5 ms·

Voices that call for repression of rights for certain parties should be silenced. Gay people are a subset of people who have been harassed because of something

by fao_ 9y ago

Voices that call for repression of rights for certain parties should be silenced. Gay people are a subset of people who have been harassed because of something that a) they cannot control, b) harms nobody (As long as it is between two consenting adults, but that's the same for heterosexual relations). Fascists are a subset of people who have been harassed because a) they call for non-whites to be exterminated, b) previous fascist movements have put into practice that goal. The difference is: If I speak about death to gay people, historically this has led to gay people dying -- even if a gay person sat still, they would be attacked. If I speak about death to fascists, historically this has led to fascists dying -- but only after they have mobilized to take power andor spread their beliefs. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which voices should be silent. That is, if one values equality among fellow humans, and keeps a gentle eye on history.

deleted 9y ago
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BurningFrog 9y ago
This does not answer the "who" question.
leroy_masochist 9y ago
So, fascists should not be allowed the privilege of free speech? This gets kind of dicey to implement in a place like SF, where it seems like half the people my age think that all registered Republicans are, ipso facto, literally fascists.
marcoperaza 9y ago
Show me a committee of people who you think should be trusted to decide what speech is not allowed. And I will show you a group of fallen men, like the rest of us, who will abuse their power for political gain. And where do you draw the line? Maybe you could get everyone to agree on "kill all gays" being irredeemably intolerant. But what about conservatives who think that children benefit from having a mother and a father and so believe that only adoption by married heterosexual couples should be allowed[1]? According to you, is that just wrong or is it worthy of censorship? And what of the many religions who believe that wives should obey their husbands? And what of discussions of multiculturalism and its potential threats to social cohesion? You give only easy examples, but the trouble is never with the easy examples. [1] And the for the record, I'm in favor of allowing adoption by gay couples.
fao_ 9y ago
Someone stated: >Voices that call for repression of rights for certain parties should be silenced. This is going to sound unbelievably pedantic and frustrating, but... What about the right to free speech? This comment was deleted, but I wrote a response I feel should be heard anyway. So here it is: 1. Vulnerable groups should be protected. If my speech has historically led to The Right To Life of others being violated, then their right to life is much more important than the freedom or protection of my speech. 2. The right to free speech is a legal device to protect you from the government coming into your home and taking you to a gulag for stating certain things. In no cases are your rights to speak being violated, you can speak these things privately within your home. However, when in public and on private land, we need different rules. Just as public indecency violates your right to wear or not wear whatever you wish when out and about, so do hate speech, libel, slander, and defamation laws also restrict what you can state in public. 3. I wonder why people only bring this up with respect to social justice discourse. A couple of months ago, a person was taken to court by someone in government for laughing at them during a speech. Just this week the CDC was banned by the government from saying "evidence-based" and "science-based". And yet the social groups (on 4chan, twitter, facebook, HN, etc.) that frequently claim for freedom of speech with respect to social justice is curiously silent about examples of actual government repression of speech. This leads me to believe that there is a certain disingenuity when this is used as a rebuttal.
- matchu 9y ago
  Haha, I was writing a reply, too! In Sam's case, it sounds like all of his social discomfort is happening entirely within free speech principles? From what I can gather, Sam sometimes freely-speaks an idea that other people find harmful. Others then freely-speak back to him that he should stop, because it's harmful. But it sounds like Sam's arguing not just for the right to free speech, but the right to have everyone listen to you. That right is limited by others' rights to live peacefully, and not be regularly subjected to words that harm them.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    I think we're in a weird situation where nobody is really worried about Sam's ability to remain free, but at the same time nobody is all that interested in listening to the weaker voices that might actually end up silenced. In fact, that's almost a given: if a million people are going to read your blog post then, no, social mechanisms aren't going to shut you up. What's in the back of my mind is an unremarkable person who has an opinion that their boss doesn't agree with. We never read their blog posts, because by definition I'm talking about when the power dynamic is backwards.
abnry 9y ago
But what are rights to begin with? Take this as purely a devil's argument and not something I am advocating, please. Let's take a 30 year old and a 15 year old. We accept in a society that two 15 year olds can consent to sex to each other. We do not accept that a 30 year old and a 15 year old can consent to sex. But for a person with a sexual preference for teens, their attraction is (a) something they can't control and (b) something that doesn't harm anyone if there is consent between both parties. There is a lot of room for argument here. Take a 15 year old and 19 year old. Is that okay? What about 17 and 19? Where's the line? How can it possibly be the case that age difference necessarily indicates a power differential that inhibits consent in all circumstances? So we are in a pickle now. Either this similar argument is wrong, and hence the original argument can be questioned, or this argument is good, and hence the majority cultural belief about such relationships needs to be drastically questioned. Either way, we should allow people to voice their arguments.
