Come on now…
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Wait, so she lied about being the author of the letter? Who did author the letter? I know about Christine Blasey Ford, but fuck if I’ve followed that web of horribleness beyond the one person who actually seemed sane if delightfully odd.
The problem is that no one has been able to define what constitutes “hate speech” outside of the traditionally reviled slurs. Even Zuckerberg couldn’t define it when asked under oath before Congress. To some people, referencing statistics that paint certain groups in a negative light is hate speech, which is ridiculous because statistics are amoral. So who gets to define what’s bigoted and what isn’t?
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I listened to a debate week before last where a gender neutral person tried to make the case that misgendering someone whether intentionally or not was, “an act of violence.” There are people who think that unkind words equal violence which is the whole problem here.
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11 dead people here, one of whom worked in the same place I do, and you equate that with some weirdo’s pfaf complaints?
These are not equivalent problems.
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Hate speech:
Anything that when boiled down to its essence, asserts that:
“Based upon your genetic composition, you are lesser than someone else, at a fundamental, human level.”
And everything that follows from such espoused beliefs.
As I see it.
I think the definition of hate speech is pretty simple: “speech, gesture, conduct, writing, or display that incites violence or prejudicial action against a protected group or individual on the basis of their membership of the group.” That’s Wikipedia’s summarized definition, and I think it’s pretty cut and dry and understandable to many.
Where many people get away with, however, is people hiding behind the “violence” part; a lot of hate speech users would submit that they don’t intend to incite “violence,” which to them almost always means they don’t want people to cause injury or death. My counter to that, however, is that in 2018, what constitutes violence is not so binary.
In 2002, the World Health Organization did a big report on violence and health in the world, and they wrote this as their definition of violence: “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”
That’s a very broad definition, but it’s important to distinguish that violence isn’t always necessarily physical force; the Nazis didn’t start by escorting mass swaths of the Jewish population to the camps, but by first engaging in a massive campaign of disenfranchisement and dehumanization. This frequently included using statistics in bad faith as well as implying that the condition was just lesser, provable through scientific studies, which we now know as quackery. They deprived the Jewish people of their humanity, which helped them justify an attempt at genocide.
Ben Shapiro frequently cites a statistic from a study on Trans folk that almost 40% surveyed have attempted suicide, and spins it as 40% of them do commit suicide, with the caveat being that it’s a mental illness that can’t be helped, and thus shouldn’t be attempted to. He does not cite that the study also went to show that the suicide attempt rate dropped to as low as 25% amongst Trans folks in households where they were openly supported, and in fact disavows that there is any sociopolitical context to the statistic. I would argue that using data in this way, as a person of influence, is definitely something that causes psychological harm, and actively contributes to the maldevelopment of society’s understanding of Trans folk. Therefore, a violent act.
People can make mistakes, and people can change. But I would argue that continued and intentional use of these tactics is akin to violence, and should definitely be construed as hate speech. I agree that an unintentional thing like accidentally misgendering isn’t an outright afront by someone, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
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I don’t at all agree that they’re the same thing, and I think it’s a problem that there are people who can’t tell the difference between an actual threat and someone just being mean and they call both things “hate speech.”
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Here’s the thing though: Violence IS always physical force, and YOUR definition of the word includes things that aren’t violence. You’re changing the definition to suit your needs and that is intellectually dishonest at best, and dangerous at worst because now it muddies the waters as to what violence really is. Your argument that “it’s 2018” isn’t an argument. Look up the definition of the word and in every instance you’ll see that the words “physical force” are there every time. It doesn’t matter what you THINK the definition is.
Calling someone names isn’t a violent act in and of itself, leaving out facts isn’t a violent act, and misgendering someone is not a violent act. Are they bad things to do? Sure, but they aren’t the same as violence. All you’re doing is making things more complicated than they have to be because now we can’t even agree on basic definitions of words.
Likewise, telling someone something factual (that is objective and truthful) that they don’t want to hear is not “hate speech” just because they can’t handle the truth. It’s important to have actual definitions we can agree on for these things if they’re going to be enforced online but more importantly in actual real world laws.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/us/amp/english/violence
http://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/en/
Strange how all of those indicate that it means more than just physical harm, huh?
