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Snowflake Challenge #3
Jan. 6th, 2023 06:34 pmThis has been my favorite challenge so far. I've been greatly enjoying going through everyone's posts and reading their rants. You learn more about someone when you see them be real and talk about something they care about that isn't all sunshine and roses.
Happily, in the rants of others, many of my own rants were already addressed, some quite eloquently. Many, many people are talking about the fandom police and bullying in the guise of 'moral purity.' There is much I could say about how stupid and annoying all that is, and how it ruins the very thing that makes fandom so wonderful, but I'll pick something else--but closely related--to vent about.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." We've seen that phrase going around the internet for years now, usually gleefully uttered by someone shamelessly visiting "consequences" in the form of bullying upon someone for saying something the bully "disapproves" of.
Now, my degree is in journalism, and I'm a writer who tends to write potentially controversial things (in my original work, anyway), so freedom of speech is very, very dear to my heart. I grew up in a time and a place where freedom of speech was taken quite seriously. (I'm Gen X.) "Piss Christ" was on the wall of the fine art hallway in my high school. Art was understood to be something one could expect to be challenging and offensive. I never heard of anyone complaining to the school library or a teacher about an offensive book being available or being taught in class. I mean, it probably happened at some point, but the complainer would have been regarded as a crackpot and no one was going to make any changes based on the complaint, because school was for teaching things and libraries were repositories for books, and one's personal feelings about these books were not taken into account. We weren't expected to enjoy the books we were taught, or even necessarily to understand them, but by god, we were going to be exposed to the art that had been deemed classic so that we could get a full education, and all of those classics were challenging or potentially offensive in some way. I understood that that was, and is, largely what makes great art great: it challenges us--US. Not "other," "dumber," or "less enlightened" people, but everyone, including myself.
This was how I assumed freedom of speech would always be regarded ... unless conservatives had their way, but even they usually had the decency to respect our hallowed First Amendment back in the day. I was always very proud to be a liberal, not least because liberals were the ones who most often trotted out the wonderful Beatrice Evelyn Hall quote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." When I saw people say it then, they meant it. A profound respect for another person's right to say whatever they believed lay at the core of all the values that led to a free society. If what that person said offended you, you listened, then proceeded to respond with a counterargument or, if you concluded the other person was too stupid, crazy, or evil to be worth debating, you shook your head and moved on ....
... Which has somehow become regarded as impossible in modern society?? People seem convinced they not only have to fight to defend their own opinion--and go low--but to force the other person to their knees--force them to admit not only that they were wrong, but to change their very thinking--or at least force them to claim they have. We've all seen celebrities claiming to have seen the light after having their livelihoods or their popularity threatened after saying something unpopular. The response is usually to scoff over how transparently insincere the celebrity's apology is, when ... really? You actually expected them to change how they think? The assumption seems to be that if someone is educated on how "wrong" their thinking is, then they better change it to "right" thinking (quite an authoritarian perspective), and occasionally, there is a lack of education that brings about a change, but in reality, people believe what they believe for reasons that make sense to them and no amount of harsh "reprogramming" will change it.
As we all know well. We all have unpopular opinions we know we'd get skewered for were we to say them publicly, since public opinion is constantly shifting and seldom aligns perfectly with our own views. Every person has a unique personality, combined with a unique upbringing and set of experiences. For better or for worse, people decide things about the world, and it would take a lot to make them see it differently. It's incredibly satisfying to educate someone or debate someone so successfully that one can actually change their minds, but a) it is rare, for a wide variety of reasons--pride being way up there, and b) diversity is supposed to be a liberal value ... right? All kinds of diversity ... including diversity of thought.
"Infinite diversity in infinite combinations," amiright? This is how the world was made, and to try to force it to be otherwise causes incalculable harm and suffering. When did folks forget that there will always be people whose beliefs piss one off and that's just the way it is? It can be annoying, but it's better than tearing other people to pieces.
It was undeniably a great disappointment for me to see liberals (well, I'd call them "so-called liberals") being at least as bad about punishing and bullying people for their free speech as the most rabid conservatives--what with "cancel culture" et al. I could rant infinitely about all the evil and cruelty I've seen committed by the people I've always thought of as "my people." So much cruelty! In the name of "moral superiority." Horrific. This shit's gotta stop.
