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"Hate speech" seems to be imbued with somewhat religious meaning, since most conversations about it make huge assumptions about its impact, frequency, and scope

• homonculus1 7y ago
  I noticed several years ago that you can mentally replace terms like "problematic" with "sinful" and "hate speech" with "blasphemy" without losing any meaning in most instances. They basically convey nothing more than a subjective moral judgment informed by group affiliation and puritan ideology. "Racist/sexist/homophobic" still convey a little bit of information since they hint at a way in which something might be genuinely bad. But their definitions have been so irresponsibly broadened that you have to take it on a case-by-case basis whether the label even means anything let alone whether it's accurate. This is a bad problem and everyone should worry about it, because a meaning vacuum is like a power vacuum. Even people who don't care about cis white men getting verbally abused need to realize that when you publish insane histrionics about OK signs and cartoon frogs, you generate confusion and doubt that actual white supremacists can use for cover. Extremism begets extremism.
  • kitsuac 7y ago
    Problem is a tribe and all its associated organizations become dependent on a fresh supply of racists, sexists in order to justify its own continued existence. Evolutionarily, it must continue to find more and more of them to survive, even if they are mostly imaginary