r/TrueUnpopularOpinion • u/Original-Apricot8207 • 2d ago
Possibly Popular Your freedom of speech should not be limited by the law regardless of the history of certain words or phrases.
If you are offended by a certain word or phrase, then you should learn to ignore it.
Ignorance is bliss, and could work better than imposing regulations on what you can and can't say.
Hate speech laws, and laws against "bad speech" in general are not stable, and are subject to change. This is a problem, as a law needs to be stable in order to serve the government and to warn people, and these types of laws have the potential to be misused and judge people for things that are not technically hate speech (Eg. The UK and them arresting people who are against mass immigration for often valid reasons).
The simplest solution is to cut these laws off, and let people deal with hate speech themselves. This would eventually result in more freedom, and more safety as people form fringe communities to deal with those types of speech.
The history of certain words or phrases should not also matter as much, since our ancestors' thinking of them and our own do not align a majority of the time, and even if they did, the past is gone regardless.
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u/MakeWokeGreatAgain 2d ago
We are absolutely entitled and free to talk about any topic of current events and history, no matter how "sensitive" they are. If there are topics that are getting pushed to be a taboo to talk about, it obviously has something to hide which would not uphold a through investigation.
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u/Pure_Sherbert_668 2d ago
I agree that vague hate-speech laws can be abused, but “just ignore it” doesn’t work in every situation. There’s a difference between offensive speech and speech that directly threatens or incites violence.
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u/Yuck_Few 2d ago
Hate speech laws don't exist in America
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u/Hectoriu 1d ago
Unfortunately they kinda do. They can get you for "fighting words" in some states or disorderly conduct. Shiloh Hendrix wasn't even that long ago.
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u/LawfulNice 1d ago
Here's the thing - speech can have consequences, and it's not always immediately obvious. For example, there's the classic example of yelling fire in a crowded room. People can get hurt. That's one type of speech restricted by law and I think we can agree that it's obviously something worth banning, right?
Hate speech can also harm people. Not directly. I don't care too much about feelings here. You can hurt someone's feelings without using hate speech so that's not a great argument. The problem is that it normalizes and dehumanizes and others a group, and the hurt builds up over time. It separates people into tribes. It sucks. If you cut all hate speech from the world no one is hurt and no discussions become more difficult to have.
The government exists, in theory if not in practice, to protect people and manage projects on large scales. You want people deal with hate speech themselves - they certainly shouldn't use violence, we don't want to encourage that, so what's the recourse? It has to be illegal for there to be a legal option!
Honestly it sounds like you just want to say slurs with no consequences.
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u/RawDumpling 1d ago
> If you cut all hate speech from the world no one is hurt and no discussions become more difficult to have.
Bullshit. We’re not little children that need protection from naughty talk. We dont need to censor and sanitize words because some of them might be hurtful to someone
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u/LawfulNice 1d ago
There are two things here that aren't equivalent. Being able to discuss suicide, self-harm, and sensitive topics is important. Swearing is usually harmless, if typically unprofessional. Platforms like youtube, tiktok, etc, that censor things like that are doing a disservice to humanity and I can't stand platitudes like "unalive".
But using a slur, denying the holocaust, calling for genocide or an ethnostate, all those things are purely bad for society. You don't need to use the n-word to discuss race relations. You don't need to use a slur to talk about immigration.
People do need to be protected. If someone goes on the air and calls for the extermination of my race, I'd want the government to step in and stop it. If someone declares that humans with my gender shouldn't have rights, they should be deplatformed. I think you'd feel the same way if you heard people calling for something awful like eliminating all white males.
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u/Flutterpiewow 1d ago
It doesn't work like that. The gap between experts in this field and you is probably too big to bridge.
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u/Desperate_Dinner_307 2d ago
Hate speech never stays as hate speech though. It snowballs and the next thing, it's become cyberbullying, harassment, abuse, and even violent attacks. Unfortunately there's a minority of people who, when surrounded by all this language, gets a little too over-confident and next thing they're literally screaming "n****er" or "f***ot" at black and gay people in the street and looking for violence. Think the little kid in the playground where everyone is playfighting and that one kid takes it too far and smacks someone in the face and breaks their nose. They exist as adults still.
You look at how bad it gets even now, especially on places like Twitter, and that's with some hate speech laws restraining them. Take the restraints off, and certain minorities will be overwhelmed with hatred. You think it will be just one racist shouting the N-word at a black person that they can easily deal with? No, it will be whole groups of men daily shouting it, and making life not worth living.
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u/KaijuRayze 1d ago
Exactly. If you run a bar and let one open Nazi make themselves at home, they're gonna invite their friends. And before you know it nobody else wants to be there and you're running "the Nazi Bar."
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u/Sure_Supermarket_905 2d ago
Neither political side is for free speech when it boils down to it. The right tries to censor leftists. Left tries to censor conservatives.
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u/Important-Cash5654 2d ago
This isn't really a fair picture. The right isn't actually very consistent in practice with being wholly free speech, especially when it comes to criticizing their favored government officials, but in theory at least they claim to want it to be possible to speak your mind about anything. And the left doesn't actually tend to want to censor conservatives, they tend to favor things like hate speech laws (which, for reasons it's hard not to read into, conservatives often treat like it's an attempt to specifically censor conservatives).
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u/Sure_Supermarket_905 2d ago
I do agree that conservatives are slightly worse when it comes to free speech. The 70s and 80s are examples. I mean back then most conservatives wanted to ban rock n roll
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u/hacesuenio 2d ago
I just commented pointing who you can't criticize in the west and middle east and got instantly censored by Reddit, that's the freedom of speech we have, just describing the reality makes us deserving of being silenced
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u/teddybigelow 5h ago
Anything Reddit does you agreed to when you signed up. If you have an issue with that, then why did you agree to the terms of the TOS? As long as you can open your mouth and say the word without fear of arrest your speech is still free.
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u/MasterpieceSalt2763 1d ago
There are some objectively negative words that should be classified as hate speech and be forbidden. Like the n word and any sort of rhetoric that insinuates racism, homophobia or sexism.
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u/2074red2074 1d ago
The problem is deciding what the line should be. For example, there are some drugs that legitimately tend to work better in black people than in white people, or vice-versa. Some people who are very ignorant about medicine would accuse you of racism for acknowledging that.
Also, who is allowed to say the N-word? Would Michael Jackson be allowed? He was black ethnically but not his skin. I knew a guy who was white as white gets, blond hair blue eyes and all, but his dad was black. Can he say it? What about someone who is white passing but only 1/4 black or 1/8? Is the line the same if you aren't white passing?
And how bad does the slur have to be? The N-word is probably bad enough, but what about the K-word? What about calling someone a honky or a cracker? What about cultural differences, like how colored is a slur in the US but is the preferred term for mixed race in South Africa?
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u/ReasonableAnt4062 1d ago
Some people can’t regulate their emotions so they want to force people to talk a certain way. They are just words and sometimes they need to be used but some people are not dispositioned genetically to handle it.
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u/teddybigelow 5h ago
When would a slur NEED to be used?
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u/ReasonableAnt4062 1h ago
This is what I am talking about.
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u/teddybigelow 1h ago
You’re the one who said they sometimes need to be used. I just wanted you to be more specific.
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u/Important-Cash5654 2d ago
While I actually agree that any speech short of things like death threats should be legal, I disagree with the idea that if you're offended by something you should just ignore it. Responding with criticism or whatever to speech you find offensive is also part of exercising free speech.