Freedom of speech is something a lot of people understand. Whenever someone tells someone what to say, they bring up the idea of freedom of speech to defend their right to call someone a ‘frigid bastard who’s afraid of human contact’***. The thing is, people seem to completely fail to understand what freedom of speech actually means.
You see, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of speech for you. Wait. Sorry. Yes it does, that was a stupid thing to say. What I mean is that it doesn’t mean freedom of speech only for you. Yes, under the principles of freedom of speech, you are perfectly free to say that asexuals**** are mentally handicapped autistics, or, indeed, that we’re subhuman. However, we are then free to say that you’re an ignorant idiot, or, indeed, that you should be burned alive for your bigotry. And if you’re criticising a slightly more public group – say if you said exactly the same thing about women, and say if you’re famous yourself they’re free to carry out a sustained campaign of abuse in several national newspapers. You can complain, yeah, but they can say whatever the hell they want about you, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. That’s not an attack on the freedom of speech. Stopping it would be an attack on freedom of speech. That’s freedom for you – noone said it had to be nice. Actually, complete freedom almost never is – that’s why the social contract exists in the first place†.
A slightly more contentious issue is the idea of online censorship. You exercise your freedom of speech on Acebook††, and explain your point of view that deviant sexualities don’t really exist, they’re just signs of mental deficiency and demonic position. You are immediately banned, and your post is deleted. That’s a violation of your freedom of speech, surely? After all, the evil moderators are cruelly violating your freedom to state your point of view. It’s censorship, pure and simple.
Yeah. No. That’s wrong. Understandable, yeah – not like the ‘I can say whatever I like but you can’t’ one. That one’s just stupid. The thing is, you have the right to say whatever you want. Noone has any responsibility to give you a platform, any more than the national gallery has any responsibility to display your retarded fingerpaintings†††, or than a publisher has any responsibility to publish your book, even when it is clearly a timeless masterpiece deserving of a place in the literary pantheon, nay even a place far above those mere scribblers who have in the past pretended to some measure of literary talent.
Ahem. Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. Noone has any responsibility to give you a platform for your views. You can say whatever you want to say, but they don’t have to give you a platform to say it. Not only that, whilst you have the perfect right to say whatever you like, in the same way that you have the right to paint whatever you like, that doesn’t violate the property right. You aren’t allowed to paint graffiti on someone’s wall against their wishes, and in the same way, you aren’t allowed to write rubbish on someone’s wall if they don’t want you to‡, or indeed to write anything on anything owned by someone else without permission. And since most parts of the internet are owned by someone, yeah, banning you from posting on a particular part of the internet, or publishing articles in a paper etc. is perfectly fine under freedom of speech. Obviously it’s a bit different if the government does that, it’s a bit different, but if it’s the legitimate owner (or someone appointed by same), it’s perfectly legitimate for them to stop you saying what they don’t want you to say on the internet, no matter how reasonable what you’re saying is. Weirdly, stopping what looks like censorship is actually more of a restriction of freedom than not doing so.
Not really sure why I wrote this, just felt like it. I was getting annoyed with people who invoke 'freedom of speech' without really knowing what it was they were invoking. For anyone wondering, I don't really even believe in 'freeedom of speech'. I belive in 'freedom of expression' - expressing whatever ideas you want, but not in expressing them however you want. I've done too much debating to think that that's the same thing.
Oh yeah. One last thing. Also, if for some reason you want to read more of my rambling, Old Acanthus finally got restored it’s here‡‡‡. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but the content probably won’t end up being the same as what’s on here. I’m not sure. I don’t think all of it as is high quality as what I’ve written here‡‡‡‡, but if you want to read it, it’s there.
*Spending holidays writing blog posts. I’d say it was sad, but I already know I have no life.
**I just want to point out the segue there. Y’know, since it was so subtle, you might not’ve noticed it.
***To be fair, that describes me perfectly. It’s a bit much to assume on the basis of my sexuality, thought.
****Or any other minority group – it should be obvious why I’m using aces as my example, but it applies equally to every group.
†Actually, virtually noone believes in complete freedom of speech. Freedom of speech kinda includes not only minor, harmless things like slander and blackmail, but also giving one’s generals the order to invade that small country to the east of you and murder those who are not of the master race. Probably what I’m talking about would be described more accurately as ‘freedom of expression’ (and yes, I'm aware that I'm not using 'freedom of expression' in the normal way).
††And no, that’s not a typo.
†††I’d be worried about offending someone who actually paints for the national gallery, but I think the chances of anyone that talented reading my drivel is slim to none††††.
††††And now I’ve offended both my readers, so balance is restored.
‡I don’t particularly want to get into an argument about who, exactly someone’s Facebook page belongs to. It’s either Facebook, in which case they give the right to decide what goes on someone’s wall to that person, or the person whose profile the wall is part of. I suspect the former, but I really can’t be bothered to work it out.
‡‡Incidentally, I think this is the most footnotes I’ve ever put in a single piece. And this being that it’s me, that’s saying a lot.
‡‡‡Yes, the web address is almost the same. I didn’t expect to be using this blog very long, so I don’t bother with differentiating it.
‡‡‡‡And, again, that’s saying a lot.
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