I Did a Hate Speech

On my first and only suspension from a media company

My only surprise is how long it took for someone to report me or for an editor — or whatever these people at online journal companies are called — to take action against something I wrote. For a couple years now, I have been making arguments that go directly against the grain of what seems to be popular sentiments, but in polling data is really only a loud fringe. And where I received this suspension — on Medium — is quite the denizen of far left essayists.

The Hateful Infraction

The article in particular was discussing some ideas about gender, social construction, and the underlying fundamentals of leftist (not liberal) ideas. It tied leftist theories to an underlying assumption that man has no nature and can be formed by man. Being the exact opposite of Christianity and/or Judaism, which presuppose an eternal nature of man, it is incompatible with Judeo-Christian ideas and the culture war is best framed as a type of religious battle. Not simply a political fight, but a deeper disagreement that cannot be won in a political arena.

But to make that argument, I had to describe leftist ideas. And that is likely what got under the skin of whomever reported and/or suspended this article. Anytime I have pointed out the fundamental axioms of leftist thought, it has attracted a lot of angry comments on Medium, which is hugely tilted towards writers and readers pretty far on the extreme left. I think the hardest part for these people is to connect their ideas to their roots. It’s hard to see the acorn when looking at the oak tree, but everything that the oak tree becomes is contained in that seed. And without proper investigation, all we see are the leaves, branches, and trunk.

I honestly don’t even know what an article being suspended truly means. It could be invisible to the public I suppose, but there is no explanation in the email I received.

The only clue to the specifics of the violation I have is that the author of my email notification referenced the rules, posted here: Medium Rules. He said it fell under “Hateful Content”.

So I read, and reread the essay a few times, and cannot find anything hateful. But “hate” in a world where tolerance of difference as the moral standard is now subsumed by celebration of difference as the moral standard, can be anything disagreeable.

In Response

I responded politely and succinctly, asking for help understanding what specifically I said to warrant this action so I could avoid it in the future. But no response came. I followed up a week later, and nothing. Now that it has been well more than a month as of the writing of this passage, I assume he, the Medium staff member in charge of “safety”, has no interest in explaining himself or the decision. But I suppose that is to be expected.

Because left-wing authoritarianism is so highly correlated with low verbal intelligence, my expectation that either the Medium staff member or the person who reported my writing would read it, understand any nuanced position, and be able to talk about it intelligently, is unreasonable. But I had to at least provide the open opportunity for that discussion.

This is the tactic: be purposefully vague about the rules or the specifics of the violations in order to allow for much latitude in simply ejecting anything we don’t like. That way we can say we have a policy, without having anything we are truly beholden to.

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And I don’t mean to come off as sounding like I am worried or upset. I don’t care so much. I published the story, along with everything else I publish on Medium, on my Substack page. A version of the story is still there and nobody batted an eye. But hardly anyone reads what I write anyways, especially if it’s more than 1,000 words.

So if I continue to do that, and lose out on Medium’s $40 or so per month I now earn, it won’t really hurt me. But I will know this: I’m on target.