, but at least now it only applies TO YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.

“Additionally, the recommendations propose changes to professional standards policy to expand the Code of Ethics’ applicability to all of a REALTOR®’s activities, not just those that are real estate–related.”

Their speech codes no longer only apply to real-estate related activity but also to everything-related activity as well. What if your activities include being active in your church and your faith is at odds with current progressive orthodoxy?

Why, it’s almost as if the NAR’s rules prohibiting discrimination against someone for their religious beliefs themselves discriminate against people for their religious beliefs. This suggests the motive here might be something other than being anti-discriminatory.

Which reminds me, you know why the NAR is really excited about these new rules?

“We have this amazing ad campaign that says ‘That’s Who We R,’ ” Difanis said, which includes being leaders and role models in the community, ‘and this is who we need to be.'”

Whatever it takes to get that “SOLD!” sign!

Of course, we all have to remember that this is not a government or state actor enforcing a law. It’s merely a private organization with great cache, they are America’s largest trade association after all. They hold enormous sway over state licensing boards requiring that you behave in a manner they prefer ALL the time. If you don’t comply with the new speech codes, you risk being reported as a bigot to your state licensing board which determines whether or not you can continue to work as a real estate agent.

“As a result, associations would be required to share with the state real estate licensing authority final ethics decisions holding REALTORS® in violation of the Code of Ethics in instances where there is reason to believe the public trust, as expanded by the proposed revision, may have been violated.”

But it’s not like that’s censorship or anything.

That would be wrong.

“Discussions started in the wake of nationwide social unrest after the death of George Floyd and after local, state, and national REALTOR® associations fielded an ‘unprecedented’ number of complaints about members posting hate speech on social media.”

Work as a real estate agent? Watch what you say because they can search your social media accounts going back three years should there ever be an alleged infraction.

But this is not censorship, okay? Stop thinking that.

Hmm, maybe we can discipline you for that, too.

Speaking freely has suddenly become really problematic. After all, what is a “slur?” The definitions of words are a lot more fluid than they used to be. Remember a month ago when “sexual preference” was okay? Yeah, it’s not anymore.

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The Ongoing Death of Free Speech: Prominent ACLU Lawyer Cheers Suppression of a New Book

On Friday, Strangio’s very un-ACLU-like views of free speech were on full display. On Friday morning, Abigail Shrier — author of a new book exploring the rapid, massive increase in teenage girls self-identifying as trans boys and undergoing permanent gender reassignment therapies and surgeries in their teens — published an article in Quillette describing the extraordinary efforts by major corporations and various activists to prevent her book from being purchased:

The efforts to block my reporting have been legion, starting with staff threats at a publishing house, which quickly reversed its original intention to publish my book. Once I obtained a stalwart publisher, Regnery, Amazon refused to allow that company’s sales team to sponsor ads on its site. (Amazon allows sponsored ads for books that uncritically celebrate medical transition for teenagers)….

Because the book tackles an interesting phenomenon, a number of established journalists wanted to review it….[T]he issue has created surprising bedfellows. Religious conservatives are concerned about the trend—but so are lesbians, who look upon the shocking numbers of teen girls transitioning with abject alarm. Many suspect that all this transitioning of girls is effectively euthanizing a generation of young lesbians….In any case, every major newspaper and legacy magazine summarily turned interested journalists down. 

The recent protest by Spotify employees over Joe Rogan’s podcast was triggered in large part by his decision to invite Shrier onto his program. Many liberal employees inside the streaming service demanded this episode be removed. “Many LGBTQAI+/ally Spotifiers feel unwelcome and alienated because of leadership’s response in [Rogan’s] conversations,” was one of the questions posed to Spotify’s CEO at a tense staff-wide meeting, along with a demand to know why that program had not been deleted from the platform. 

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Target Swiftly Bans Book On Behalf Of Anonymous Twitter User Crying ‘Transphobia’

An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors.