Cherry picking. Even that Mirriam Webster link you sent, while it has “words” in one of the definitions, none of the examples it gives make any reference to that. They still only pertain to physical force. And no other definition on any other doctor nary site I’ve found defines violence as anything but physical force except when it’s a figure of speech, not trying to make something that isn’t really violence such.
What the fuck is this bizarro world we live in now?
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If the definitions as defined in the preeminent English Dictionaries constitute “Cherry Picking” to you, then you are arguing in bad faith, and there is little to no point in debating against such dishonesty.
So because I won’t go along with your imaginary word meanings, I’m arguing in bad faith? Cool story bro.
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The links are there, for everyone to read.
And both of your links prove my point. Read them again.
Btw that definition that included “words” isn’t there now when I click the link just FYI. You’re grasping at straws mate.
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People should be able to express their bigoted views
It makes it easier to disregard then
The problem is when it is the president of the us fearmongering against gays and brown people
When it is the president arguing for antivaxxers leading to things like the mumps and measels to return.
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Very true. A black friend of mine said once that if someone spouted racist shit, that was his cue to stay away from that person and that it just makes it easier to spot them.
Once again, I have to be critical of what you seem to interpret from what I said. That definition is not my definition, it’s that of the United Nations when they had the WHO overlook the problem of violence in the world. Words are not sacred, and the meanings for them change overtime as we grow to understand more; the UN seems to agree, along with many researchers, that words can have a profound psychological and social effect that may not lead to injury or death, but is harmful to human beings nonetheless.
Are there more severe acts of violence that deserve a worse punishment? Absolutely. But all we’re talking about is deplatforming from private entities, not jail time. I’m not sure what could be done about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, who spent a lot of time on Gab spewing the antisemitic garbage that most people would just go “Oh, just ignore it, he’s crazy,” only to commit an incredibly violent act later. Gab itself seems to revel in antisemitic language and talking points. But what I do know is that violent ideology like that should be cycled out of public discourse because all it does is incite more violence without any real benefit other than “Oh look, another racist.”
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When I say “it’s 2018,” what I mean is that by now, people are starting to recognize that a lot of psychological scarring and trauma for individuals can emerge from adverse social situations, situations that are often caused by people in power acting in bad faith. Intentionality is not the point; again, from the WHO report: “Certain behaviours – such as hitting a spouse – may be regarded by some people as acceptable cultural practices, but are considered violent acts with important health implications for the individual.”
When Mitch McConnell slashes Medicare funds and tries to kill Social Security, he can say that he just wants federal deficits to be lower, but he also definitely knows that it will lead to grievous harm for many individuals, and he just doesn’t care. I don’t see how that isn’t an act of violence, but in the culture of the United States, that is just considered acceptable. “Well, poor people suffer.” John McCain is literally eulogized as having been a civil and respectful politician when he is one of the biggest warmongering shitheads to grace the Senate, and has the blood of millions of brown people on his hands, yet because it was “Acts of War,” he gets a pass.
The WHO’s violence definition is an attempt to examine, regardless of culture and intent, how people come upon injury, be it physical or psychological. And it is a complex thing, which is why these social media sites are being raked over the coals because they don’t see it as a complex thing.
I am curious though, what is an example of someone who has taken a beating for “telling it straight” that wasn’t actually a bad faith exercise?
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If words are not violence, then a large chunk of teenage suicides have no outside cause.
But that is bullshit, and you, and I, and most other rational people know it.
Even 'Murika the ignorant has finally gotten its head partially excavated from its ass as regards this is, with all the anti-bullying messages interjected between modern cartoons.
Good on them.
It only took decades of denial and mass school shootings for the point to finally sink in, but hey - America is a really, really fucking stupid country, at its Heart.
That Pelosi show on HBO is spot-fucking on, as regards the Trump people of 'Murika.
I lived in the Midwest for years.
That shit ain’t staged.
And while it IS ignorant, it ain’t the minority.
That is what we are up against, people.
It is not going away.
You cannot cure stupidity.
And you cannot cure indoctrinated willful ignorance.
We either need to contain it, or write this cultural wasteland off as lost.
Because the coasts and their close neighbors truly are the only thinking parts of this country.