A current thread is getting bogged down by a discussion about what is and what is not “hate speech”, with many disagreeing with my characterization of insults such as “lazy assed fatties” being hate speech. I am happy to have the debate and open to having my POV possibly changed, but would very much like to give the other thread a chance to actually address the actual op without that distraction, and in that thread will use instead the phrase “insulting speech.”
I can find the following definitions available on-line:
There are more of course but none that I could find that requires a history of genocide against the group, or lynchings, or any violent oppression. Yet many seem to believe that the word is reserved for that alone.
By those definitions my use of the phrase “hate speech” for disparaging and hateful comments against the obese as a group is correct. Are the definitions wrong?
Please note: this op is NOT proposing or wishing to discuss “hate speech” as the legal entity which apparently is a bit tautologic: a group that is subject to hate speech is protected by the law, and hate speech is defined as being a member of a group protected by the law. My bias is towards free speech, meaning that very little speech should be against the law. That does not however mean that some speech should not be against social codes and fought against with more free speech. (By way of illustration of that principle, back in my teen years the Neo-Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, not far from where I lived. Some wanted to not allow them to march. My take was to allow it but to have a circus with clowns as a counter demonstration since clowns is what those people were.) So please try to stay on subject: what is hate speech, not should it be regulated.
In the complete abstract, hate speech can mean whatever you want it to mean. I favor a definition that’s something like “speech designed to disparage a whole group of people instead of just the person the speech is directed toward.” When talking about a particular law dealing with hate speech, then obviously that law will have its own definition (that can develop as its interpreted).
That being said, I don’t see much hate speech being directed at fat people, either on this messageboard or in the wider world. Rather, as I said in the other thread, negative speech directed toward fat people is directed toward those fat people who claim that it is impossible to unfatify themselves. And the speech is specifically directed toward the “I can’t help it” aspect, not the “I’m fat” aspect.
So “negative speech” that was not directed at a particular individual but to the whole group of people in general, or was directed at someone who never made such a claim, and referred to the group, or the individual on the basis of being a member of the group, would then be hate speech in your view?
It is your view that a threat of violent oppression is not requisite for the term to apply?
Using the specific as an illustration - I do think it needs to be more than negative speech. “Fattie” is insulting speech. Calling the group or an individual that is being a jerk but even though it is negative speech it is not disparaging enough to qualify. “Lazy assed fattie” though, and stating that “fatties are weak or they wouldn’t be fat” does.
“Hate speech” seems to me the same as “sexual harrasment” They both have real meanings and DO happen, but generally just mean “something i dont like” and “whatever the ‘victim’ says”.
Once again my read of that was that it was not intended ironically; I may have been mistaken and if so apologize to that poster. Other examples of that sort of speech? Sure easy. Just meander over this thread some - specifically created to Pit the class of people who are obese. See, for example this post: fatties “are not only lazy but not really terribly bright as well”
Rand, a group of college guys are at a beach. An obese woman walks by with her children. The men fall silent for a moment as they watch her walking. She gets just about even with their group and one of the college guys starts to moo loudly – where she can hear it. Most of the guys just crack up. One of them calls, “What dairy do you work for?”
No, that’s no hate speech. But it serves to demonstrate that people don’t reserve their loathing and ridicule for only those people who claim that they can’t lose weight. Do you honestly believe that there is not discrimination and harassment against the obese regardless of the reason they are fat? Do you discriminate against fat people? Do you know all of the causes of weight retention? Don’t people use hate speech against strangers?
I think that hate speech needs be very narrowly defined. Hate speech is designed to incite discrimination or violence against a class of people. It can’t just be speech that is rude, or makes someone feel bad. It could be directed against an individual, but you would have to show a consistent pattern of repeated speech to prove it.
Putting together your and pope’s comments I am becoming convinced that my use of the term for this specific was a step too far and that you are both right and that the web definitions do not define it narrowly enough. I withdraw my use of the term in this instance.
Fat bashing is perhaps hateful speech and the obese are discriminated against as a class but it seems the specific term “hate speech” implies more, even if such implication is not part of its definition.
So where is the line drawn? Take your example of college guys and replace the overweight woman with one who is not classically attractive. Instead of mooing,
they say things like “Hey look out, there’s a mirror ahead and you might break it if you look.” Is this hate speech too? Are “ugly” people a class to be protected as well?
Obese people are not a social or ethnic group. They are not a race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
Premise FAIL.
Sure each of those groups may include obese people, but obese people as a group do not meet the criteria you established in your OP definitions. You migh try and include obesity as a disability, but that would be a stretch, last time I checked it does not qualify as a disability under the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
So disparaging remarks towards obese people would not meet your definition of “hate speech”.
Wilbo523, well now I am indeed merely engaging in discussion for its own sake, having already ceded the op on a different point, the point that the available definitions are actually inadequate in that they do not capture that which hate speech seems to imply by necessity. It seems to me however that the definitions also fail here.
If a group had it in for “small people”, and were engaged in violent acts against them, and engaged in speech designed to foster violence against them, then that speech would, by the common sense that others have argued for, be “hate speech” even if being “small” did not constitute a social or ethnic group or even a disability.
My sense is that the phrasing was chosen with the intent to be as all-inclusive of classes of people as possible.
Anyway, it seems that it may legally qualify under the disability clause:
And it may very well qualify as a “social group” as well … although again I think such issues are immaterial.
The term “hate speech” implies that it is a crime or something you could sue somebody over ( a tort?), beyond social disapproval. I don’t think criminalizing “hateful” speech has any basis in the laws or traditions of the United States, and rightly so. Other countries, YMMV.
But, for example, was it hateful when some idiot on the radio told a caller to “get AIDS and die” or when Nina Totenberg said that Jesse Helms should get AIDS from a blood transfusion? Obviously. But it shouldn’t be illegal to say things like that. It is already legal to fire, shun and humiliate such people.
Hate Speech is any language directed at limiting another’s freedom of speech. Language directed at denigrating another’s race or sexual persuasion, in the past, was regarded as simply, poor taste. Now we are making laws against poor taste and limiting the freedom of speech. In a place where freedom of speech was purchased with so much blood, I think limiting it should be regarded as a serious crime.
RGM middlefingerparty.com
The main problem with the term is its existence as a legal term, making it likely to cause terminology arguments if its not being used in that strict sense.
I tend to agree that hate speech in my view is more speech intended to elicit behaviour from others.
But I wouldnt say it needs to be physical violence. Social exclusion would be one possibility for instance. The ‘mooing’ was probably intended to get other people to join in for instance.
The problem is the cutoff is fairly subjective and depends upons ones definition of violence or abuse. In the cases mentioned I would tend to call it bullying or the like rather than that term in order to avoid the legal conflation aspects.