7 ms·

> We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. They are giving credence to the idea that words can injure. I would have rather see

> We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. They are giving credence to the idea that words can injure. I would have rather seen this phrased as "that some believe to be offensive or injurious". But I imagine this sentence was heavily negotiated.

TylerE 4y ago
[flagged]
- crackercrews 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - TylerE 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - notjoemama 4y ago
      Good point. There is a degree of injury and I would have, prior to several years ago, assumed the general public at large to understand the difference. Given that social engineering has steered empathy into being weaponized politically, I now unfortunately think this is either explicitly codified or roundly dismissed. Gradations of judgement left entirely to those offended whether present or not is an untenable society. Which, may actually be the intention. My perspective comes from having listen to a talk from Alan Watts on false virtue.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - polygamous_bat 4y ago
        Gatekeeping abuse is something I did not expect to see here today. Suffering is suffering, and we should aim to end it, not categorize in greater and lesser pains and categorically claim people with "lesser pains" are "pushing agendas" and should "stay the f*k out" or whatnot. As someone who has experienced both, I can provide my anecdata to say that words hurt. Maybe they're not the same type of pain, but they do. If you are a victim of verbal and mental abuse, do not let the above comment convince you that your suffering is somewhat lesser and thus not worthy of empathy.
        P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    Now think of what a gay man thinks when he's minding his own business and a group of people start slinging slurs at him. Have you ever been in that position? Do you know what it's like, wondering if you make the wrong move that they might change from jeering to violence?
    - crackercrews 4y ago
      Sounds like we're in agreement. Violence is worse than jeering.
      - fzeroracer 4y ago
        I don't know how you got that at all from my statement, but I don't think you've been in a position like that to understand that the jeering comes with the implicit threat of violence, and how trying to navigate/defuse situations like that place a huge burden on the person defending themselves.
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    > Think of what an assault victim thinks when she hears that words are violence. Think of what a Jewish person thinks when they hear insert Kanye West tweet here. The reason speech such as that is restricted is because it inevitably precedes physical violence. Historical victims of violence have learned to identify that through trial and error, while others can safely pretend that words never hurt anybody.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhFepY5G0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhFepY5G0w Ben Shapiro talking about it, I'll transcribe part of it here. > I feel bad for Ye. There are people who are bipolar in my family, like when people are in manic episodes, which he _clearly_ is in a manic episode, they say things that are insane and they think that nobody can tell them what to do and the more insane it is and the more people disapprove the more they do it. And they do crazy stuff and when he comes out of the manic episode it's ... it's going to be really really bad for him. Someone then asked Shapiro, "would you debate with him [Ye]" and his response was "I won't debate with people who are mentally ill". --- That seems like a pretty rational, reasoned response, and I'm not sure why you think he was harmed in some way. Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape. No, the need to be protected from the _ACT_ of rape, how does one do that without talking about rape? If a victim of rape feels harm from the very utterance of the word rape, that's a mental problem that should be dealt with through therapy, not by making it more difficult to protect from the _ACT_ of rape by making it more difficult to speak about it. We have 100's of years of common law to better vet out what types of speech have a tendency to result in violence, and there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list.
      - polygamous_bat 4y ago
        > Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape. No, that seems to be either an incredibly biased reading of my comment or an attempt at a bad faith argument. I am claiming: rallies that announce "all trans people are child molesters" are inevitably followed by physical violence against some trans person for "molesting children". More often than not, people who hold such rallies are aware of such implications, and are intentionally holding such rallies to cause harm. Thus, words, for all intents and purposes, can be a direct cause of physical violence and thus should be regarded as such in very extreme cases. > there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list. Sometimes the laws simply have not caught up with the times. Quick example: how long have gay marriage been federally legal in the United States? Law follows common sense and consensus, not the other way around, which is why I do not agree with your suggestion that we should forsake common sense and consensus to blindly follow the letters of the law.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  [flagged]
wilg 4y ago
It's important to realize that debating the definition of "injure" is almost entirely unsubstantive. I prefer the generally-accepted definition of "harm physically", as I assume you do, but clearly some people try to generalize the idea in order to emphasize other types of harm. It's a debatable topic, there might be a little bit to learn from hashing it out, but it's mostly fluff. It's better to explore if this illuminates any actual disagreement on some concrete issue. This sort of taking umbrage about word definitions is a factor in pretty much all major political spats, and I don't think it's going away by arguing about each term. You just have to define the terms in some way for the purposes of mutual understanding for an individual discussion. If the debate ends up just being bikeshedding the definition, walk away and find a better conversation.
imperfect_blue 4y ago
Speech can be injurious if they cause someone reputational damage through slander, but I'm not sure that's what's meant here.

