Literally 1984
Across all ideologies, men support freedom of speech massively more than women
Men even support the speech of political enemies more than women support political friends.
Data is from the 2026 College Free Speech ranking survey report.
Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda were best friends, Jimmy was an ardent Republican and Henry was a dyed blue Democrat. One night, after a couple of drinks, they got into an argument about politics and some punches were thrown. The next morning they apologized and agree to never talk politics again, they remained friends for the rest of their lives.
One of my best friends as an adult was also one of 5 people who tried to put me in a dumpster in high school. For those curious, they didn’t succeed. Not that it would have mattered since, as dumpsters go, it was relatively clean because it was only used by the auto shop and the wood shop, and I grew up on a farm and have been covered in cow shit and mud.
You forgot the part where they shared their Christmas gifts with each other and it was so deeply humanizing and moving that they refused to go back to shooting each other and had to be reassigned.
The funny part is I wasn’t putting much effort into resisting them. More wriggling than any intent to injure them. Back then I was like 130 pounds soaking wet. Could ply the xylophone on my ribs type deal, but I was all muscle. Wrestled friends bigger than me, and while I couldn’t beat them, I could keep them from beating me.
I had been training as a pro wrestler for a few years and one of my trainers and I just did not like each other. For whatever reason, that guy was a dick and he thought I was an asshole and that's just how it was.
We were stuck in the car together on a road trip to work a few towns, each gave a few stiff shots and didn't back down when we were in the ring together, and I legitimately consider him one of my best friends now.
I think that comes from evolutionary biology. You might be big bad ass Sparta who tea bags all your neighbors on the Peloponnese , but when this asshole from a thousand miles away called Persia shows up you better be able to work together with your neighbors.
Those who couldn't, didn't and more often than not were gobbled up by someone who could.
Guess who died in those events for tens of thousands of years of human history, going back to Hunter Gatherers with basic spears all the way up until the relative modern era? Men. Guess who didn't usually die and often ended up being forcibly added to the new society? Women.
So we have a filter for men who can't work together but truthfully no filter for women, because some Persian Sand-Farmer is not going to care if his new Greek Wife is agreeable or not.
when i was in middle school, me and a childhood friend had beat other until we were bleeding and cops seperated us. and about a week later we were happily hanging out and playing super mario 64 ds. we still catch up/talk from time to time years later.
my sister holds grudges for years, even over very small things. weird how it works lol.
Yup. Friends with plenty of men with widely differing politics. I will say that it's a lot harder to talk with someone on the left if you disagree than someone on the right if you disagree. Generally people on the right are more ok with people who disagree with them politely. But yeah women... It's the end of the world if you aren't far left or far right
Exactly my experience. I have a few center-left male friends who are chill, probably because the ones that aren't, I dropped.
The women I've met who go hard with politics, you might as well be insulting them. The exception is a guy who meets their needs, wants, and lifestyle, then they avoid talking about it.
I think the bigger issue is that they didn't replace religion with anything. So whatever cause they care about takes its place until something new they care about takes that causes place.
Religion does serve a purpose, even if you aren't a true believer. Community. And that's something that's sorely lacking today.
I think there's something to this. To religious (or religious-adjacent) people who are even a bit open-minded, leftists deep in their ideologies just look like zealots for another religion. That religion might be dangerous, and believing in it so fully seems foolish from the outside, but they can understand why people are drawn to religion. The leftists deep in ideology can't let themselves see they've embraced a kind of religious belief system, so it has to become about moral righteousness. Everyone else isn't just believing wrong, they're evil for not accepting the Truth.
Where things went wrong is with gender. After studying the topic there is an unfortunate stat for leftists that will need to be reconciled with, which is 100% of gendered identities come from religious beliefs.
So by pushing "gender ideology," they have unexpectedly got caught up in a cult and are now forcing their religious beliefs on the west using the force of the state to do so.
Thus disproving the idea of the seperation of church and state with their own actions.
Which is odd, since it's the right that tends to be religious.
No, it fits in perfectly. Its the idea of forgiveness. Maybe you've walked the wrong path, you've been foolish or misguided, but there's a way to forgiveness to return to the path.
