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Yes, it's offensive, yes, it's disgusting, but how exactly does it "have consequences"? Do you really think someone is going to go rape a woman just because of

• ColinWright 13y ago
  Do you think speech like this has no consequences at all? That's what I'm trying to find out, whether people believe this sort of thing genuinely has zero effect. Personally, I think speech and communication in general goes both ways. It reflects what the source thinks and feels, and in turn affects what the listener/reader thinks and feels. I think there is an effect. Do you think there is none? And then there is the other aspect. Do you believe that speech with consequences should be censored or controlled? Or do you believe that all speech, even shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, should be uncensored and uncontrolled? You appear not to have answered the question I actually asked.
  • glomph 13y ago
    All speech has an effect otherwise no one would bother talking. The question is not whether it has an effect, but whether it causes enough harm to justify stopping it. Older than the fire in the theater example (which if I remember rightly comes from a supreme court case in the US) is John Stuart Mill: >An opinion that corndealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. But he then of course gives one of the most brilliant defenses of free speech in all circumstances other than direct harm ever written. Do you think this is going to cause direct harm?