Profanity can be removed with a regular expression. What counts as "hate speech" is necessarily impossible for even humans to agree on, let alone algorithms. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the general public, and maybe especially the media class, has no idea that this is the case.
It's unrealistic to define "subjective" as "impossible". The ability to automate something deterministically can't be a universal bar for action. Yes, defining hate speech is a thorny undertaking, but moderating based on subjectivity is already the norm, by necessity.
> What counts as "hate speech" is necessarily impossible
Most problems like this can be broken into "the easy bit" and "the rest". Focusing on the thorny problems in "the rest" is a mistake if you want to do something about the easy bit (and a tactic, if you want to avoid it).
There are a few reasonable ways to approach this, free-speach maximimalist only one of them. I'm sure there are unreasonable ways too.
Yes, yes, I realize that you can't just s/bad word/*/g across your database of comments. Nevertheless, it's a much easier job than teaching an AI which references to monkeys are from cuddly wildlife accounts, and which are abuse sent to black athletes.
I always thought this type of take was interesting. Profanity (and blasphemy) is offensive to tons of people, arguably more than are offended by hate speech. But profanity is tolerated in many communities where hate speech is not.
Seemed funny that calling someone a “f**ing idiot” is not banworthy but calling someone a “[insert your least favorite racial slur here]” is. So irrational race-based hatred is worse than just run of the mill irrational hatred.
It is interesting - but note that context matters a lot. "You're a fucking idiot" and "Your cake recipe was fucking delicious" should be treated very differently by moderators.
Edit: Maybe I'm a bit off-topic though. As for the question of whether two hateful comments should be weighted differently because one is based on race/gender/etc and one is just generalized anger, you could reframe that conversation as one about whether you agree with the concept of protected classes or not. Does hate against blacks produce more societal harm than hate against people who said somebody's preferred car manufacturer was shitty? I think so, even if the hate is just as loud and irrational in both cases. But it's definitely not a clear cut answer in every case.
> you could reframe that conversation as one about whether you agree with the concept of protected classes or not
If someone is not in a vulnerable position, than hate speech isn't much of a threat. If a Swede is locked in a room of Norwegians and says 'Norwegian scum should be taught a lesson', people might back away a little, but it's not much threat. But vice-versa, if a Norwegian says 'Swedish scum should be taught a lesson', then it's a very threatening situation to the Swede. (I'm picking two groups which, as far as I know, have little real-world animosity.)
It's about the implied world view. If you think black people or gay people are inferior then that's obviously a really harmful attitude to have (and one that has a long history of causing severe injustices to people on those groups).
Is calling someone a "fucking idiot" even any more offensive than just calling them an idiot? I don't see why.
In the case of blasphemy, many think that religious people are inferior. I’ve talked with many athiests who think all theists are stupid. And I’ve talked with members of Religion X who think members of Religion Y are inferior.
So from a world view perspective, someone saying “Jesus Christ, you’re an idiot” would be part of an inferior perspective on people who think that blasphemy shouldn’t be done.
I think this is different from profanity, but I’ve worked with people who thought use of the “F word” was so offensive they would feel uncomfortable working with people who say such things.
I think it comes down to those views as not being reasonable, but everyone agreeing that being offended by racial slurs as being reasonable. So it’s unreasonable to ever use hate speech, but it’s reasonable to use blasphemy and profanity.
> someone saying “Jesus Christ, you’re an idiot” would be part of an inferior perspective on people who think that blasphemy shouldn’t be done.
As an important nuance, if the speaker knows that someone will be offended, I think it assumes the views of the offended person are unimportant. That's different, though not necessarily any less bad, than seeing that person as inferior.
I can't anticipate everything that will offend anyone. But if I know someone is offended by something, I certainly want to respect them as people and avoid saying it. If I know someone is of a certain religion, I'd avoid saying anything about it that I wasn't sure of.
> I think it comes down to those views as not being reasonable, but everyone agreeing that being offended by racial slurs as being reasonable.
