When people make arguments that those who advocate freedom of speech must then commit to listening to the speech of everyone else in the world, I realise how much danger we are in of losing touch with the liberal principle of freedom.
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They don't see it as that. They see 'freedom of speech' as demanding the right to inflict views on other people which is abusive and even violent. The response 'Well, then you must listen to me as I berate & yell at you or just never go away so you know how it feels' is punitive.
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They genuinely see this as equivalent. I've seen a lot of this in the last few days but its been growing for a while & it's bewildering to others who keep saying 'Why is it so hard to understand that freedom of speech and freedom to choose which speech you listen to go together?'
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It's hard to understand if you don't realise how much the idea of discourses constructing social reality has been internalised by large segments of society - that the very existence of speech which argues for something they find abhorrent damages society and marginalised groups.
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The idea that speech you don't like could be going on but you don't have to listen to it or that you can argue with it simply isn't enough. Harm is being done by these ideas being spoken. If it can't be stopped, there must be consequences for it.
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They speak of this as though people are being bombarded, wounded by these words and ideas they don't like that are being spoken in a public place whether it's that psychological gender differences exist or that gender is entirely a cultural construct so trans people don't exist.
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(Simplifying there, obv) If you understand that people really see it like this, you'll understand why some see it as equivalent to insist that those people who insisted they had the right to say those hurtful things must now listen to everybody else or be hypocrites.
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End of conversation
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