>banning homophobia is merely banning violent censorship of lgbt people.
'violent'?
If I say "I don't like gays". How is that violent?
If we have freedom of speech that applies to everyone. LGBT or homophobic. Each have the same right to speech, neither has the right to threaten with violence. Redefining speech you don't like as 'violent' isn't right though.
Also "Redefining speech you don't like as 'violent' isn't right though." That's exactly what you're doing with the word 'violence' in your post. You're claiming it doesn't have a meaning that it definitely does, in the literal look-it-up-in-a-dictionary sense.
I read the piece. Leaving aside the weighty issue of whether Milo Yiannopoulos' presence can violently shorten people's telomeres or methylate their CpG sites, there's the question of whether broadening a definition licenses broadening a prohibition. People who accept without question that the govt should stop interpersonal violence in the narrow sense may well not accept at all that it should stop it in its broader senses. Think about the friar's famous line from Romeo and Juliet, "These violent desires have violent ends". "Violent" has two different meanings in this line. It should be clear to anyone that the violence of Romeo and Juliet's love or sexual attraction for each other is not susceptible to the same legal sanction as the clan warfare that erupts in its consequence.
The common law prohibition of violence pertains to physical violence. Defining speech as "illegally violent" is absolutely a redefinition.
> Speech can cause a physical reaction just as much as a punch in the face can
This is farcical on it's face. There is simply no evidence that being offended or made a little uncomfortable is going to hurt you. You do after all have great power to control your own mental state, emotions, and reaction to negative externalities. This is a cornerstone of some of the oldest philosophical traditions in the world and well supported by experimentation. Cultivating a mindset of fragility only hurts yourself. But being called bad names will never hurt you like being physically beaten, words can't break bones or rupture your internal organs.
1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.
2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena.
3. Extreme or powerful emotion or expression
Which? Because it isn't physical force. And I don't think 3 applies as that tends not to be directed at anyone, and there's no requirement for the 'expression' to be hateful.
Further. That means saying "I hate homophobes" is also violence. So we can't say that either. And then we're on a slippery slope where if you say anything that anyone disagrees with is violence.
In the last paragraph you're ignoring the part where the protected categories are based on a logical analysis of the problems in society. Homophobes aren't a protected class because they aren't systematically persecuted for something outside their control.
It should be completely irrelevant whether something is outside of one's control. The persecution of someone for something arbitrary is the morally wrong thing here.
And choice doesn't really exist, which is why I find that requirement so distasteful. I didn't really choose to have my political views. I didn't choose to like the color green. It's the culmination of my genetics, life experiences and so on and that's just how I turned out.
I agree with you about free will, but we still run society as if it exists. If that's the argument we're going with then we literally shouldn't punish anyone for anything.
Free will isn't required for a justification for law enforcement.
Deterrence, rehabilitation and other reasons still apply with or without free will.
All that changes is the mindset. You're no longer a perpetrator with agency. You're a broken machine and we need to fix you or isolate you from society so you don't do more damage.
>Homophobes aren't a protected class because they aren't systematically persecuted for something outside their control.
You cannot assert that if you cannot demonstrate that homophobia is 0% genetic (I am using "genetic" loosely here). In reality, like most complex human traits, it's partially genetic and partially environmental, hence it is outside the control of at least a subset of those exhibiting it.
So what? Being a serial murderer could be outside the control of at least a subset of serial murderers, but that doesn't mean we don't make laws about it. Society is still built on the axiom of free will, whether it is true or not.
You're also skipping over the "systematically persecuted" part. I guess you could say the modern liberal distaste of homophobes is "systematic", but it's such a weird example to choose given the paradox of tolerance.
This is exactly the type of reaction I expect from modern leftists when they are proven factually wrong and logically inconsistent. Thanks for being an epitome.
>You're also skipping over the "systematically persecuted" part
Homophobia is a crime in the EU. So much for not being "systematically persecuted". Homophobes fit that description far better than homosexuals today.
If something is violence, it's violence. You could say violence towards homophobes is ok because they aren't a protected class. But if you make the case that hate speech is violence, then it's violence regardless of who it's directed at.
I wasn't really arguing the "hate speech == violence" position, which is pretty silly. That doesn't mean hate speech shouldn't be an add-on offense to other crimes though. Or the idea that all targets of "hate speech" are equal. (Because it's only true "hate speech" if the targets are protected).
This is kinda like the question, "can white people experience racism?" One school of thought says no, because (in the USA) non-white people cannot wield the psychological threat of systematic persecution against white people. You could offend a white person, or be prejudiced against them, but not really "commit racism". Partly this is just a semantic argument about what "racism" means - it is not merely a superficial difference in race between parties, but rather an encapsulation of the historical and systemic forces at play. Racism is a more powerful tool for white people than it is for others.
Do people argue that white people can't experience racism?!?
If a black person applies for a job and doesn't get it because of his race, that's racism. The same applies to a white person. The same power dynamic is at play.
Note that the way you phrased that, "You are evil unless you pay me reparations." makes it so that the person isn't considered evil if they pay. That is significantly different to "You are evil therefore you pay me reparations.", in which the burden of proof of evilness is not based on payment. The person is still considered evil if they pay; they pay because they accept that and want to make things right. That's important.
Your link doesn't support your assertion that the phrase "I hate evil people. You are evil unless you pay me reparations." meets the definition of the crime of intimidation.