TylerE 4y ago

[flagged]

crackercrews 4y ago
[flagged]
- TylerE 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - notjoemama 4y ago
    Good point. There is a degree of injury and I would have, prior to several years ago, assumed the general public at large to understand the difference. Given that social engineering has steered empathy into being weaponized politically, I now unfortunately think this is either explicitly codified or roundly dismissed. Gradations of judgement left entirely to those offended whether present or not is an untenable society. Which, may actually be the intention. My perspective comes from having listen to a talk from Alan Watts on false virtue.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - polygamous_bat 4y ago
      Gatekeeping abuse is something I did not expect to see here today. Suffering is suffering, and we should aim to end it, not categorize in greater and lesser pains and categorically claim people with "lesser pains" are "pushing agendas" and should "stay the f*k out" or whatnot. As someone who has experienced both, I can provide my anecdata to say that words hurt. Maybe they're not the same type of pain, but they do. If you are a victim of verbal and mental abuse, do not let the above comment convince you that your suffering is somewhat lesser and thus not worthy of empathy.
      - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  Now think of what a gay man thinks when he's minding his own business and a group of people start slinging slurs at him. Have you ever been in that position? Do you know what it's like, wondering if you make the wrong move that they might change from jeering to violence?
  - crackercrews 4y ago
    Sounds like we're in agreement. Violence is worse than jeering.
    - fzeroracer 4y ago
      I don't know how you got that at all from my statement, but I don't think you've been in a position like that to understand that the jeering comes with the implicit threat of violence, and how trying to navigate/defuse situations like that place a huge burden on the person defending themselves.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  > Think of what an assault victim thinks when she hears that words are violence. Think of what a Jewish person thinks when they hear insert Kanye West tweet here. The reason speech such as that is restricted is because it inevitably precedes physical violence. Historical victims of violence have learned to identify that through trial and error, while others can safely pretend that words never hurt anybody.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhFepY5G0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIhFepY5G0w Ben Shapiro talking about it, I'll transcribe part of it here. > I feel bad for Ye. There are people who are bipolar in my family, like when people are in manic episodes, which he _clearly_ is in a manic episode, they say things that are insane and they think that nobody can tell them what to do and the more insane it is and the more people disapprove the more they do it. And they do crazy stuff and when he comes out of the manic episode it's ... it's going to be really really bad for him. Someone then asked Shapiro, "would you debate with him [Ye]" and his response was "I won't debate with people who are mentally ill". --- That seems like a pretty rational, reasoned response, and I'm not sure why you think he was harmed in some way. Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape. No, the need to be protected from the _ACT_ of rape, how does one do that without talking about rape? If a victim of rape feels harm from the very utterance of the word rape, that's a mental problem that should be dealt with through therapy, not by making it more difficult to protect from the _ACT_ of rape by making it more difficult to speak about it. We have 100's of years of common law to better vet out what types of speech have a tendency to result in violence, and there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list.
    - polygamous_bat 4y ago
      > Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape. No, that seems to be either an incredibly biased reading of my comment or an attempt at a bad faith argument. I am claiming: rallies that announce "all trans people are child molesters" are inevitably followed by physical violence against some trans person for "molesting children". More often than not, people who hold such rallies are aware of such implications, and are intentionally holding such rallies to cause harm. Thus, words, for all intents and purposes, can be a direct cause of physical violence and thus should be regarded as such in very extreme cases. > there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list. Sometimes the laws simply have not caught up with the times. Quick example: how long have gay marriage been federally legal in the United States? Law follows common sense and consensus, not the other way around, which is why I do not agree with your suggestion that we should forsake common sense and consensus to blindly follow the letters of the law.
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
[flagged]

wilg 4y ago

It's important to realize that debating the definition of "injure" is almost entirely unsubstantive. I prefer the generally-accepted definition of "harm physically", as I assume you do, but clearly some people try to generalize the idea in order to emphasize other types of harm. It's a debatable topic, there might be a little bit to learn from hashing it out, but it's mostly fluff. It's better to explore if this illuminates any actual disagreement on some concrete issue. This sort of taking umbrage about word definitions is a factor in pretty much all major political spats, and I don't think it's going away by arguing about each term. You just have to define the terms in some way for the purposes of mutual understanding for an individual discussion. If the debate ends up just being bikeshedding the definition, walk away and find a better conversation.

imperfect_blue 4y ago

Speech can be injurious if they cause someone reputational damage through slander, but I'm not sure that's what's meant here.