J, if I could steal your attention from tushantin for a bit, I want to challenge you on something.
For the nucleus of people who don't just do this to harass, but really mean it, I support capital punishment as the next step if rehabilitative efforts prove unsuccessful. It may not seem so, but I don't support the death penalty for much. This is one.
I can't tell if you're indulging in Zealitarian hyperbole here, but if not, how do you advocate putting people to death for holding an opinion as opposed to people who murder, rape, or violently assault others? How do you say that the latter, with all of the consequences thereof, don't deserve this punishment but that the former does? Can you really say that being a sexist is worse than being a violent criminal? And if so, how on earth do you justify that?
To understand any support for the death penalty, you need to understand the road that travels there. I assume you read the
"A Woman’s Opinion Is the Miniskirt of the Internet", but if not then go back and read it now. What the columnist is writing about is a pervasive culture on the Internet where female contributors to the public dialogue are routinely insulted, professionally and personally, and threatened with just about everything you can think of, including rape and death.
The reality of this harassment is not something I intend to debate. Everyone who spends time on the Internet reading the words of other members of the public knows that this problem exists. They may not all think of it as a “problem,” or realize it is pervasive, but you have to at least acknowledge that this is a real problem and not something made up by, say, feminists or liberals. If you don’t acknowledge that, then we are at the end of the discussion.
The consequences of this harassment are fourfold. First, it stifles female cultural participation essentially everywhere it is allowed to continue. Second, it reinforces a very ugly sexist dynamic between males and females, with males affirmed in writing horrible things to females, and females resigned to accept it for lack of support to do otherwise. Third, it contributes to a culture of actual physical harassment, abuse, and worse. Fourth, it deprives females of power by inclining large segments of both sexes to dismiss female power (or, more properly, power held by females) as illegitimate.
You probably don’t understand, given your background, the extent of loss and waste created by a sexist climate. But you only need to reflect upon the pages of this very Fuck Sexism thread to have a taste of it. Or you need only stop and appreciate that (in all probability) females are seriously underrepresented on your favorite parts of the Internet. I don’t say that you “probably don’t understand” to demean you, but to describe you. Most people honestly don’t understand this, or are only vaguely aware of it. You come from a conservative Christian background which is at the heart of promoting such ignorance, and it will take you a generous period of dedicated effort to appreciate it for yourself.
On the Compendium, we don’t tolerate sexism. Far from having to ban people, the problem doesn’t come up very often—or, perhaps more accurately, sexism is not an accepted facet of our community. I think we owe this not to some upstanding quality in the character of all Chrono series fans, but to our community intolerance. I think the people who would otherwise write sexist comments see that the culture here doesn’t permit it, and keep their mouths shut. Most of those probably lose interest and leave the site. We are somewhat unusual here because of our anti-sexist policy and, more importantly, our
community enforcement of it. These days a number of Compendiumtes contribute to that shield of egalitarianism, but I remember when it was just me, and I suppose my most important legacy to this website is that I am the main personality behind it. Females are underrepresented on the Compendium, but those who come are not going to be pushed away by a climate of comments telling them that their only value here is to be a sex object or GTFO.
When it comes to sites like this, most have a sexist atmosphere except for those which are led by females and/or feminists, or those which have a small, close-knit community consisting of prominent females and/or feminists. What if you were a female and your experiences on a website consisted of a steady stream of denigration? What desire would you have, and what hope, that your thoughts should come to reside in the minds of others by participating in conversation and making points therein? Your participation in the community may well be irrelevant, because you would have been judged worthless. Don’t say that it doesn’t happen, or that I am exaggerating it. It happens every single day, all over.
Shutting people out of society, or making them suffer if they want to participate, and dismissing the value of their participation if they go ahead with it, all on account of something as irrelevant as sex, is a serious crime. It’s not a crime under the law, yet, but it is one of the grosser ethical failures of any society which permits or embraces it. It is an ethical failure in two ways. First, it is a logical fallacy to treat people differently on the basis of a trait that doesn’t pertain to the effects of the different treatment. (Example: “The student who has the most freckles will fail the class!”) Second, the behaviors which follow from that fallacy are destructive. (Example: “A woman who speaks out on the Internet is asking to be raped.”)
Combine destruction with fallacy and what do you get? You get
gross ethical failure.
If there is a clear and persistent injustice, as necessarily implied by any gross ethical failure, then we arrive at the point where I can propose controlling the injustice by criminalizing behavior. You latched right onto my support of the death penalty, but we’re not nearly there yet. Let me repeat what I wrote earlier:
I would be prepared to go so far as to support a federal constitutional amendment defining a new limit on free speech, together with a significant legal deterrent of fines, loss of status, and if necessary even jail time, along with a robust rehabilitative effort. For the nucleus of people who don't just do this to harass, but really mean it, I support capital punishment as the next step if rehabilitative efforts prove unsuccessful.
