Speech Is Not Violence, Even If It Hurts Your Feelings
From comedians to angry parents and everything in between, offensive words don't equate to physical harm.
Comedy
On October 20, Wednesday of last week, a group of Netflix employees walked out in protest of Dave Chappelle’s most recent comedy special The Closer that aired on the platform earlier this month. Chappelle made several jokes that could seem to be directed at people who identify as LGBTQ, specifically members of the Trans community. If you haven’t actually watched the special, I would suggest you at least consider doing so before joining the outrage bandwagon. Yes, trans jokes were made, but that’s hardly the whole story.
Anyone familiar with Dave Chappelle’s work shouldn’t be surprised when he says something controversial. He’s a comedian and a very talented one at that. Comedy is often offensive, against the grain, or pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable to say or to laugh at. It’s a way for people of varying perspectives to talk about sensitive topics that are often difficult to discuss otherwise. In my opinion, humor is a very important trait of a healthy society.
Let me take a moment to state clearly that I fully support trans rights. Everyone should have the freedom to live their lives however they choose, so long as they don’t harm or violate the rights of another person. I believe in viewing people as individuals rather than as a group and I do my best to treat everyone equally while advocating for others to do the same. However, that also means I recognize that individuals can interpret art in different ways.
The actual content of the special is much more nuanced than what critics have made it out to be. It’s both crude and respectful; inappropriate yet sympathetic. In my view, it’s an hour of great comedy that’s also a thoughtful take on the changing landscape of acceptable opinions. I will acknowledge that I’m a cis-gendered straight man, so my lens does have that tint to it.
However, even if I considered the special to be offensive, I would still advocate for it to remain on Netflix. Speech shouldn’t be censored, regardless of how wrong you think it is. Netflix, as a private company, has every right to remove The Closer from its library, but the implications of doing so would have negative consequences for society. Bad ideas should be openly debated in the public sphere, not silenced. Although to be fair, the protesters didn’t want the special to be removed, they instead wanted there to be a content warning saying that it may be considered transphobic.
Again, Netflix is a private company, and like other Big Tech companies, it should be free to make its own content moderating decisions. A government that can compel a company to carry speech, is a government powerful enough to silence speech as well. We should all be wary of state interference with private businesses, although I will admit that large corporations colluding with the government are just as dangerous.
For now the special remains on Netflix, but this instance is just another example of a growing trend. The desire to silence speech you disagree with has become a popular sentiment, and not just in the Woke faction of the American left. Conservatives can also be proponents of censorship. Their recent attempts to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools is the most current example. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, the State deciding what you’re allowed to teach your children is never a good idea.
Angry Parents
On the other side of that discussion is how much power parents should have over what their children are taught in public schools. The tensions between frustrated parents and indifferent school officials have been steadily increasing since the start of the pandemic when schools first replaced in-person schooling with virtual learning. followed by teachers’ unions keeping schools closed even when much of the world had let kids physically attend school for months.
The saga continued when the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to the White House asking for the Federal government to investigate “threats of violence and acts of intimidation” by angry parents, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to direct the FBI to keep an eye on parents at school board meetings. The letter specifically asked for a coalition of federal law enforcement agencies to investigate parents concerned about Covid mitigation policies and (or) the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools. According to the letter, bringing up those concerns is “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” More recently it’s been reported by The Washington Free Beacon that the White House was aware of the letter before it was sent, revealing a coordinated effort to clamp down on riled up parents.
When reading about this story words like “attacks” “threats” and “violence” appear over and over again, though there rarely seems to be an example of actual physical harm taking place at any of these school board meetings. Parents bringing up issues they have with the school or the curriculum is the entire purpose of holding said meetings, and they shouldn’t be seen as extremists for doing so. Whether you agree with their concerns or not, the State treating people as “domestic terrorists” for simply sharing their opinions has very dangerous ramifications.
Some of those parents may have been impolite, rude, or possibly even threatening, and any act of violence should be condemned and the perpetrator should be held accountable, but in most instances, the “harassment” taking place is actually just parents using their freedom of speech to openly disagree with stances and policies these schools have taken. Speech, even when rude or offensive, should not be seen as violence.
The FBI and the DOJ trying to rebrand angry parents as “domestic terrorists” is the latest attempt by the Biden Administration to start a War on Terror 2.0, this time focusing inward on American citizens. Considering the human rights abuses and loss of civil liberties we witnessed during the first War on Terror, it’s hard to believe that using the same tactics at home will have different results.
The In-Between
Both of these stories are just recent examples of speech being seen as harmful and being treated as if it were actual violence. The dangers of this kind of mentality are very real and the path it takes us down does not lead to a good place. Words can be very powerful, and no one will argue that sometimes that power can be misused, but at the end of the day, they’re still just words. Inflammatory language cannot physically harm anyone.
Freedom of speech is possibly the most important freedom of all; without it, it’s very difficult to maintain any others. The right to speak one’s mind, even if that person is wrong, needs to be protected. Debate and discussion is the appropriate response to offensive or misinformed speech, not silencing it or advocating for state-sanctioned punishment for the speaker.
We as a society need to embrace differing beliefs and opinions. We need to stop expecting every single person to think and behave in the exact same way and we need to learn to get along with each other regardless of our disagreements. Although it really only violates anyone’s rights when it’s enforced by the government, censorship, in all its forms, is very dangerous. The desire some people have to not allow certain things to be said needs to be kept in check. Whether you care about the opinions of the people currently being censored or not, you should care about their right to speak, because if this trend continues, one day you might be censored too.
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