There's hate speech against religions too, and that's as verboten as hate speech against racial groups. In fact, for a moment I considered using an example of religious hate speech, but that would be completely inappropriate (and rightfully so, IMHO).
> Profanity (and blasphemy) is offensive to tons of people, arguably more than are offended by hate speech. But profanity is tolerated in many communities where hate speech is not.
That overlooks the degree of offense and threat. Some things are far more offensive and threatening than others. Clearly, hate speech is exceptionally offensive and threatening to many people.
Fuck. Shit. Asshole. My writing these words is rude, but has little impact. Even if I stuck them into my comments ('the fucking interface ...'), it would just be a little rude.
Hate speech can be a personal attack. Also, hate speech is often tied to power: If a powerful group uses hate speech against a vulnerable one, it can represent a serious threat: Humanity's history of the powerful abusing the vulnerable is long and terrible, and hate speech indicates, often intentionally, the willingness or intention to carry out such acts.
Yes, and the issue is the level of offense and threat. My curiosity is why a web site would think that it’s ok for people to be offended by “God dammit” but not by “[racial slur].”
I’m not really offended by profanity or blasphemy, but many are. So I don’t think it’s based on number of people offended.
I think I understand why hate speech is particularly dangerous, but it seems funny that other offensive speech is deemed acceptable. For example, HN allows profanity and blasphemy but not racial slurs (whether targeted or not).
> I’m not really offended by profanity or blasphemy, but many are.
> it seems funny that other offensive speech is deemed acceptable. For example, HN allows profanity and blasphemy ...
I'm interested to know what your experiences are with this? I don't recall seeing a complaint about blasphemy in an Internet forum. However, I haven't quite yet read the entire Internet ...
What blasphemy is on HN? I could imagine statements that unknowingly violate a theological tenant - for example, to some using the word beginning G... for the monotheistic deity is blasphemous [edit: to some religions] (which, given the circumstances, I'll avoid). But I am not aware of any knowing blasphemy - there is so little religion here that it's not even an issue.
Hate speech directed at a religion would (or should) be outside the guidelines, but that's regardless of the blasphemy of it.
I’m not offended by blasphemy, but searching HN [0]
reveals the following submissions that could offend people who are Catholic/Christian and don’t like blasphemy:
- “Jesus Christ, Use a Password Manager Already”
- “ Revision 2020 Demoscene Event Live – Praise Jesus Christ”
- “ So, just by looking at the box of pizza, you're going to judge that the pizza tastes bad? Jesus Christ man...”
I would have said that profanity is fairly low on the offensive scale, and hate speech is on a completely different level. The number impacted is not really relevant.
Well generally race-based insults have a far greater emotional impact. The words themselves have to arise from somewhere, and usually it will be from somewhere or something or somewhen very meaningful for the race being insulted
Profanity is objective and can be detected mostly in an automated way. Which means it may not be THAT useful to remove it, but it's EASY to remove it, and the decisions are not CONTROVERSIAL.
While concepts like "hate speech" very easily turn into arbitrary censorship. So it's easy to say people should focus on hate speech more, but there be dragons.
I agree, but I would qualify that, while removing profanity is easy to do, it is not easy to automate, and more importantly, it's not uncontroversial - just less controversial than removing hate speech. There are plenty of people who would be very upset about their comments being removed just because they contained profanity.
And it goes the other way too: People use hate speech and then try to claim it was political speech. 'I wasn't saying that I hate blue people, I was saying that they should run for office in a town of green people.'
That's obviously a simple example, but even in real examples, I don't find them hard to distinguish, as long as we ignore the endless trolling and theoretical arguments.
Note that the survey was about users' perception of fairness, not the actual fairness or about outcomes for the forum.
> Participants were exposed to a social media post that contained either hate speech or profanity. Then they were exposed to a post from a moderator — either a human or an algorithm — that deleted the initial post because it was offensive. This message either explained specifically why the post was deleted, gave a general sense of why it was deleted with a clickable link to community guidelines for the site, or offered no explanation. Afterward, participants answered questions about how fair or legitimate the deletion was and how transparent or trustworthy the moderator was.