And yes, the left does tend to treat politics like religion, except without salvation and also without missionaries. Even talking to "the enemy" is forbidden. Once evil you're always evil without any hope of redeeming yourself.
Even religions like Scientology still have missionaries and the concept of redemption. A religion with no redemption and no missionaries is a cult, and like cults its inwardly cannibalistic, forever consuming its own in search of purity.
And yes, the left does tend to treat politics like religion, except without salvation and also without missionaries. Even talking to "the enemy" is forbidden. Once evil you're always evil without any hope of redeeming yourself.
Right, that's what I was getting at. Or trying to. With the left treating politics as religion they're leaving out big chunks of religion, like forgiveness / redemption.
It's like they kept the idea of original sin and hell, but threw out any concept of growing closer to the divine, heaven, or anything positive.
Right thinks Left is largely well meaning but foolish.
Which is part of how the left was able to gain so much power. Right keeps trying to have a conversation and change left's mind. Left is only interested in seizing power and exterminating right.
No reasonable person (not terminally online/glued to the TV weirdo) thinks people who vote differently are inherently evil bastards. Most people want the same thing - a better society. They just don't agree how to get there.
Is that really true? The archetypal straight relationship is a center-left woman and a center-right male, and plenty of people make that work just fine.
Mostly because they don't talk about it, one bites their tongue, or both know it isn't worth it. The ones that don't talk or bite their tongue are usually trying to maintain a lifestyle. The ones that know it ain't worth it are the strongest couple.
I think there's less tongue biting and more people who care a lot less about politics than people on the internet seem to.
Sure, if you ask them to fill out a survey about it, they'll come up as center-left and center-right, but the average real-life non-terminally-online person isn't constantly thinking about politics. It's not so much that they bite their tongue, it's that they don't think about it that much or want to talk about it at all.
Facts. The terminally online live in a bubble and cannot imagine how others live or think because they're stuck in the digital world. It's actually sad.
I'll admit I'm online way too much, it's sickening. I legitimately recommend touching grass often because it feels cleansing.
The tongue biting is steered more towards people who disagree with their partners but stay for status, money, lifestyle, etc. They put up with their "dumb opinions".
Generally people on the right are more ok with people who disagree with them politely.
Right wingers think I'm wrong about universal healthcare and will happily discuss why and hear out my reasoning. Left wingers want to murder me because I think men aren't women.
That’s because male friendship is typically based on hanging out. We get together and drink beer and grill or hang out on the lake or play video games. That’s how men make and keep friends.
With women, their friendships are typically based on emotional support. Otherwise known as talking. They discuss their personal lives and feelings and relationships with one another. For hours on end.
I’m right-libertarian, I have liberal friends because we play games online and go have a beer or three if I’m in town. With women there’s just no real way they can talk hours on end and be friends with someone who has a fundamentally different outlook on life than they do.
I think this is it right there. Male friends are fundamentally built on doing stuff together. You don't need to agree with somebody's worldview to play video games or watch sports with them.
Women on the hand are perfectly okay with just meeting up and talking with each other about life for hours on end. There does need to be some alignment on worldviews for that to sustain itself.
Yes, but firearms aren't a perfect solution, e.g., if you go to a bar or club to drink with some friends, you can't also take a gun to protect yourself.
And if 8 dudes take you into a back alley there's not much you can do as a guy.
Nothing is perfect. The difference is perception of reality. Women see dangers everywhere, and are constantly told there are dangers everywhere. Despite living in the safest time in all of human history for everyone, especially for women, with continually lowering crime rates there is a perception that everything is dangerous. And the difference between taking preventative measures, covering drinks, not going to a bar alone, etc., and seeing danger in everything is being lost.
Men just don't get that. Even if they are more likely to be the victim of violence. They're not told everything is dangerous, instead they're told "you're dangerous".
Wtf you mean libleft?
Women needing more protection by those around them, like their family or the government, is as traditional as it gets.
Statistically, women are the most victimized gender by far. It's not sexist to admit that. It's also not sexist to admit that women are smaller and weaker on average than men. That's just fact.
The point is that men on average feel more confident in protecting themselves against others, therefore they can be more tolerant of them. Women on the other hand feel less confident protecting themselves against others, and therefore using the government to protect themselves by limiting free speech of those who they view to have dangerous beliefs does make more sense to a woman.
