> That hasn't been true since the printing press and particularly the invention of the nation state. I disagree. There's not much success in the state forming

> That hasn't been true since the printing press and particularly the invention of the nation state. I disagree. There's not much success in the state forming its citizens, nor with the media. Take Germany for example. Germany's public broadcaster is deeply progressive on all social issues, and has a funding of €8bn per year. Most of Germany's private print media is similarly progressive. They've been pushing hard on genderized speech for years, yet the population rejects it continuously. If a primary objective isn't fulfilled with near-endless budgets, the tool seems to just not work for the task at hand. > If you find these new limits on your speech onerous but not the old ones, then your gripe is with the flavor of the speech which might get you fired not the fact that speech exists which might get you fired. These new speech rules are strongly being pushed, from state/quasi-state institutions (e.g. universities), are being pushed into legislation and aren't based on the population's norms (or there wouldn't be any opposition). There's a difference between going into a room, behaving a certain way and the group rejecting your behavior, and going into a room, behaving a certain way and having one person pull a gun and forcing the group to reject you. The former is an organic group-response based on their shared values, it can change over time. The latter is what the speech-crusaders are trying to do.