> In all countries, survey participants thought that removing hate speech was more fair and legitimate than removing profanity, and found the moderators who did so and offered a detailed explanation of why to be more transparent.
Little Johnny knows the rules in the house. If he calls his sister Betty the C word, that is VERY bad and Betty can hit him with a stick, take his toys and make him be sent to his room. But everyone knows that being called a d@#k is harmless, so Betty calls Johnny that all the time. When he calls her a d@#k she just laughs and says 'I am a girl - do you even know what d@#k means?' Funnily enough, Johnny seems to call Betty the C word whenever he gets a new toy that Betty wants to play with. Never mind, he'll learn. Even though Johnny is sometimes quiet for no reason and seems to have become withdrawn, this is a good and fair set of rules and everyone is much happier with them, even Johnny, that little d@#k.
The purpose of my statement was to summarize the preceding poster's hypothetical example into its barest premise. Any particular claim of broadness you gleaned from my one sentence is for you to prove.
As far as your assessment of hate speech is concerned, I read it and was about to compose similar arguments to those of Andy_G11. I have little to add.
As far as what I personally think about your premise that certain speech from certain individuals should be classified differently whether in law or in general society, it's bunk. I don't know how you think any such law would functionally work in a world with free press, mass publishing, the Internet, etc. and, even if followed, I don't see how "hate speech" laws won't be abused to silence individuals. If you want to see how laws like this that "work" in practice, look up lèse-majesté.
Laws that cannot be applied equally to everyone are subject to abuse; the concept of 'hate speech' (defined here https://www.rightsforpeace.org/hate-speech as communication that ‘attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender, or other identity factor’) is subjective.
For example, is the word 'Karen' hate speech? It is used derogatively against white women (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(pejorative): "the term was increasingly being used in media and on social media as a general-purpose term for middle class white women"). It seems to fit the definition - pejorative, discriminatory, based on colour, gender (and economic class?)... But it is the fashion for this term to be in widespread use and for it to be applied generally to dismiss and demean this demographic (The Guardian even calling 2020 the Year of the Karen).
Introducing rules based on subjective standards will make it impossible for them to be impartially applied. It is difficult enough apply laws even in cases where it should be far easier to judge rights violations (workplace bullying, rape, domestic abuse). Subjective rules will be open to abuse.
To talk about the elephant in the room, we both know we are engaging in an old debate about double-standards and 'reverse discrimination'. Let's not pretend it's some novel thing we're proposing.
Also, I don't know about the credibility of the first citation's definition of hate speech, and I think Wikipedia has little credibility (no idea why I'm suddenly seeing so many people citing it on HN) - it might as well have been written by you or me. So I'm not commenting on those.)
Some points:
* There are degrees to threats and danger, of course; communication depends on words, context, emotion, the parties involved, etc. Every insult is not a threat and does not rise to the level of hate speech in a significant way. Perhaps we should use the term 'threatening hate speech', to distinguish it for these purposes.
* There is a clear standard necessary to 'threatening hate speech' that is omitted from the reverse discrimination argument: The vulnerability of the target. To reuse an example I gave in another comment, if a Swede is locked in a room with 30 Norwegians and says, 'Norwegian scum should die', people might back away a bit but it's not much threat. But if a Norwegian says 'Swedish scum should die', that's a threatening and dangerous situation for the Swede. In U.S. law, this standard is expressed as 'protected classes' (afaik). Hate speech is only a double-standard if we omit this factor. The consequences to vulnerable people are very well established and very dangerous, arguably the worst events of human history; we can't just ignore that because we lack the perfect solution. Doing nothing is not the null hypothesis, it's an alternative with clearly worse results.