- fao_ 9y ago
  But for a person with a sexual preference for teens, their attraction is (a) something they can't control and (b) something that doesn't harm anyone if there is consent between both parties. Honestly, I haven't seen much evidence for point (b). It ultimately comes down to experience and power-dynamics. We can accept that two people of the same age do not have a drastic advantage over each other. It is much less likely that a thirty year old does not have an advantage over a fifteen year old. Even if that advantage is one that is not acknowledged by either party, it exists to some degree. A minor is someone who we have arbitrarily decided has less ability to determine how to act compared to an adult. Yes, different cultures having different ages indicate that this is arbitrary, and yes it is difficult to know where to draw the line exactly, but the fact is that to protect minors the line needs to be drawn somewhere. It is mildly contradictory that a 16 year old in Britain can sign up for the armed forces, have a child, and get married, but they are not allowed to drink or drive a car. That doesn't mean that those boundaries should not exist, however. Ultimately the exact definition of these sorts of things come down to cultural handshakes. Why do people drive on the left-side or right-side of the road? It's a cultural handshake. Consent between two parties of different emotional maturity is a difficult thing to figure out, hence why we have the cultural handshake that says that for certain parties it is unacceptable for them to liasion at certain ages. To say that those power dynamics apply to two adult men of the same age, is -- to put it mildly -- ridiculous.
jopalm 9y ago
>It doesn't take a genius to figure out which voices should be silent. We live in a political environment where you can be labeled a fascist for not wholeheartedly supporting an array of ideas that have been determined to be so obvious that they don't warrant discussion (large scale immigration, white culture as toxic, transgenderism as normal and desirable, just to name a few). Given that context, you'll excuse me if the idea that we can easily figure out who deserves to be silenced is implausible.
jrs95 9y ago
I can't be on board with this because the way it's treated currently is a one way street. As much as I hate the stuff you're mentioning specifically, I'm not going to call for those people to be silenced when it's acceptable and somewhat popular to say the same thing about whites, men, straight people, etc. And ultimately calling for silencing the far right while doing and saying nothing about equally abhorrent ideas on the far left only creates useful propaganda for the people you want to silence. As for your specific example, it doesn't really fit into what's happening now. Violence towards people labelled as fascists is common, but not the other way around. And in parallel cases, things like "death to cops" has absolutely led to an increase in people murdering police officers. This whole thing is benefiting the far right from a propaganda standpoint.
- fao_ 9y ago
  when it's acceptable and somewhat popular to say the same thing about whites, men, straight people, etc. You're ignoring the power dynamics. Take trans women for example. 46% will commit suicide, over 80% have experienced assault (and only a slightly lower statistic for sexual assault). Thus a cis person saying something of the sort like "trans women should be murdered" is propagating an idea that has very real effect on the world. Since it is already accepted that trans women are harmed as such, making such a statement propagates the harmful ideas further. It is very likely that after that person makes such a comment, a trans woman will die. In contrast, cis white men are not being murdered by trans women. Thus for them to state that "cis should die" is a act of protest, and has very little effect on the real world. The difference is: Is this likely to happen, is this happening, and has this happened? In the former instance the case is yes, in the latter the case is no. Violence towards people labelled as fascists is common, but not the other way around. On the contrary, fascists have murdered in recent years: 1 British politican (Joe Cox). 2 American Representatives. A number of American people[0][1]. I can bring up more examples but I'd like to get off this site sometime today :) Besides, it's trivial to google. Indeed, White Supremacy is listed as one of the things that the US DHS is working to combat[2] "death to cops" has absolutely led to an increase in people murdering police officers. Source please? All I've seen is more police killing unarmed and already restrained people. [0]: James Fields was a fascist. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/charlottesville-james-fields-charged-with-was-pictured-at-neo-nazi-rally-vanguard-america https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/charlottesvi... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-double-murder-white-supremacist-muslim-hate-speech https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-dou... [2]: https://www.dhs.gov/blog/2017/08/16/did-you-know-four-ways-dhs-working-prevent-terrorism-home https://www.dhs.gov/blog/2017/08/16/did-you-know-four-ways-d...
deleted 9y ago
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by fao_ 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