Speech can cause a release of hormones that make you feel negative emotions. That is not violence any more than causing the same effect by, for example, teaching someone about how their ancestors committed a genocide is violence. You do not have a right to not hear things that make you unhappy.
Excessively loud noise in residential areas is banned because it releases hormones that make you feel bad. Although there's less room for such a ban to go wrong, obviously.
I agree that the label "violence" is manipulative. Using the label "harm" instead would be more accurate.
I know it isn't. I'm saying there's precedent for things being banned merely because of a stress response. And the kinds of noise that get banned aren't just ones that damage your hearing.
And I just said it is not only sounds that damage hearing that are banned. If I am stomping on my floor for six hours straight and propagating noise pollution to my downstairs neighbor, I am getting a police visit. No hearing damage perpetrated.
>Excessively loud noise in residential areas is banned because it releases hormones that make you feel bad. Although there's less room for such a ban to go wrong, obviously.
"Excessively" loud noise in residential areas is banned for a bunch of reasons, none of which have anything to do with hormones:
1. It's annoying and disruptive to the residents of the area. No hormones required;
2. It's often selectively applied to harass members of less-favored groups, to make them uncomfortable living in that area with the hope that they'll move out.
1. "annoying and disruptive" is just cortisol, adrenaline and so on. It's the health damaging physiological stress response that's the reason for the ban.
>1. "annoying and disruptive" is just cortisol, adrenaline and so on. It's the health damaging physiological stress response that's the reason for the ban.
You're retconning[0] here.
Many (most?) noise regulations were implemented before anyone other than endocrinologists and a few neuroscientists (and many before even that) knew that cortisol even existed.
I assume that those regulations are in place because of the stress response that victims feel. Isn't it besides the point whether or not they knew about how that stress response was generated in the body?
So somehow learning more about how stress is generated changes whether or not stressors should be banned? How does that make sense? If anything, we now know more about how damaging chronic stress is, so our justification to ban stressors should be even higher than it was in the past.
The only good argument is that speech shouldn't be banned even if it leads to a large stress response, because of the slippery slope risk and so on.
Taking the position that either (i) speech can't generate a large stress response that's physically harmful to the individual, or that (ii) our knowledge of how stress is generated somehow changes whether or not stressors should be banned -- these are both not good arguments.
According to the article some forms of "adversity" can be violence. You disagree with my view and expressed it.
If I make the claim your post caused my blood to boil, that could be considered a symptom of inflammation mentioned in the article.
As the article points out, that can shorten my life and as such is tantamount to violence.
Therefore you have committed an act of violence towards me. I would ask you to please turn yourself into the appropriate authorities and inform me of the court date so I can testify against you.
Can't read that article because it's paywalled, but you seem to be implying that provoking a physical reaction in someone else is tantamount to an assault. Is that really what you are saying? Is this not an inevitable part of interacting with each other?
That is the argument, yes. That speech can cause harm because we have a social nervous system and chronic stress can shorten life span.
A better argument is to appeal to the history of genocide. There's a causal connection between speech and culture on the one hand, and genocide on the other.
But aren't we trying to break the causal link by banning incitement to violence? Surely the discussion is about whether to move one step back on the causality chain.
If you have a culture where everyone hates Jews due to memes propagated by speech, then you get 40 percent of people wanting to vote for a Hitler, who then brings the violence part after he's in power.
Or you get lone wolf terrorists that are motivated by speech that isn't technically incitement.
What speech laws were in place in Weimar Germany? What was Hitler advocating for before he took power? Without that this isn't the evidence you say it is.
Lone wolf terrorists seems a better example. I assume you're referring to school shooters. The problem is that's an issue of the US, not of speech laws. To me it seems more like the psychology of people jumping off golden gate bridge.
> What speech laws were in place in Weimar Germany? What was Hitler advocating for before he took power? Without that this isn't the evidence you say it is.
Hitler's rise has many causes. One of those causes was that anti-semitic racism was part of everyday culture. It was a meme that was propagated across generations via speech. Then Hitler weaponized that meme (again, using speech) to rally support after the Great Depression + fears of Bolshevism + WW1 grievances made people's minds more pliable to scapegoating.
Weimar Germany did have hate speech laws, albeit not ones that were properly enforced. That's moot, though, since it's not my claim that a specific speech restriction is effective at preventing the hate speech -> genocide causal path. My only claim is that that causal path exists.
> Lone wolf terrorists seems a better example. I assume you're referring to school shooters. The problem is that's an issue of the US, not of speech laws.
I'm really referring to hate crimes perpetrated by lone wolves, of which shootings are a subset. For example, the supermarket shooter that wrote the N word on his gun barrel. I read his manifesto, and his grievances were ones that he'd adopted from online ethnonationalist forums.
Again, I'm not trying to claim that some speech law can stop hate crimes. Maybe they can, or maybe they'll backfire. I'm just claiming that this notion that speech that isn't direct incitement hasn't historically partially caused hate crimes and genocide is a fantasy. The above case is some evidence backing that position, and there are others like it.
Ideas are extremely powerful. They can inspire unhinged people to take drastic action on their own terms, when perhaps they may not have otherwise done so. They can be part of the fuel for the rise of demagogues. That's what appears to be the reality.
'violent'?
If I say "I don't like gays". How is that violent?
If we have freedom of speech that applies to everyone. LGBT or homophobic. Each have the same right to speech, neither has the right to threaten with violence. Redefining speech you don't like as 'violent' isn't right though.