* Subjective judgments are less desirable than objective measures, but that's life; the world is just too complicated and in almost every case we don't have time for scientific accuracy. It's a theoretical argument to require objectivity; reality, as everyone can't help but observe, requires and uses endless judgment. That doesn't make all judgments good or equal (another theoretical argument). Note, for example, that courts have a complicated system designed to output good subjective judgments by judge and jury; they expect and accept subjectivity. But to the extent a rule requires subjective judgment (which is every rule, as every one has edge cases), I agree that it would be better to do it objectively, we should do that where possible, and that we have to be careful.
I agree that that using destructive blanket terms for groups and making caricatures of people is not novel, nor is the adoption of unfair, discriminatory policies novel. Because what constitutes hate speech is subjective, it might be something that is applied to others opportunistically and with surprisingly little provocation of any discrimination it supposedly seeks to reverse. ‘You’ve upset me, so you owe me,’ is a tactic that can be used opportunistically.
For info, the first citation is from the 2019 UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (https://www.rightsforpeace.org/policy-docs), so is a pretty influential body for this topic and may well affect policy. It is true that Wikipedia should not be relied upon as an authoritative resource, but the link to the Guardian article can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/27/karen-race-whi... how broadly the term is applied can be gauged from the article or other instances where it appears on social media.
Addressing each of your points:
1. I agree that every insult is not a threat and its severity is subjective. One person might be hurt or even feel threatened by seemingly innocuous language whilst another might shrug off deliberate, targeted insults; simply using a person’s name or words like ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ can be threatening if the other person is about to be violent. People can even deliberately claim offense to exploit the subjectivity in dialogue. In this instance we are in danger of granting a term a degree of recognition which it is actually too subjective to deserve and this is opening up opportunity for misuse.
2. The vulnerability of the target argument is again subjective; 1 violent criminal amongst 30 sheepish academics will feel zero threat whereas the 30 will all be intimidated by this person. My experience has been that bullies are generally a minority in a pool of people – but weak people will follow and support them. History is full of instances where subordinated groups have vastly outnumbered the minority which holds sway over them (the feudal system, caste systems, colonialism, crime bosses, corporate org structures, etc.). Power systems are not necessarily gauged by the number of people in the group – a lion will not be threatened by a herd of sheep.
3. I agree that centralised micro-management of this issue is not possible or even desirable. Will some people have to overcome prejudices against them irrespective of whether they have the same rights as everyone else? Yes. For example, women may be regarded as the weaker sex or more emotional, whilst men may be regarded as dictatorial, insensitive ‘mansplainers’. Should we try to even things out for them by introducing subjective rules that favour them above others? I do not think so.
There is a great misunderstanding of what I wrote.
> I agree that that using destructive blanket terms for groups and making caricatures of people is not novel ...
You are agreeing with something I didn't say. I said: "we both know we are engaging in an old debate about double-standards and 'reverse discrimination'. Let's not pretend it's some novel thing we're proposing"
Also, you keep using the world 'subjective' like it is disqualifying. You can see my GP post for why.
The idea that we don't know about many vulnerable groups in our society is absurd and theoretical; there is plenty of objective evidence and it's obvious who they are. I'm not even sure what you wrote really says anything to the contrary.
It would have been great to have a genuine conversation.
Groups have and are discriminated against. You assumed that 'we both know' this is about 'reverse discrimination' but I am not so quick to accept that, hence why I stated what I can agree with.
Why do I not accept that the attempt to classify things as 'hate speech' is about 'reverse' discrimination (i.e. I do not agree that this is something 'we both know')? Because this implies that it seeks to react to and target initial discrimination. But because it is subjective and open to abuse it can be used opportunistically against individuals who have done nothing to the other party (no initial discrimination to reverse). So, it is a label that can itself actively be applied in a discriminatory way.
Which are these 'obviously vulnerable groups' that you think 'it is obvious who they are'? Children - agreed. People with some disabilities - agreed. Some frail elderly people - agreed. Even with this set of groups, the degree of vulnerability will vary hugely. Are these the groups you refer to?
