(I'm a girl, by the way.)

I too subscribe to the "stay out of the kitchen" theory. But, I also agree with you that the heat blows both ways. If you want to post nicely on the internet, you still better expect that there will be a fuckwad out there. However, if you're a fuckwad, you should expect to be hunted down and crucified by others.

I loved this:

Are there ideology-blinded twits out there who would like to intimidate people into silence by throwing around “racist” and “sexist” and “white privilege” and the whole pointlessly polysyllabic lexicon of oppression both real and imagined? Yes. Can they stop us from talking the way we want to talk? No. We can throw it back in their faces.

But, just "throwing it back in their faces" isn't enough to highlight the problem. Lets put it this way, if I didn't get close to perfect student evaluations, you can bet your life that the academic PC police would come for me. Anyone in the academy who dares throw it back in "their faces" is usually toast.

That isn't to say that we (I) shouldn't have to stand the heat too. We should. Back when I criticized the new, hip, PC "intentional sex torts theory," the author I criticized made it a point to contact the dean at my law school, to "verify that Marc Randazza is indeed associated with Barry University School of Law". "Verify" my ass. She was hoping that the dean would be as uptight and as stupid as she was. He read her quotes of my critique out-of-context, raised his eyebrow, then read my whole post and said there was nothing wrong when you read the whole thing.

Nevertheless, you can bet your next month's paycheck that Citron will do the same thing in her quest to turn the world into a binary case study in sexism.

I don't think that Scott's point is that "we" are being silenced. I think that Scott, in his peculiar manner, is pointing out that those who bitch the loudest about unreasonable voices "silencing" other dissenting voices usually are the ones who are most strongly advocating the end of any dissent. Even the most sexist person on AutoAdmit wouldn't say "you can't argue with me because you are a woman," but the Ann Bartow / Danielle Citron / Andrea Dworkin crowd will simply huck "male privilege" or other bullshit at any dissent. Scott's not saying that it isn't fair, Scott's simply pointing out hypocrisy. Which frankly, is like shooting fish in a barrel when you're talking about leftover second wave feminists.

Could it be that Hahvahd rhetorical thing that I lack, being undeniably tied to the simple, pedestrian meaning of words rather than the secret hidden theoretical meaning of secret hidden theories?

I can’t speak for Marc, but I’m not rubbed the wrong way. Of course, Ken is correct in his understanding, though there is an element of staying out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat, rather than sue or prohibit speech. But the most important aspect is the gender/victimization, which eliminates discussion or dissent, since no one is allowed to challenge or criticize anything as soon as it is framed as a gender issue. Suddenly, disagreement renders one sexist, and that was the the real fight here.

I'll grant you a bit of "stay of out the kitchen", but only to the extent that I think informed people should expect to encounter assholes who treat them badly on the internet. That doesn't mean that the assholes are pardonable or that their victims should not call them out as assholes.

Here's where we part company, though, Scott — I am heartily sick of the "eliminates dissent" or "we're not allowed to talk about X" response to political correctness. Are there ideology-blinded twits out there who would like to intimidate people into silence by throwing around "racist" and "sexist" and "white privilege" and the whole pointlessly polysyllabic lexicon of oppression both real and imagined? Yes. Can they stop us from talking the way we want to talk? No. We can throw it back in their faces. If we expect the AutoAdmit defendants to endure what they endured without legislation or litigation — and if we admit that there is any tinge of "stay out of the kitchen" or "man up, for God's sake" to the culture of the internet — then surely we need to be able to endure some theoretician whackaloons throwing the labels sexist and racist at us. And it would be nice if we could do it without complaining that we are somehow being silenced. Because we're not, for God's sake.

Though I've not been to Milwaukee, I rather like what I've seen of Wisconsin and the people I met there.