The following is concerned with criticizing the excesses of social movements through reliance on analytical training. In particular, the philosopher’s toolkit will be put to task in assessing two radical claims of such movements: the trans rights movement’s insistence that people are ethically and/or legally required to address trans people by their preferred gender pronouns has dire implications for freedom of expression and relies on a conflation of offense with harm while the “Me, Too” movement’s demand that all women be believed categorically has disastrous implications for epistemology, logic, ethics, and due process. With such key classical liberal values as John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, epistemic, logical, and ethical realism -- let alone due process -- under assault, I aim to provide a philosophical defense of them through analyzing and refuting arguments made to abridge free speech or discriminate based on gender, all ironically in the name of a social justice that would make John Rawls roll over in his grave. In so doing, it becomes apparent that the two movements’ excesses have more in common than would first appear. Thus, though the account below starts with specific cases, the conclusions drawn are general enough to be widely applicable as the very ideas of civil discourse, a liberal arts education, and democracy continue to be jeopardized.
