Thread: Free speech vs hate speech

To clear one thing up, I did not call tommo an asshole. I characterized his actions and how they were likely to be perceived. If I had called him an asshole, that would be a punishable offense under forum rules. I did, however, take an unnecessarily patronizing tone and take things in that direction, which is why tommo didn't get an infraction for outright calling me an asshole in his response. Sorry for the forum policy tangent--the rest of this discussion does seem relevant to the thread.

Originally Posted by stonedape

Sorry, I just feel the need to speak up when someone is trying to suppress speech in a thread about freedom of speech. Particularly if it is for PC reasons, because I feel that political correctness is a form of superficiality. It is about making yourself look good and proper and has nothing to do with morality or justice.

If you really thought that tommo was a racist and consider him a member of this community, would it not be more beneficial to talk with him about this than to insult him? I understand, your a cop and your only "doing your job", but do you really think that tommo had racist intent, or was this just an opportunity for you to push political correctness?

People should act and speak as they will. If they do something offensive it shows who they are and how they feel. You yourself showed that you cared not about what was morally right or just or offensive but what was politically correct when you insulted him. If you believe that members of this community should not be offensive toward each other than you should start by not offending others yourself.

Sorry for ranting so much and directing all this negative energy towards you, but I get very pissed off about hypocritical moralizing. I'm not trying to reverse your decision, it's just that you dropped the PC card, talked about how he tommo was offensive, then insulted him. I can't resist this kind of inconsistency, my mind looks for it and attacks it. I see this sort of inconsistency as the Achilles heel of modern politics and think that it needs to be directly addressed and because it isn't and I'm in no position to address it myself, I rant on the internet.

And I feel the need to speak up when someone is using a "hate speech" discussion as an excuse to get a tingle by using a taboo racial epithet, one that is taboo for good reason. Let's imagine tommo saying his post out loud in some other public settings: a classroom; a subway platform; a busy restaurant; the evening news. What kind of response do you think he would get? If you were standing next to him, would you back him up as adamantly as you did here? Would he even think about saying it in the first place? I doubt either you or tommo would have made that statement without 1) the anonymity and distance of the internet or 2) a 100% white audience.

The "How come I can't say it? Why can't I be a minority, too?" mindset indicates an ignorance not far short of racism: ignorance regarding the real scale of racism in this country--not just blatant, hate-crime racism, but the amount of shit people have to let slide off their backs on a daily basis; and ignorance of the extent of white privilege. You can fall back on idealism, "I should be able to say anything, anywhere!" but in practical terms, racial epithets have such a strong chance of engendering defensiveness, fear, hostility, or the approval of people you probably don't want on your side, that they're almost always going to undermine anything you're trying to say.

You can throw around allegations of "political correctness" all you want, but every community has standards.

I can think of a half a dozen curse words worse than that. One isn't any more taboo than the others, just because people generally refer to one race. I am pretty sure if you call a white guy a mother ******, you are going to get the same reaction as using the other word with a black man.

That said, there is an appropriate time and place for every word.

Exactly, and I used it appropriately.

And Taosaur, I have said nigger in public before, to black friends in fact. But I never use it in a derogatory way. As stonedape has basically said, covering up actual racism by trying to force political correctness, is useless.

Originally Posted by Alric

I am pretty sure if you call a white guy a mother ******, you are going to get the same reaction as using the other word with a black man.

I would tend to disagree. I think what it is here is that "ni***r" is perhaps a much less offensive word in Australia than in North America. For example, here in Quebec you hear news reporters and sportscasters saying "fuck" all the time on French language stations, it's just not that offensive.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

To clear one thing up, I did not call tommo an asshole. I characterized his actions and how they were likely to be perceived. If I had called him an asshole, that would be a punishable offense under forum rules. I did, however, take an unnecessarily patronizing tone and take things in that direction, which is why tommo didn't get an infraction for outright calling me an asshole in his response. Sorry for the forum policy tangent--the rest of this discussion does seem relevant to the thread.

Even as a tangent it's still very relevant to the topic of free speech and hate speech. This is just another example of why I think that all speech should be allowed and unpublishable(other than in certain nebulous contexts like yelling "BOMB!" on an airplane or something; in this case you should be punished for causing havoc, not for use of words).

Your right, you didn't call him that, I missed the words "likely to come off as" in your second post. My apologies for misrepresenting you. But if he was offending you by his choice of words then you could have called him an asshole, or at least this is what I would have done(only with harsher words). What is wrong with calling someone an asshole when they are acting like one? You probably shouldn't have, buts that's just because you're a mod and that would look bad for the site and make it hard for people to take you seriously as a mod.

And is calling someone an asshole seriously a punishable offense? Jesus H. fucking Chirst. This is the internet, not 3rd grade. I can understand mods not using words like that(mods really shouldn't be offending people), but if someone is being an asshole you should be able to call them an asshole.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

And I feel the need to speak up when someone is using a "hate speech" discussion as an excuse to get a tingle by using a taboo racial epithet, one that is taboo for good reason. Let's imagine tommo saying his post out loud in some other public settings: a classroom; a subway platform; a busy restaurant; the evening news. What kind of response do you think he would get? If you were standing next to him, would you back him up as adamantly as you did here? Would he even think about saying it in the first place? I doubt either you or tommo would have made that statement without 1) the anonymity and distance of the internet or 2) a 100% white audience.

This is because it is taboo, not because of the word itself. I agree that he could have worded it better. And I'll admit it, I am only so adamant in my backing because I secretly want to be a lawyer for the ACLU. Do you have any evidence that he was doing this to get a tingle? While his wording may have been poor, it seems much more likely that he was using the word(a form of hate speech) because he is in a discussion about hate speech.