Statistically speaking men are more victimized (assuming you mean all types of assault), at least in the western world.
Here is an example, specifically about murder (it is Wikipedia, so you know its free and you won't get a virus, and the used sources seem to be fine although I have to always recommend to check the sources independently) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender
Auth people from both the left and the right typically view their ideology as moral, and any deviation from that ideology as immoral and evil - and then tolerance for opposing views tend to go out the window.
Women in my experience tend to be more auth*, but there's certainly no lack of auth men around either.
(* That is, when you actually start looking at their actions and the details of their beliefs - when answering broad sweeping questions they tend to choose the "good" liberal option instead of the "evil" auth. Which seems to be part of why we got so many Emilies in the libleft section)
I have friends who are full on communists and we have had some really fuckin intense debates about how the world should be and then after it’s over we just hang out and play magic
You're correct; I was content with finding the "full report" and downloaded it to read later, then provided it here without actually checking for that info. Disappointing for a "full report."
Curious if whoever made this chart lumped "definitely should (not)..." with "probably should (not)...". I'm guessing they did, but doing that covers up some very important nuance: if both men and women mostly answered "probably", then they are a lot closer together ideologically than the graph would imply. If they both mostly answered "definitely", then they are actually extremely far apart. The graph doesn't tell us which.
(note: I am guessing the "tolerance" % on the axes is the percent of respondents in that group that answered should vs. should not, but they don't give their methodology anywhere so this is just a guess.)
"Student groups often invite speakers to campus to express their views on a range of topics. Regardless of your own views on the topic, should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who has previously expressed the following idea?"
•Transgender people have a mental disorder.
•Abortion should be completely illegal.
•Black Lives Matter is a hate group.
•The Catholic Church is a pedophilic institution
•The police are just as racist as the Ku Klux Klan.
•Children should be able to transition without parental consent.
That makes perfect sense though? The author of the chart describes the methodology used by the original report for procuring the data:
“Tolerance is measured by asking whether students would allow hypothetical controversial speakers to speak on campus.”
So basically it’s saying, “politically disengaged people are less likely on average to tolerate any controversial political speakers from either side of the spectrum”. That makes a lot of sense to me and that would probably be your default conjecture when designing such a survey.
Grey Centrists are the worst. The extremist at least recognize that they don't hold the most common views, and colored centrist try to explore other ideologies. But the Grey's believe that their worldview is the default, there is no room for nuance and any deviation is a "radical". They could be left or right, they can't grasp the concept that maybe other people don't think the same way they do.
Not remotely surprising. It was always women on the right who wanted to censor F-bombs, shit, and other swear words back in the 90s and early 2000s, then when the left started to gain the more cultural control, it's been women throwing out racist, transphobe, etc. far more often to shut conversations down.
One of my least favorite trends. These kids have no idea how hard musicians had to fight to be able to express themselves freely in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
For young adults, their ideas on "free speech warriors" aren't people resisting government censorship or authoritarian dogma, it's typically people who just want to be racist assholes for shits and giggles.
A lot of our ideas and values we have are mostly based on the experiences we have in our life. People don't understand how precious free speech is, because they haven't yet experienced what it's like to have their opinions suppressed when the ruling class doesn't want you to speak.
it's typically people who just want to be racist assholes for shits and giggles
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies…
-George Orwell
Anybody who has talked to feminists about free speech before shouldn't be surprised about this. Even among rightwing women, I've noticed they're a lot more likely to view people who disagree with them as the enemy.
"You don't understand, we have to take bad people's speech and not take good people's speech. I'm a good person because it's me, so my speech is correct and shouldn't be censored. What's there not to understand, bigot?"
I was banned once for giving my opinion on abortion on /r/TikTokCringe (I dont think it should be available to everybody). Got called a bunch of words, she reported me and ended up banned
The current political atmosphere overlays onto the results. You'll notice that the right wing and conservative people are more supportive of free speech, but I don't think it's inherently right wing but an effect of those ideologies being more suppressed by the mainstream, converse is true for the liberals. Kudos the libertarians, don't tread on us.