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 89.1 ms ] threadNot easily. cf "Scunthorpe Problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
> What counts as "hate speech" is necessarily impossible
Most problems like this can be broken into "the easy bit" and "the rest". Focusing on the thorny problems in "the rest" is a mistake if you want to do something about the easy bit (and a tactic, if you want to avoid it).
There are a few reasonable ways to approach this, free-speach maximimalist only one of them. I'm sure there are unreasonable ways too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
A week later a new sign was being installed, “Thai Food”
So I guess a translation error, and no one thought to say something until after it was installed.
Expensive mistake.
(The point being that determined posters can work around regexes trivially and that regexes have a high occurrence of false positives.)
Seemed funny that calling someone a “f**ing idiot” is not banworthy but calling someone a “[insert your least favorite racial slur here]” is. So irrational race-based hatred is worse than just run of the mill irrational hatred.
Edit: Maybe I'm a bit off-topic though. As for the question of whether two hateful comments should be weighted differently because one is based on race/gender/etc and one is just generalized anger, you could reframe that conversation as one about whether you agree with the concept of protected classes or not. Does hate against blacks produce more societal harm than hate against people who said somebody's preferred car manufacturer was shitty? I think so, even if the hate is just as loud and irrational in both cases. But it's definitely not a clear cut answer in every case.
If someone is not in a vulnerable position, than hate speech isn't much of a threat. If a Swede is locked in a room of Norwegians and says 'Norwegian scum should be taught a lesson', people might back away a little, but it's not much threat. But vice-versa, if a Norwegian says 'Swedish scum should be taught a lesson', then it's a very threatening situation to the Swede. (I'm picking two groups which, as far as I know, have little real-world animosity.)
Is calling someone a "fucking idiot" even any more offensive than just calling them an idiot? I don't see why.
So from a world view perspective, someone saying “Jesus Christ, you’re an idiot” would be part of an inferior perspective on people who think that blasphemy shouldn’t be done.
I think this is different from profanity, but I’ve worked with people who thought use of the “F word” was so offensive they would feel uncomfortable working with people who say such things.
I think it comes down to those views as not being reasonable, but everyone agreeing that being offended by racial slurs as being reasonable. So it’s unreasonable to ever use hate speech, but it’s reasonable to use blasphemy and profanity.
As an important nuance, if the speaker knows that someone will be offended, I think it assumes the views of the offended person are unimportant. That's different, though not necessarily any less bad, than seeing that person as inferior.
I can't anticipate everything that will offend anyone. But if I know someone is offended by something, I certainly want to respect them as people and avoid saying it. If I know someone is of a certain religion, I'd avoid saying anything about it that I wasn't sure of.
> I think it comes down to those views as not being reasonable, but everyone agreeing that being offended by racial slurs as being reasonable.
There's hate speech against religions too, and that's as verboten as hate speech against racial groups. In fact, for a moment I considered using an example of religious hate speech, but that would be completely inappropriate (and rightfully so, IMHO).
Blasphemy is a different matter than hate speech.
That overlooks the degree of offense and threat. Some things are far more offensive and threatening than others. Clearly, hate speech is exceptionally offensive and threatening to many people.
Fuck. Shit. Asshole. My writing these words is rude, but has little impact. Even if I stuck them into my comments ('the fucking interface ...'), it would just be a little rude.
Hate speech can be a personal attack. Also, hate speech is often tied to power: If a powerful group uses hate speech against a vulnerable one, it can represent a serious threat: Humanity's history of the powerful abusing the vulnerable is long and terrible, and hate speech indicates, often intentionally, the willingness or intention to carry out such acts.
I’m not really offended by profanity or blasphemy, but many are. So I don’t think it’s based on number of people offended.
I think I understand why hate speech is particularly dangerous, but it seems funny that other offensive speech is deemed acceptable. For example, HN allows profanity and blasphemy but not racial slurs (whether targeted or not).
