Hate speech braindump (part 1 of ???)

I support hate speech laws, and I'm the only person I know who does. Unfortunately, I've never been able to articulate usefully why exactly I do support hate speech laws. However, the more I think and learn about it, and the more I'm exposed to the efforts of everyone I know to convince me otherwise, the more I become convinced that hate speech laws are a good idea. But I still can't articulate why. So I'm going to braindump around the concept and see what I can come up with. You can try to debate me if you want, but you're totally going to win right now because my thoughts aren't words yet.

1. There's a parenting technique whereby siblings are to be left to sort out their interpersonal problems among themselves I've blogged about my experience with it here. The problem for me is that what I wanted was to be left alone. It didn't hurt anyone, it didn't demand anything of anyone. But what my sister wanted was apparently to bother me, to stop me from having privacy, to make sure that I didn't get what I wanted. The same thing with my bullies. Leave me alone, either work civilly with me or ignore me in class, let me read my book. But what they wanted apparently was to bother me. What I wanted had no impact on anyone else; what they wanted was specifically to bother me. But this technique of letting kids sort out their own interpersonal problems treated them both as equally valid. It didn't give any credit to the fact that I wasn't hurting anyone, I wasn't bothering anyone. Because they did want to hurt and bother, they were good at it; because I didn't want to hurt and bother, I was bad at it. Therefore, they always won, and the net result was that someone was hurt and bothered. Which is, objectively, a negative outcome, whereas if I had been left alone the outcome would have been neutral or perhaps even positive.

My child-self didn't have these negative skills of hurt and bothering, but she did have the positive skills of amusing herself quietly without hurting or bothering. In a society, these are excellent, helpful, even productive skills to have, and if our child society had been mediated by adults, my child-self would have been left alone to be productive and our little corner of society would have been better for it. But when kids are left to their unmediated anarchy, these positive skills are worthless and the negative outcomes prevail, to the detriment of all but the lowest common denominator.

There needs to be…something, some way of mediating discourse to prevent the people with the best bullying skills from winning just because they have the best bullying skills. There needs to be some way of giving more credit or weight to positions that are productive as opposed to positions that are harmful. There needs to be some way of creating a public environment in which people can't bully their way to credibility. Without this, we may as well be back on the playground.

2. Go read Death or Cake and them come back here (this is an archive.org page and the formatting is messed, so you have to scroll down about halfway before the content starts). In this particular article they're talking about US political parties, but let's take it as broader interpretation: the contingent calling for Cake is being opposed by a contingent calling for Death. This reminded me of something I wrote during the last municipal strike. It uses up a lot of time and energy and bandwidth and column space and airtime to have to constantly counter shouts of "Death! Death!" It's draining, and it's preventing us from being productive. Maybe Cake isn't the optimal solution, but all the energy we're putting into countering calls for Death is preventing us from being able to to build a better cake, or maybe a pie instead.

We need…something, some way of taking Death off the table, so we can examine Cake objectively. How do we make it work for vegans and diabetics? I have a great recipe for gluten-free cookies! What if there was a nice salad? We can't do this when we're frantically trying to negotiate down to a maiming.

3. A while back, I read this article by a US columnist on Canadian hate speech laws, and I got the impression that he isn't seeing something that's apparent to me. I'm still not able to fully articulate my reaction (although I can point to the exact part of my brain where it occurs), but I think at least part of it is that the concept of hate speech is far more closely circumscribed than this columnist - or, I think, people who are opposed to hate speech in general - realize. You can't just point at someone saying something you don't like and scream "Hate speech!" and get them in trouble. And any idea with some actual non-hate substance to it can totally be expressed in a way that doesn't constitute hate speech.

I don't have on hand any real examples of hate speech with substance beneath, so I'll try to explain this using the Death or Cake example. Suppose that, rather than simply shouting "Death! Death!", the Death contingent was saying "You know, we have a bit of an overpopulation problem here…" We could work with that. We could start talking about improving access to family planning or introducing voluntary euthanasia options. It would not only save a whole lot of time and energy and yelling, but also keep anyone from being maimed in the name of "reasonable" compromise.

That is part (not all) of the nuance of what constitutes hate speech. "Death! Death! Death to Those People!" is hate speech. "We have an overpopulation problem. " is not. That's part of why the more I think about it, the more I support the existence of hate speech laws. It's a little step in the general direction of giving a bit more weight to productive positions. It's a little step towards taking Death off the table so we can focus on the real issue of controlling overpopulation while keeping the existing population from starving. It stops people from being able to go around doing harm just because they're bigger and louder like the bullies. And maybe if my bullies had been forced to say what it was they wanted from me, why exactly they wouldn't just leave me alone and what exactly they hoped to accomplish, maybe we could have had a situation where everyone was happier and no one was bothered.

4. When I say that any idea with non-hate substance can be expressed in a way that doesn't constitute hate speech, some of you are probably thinking "But not everyone is as good with words as you are! How can you say - and this in a blog post full of 'I can't quite articulate' - that people should get in trouble just because they can't express the precise connotation they need?" But that's how the rest of the world works. If I want to compliment a subordinate on her outfit, it's incumbent upon me to do so in a way that cannot be interpreted as sexual harassment. If I joke to the woman waiting in front of me in line that we should shoplift our purchases and then it turns out she's a police officer, it's incumbent upon me to do so in a way that makes it clear I'm not actually planning to shoplift. If I want to tease you about something, it's incumbent upon me to do so in a way that isn't cruel. So why should the people making the most hateful statements in our collective discourse get a bye?

5. Hate speech laws are to free speech as libel/slander laws are to freedom of the press.

6. As I've written about before somewhere, I do well in a society, but wouldn't do well in anarchy or a survivalist situation. I've found something I'm good at, and someone pays me money to do that, and then I can trade that money for things I need. In exchange for contributing what I can and keeping out of everyone else's way the rest of the time, I have enough food and shelter that keeps the bugs away and time and space to learn and think and grow. And a lot of the reason why this works is because of laws. Because we have laws, my employer pays me what's due to me, my landlord doesn't kick me out or raise my rent every month, the grocery store sells me food at the posted price and the food isn't poisonous, etc. This allows people like me who aren't good at fighting for their very survival to participate and even thrive, and it also allows our society as a whole to ascend Maslow's pyramid. I think hate speech laws do the same thing for discourse. It takes death off the table so we can work on building a better cake while also solving the overpopulation problem, all without anyone getting maimed along the way.

That's all the words I have at the moment, and it feels like somewhere around 20-30% of what's in my brain. More later.