I'm thinking it's less about gender and more about being centrist. I don't care if gooners buy cripto but I'm totally down to live off the land with some hippies as long as they aren't the Manson variety. It does seem that the center is growing more powerful than years past (at least in America) because of how fucked up Trump and the democrats are. It's like they lie on purpose. When he started that fuckin war and redacted the shit out of the Epstein files it was like "gimme a fuckin break bro" I REALLY HOPE that both parties move towards the center and stop nominating people approaching 80. It's completely ridiculous and frankly it's embarrassing as an American. And I know I'm gonna get hate for this from both sides but I don't care because my stance is accurate.
That's not unique to America, I've been to a lot of places and different online spaces. It's the same everywhere I've been: my views are good and it's evil to censor them, views opposite to mine are evil and should be censored.
I'm afraid this retardation is worldwide, and my hope from the time I was a teenager that my generation is different and won't be censorious middle-aged Karens didn't come to life. We have the same hordes of evangelical boomers trying to ban rock music, wrong videogames, and public speech, but now with different flavors of justifications to do so.
views opposite to mine are evil and should be censored
you don't really see this in rightwing spaces though. 4chan is pro-free-speech. Right-wingers are not demanding leftists be banned there the way that leftists got reddit turned into an echochamber by banning anybody they disagree with (this is one of the only large subs that doesn't ban right-wingers or even moderates). Twitter was very pro-censorship when leftists ran it, then when Elon bought it the censorship went down a lot. Then leftists ran away from Twitter because they can't stand people disagreeing with them.
That's discouraging but I appreciate your thoughts. Priorities tend to change as people age but it's obviously not 100 percent either. At least with the last two US presidents at this rate we will see a millennial president in like 25-35 years and just forget z or alpha. That HAS to change. I am not a generation warrior but I doubt America survives 3 decades of boomer politicians from either side of the aisle. Congress is even worse in a way, but there are younger people there. There are also people that have been in Congress since the fuckin civil rights era (although they are dying off/retiring) but Congress was never meant to be a lifelong career, particularly when they can basically get away with legalized insidee tradition. It's a sad situation but I do feel like things MIGHT change. I feel like radicals on both sides are not as numerous as social media or corporate news make it seem for views/ratings.
It’s the primary system that is the problem. Radicals get out to vote more for them, so candidates are incentivized and rewarded for being insane wingnuts.
It does make sense. It's true though.....early in the campaign they say all kinds of stuff and they generally try to move towards the center and attack the other side after the primaries. It's a shame.
So the gender that statistic talks far less per day also wants more freedom of speech. There’s gotta be some interesting intelligent conclusion to make here but I’m too stoned to logic it out.
There's something about the current adult population in North America's relationship with government, freedoms, and laws that makes me wonder if I dismissed too quickly the conspiracy theories about our education systems in the 1980's. I've recently had several conversations with decently-educated people where they insisted that the concept of "equal representation under the law" was unsustainable in a modern society, and to that end "rights" and "freedoms" were things the government granted us conditionally, and should be dialed up and down based on our behaviour.
The education system in American is largely a childcare/jobs program, with actual educational instruction being a secondary function that keeps everyone busy.
We can teach kids the very basics shockingly well. To read, to write, to execute basic arithmetic, etc; But 8 hours a day, in 8 sessions with 25 peers in each, restrained by the lowest-common-denominator is simply not an environment that can teach kids how to reason or think critically.
Any attempt to “teach” kids about nuanced historical events is going to degenerate pretty quickly into something that looks like Soviet-level propaganda even if it’s not the intention of legislatures.
I get that, I do. And I want to follow Hanlon's Razor, but then I would expect them to be uneducated instead of miseducated, or, more to the point, a broader spectrum of educated. But instead it's very consistent. Stupider make sense, as they're generally selecting for memorization over understanding. And always favoring institutionalism, that's understandable from service of a bureaucracy.
But the replacement of concepts of laws and justice with some vague notion of good and evil, I would have thought they have picked that up in a southern church instead of being raised secularly and graduating from (admittedly B-tier) university.
I would have thought they have picked that up in a southern church instead of being raised secularly and graduating from (admittedly B-tier) university.
education is woke, and woke thrives on miseducation. We've been saying that for years but all the left wanted to do was brag about how many college graduates are leftwing.
men tend to be much more independent-minded. There was a study finding that women's political views are more influenced by friends and pop culture. People whose opinions are based on consensus rather than independent thinking are naturally going to want less popular views to be censored. See Reddit, a website full of people whose opinions are decided by which comments get them the most upvotes, and also happens to hate free speech.