I am fascinated that you latched onto the death penalty part, when for me the much more radical statement was that I would be prepared to support a federal constitutional amendment defining a new limit on free speech. That’s an extremely serious position, and a very difficult one for me because I consider free speech to be one of the essential ingredients in a free society. Killing people for crimes committed is a trivial argument to make compared to silencing people for the sake of the public welfare.
Where do females go on the Internet? Do you know the answer to that question? Females certainly use the Internet, notwithstanding the joke that the Internet doesn’t have any females. But if they’re not on the parts of the Internet you use yourself, then where are they?
They are in the places where they are not subjected to an endless barrage of hate and abuse.
This is important. It means that, when the culture of misogynistic sexism is not permitted, more females will participate. That’s simple logic. People are likelier to go where they are welcome. This gives us a target to focus on. Here’s the imperative which follows: Websites need to discourage a sexist climate.
Some websites do it voluntarily. Hurrah for the invisible hand of the free market! On other websites, the matter doesn’t really come up one way or another, so that’s a wash. But as to those which maintain a sexist climate and seem to approve of it, what do we do?
Well, recall that I had spoken earlier about things like comments on news websites. Oftentimes, the website is a junction between a business and its user base. The Los Angeles Times is not a paragon of misogyny, but many of the public comments by people who visit its website are exceedingly sexist, plain and simple. The LA Times has made the choice to accommodate a wider range of voices at the expense of fostering a healthy conversational climate.
I point this out to illustrate the following: If we were to, say, ban sexist comments as hate speech (which is not what I am proposing), the LA Times would not be particularly hurt. They might lose some voices, but they would foster a richer conversational atmosphere, in which a persistent and vibrant community would very likely coalesce.
And that’s how it would be for most of the affected parties of such a law. Most would lose nothing, except for the right to say things that they probably wouldn’t have personally said anyway. The people who stand to lose the most from a ban on sexist comments are the ones who have the most stake in promulgating those comments. The provocateurs and lovers of sexism. This is important because any ban on speech must be highly targeted and specific. Indiscriminate blanket bans are extremely dangerous.
What I actually do propose is that we begin with hate crimes law. As defined by the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (I can’t vouch that that is a permalink):
“hate crime means a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.”
As you can see, it already includes a provision for sex—or “gender” as they put it, which is incorrect. Anyhow, I can’t help but observe, with a touch of bitterness, that this law was passed under the Democratic Congress and signed by President Clinton, way back in 1994. Later that year the Democrats were crushed in the elections, and the Republicans subsequently ruled Congress until 2007. From them, we didn’t get good legislation like healthcare reform or hate crimes laws. We got shit about outlawing abortion and paying tax dollars for Jesus parents to send their kids to Jesus schools. But I digress...
Clearly, this provision of the law is not enforced. Hate crimes prosecutions don’t occur very often because the burden of proof is so high (“beyond a reasonable doubt”), the existing law itself is unclear, and society just doesn’t seem to have much interest in cutting sexism. All the law really serves to do is define what a hate crime is, and specify that conviction of a hate crime will incur a higher penalty.
I consider it uncontroversial that the “gross ethical failure” I am talking about here, where sexist comments damage female participation on the Internet, etc., qualifies as a hate crimes matter. What we need, then, is a new law that both criminalizes offending sexist language and classifies it as
hate crime. This is one of those times when the government will have to lead the public, and get ahead of public opinion with far-reaching progressive legislation. I don’t know whether it would be better to amend the existing law or start all over. Either way, what I support is a legal provision that reads something like this:
[[Language or Imagery]] << on >> [[Digital Media, especially Websites]] << that >> ((Targets)) [[Real Persons]] << with >> [[Abuse, Threats, or Harassment]] << on the basis of >> [[Sex]] ((Is)) {{Hate Crime}}.
Forgive my fanciful formatting. I’m not a lawyer and obviously can’t vouch that my prosaic phrasing would reflect my intention, so I created a very simple and obvious description of what I mean:
Language or imagery on digital media, especially websites, that targets real persons with abuse, threats, or harassment on the basis of sex is a hate crime.The only reason I talked about a federal constitutional amendment is that the law I propose may be unconstitutional because of the First Amendment protection on speech. In that case, it would take another constitutional amendment to specify that hate speech is not protected. That’s the only reason I would be interested in amending the Constitution in this case. (Separately, but relatedly, I support the Equal Rights Amendment.)
It would be important for any law to distinguish between the discussion of sexist comments, the opposition thereto, the fictional depiction thereof, and the actual criminal behavior of victimizing people. We must avoid or at least minimize the creation of any unintended hardships upon anyone.