BurningFrog 9y ago

This does not answer the "who" question.

leroy_masochist 9y ago

So, fascists should not be allowed the privilege of free speech? This gets kind of dicey to implement in a place like SF, where it seems like half the people my age think that all registered Republicans are, ipso facto, literally fascists.

marcoperaza 9y ago

Show me a committee of people who you think should be trusted to decide what speech is not allowed. And I will show you a group of fallen men, like the rest of us, who will abuse their power for political gain. And where do you draw the line? Maybe you could get everyone to agree on "kill all gays" being irredeemably intolerant. But what about conservatives who think that children benefit from having a mother and a father and so believe that only adoption by married heterosexual couples should be allowed[1]? According to you, is that just wrong or is it worthy of censorship? And what of the many religions who believe that wives should obey their husbands? And what of discussions of multiculturalism and its potential threats to social cohesion? You give only easy examples, but the trouble is never with the easy examples. [1] And the for the record, I'm in favor of allowing adoption by gay couples.

fao_ 9y ago

Someone stated: >Voices that call for repression of rights for certain parties should be silenced. This is going to sound unbelievably pedantic and frustrating, but... What about the right to free speech? This comment was deleted, but I wrote a response I feel should be heard anyway. So here it is: 1. Vulnerable groups should be protected. If my speech has historically led to The Right To Life of others being violated, then their right to life is much more important than the freedom or protection of my speech. 2. The right to free speech is a legal device to protect you from the government coming into your home and taking you to a gulag for stating certain things. In no cases are your rights to speak being violated, you can speak these things privately within your home. However, when in public and on private land, we need different rules. Just as public indecency violates your right to wear or not wear whatever you wish when out and about, so do hate speech, libel, slander, and defamation laws also restrict what you can state in public. 3. I wonder why people only bring this up with respect to social justice discourse. A couple of months ago, a person was taken to court by someone in government for laughing at them during a speech. Just this week the CDC was banned by the government from saying "evidence-based" and "science-based". And yet the social groups (on 4chan, twitter, facebook, HN, etc.) that frequently claim for freedom of speech with respect to social justice is curiously silent about examples of actual government repression of speech. This leads me to believe that there is a certain disingenuity when this is used as a rebuttal.

matchu 9y ago
Haha, I was writing a reply, too! In Sam's case, it sounds like all of his social discomfort is happening entirely within free speech principles? From what I can gather, Sam sometimes freely-speaks an idea that other people find harmful. Others then freely-speak back to him that he should stop, because it's harmful. But it sounds like Sam's arguing not just for the right to free speech, but the right to have everyone listen to you. That right is limited by others' rights to live peacefully, and not be regularly subjected to words that harm them.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  I think we're in a weird situation where nobody is really worried about Sam's ability to remain free, but at the same time nobody is all that interested in listening to the weaker voices that might actually end up silenced. In fact, that's almost a given: if a million people are going to read your blog post then, no, social mechanisms aren't going to shut you up. What's in the back of my mind is an unremarkable person who has an opinion that their boss doesn't agree with. We never read their blog posts, because by definition I'm talking about when the power dynamic is backwards.

abnry 9y ago

But what are rights to begin with? Take this as purely a devil's argument and not something I am advocating, please. Let's take a 30 year old and a 15 year old. We accept in a society that two 15 year olds can consent to sex to each other. We do not accept that a 30 year old and a 15 year old can consent to sex. But for a person with a sexual preference for teens, their attraction is (a) something they can't control and (b) something that doesn't harm anyone if there is consent between both parties. There is a lot of room for argument here. Take a 15 year old and 19 year old. Is that okay? What about 17 and 19? Where's the line? How can it possibly be the case that age difference necessarily indicates a power differential that inhibits consent in all circumstances? So we are in a pickle now. Either this similar argument is wrong, and hence the original argument can be questioned, or this argument is good, and hence the majority cultural belief about such relationships needs to be drastically questioned. Either way, we should allow people to voice their arguments.