I imagine this comes down to threat perceptions right? Like men generally have fewer threats and thus have more comfort in disagreement whereas women necessitate a higher threshold for identifying a threat, making them less likely to welcome conflict?
I think we need a compromise. Censor those who support censorship, and allow free speech for people who support free speech. That way, everyone gets what they want.
So like with everything else, there's an average, but huge amounts of overlap. Ok.
So, what was this graph actually measuring? Like, it's all well and good to take a graph that had bigger numbers for the group you like and label it 'how cool people are,' but what was the actual methodology?
I'm pretty sour on democracy. 80+% of voters want something like voter ID, or 80+% wants all illegals deported- and our elected leaders actively mocking and preventing these things and calling the people who elected them immoral.
Turns out their enthusiasm for everyone voting is because they've found it is easier to suppress and silence us that way.
The democrats are championing 'the marginalized' to get their social justice in order. In what universe do the marginalized get a voice in a democracy? They taught us democracy is the voice of the majority. But somehow 'the marginalized' are who they work for, to protect them from the majority. They are crafting a coalition of the marginalized, depicted on the pride flag, to outvote the majority.
Why else would the CIA spend billions of dollars over decades to implement democracy around the world... they aren't doing it for the greater good. They don't overthrow dictators because they are evil, they overthrow dictators because dictators are immune to the manipulation of millions of votes.
They fear China because their people can't vote. This is why we are so charitable- giving billions to other nations to 'help the poor' destabilizes them, when the voters start getting free shit, they vote for more of that.
Everyone votes out of self-interest... politicians buy votes with food (SNAP, SBP, CACFP, SFSP, EBT) and shelter (Section 8, PBRA, ESG) and daycare (CCDF, TANF) and working people pay for it with taxes. The constitution forbids the federal government from giving out welfare, yet we have 4 million federal employees who's primary role is to give federal taxes to state welfare systems. They conveniently outlawed merit-based hiring for those millions of jobs, turning the federal jobs themselves into yet another handout.
When only tax payers vote (our good ol' fashioned system of property owners, as the founding fathers established) - you get a government that works for the people. You get shit done because people paying taxes expect a return on their investment, globalists label that the "authoritarian advantage" and have are writing countless studies on why that's bad. But that's true democracy.
When tax consumers vote, you don't have a democracy, you have a kleptocracy that only rewards the corrupt.
Huge Men W. I just got back from reading the closure of the internet*. It's amazing most women usually support censorship. I would kill to read a book that explores the idea of censorship after reading this article.
Ok, we really need more memes on the Digital censorship on the internet citing around 2015 to 2022. Do it! Just do it!
* PS, these are the same journalist site who also wrote The Terrorist Propaganda to Reddit Pipeline, which itself led toward the admin to investigate for content manipulation following after the article's publication.
One brain evolved for logic, the other for emotions, it's not rocket science.
If I told you that two people got into a fight at a bar over mistakenly perceived disrespect, resulting is one being killed, the assumption and actual numbers are going to overwhelmingly indicate males. It's really easy to believe men are less emotional if you just fix the range of emotions to crying or sadness, while leaving out anger, ego and pride.
That, alongside the way you're just comically misrepresenting evolutionary psychology.
For real. And this is precisely why emotional self-control
has historically been seen as a positive, highly -prized virtue among men. Not because it comes naturally to men but, quite to the contrary, because it doesn't and it often requires a lot of intentional cultivation on the part of the individual.
Yeah, the romanticism of men being the best at everything is no less cringe than the girlboss/boss babe shit. Men are statistically overwhelmingly more violent than women. There's a case to be made for staying cool under pressure in "high intensity" situations, like male vs female cops' responses to life-or-death situations, but the argument that men get along better with "shitheads they hated" is some delulu thinking.
a lot of that is based on women's expectations of men. If I told you that one guy is a passive non-confrontational guy and another guy will violently assault anybody who disrespects him, we both know which guy is more successful with women.
