My posting has been light in the past week, as I’ve been fighting off a monster cold and can’t seem to stare at a computer screen for longer than a few minutes until the phlegm overtakes the back of my throat and puts me in a state where I can barely read what’s in front of me. I have many movie trailer reviews to write now that OSCAH SEASON is upon us, and I promise I will get to them once I feel better.
For now, I’m going to offer very brief thoughts about the issue of censorship.
My post from a few weeks ago, “On Rape Jokes,” has been making the rounds in the blogosphere, linked to by other bloggers and shared in other comment sections. It’s quickly become one of my most-read posts. Of course, there are people who have problems with it, and I’ve read comments on other forums that are more vile and disgusting than the imagery I used in the first paragraph of this post. I’m not going to link to those comments, because why offer vile people more attention? But I will talk about the gist of the complaints and the mockery: the assertion that I am censoring people by talking about how rape jokes are damaging.
I could comment on people’s misplaced priorities and valuing their right to say whatever the hell they want, regardless of the effect it might have on other people’s feelings.
I could question why rape jokes need to be defended in the first place.
I could comment on the irony of people calling feminists “too sensitive” for not liking rape jokes while simultaneously whining that they don’t wanna give up telling rape jokes, and acting like the equivalent of children stalking off to their rooms to sulk when grownups took their favorite toys away.
But instead, I’m going to ask a question of my readers, and anyone is free to respond, whether you’re a regular reader or first-time commenter:
Could someone please explain to me how a person writing on her own blog about her personal opinions regarding rape jokes, carefully using “I” statements such as “I don’t like rape jokes that…” “I prefer jokes that…” counts as censorship of others?
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Well, if you consult the dictionary definition of censorship:
Censorship [sen-ser-ship]
noun
1. The act or practice of censoring.
2. The office or power of a censor.
3. The time during which a censor holds office.
4. The inhibiting and distorting activity of the Freudian censor.
5. Failure of someone on the internet to wholeheartedly endorse everything I say.
Obviously they’re using definition number 5.
Failure of someone on the internet to wholeheartedly endorse everything I say.
Hell, if that’s censorship, we’re ALL guilty of it.
It seems that a lot of people are confusing “freedom of speech” with “freedom to say whatever I want without anyone protesting or getting offended”. You’d think it’s pretty easy to figure out the difference, but apparently not.
Sadly, it seems that you’re right. People misuse “freedom of speech” like that all the time. It doesn’t mean that you can say whatever you want without social consequences; it means that you can say whatever you want without political or legal consequences (i.e. you won’t be thrown in jail for calling the President an idiot). It’s sad when people pull out terms that they don’t really understand and try to use them to defend thier objectionable behavior.
It doesn’t mean that you can say whatever you want without social consequences; it means that you can say whatever you want without political or legal consequences (i.e. you won’t be thrown in jail for calling the President an idiot).
Yup. And yet people can read my post and get all huffy because they think I’m trying to make rape jokes illegal, or something.
Yet *I’M* the one who’s oversensitive. Sure.
I think its related (tangentially) to the Christians who claim persecution over someone saying “Happy Holidays”,
You see this in politics a lot too. A politician says something dumb (or flat out wrong) and they get called on it and then whine about being forced into silence (anti-gay rights activists for example).
Its like… No. You are allowed to have your opinions. You are even allowed to say them out loud. You even are able to publish/ broadcast those opinions all over the internet/ television. And then we can respond.
Unless you are imprisoning everyone who tells rape jokes on the internet. If that was the case though, I think World of Warcraft would have a lot less people playing right now…
Uh-oh. You found me out.
But seriously, the only thing I do on this blog that can even be considered in the same realm as censorship is moderating the comments – allowing the ones that are appropriate and discarding the ones that are not. But even that, I don’t consider censorship. I consider that establishing rules. This blog is a platform for me to share my opinions and I welcome discussion, but ultimately, it’s my house and my rules.
I absolutely despise this type of reasoning. I actually wrote a blogpost about it a week ago, funnily enough (and I did read your previous post about rape jokes.) I’m just going to copy and past what I wrote.
“The person who spits this line out [note: the freedom of speech line, or, “you’re censoring me, boohoohoo”] will probably, at some point, argue that freedom of speech means that artistic license should be unfettered. A normal response to this would be that no one is talking about censorship and that freedom of speech also means that you have the freedom to criticize art.
You’d think this would be obvious. But I’ve lost count how many times I’ve encountered this bizzaro form of reasoning. You begin to see how often freedom of speech is used as a way of silencing critics.
But the entire point of freedom of speech (if we’re going by the J.S Mill* variety) is specifically designed to protect criticism and encourage debate. Unlike Jeremy Bentham, who argued that trying to posit one form of entertainment over another was a form of snobbishness, Mill argued that there was a way of differentiating between what had merit and what didn’t, and believed that people would eventually pick out the “truth” from competing claims. But to do this, you needed freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has never been an argument for moral relativism. Freedom of speech leads to debate, and debates leads to conclusions and resolution of issues–hopefully. Freedom of speech is not, and has never been, the same thing as advocating that “everyone has a point” and “all ideas are equal.” Nope. All it does is grant license to call people out on their bullshit. In this sense, it’s actually a very optimistic endeavour. Mill thought people could actually resolve issues by talking about them.”
Anyway, if anyone wants to read the entire post they can do so here: http://politiciansathogwarts.blogspot.com/2011/11/actually-im-not-going-to-change-channel.html
This might seem like shameless self-promotion, and it probably is on some level, but I’m also pretty pissed on your behalf.
Shameless self-promotion or not, it’s certainly well-written and makes me want to high-five you. But since I can’t high-five over the Internet, I’m adding you to my blogroll instead. 🙂
*Internet high five!* I’d totally add you to my blogroll too, if you weren’t already there. 😛