Anyhow, the takeaway is that I support outlawing some forms of hate speech.
Now, the penalty. Let me repeat myself again:
I would be prepared to go so far as to support a federal constitutional amendment defining a new limit on free speech, together with a significant legal deterrent of fines, loss of status, and if necessary even jail time, along with a robust rehabilitative effort. For the nucleus of people who don't just do this to harass, but really mean it, I support capital punishment as the next step if rehabilitative efforts prove unsuccessful.
I spoke of a “significant legal deterrent of fines, loss of status, and if necessary even jail time, along with a robust rehabilitative effort.” That’s what I envision the primary penalty set should entail.
It may also be appropriate to pass a law penalizing website operators for failing to curtail sexist activity. That would relieve some of the compliance workload, and, as a side benefit, it would encourage website operators to refuse to ignore the issue and actively make a choice to support sexual equality.
Most sexist comments are borne of ignorance rather than malice. Those should typically be met with the suspension of posting privileges by the website operators or their agents. In the case of particularly serious comments, the victim(s) would be free to choose to press charges against the person who posted them.
This raises the question of whether it would be necessary to implement a better infrastructure for law enforcement to identify anonymous or pseudonymous individuals. Most people aren’t as anonymous online as they would like to think, and would be identified relatively easily. In other situations, the right to privacy will conflict with the right to sexual equality, and we may need a law to draw the line.
Once identified and charged, guilty defendants would typically be fined (if it would not impose an undue hardship) a restitution to the victim, through wage garnishment if necessary, as well as sentenced to counseling (at their own expense if feasible) and community service, and threatened with jail time for a repeat offense. Innocent defendants would have their cases dismissed or be acquitted.
Repeat offenders would be jailed, sent in for counseling, and made to pay a more serious restitution. I am wary of jail time, particularly for something like this (as jail culture is incredibly sexist), but people take jail seriously and there might be some merit to that.
Because the law as I envision it would not single out male-against-female acts of sexism, everyone would have to start being more mindful of discriminating against everyone else on the basis of sex. This would, on the one hand, be relatively easy. Most people who make sexist comments are aware of what they are doing, as evidenced by the prevalence of sentiments like “I know this isn’t politically correct, but....” On the other hand, it would force a lot of social evolution. Misandrists in the feminist movement, for instance, would have to retool their approach to social justice. Elsewhere on the Internet, entire websites would suddenly become illegal as people like Pat Robertson would find themselves operating outside the law on a near-daily basis. All in all, I think these changes and hardships would be for the better.
Now, at last, we get to the issue which struck you dumb, being my support of the death penalty in limited circumstances.
For the nucleus of people who don't just do this to harass, but really mean it, I support capital punishment as the next step if rehabilitative efforts prove unsuccessful.
In case you simply misunderstood me, I am not suggesting that I support the death penalty as the endgame punishment for all sexist hate speech on the Internet, but instead for a smaller group of people whose hate speech is matched with a genuinely sick personality. These are the people who are physically dangerous, who have committed sexual abuse already or are likely to do so when presented with the opportunity; and the people who research the private information of their victims with the intention of causing bodily or property harm; and the people who are mentally ill and incapable of exercising the judgment to constrain their hateful attitudes; and the people who so virulently detest or demean people of one sex (it’s usually males hating females, but other combinations apply) that their hatred or condescension clouds their judgment even if they remain otherwise rational.
People like that are sick. They are a tragedy; their lives are often a partial or total waste. But, more importantly, they are an existential danger to society. Jail is not the appropriate place for them. A mental hospital, or a psychologist’s office is where they belong.
If curing or controlling their sickness is impossible, then they need to be killed.
I won’t walk away from that, or weaken it with qualifiers, or say it out of the corner of my mouth while looking down at the floor. People like that, if they cannot be helped, are too dangerous to be allowed to live. I have read too many stories, and met too many people, who have been the victims of such monsters, to permit myself the indulgent luxury of thinking that a more peaceful solution would be effective or just.
To avoid being a "concern troll," I'll be blunt with my intentions: Not only do I disagree with what you've said, I think it's so reckless and out-of-this-world that you've either lost your damn mind or you've got some really good explanation for it.
There you have it.
I am sad to say it, but there are only three kinds of reaction to my comment in favor of criminalizing sexism. There are the philosophers, who agree because their principles line up with it. There are the females and their friends and allies, who agree on account of having suffered the effect of sexism personally, or have witnessed it affect people close to them. And there are the people who disagree and call me a crazy or a radical. That is the nature of fighting an entrenched prejudice. Most people who aren't specifically aware of the evil, don't perceive it at all. People tend not to pay much attention to the air we breathe. It's everywhere, but it's invisible, and, precisely because we breathe it so continuously, we just don't think about it. So it is with sexism.