Happily, in the rants of others, many of my own rants were already addressed, some quite eloquently. Many, many people are talking about the fandom police and bullying in the guise of 'moral purity.' There is much I could say about how stupid and annoying all that is, and how it ruins the very thing that makes fandom so wonderful, but I'll pick something else--but closely related--to vent about.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." We've seen that phrase going around the internet for years now, usually gleefully uttered by someone shamelessly visiting "consequences" in the form of bullying upon someone for saying something the bully "disapproves" of.
Now, my degree is in journalism, and I'm a writer who tends to write potentially controversial things (in my original work, anyway), so freedom of speech is very, very dear to my heart. I grew up in a time and a place where freedom of speech was taken quite seriously. (I'm Gen X.) "Piss Christ" was on the wall of the fine art hallway in my high school. Art was understood to be something one could expect to be challenging and offensive. I never heard of anyone complaining to the school library or a teacher about an offensive book being available or being taught in class. I mean, it probably happened at some point, but the complainer would have been regarded as a crackpot and no one was going to make any changes based on the complaint, because school was for teaching things and libraries were repositories for books, and one's personal feelings about these books were not taken into account. We weren't expected to enjoy the books we were taught, or even necessarily to understand them, but by god, we were going to be exposed to the art that had been deemed classic so that we could get a full education, and all of those classics were challenging or potentially offensive in some way. I understood that that was, and is, largely what makes great art great: it challenges us--US. Not "other," "dumber," or "less enlightened" people, but everyone, including myself.
This was how I assumed freedom of speech would always be regarded ... unless conservatives had their way, but even they usually had the decency to respect our hallowed First Amendment back in the day. I was always very proud to be a liberal, not least because liberals were the ones who most often trotted out the wonderful Beatrice Evelyn Hall quote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." When I saw people say it then, they meant it. A profound respect for another person's right to say whatever they believed lay at the core of all the values that led to a free society. If what that person said offended you, you listened, then proceeded to respond with a counterargument or, if you concluded the other person was too stupid, crazy, or evil to be worth debating, you shook your head and moved on ....
... Which has somehow become regarded as impossible in modern society?? People seem convinced they not only have to fight to defend their own opinion--and go low--but to force the other person to their knees--force them to admit not only that they were wrong, but to change their very thinking--or at least force them to claim they have. We've all seen celebrities claiming to have seen the light after having their livelihoods or their popularity threatened after saying something unpopular. The response is usually to scoff over how transparently insincere the celebrity's apology is, when ... really? You actually expected them to change how they think? The assumption seems to be that if someone is educated on how "wrong" their thinking is, then they better change it to "right" thinking (quite an authoritarian perspective), and occasionally, there is a lack of education that brings about a change, but in reality, people believe what they believe for reasons that make sense to them and no amount of harsh "reprogramming" will change it.
As we all know well. We all have unpopular opinions we know we'd get skewered for were we to say them publicly, since public opinion is constantly shifting and seldom aligns perfectly with our own views. Every person has a unique personality, combined with a unique upbringing and set of experiences. For better or for worse, people decide things about the world, and it would take a lot to make them see it differently. It's incredibly satisfying to educate someone or debate someone so successfully that one can actually change their minds, but a) it is rare, for a wide variety of reasons--pride being way up there, and b) diversity is supposed to be a liberal value ... right? All kinds of diversity ... including diversity of thought.
"Infinite diversity in infinite combinations," amiright? This is how the world was made, and to try to force it to be otherwise causes incalculable harm and suffering. When did folks forget that there will always be people whose beliefs piss one off and that's just the way it is? It can be annoying, but it's better than tearing other people to pieces.
It was undeniably a great disappointment for me to see liberals (well, I'd call them "so-called liberals") being at least as bad about punishing and bullying people for their free speech as the most rabid conservatives--what with "cancel culture" et al. I could rant infinitely about all the evil and cruelty I've seen committed by the people I've always thought of as "my people." So much cruelty! In the name of "moral superiority." Horrific. This shit's gotta stop.