Any discussion of hate speech is going to be edgy in some respect unless it is weak and watered down by political correctness and other forms of fear. If I found myself in a discussion of hate speech in a classroom I would have no problem saying the word nigger, though I wouldn't have used as he did the second time, that does sound like he is using the word to refer to someone, which is offensive.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

You can throw around allegations of "political correctness" all you want, but every community has standards.

Why should standards ever be a complete prohibition of things or actions? This has been tried in communities since the beginning of time and has always been a total failure. We prohibit drugs yet people do them anyway. We prohibit murder yet people do it anyway. This is not to say that we shouldn't have rules or regulations of any kind, but rather to say that our methods of morality are old fashioned and out dated. They are still based in Thou Shalt mentality, which doesn't work. Time for a software upgrade in the Universal Computer.

Things are never harmful in and of themselves. A gun sitting 5 feet away, or even one in someones hand, is not in and of itself harmful. It is the way we use things that creates harm.

I think that it is an obvious and unspoken standard that a man should not offend another man. Why do we need to put stipulations and limitations on the strings of letters we can put together? Had you told tommo "watch it, you sound like a racist," I might have let it go. It is this idea that you are in some position of authority to tell someone what words they can and cannot use that I am rambling on about. This is a free country God Damn it. This is supposed to be a country of free men, of free thinkers. This country* was founded on a reaction, a revolution against this kind of Thou Shalt Not moralizing. People came here to escape this kind of bullshit and it seems to have followed them.

As a mod you certainly need to control the context, that is your job, to keep things from getting out of hand. But by eliminating content (or threatening to) you are not controlling the context, you are warping it. In order to control the context you must remain rational and not be moved by politics(which is all second circuit emotional energy). Your tone was offensive in my opinion. You seemed to be in this kind of Holier than Thou mindset that politically correct folk often have.

Sorry for this being so absurdly long, I am very passionate about free speech, it is the cornerstone of liberty.

*I should note that when I say country, I am not referring to the state. I am referring to the groups of communities that were started here in the 1500s by European settlers.

The only reason I said it a second time was because I wasn't really thinking about it. But in any case I don't think it matters. For reasons stated above.

Originally Posted by stonedape

And is calling someone an asshole seriously a punishable offense? Jesus H. fucking Chirst. This is the internet, not 3rd grade. I can understand mods not using words like that(mods really shouldn't be offending people), but if someone is being an asshole you should be able to call them an asshole.

Originally Posted by stonedape

I think that it is an obvious and unspoken standard that a man should not offend another man. Why do we need to put stipulations and limitations on the strings of letters we can put together? Had you told tommo "watch it, you sound like a racist," I might have let it go. It is this idea that you are in some position of authority to tell someone what words they can and cannot use that I am rambling on about. This is a free country God Damn it. This is supposed to be a country of free men, of free thinkers. This country* was founded on a reaction, a revolution against this kind of Thou Shalt Not moralizing. People came here to escape this kind of bullshit and it seems to have followed them.

As a mod you certainly need to control the context, that is your job, to keep things from getting out of hand. But by eliminating content (or threatening to) you are not controlling the context, you are warping it. In order to control the context you must remain rational and not be moved by politics(which is all second circuit emotional energy). Your tone was offensive in my opinion. You seemed to be in this kind of Holier than Thou mindset that politically correct folk often have.

Sorry for this being so absurdly long, I am very passionate about free speech, it is the cornerstone of liberty.

*I should note that when I say country, I am not referring to the state. I am referring to the groups of communities that were started here in the 1500s by European settlers.

Setting aside that highly selective reading of colonial history (a preponderance of those settlers came here to better enact their own brands of Thou Shalt Not moralizing), your argument would be quite lovely if anyone were taking up the position you argue against. I've already said:

Originally Posted by Taosaur

maybe I was making too much of a blanket statement, insofar as your usage of the term in the discussion about using it was relevant and non-offensive.

and

Originally Posted by Taosaur

I did, however, take an unnecessarily patronizing tone and take things in that direction

There are no "7 Words You Can't Say on DV," but there are standards of inappropriate language, and rules against insulting members, whether you call them fuckwad or captain poopy-face. There's no rule against taking an insulting tone when responding to a member, but it's still dickish and counterproductive, and I'm sorry for the tone of my initial responses to tommo.

Now regarding the word in question, and forum rules aside, you really have to examine your motivation for using it in any circumstances. We're talking about a word with very strong chances of one or more of the following effects:

1) causing someone distress
2) obscuring any message you might have
3) changing people's perception of you for the worse

particularly if you fumble it and end up saying something you didn't mean to say, as we're charitably assuming tommo did in his second usage. You can argue for your inalienable right to eat a shit sandwich, but you'll have a hard time convincing me it's ever a good idea, and no one's going to thank you for whipping it out in public.

My own observation of self-identified white people who are not overtly racist, but choose to put this particular turd in their mouth, is that they fail to grasp the real, ongoing impact of racism and, conversely, of white privilege, resulting in shallow, borderline racist views such as resentment against minorities for getting "special treatment" and a fetishistic fascination with minority culture--hence the failure to recognize that "edgy" use of racial epithets is an inappropriate arena in which to measure your e-peen (or ego-peen, in RL situations).

So no, I didn't feel moral outrage over tommo's post: more of a facepalming embarrassment on his behalf, and a wish to make it clear, for his edification and as a general illustration of the rules, that he had crossed the line.

Trying to stop people from using a word isn't going to make racism go away.