amateur ramblings

Artificial rivalries between offensively similar elite centers of privilege are noxious enough in their own right, but when they foster elitism and prejudice, they become dangerous.

In last Friday’s edition of YDN, Bijan Aboutorabi argues that, in withdrawing a t-shirt design calling the rival-but-mirror-image team “sissies,” a university committee tasked with facilitating this crass competition produced solid evidence of “the kind of conversations the doctrine of political correctness has left us.” Aboutorabi mistakenly applies a free speech analysis to evaluate the decision, claiming that “with the words ‘I am offended!,’ any member of a community [can] decide what is or is not acceptable to say,” and that such a condition is “inimical to our ideals of free expression.” Aboutorabi is wrong on all counts.

I’ll let alone the question of who the “our” in “our ideals” might be  (read: Aboutorabi’s ideals) to say that Aboutorabi appears to rebut a straw man of his own making. Few would actually claim that any speech that any single person finds offensive should be exempted from public discourse. That is not to say that there is no ambiguity about where the line should be drawn between acceptable speech and unacceptable speech. No doubt Aboutorabi would have objected to a t-shirt featuring a word like “n–g-r” or “ch-nk,” but the question is, why?

Is it simply that some issues, like a person’s race, are off limits, while others, like gender roles, are okay to deride? Is it simply a matter of magnitude, that some phrases offend more people and therefore merit censorship after reaching a certain threshold? It is unlikely that either of these lines of inquiry can be productive here, or that Aboutorabi’s column has the potential to offer a coherent answer.

While Aboutorabi waxes poetic about “our” (read: his) ideals, he offers little to help us understand what speech crosses the line and what speech does not. The truth is, to speak of speech as “crossing the line” neglects that speech draws lines. Speech does not merely convey ideas, as the free speech martyr would pretend; it also constructs the space in which it is uttered. Even a paradigm which attempts to side-step the issue by characterizing such slurs as injuries instead of insults (and therefore outside of the reach of “free speech”) misses the way in which words shape the architecture of our social space.

It is not merely that the word “sissy” may inflict emotional harm, but also that it demarcates a space, a forum, or a discourse as one that belittles, denigrates, and marginalizes–if it does not altogether exclude–those who are perceived to fall under its umbrella.

It is not the word itself that is offensive, but rather the kind of forum it produces. The traditional free speech analysis is simply unequipped to handle issues like hate speech and other slurs. Voltaire’s famous statement that he would defend to the death the right of those to say even that with which he disagrees simply does not apply fruitfully in this context, for one does not disagree with the content of the word “sissy” (there is no argument to disagree with) but with the very act of uttering it.

The words we don’t say are a reflection of social values. Sometimes they are sensible, sometimes they are noble, sometimes they are arbitrary, and other times they are oppressive. An entrenched social policy and attitude against racial segregation makes the N-word and other racial slurs so obviously imprudent regardless of the context, but it is because of their segregating and divisive effect that they are shunned, not simply because the words offend.

Similarly, the word “sissy” does not denote “mere cowardice and ineffectuality” as Aboutorabi  claims, but rather is a slur that cannot be divorced from a history as complex and derogatory as that attached to the word “faggot.” We are not yet at a time where heteronormativity has given way to make the public space as safe for and welcoming to queer people, practices, and ideas as it is to others, but it is unlikely we can be so long as those committing the offense do not recognize it. What threat excluding the slur “sissy” or other such exclusive language from our public discourse might pose is difficult to see: but the cost of casual acceptance is all too clear.