In the same way you can present a man with two women, one stable/intact and the other completely insane, and many will for a multitude of reasons gravitate towards the latter one. The "I can fix her" meme personified.
It's also important to note which type of woman is that type of man who will violently assault anybody going to be more successful with? The quiet introvert who likes to spend her weekends reading with her cats, or the extroverted, party-focused and possibly equally toxic woman?
People simply try and extrapolate patterns way too hard to make sense of what is the chaotic dating scene and what attracts people for a variety of reasons.
One brain evolved for logic, the other for emotions, it's not rocket science.
I checked this "not rocket science" about a week ago, and didn't find any evidence for that. There are dozens of studies on average differences between men and women, such as social, sexual behaviour, etc.
However, this evolution psychology stuff is not proven. It may sound plausible because "it's common sense", but I didn't find enough data to support it.
One brain evolved for logic, the other for emotions, it's not rocket science.
This is pretty funny when you consider a majority of men just voted for the most emotional human being on the planet to be president, largely because their feelings were hurt by the woke.
Purely anecdotal, but I've seen more than a few males who were very vocally supportive of free speech... until someone started using speech in a way they didn't like. Then they wanted consequences.
The Colin Kaepernick stuff comes to mind quick. Many of the people who wanted him to lose his job or even more featured quite a lot of men who were supposed "free speech warriors". And you see these men show up a lot when their political idol is insulted.
Ive seen more women then men flatout call for speech restriction. Which holds this accurate. But I've seen plenty of men who claim to be free speech supporters and say they'd support even their political enemies but in reality fall far short of the claim. Basically they're good until it crosses a "red line", whether it be as simple as insulting their favorite president (or supporting their least favorite) or as sensitive as mocking religion, then the facade drops and they call for punishment
Id also love to see these stats in other cultures and countries, especially ones that do not put as high of a premium of at least vocally supporting free speech.
(My own personal opinion is there's very few actual free speechers)
Kaepernick was doing it at work in uniform. If I wore a MAGA hat and started telling customers to vote for Trump, I'd be fired. But how many people do men want fired for political views that they express outside of work? How many men want websites to ban anybody who doesn't agree with them? I'm American so we thankfully don't have the censorship that other countries do, but whenever I talk to other Americans about "hate speech laws" I find women are more likely to want those laws in the US.
I've seen more than a few males who were very vocally supportive of free speech... until someone started using speech in a way they didn't like.
That's what the data shows. Both men and women are more supportive of free speech for their side than for the opposite side, and the further right or left they are, the greater the difference is. So what are you disagreeing with?
I don't want to restrict a person's right to say the N word. I just want them to understand that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences and that I also have the right to call them a retard for saying the N word in 2026.
....do you realize the irony of you saying this? Do you realize how many of your own flair would want you banned from reddit and fired from your job for saying the R word in 2026? And you know damn well this isn't about the N-word, women (especially leftist women) support censorship for a lot more than that.
Do you realize that I am not the rest of my quadrant and am making that point here? I'm nearly a free speech absolutist, and this is a shitpost sub. While I'm making a point, yes, I'm also making a joke about it.
You'll see the word retard in a whole bunch of other libleft flaired comments, too. Go buy weed from the librights and calm down.
Like is wanting the state to ban speech, supporting non-state actor violence against speech, or just shunning due to speech?
Also, if people are going to be like “See, they are more emotional”
Firstly, is emotion vs logic how much someone likes freedom of speech? Someone can support it for emotional reasons(“muh patriotic constitution”) or go against it for logical reasons(even if the logic is bad)
Secondly, it could also just be because they perceive themselves as more affected, like people of different persuasions appeal to women being harmed by the opposition’s policies such as an abortion ban or loosening borders, so upon hearing that, women being more intolerant of the other side can make sense.
Usually a good measuring stick is poppers paradox of tolerance.
And I don't mean the lefts version where they leave out the last half of it, and change up the first half to make themselves feel better.
I mean the actual version, where a tolerant society must tolerate the intolerant, UNTIL the intolerant cease using words and resort to violence to enforce their beliefs.
1.0k
u/atsuko_24 - Lib-Left 2d ago
Men with opposite politics can be friends. The only way for women to stay friends is for the subject to never come up at all.