“I think the trans community deserves a response from @AskTarget @Target as to why they are selling this book about the ‘transgender epidemic sweeping the country.’ Trigger warning: Transphobia,” wrote the user.

Target thanked the user for bringing Shrier’s book to their attention.

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Gender Activists Are Trying to Cancel My Book. Why is Silicon Valley Helping Them?

The day after I tweeted about the ongoing attempts to block sales of my book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, I was stuck on the phone with my parents’ real estate agent. “How’s your book going?” she wanted to know. “Is there a lot of controversy?”

I know it’s fashionable these days to claim to be an introvert—something to do with an unwarranted assumption of depth, maybe—but I actually am an introvert. Small talk exhausts me, not because I believe it’s beneath me, but because it feels like being handed a socket wrench. I have no idea what to do with it.

“Well, you had to expect that, right?” she added casually. “When you write a book like that, that’s what you’re expecting.”

This is, more or less, most people’s reaction to the efforts to suppress my book. It isn’t that they agree with censorship per se. But you also can’t go setting fires without expecting Big Tech’s cops to shut them down. “If you’re going to talk about the trans thing, I mean, what did you expect?” I think the agent may have said those very words.

Except that I didn’t write about “the trans thing.” I wrote specifically about the sudden, severe spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls. I fully support medical transition for mature adults. And I have no desire to be a provocateur. (I dislike pointless provocation, in part because I think provocateurs often have a good argument—one they’re too lazy or inept to make). Nor do I have any prurient interest in others’ social lives.

What I aim to do, as a journalist, is to investigate cultural phenomena, and here was one worth investigating: Between 2016 and 2017, the number of females seeking gender surgery quadrupled in the United States. Thousands of teen girls across the Western world are not only self-diagnosing with a real dysphoric condition they likely do not have; in many cases, they are obtaining hormones and surgeries following the most cursory diagnostic processes. Schoolteachers, therapists, doctors, surgeons, and medical-accreditation organizations are all rubber-stamping these transitions, often out of fear that doing otherwise will be reported as a sign of “transphobia”—despite growing evidence that most young people who present as trans will eventually desist, and so these interventions will do more harm than good.

The notion that this sudden wave of transitioning among teens is a worrying, ideologically driven phenomenon is hardly a fringe view. Indeed, outside of Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and college campuses, it is a view held by a majority of Americans. There is nothing hateful in suggesting that most teenagers are not in a good position to approve irreversible alterations to their bodies, particularly if they are suffering from trauma, OCD, depression, or any of the other mental-health problems that are comorbid with expressions of dysphoria. And yet, here we are.

The efforts to block my reporting have been legion, starting with staff threats at a publishing house, which quickly reversed its original intention to publish my book. Once I obtained a stalwart publisher, Regnery, Amazon refused to allow that company’s sales team to sponsor ads on its site. (Amazon allows sponsored ads for books that uncritically celebrate medical transition for teenagers).

Because the book tackles an interesting phenomenon, a number of established journalists wanted to review it. The issue of trans-identification has seemed to come out of nowhere with Gen Z, the generation begun in 1995 whose large-scale mental-health crisis already has us so on edge. And the issue has created surprising bedfellows. Religious conservatives are concerned about the trend—but so are lesbians, who look upon the shocking numbers of teen girls transitioning with abject alarm. Many suspect that all this transitioning of girls is effectively euthanizing a generation of young lesbians.

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Information War? Internet Archive To Rewrite History With Alerts For ‘Fact-Checked’ Sites

According to an Archive.org blog post, you will now know if a page was pulled down or received an alert over what “fact-checkers” consider “misinformation.”

This also includes “dead” web pages that were archived. The Internet Archive has started adding fact checks and context to Wayback Machine pages to explain just why the pages were removed. If a page was part of a disinformation campaign or pulled due to a policy violation, a distinct yellow banner will explain why.

The fact checks will come from a variety of mainstream outlets, including FactCheck.org, Politifact, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post. Which absolutely in no way will be manipulated, right?

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