> it seems funny that other offensive speech is deemed acceptable. For example, HN allows profanity and blasphemy ...
I'm interested to know what your experiences are with this? I don't recall seeing a complaint about blasphemy in an Internet forum. However, I haven't quite yet read the entire Internet ...
What blasphemy is on HN? I could imagine statements that unknowingly violate a theological tenant - for example, to some using the word beginning G... for the monotheistic deity is blasphemous [edit: to some religions] (which, given the circumstances, I'll avoid). But I am not aware of any knowing blasphemy - there is so little religion here that it's not even an issue.
Hate speech directed at a religion would (or should) be outside the guidelines, but that's regardless of the blasphemy of it.
- “Jesus Christ, Use a Password Manager Already” - “ Revision 2020 Demoscene Event Live – Praise Jesus Christ” - “ So, just by looking at the box of pizza, you're going to judge that the pizza tastes bad? Jesus Christ man...”
[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22jesus+christ%22
While concepts like "hate speech" very easily turn into arbitrary censorship. So it's easy to say people should focus on hate speech more, but there be dragons.
Disagreeing with someone is not hate speech. Yet that is an easy way to shutdown your opponent.
That's obviously a simple example, but even in real examples, I don't find them hard to distinguish, as long as we ignore the endless trolling and theoretical arguments.
> Participants were exposed to a social media post that contained either hate speech or profanity. Then they were exposed to a post from a moderator — either a human or an algorithm — that deleted the initial post because it was offensive. This message either explained specifically why the post was deleted, gave a general sense of why it was deleted with a clickable link to community guidelines for the site, or offered no explanation. Afterward, participants answered questions about how fair or legitimate the deletion was and how transparent or trustworthy the moderator was.
> In all countries, survey participants thought that removing hate speech was more fair and legitimate than removing profanity, and found the moderators who did so and offered a detailed explanation of why to be more transparent.
:)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27608017
As far as your assessment of hate speech is concerned, I read it and was about to compose similar arguments to those of Andy_G11. I have little to add.
As far as what I personally think about your premise that certain speech from certain individuals should be classified differently whether in law or in general society, it's bunk. I don't know how you think any such law would functionally work in a world with free press, mass publishing, the Internet, etc. and, even if followed, I don't see how "hate speech" laws won't be abused to silence individuals. If you want to see how laws like this that "work" in practice, look up lèse-majesté.
For example, is the word 'Karen' hate speech? It is used derogatively against white women (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(pejorative): "the term was increasingly being used in media and on social media as a general-purpose term for middle class white women"). It seems to fit the definition - pejorative, discriminatory, based on colour, gender (and economic class?)... But it is the fashion for this term to be in widespread use and for it to be applied generally to dismiss and demean this demographic (The Guardian even calling 2020 the Year of the Karen).
Introducing rules based on subjective standards will make it impossible for them to be impartially applied. It is difficult enough apply laws even in cases where it should be far easier to judge rights violations (workplace bullying, rape, domestic abuse). Subjective rules will be open to abuse.
(Some caveats:
To talk about the elephant in the room, we both know we are engaging in an old debate about double-standards and 'reverse discrimination'. Let's not pretend it's some novel thing we're proposing.
Also, I don't know about the credibility of the first citation's definition of hate speech, and I think Wikipedia has little credibility (no idea why I'm suddenly seeing so many people citing it on HN) - it might as well have been written by you or me. So I'm not commenting on those.)
Some points:
* There are degrees to threats and danger, of course; communication depends on words, context, emotion, the parties involved, etc. Every insult is not a threat and does not rise to the level of hate speech in a significant way. Perhaps we should use the term 'threatening hate speech', to distinguish it for these purposes.