fao_ 9y ago
But for a person with a sexual preference for teens, their attraction is (a) something they can't control and (b) something that doesn't harm anyone if there is consent between both parties. Honestly, I haven't seen much evidence for point (b). It ultimately comes down to experience and power-dynamics. We can accept that two people of the same age do not have a drastic advantage over each other. It is much less likely that a thirty year old does not have an advantage over a fifteen year old. Even if that advantage is one that is not acknowledged by either party, it exists to some degree. A minor is someone who we have arbitrarily decided has less ability to determine how to act compared to an adult. Yes, different cultures having different ages indicate that this is arbitrary, and yes it is difficult to know where to draw the line exactly, but the fact is that to protect minors the line needs to be drawn somewhere. It is mildly contradictory that a 16 year old in Britain can sign up for the armed forces, have a child, and get married, but they are not allowed to drink or drive a car. That doesn't mean that those boundaries should not exist, however. Ultimately the exact definition of these sorts of things come down to cultural handshakes. Why do people drive on the left-side or right-side of the road? It's a cultural handshake. Consent between two parties of different emotional maturity is a difficult thing to figure out, hence why we have the cultural handshake that says that for certain parties it is unacceptable for them to liasion at certain ages. To say that those power dynamics apply to two adult men of the same age, is -- to put it mildly -- ridiculous.

jopalm 9y ago

>It doesn't take a genius to figure out which voices should be silent. We live in a political environment where you can be labeled a fascist for not wholeheartedly supporting an array of ideas that have been determined to be so obvious that they don't warrant discussion (large scale immigration, white culture as toxic, transgenderism as normal and desirable, just to name a few). Given that context, you'll excuse me if the idea that we can easily figure out who deserves to be silenced is implausible.

jrs95 9y ago

I can't be on board with this because the way it's treated currently is a one way street. As much as I hate the stuff you're mentioning specifically, I'm not going to call for those people to be silenced when it's acceptable and somewhat popular to say the same thing about whites, men, straight people, etc. And ultimately calling for silencing the far right while doing and saying nothing about equally abhorrent ideas on the far left only creates useful propaganda for the people you want to silence. As for your specific example, it doesn't really fit into what's happening now. Violence towards people labelled as fascists is common, but not the other way around. And in parallel cases, things like "death to cops" has absolutely led to an increase in people murdering police officers. This whole thing is benefiting the far right from a propaganda standpoint.

fao_ 9y ago
when it's acceptable and somewhat popular to say the same thing about whites, men, straight people, etc. You're ignoring the power dynamics. Take trans women for example. 46% will commit suicide, over 80% have experienced assault (and only a slightly lower statistic for sexual assault). Thus a cis person saying something of the sort like "trans women should be murdered" is propagating an idea that has very real effect on the world. Since it is already accepted that trans women are harmed as such, making such a statement propagates the harmful ideas further. It is very likely that after that person makes such a comment, a trans woman will die. In contrast, cis white men are not being murdered by trans women. Thus for them to state that "cis should die" is a act of protest, and has very little effect on the real world. The difference is: Is this likely to happen, is this happening, and has this happened? In the former instance the case is yes, in the latter the case is no. Violence towards people labelled as fascists is common, but not the other way around. On the contrary, fascists have murdered in recent years: 1 British politican (Joe Cox). 2 American Representatives. A number of American people[0][1]. I can bring up more examples but I'd like to get off this site sometime today :) Besides, it's trivial to google. Indeed, White Supremacy is listed as one of the things that the US DHS is working to combat[2] "death to cops" has absolutely led to an increase in people murdering police officers. Source please? All I've seen is more police killing unarmed and already restrained people. [0]: James Fields was a fascist. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/charlottesville-james-fields-charged-with-was-pictured-at-neo-nazi-rally-vanguard-america https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/13/charlottesvi... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-double-murder-white-supremacist-muslim-hate-speech https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-dou... [2]: https://www.dhs.gov/blog/2017/08/16/did-you-know-four-ways-dhs-working-prevent-terrorism-home https://www.dhs.gov/blog/2017/08/16/did-you-know-four-ways-d...

deleted 9y ago

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