There is thread on Twitter where some speaker went to confront a female protester and touched her on the arm. J.K. Rowling observed that he probably wouldn’t have done that if the protester was a man — that we respect men’s personal space more than women’s.
It’s a fair observation. Men are probably more likely to touch women than to touch men, because (at least in part) the consequence of touching a man has a higher likelihood of ending in violence.
I considered asking Rowling (not that she would reply) whether she expects all rules to apply equally to men and to women — which, I maintain, is a ridiculous thing to expect.
But to ask such a thing is to open oneself up to the attacks of the hysterical, illogical, screaming mob. There’s no discussion. It’s not a “town square” — unless you mean a “town square” full of opposing mobs with torches, tar, and pitchforks.
Twitter can proscribe certain words, ban people who go too far, etc., but it does almost nothing to address the underlying problem, which is that a large part of the population has no respect for civil disagreement.
That attitude has to be learned with peas and carrots. If it’s not drilled into people’s heads when they are children, and throughout their early life, no amount of moderation, banning, rules about words and so forth is going to solve the problem.
Like so many other societal ills, this is a problem that was a long time in the making, that can only be solved with decades of work.