* There is a clear standard necessary to 'threatening hate speech' that is omitted from the reverse discrimination argument: The vulnerability of the target. To reuse an example I gave in another comment, if a Swede is locked in a room with 30 Norwegians and says, 'Norwegian scum should die', people might back away a bit but it's not much threat. But if a Norwegian says 'Swedish scum should die', that's a threatening and dangerous situation for the Swede. In U.S. law, this standard is expressed as 'protected classes' (afaik). Hate speech is only a double-standard if we omit this factor. The consequences to vulnerable people are very well established and very dangerous, arguably the worst events of human history; we can't just ignore that because we lack the perfect solution. Doing nothing is not the null hypothesis, it's an alternative with clearly worse results.
* Subjective judgments are less desirable than objective measures, but that's life; the world is just too complicated and in almost every case we don't have time for scientific accuracy. It's a theoretical argument to require objectivity; reality, as everyone can't help but observe, requires and uses endless judgment. That doesn't make all judgments good or equal (another theoretical argument). Note, for example, that courts have a complicated system designed to output good subjective judgments by judge and jury; they expect and accept subjectivity. But to the extent a rule requires subjective judgment (which is every rule, as every one has edge cases), I agree that it would be better to do it objectively, we should do that where possible, and that we have to be careful.
For info, the first citation is from the 2019 UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (https://www.rightsforpeace.org/policy-docs), so is a pretty influential body for this topic and may well affect policy. It is true that Wikipedia should not be relied upon as an authoritative resource, but the link to the Guardian article can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/27/karen-race-whi... how broadly the term is applied can be gauged from the article or other instances where it appears on social media.
Addressing each of your points:
1. I agree that every insult is not a threat and its severity is subjective. One person might be hurt or even feel threatened by seemingly innocuous language whilst another might shrug off deliberate, targeted insults; simply using a person’s name or words like ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ can be threatening if the other person is about to be violent. People can even deliberately claim offense to exploit the subjectivity in dialogue. In this instance we are in danger of granting a term a degree of recognition which it is actually too subjective to deserve and this is opening up opportunity for misuse.
2. The vulnerability of the target argument is again subjective; 1 violent criminal amongst 30 sheepish academics will feel zero threat whereas the 30 will all be intimidated by this person. My experience has been that bullies are generally a minority in a pool of people – but weak people will follow and support them. History is full of instances where subordinated groups have vastly outnumbered the minority which holds sway over them (the feudal system, caste systems, colonialism, crime bosses, corporate org structures, etc.). Power systems are not necessarily gauged by the number of people in the group – a lion will not be threatened by a herd of sheep.
3. I agree that centralised micro-management of this issue is not possible or even desirable. Will some people have to overcome prejudices against them irrespective of whether they have the same rights as everyone else? Yes. For example, women may be regarded as the weaker sex or more emotional, whilst men may be regarded as dictatorial, insensitive ‘mansplainers’. Should we try to even things out for them by introducing subjective rules that favour them above others? I do not think so.
> I agree that that using destructive blanket terms for groups and making caricatures of people is not novel ...
You are agreeing with something I didn't say. I said: "we both know we are engaging in an old debate about double-standards and 'reverse discrimination'. Let's not pretend it's some novel thing we're proposing"
Also, you keep using the world 'subjective' like it is disqualifying. You can see my GP post for why.
The idea that we don't know about many vulnerable groups in our society is absurd and theoretical; there is plenty of objective evidence and it's obvious who they are. I'm not even sure what you wrote really says anything to the contrary.
It would have been great to have a genuine conversation.
Why do I not accept that the attempt to classify things as 'hate speech' is about 'reverse' discrimination (i.e. I do not agree that this is something 'we both know')? Because this implies that it seeks to react to and target initial discrimination. But because it is subjective and open to abuse it can be used opportunistically against individuals who have done nothing to the other party (no initial discrimination to reverse). So, it is a label that can itself actively be applied in a discriminatory way.
Which are these 'obviously vulnerable groups' that you think 'it is obvious who they are'? Children - agreed. People with some disabilities - agreed. Some frail elderly people - agreed. Even with this set of groups, the degree of vulnerability will vary hugely. Are these the groups you refer to?