an update on the facebook ludicrous i posted on earlier.it was only a matter of time before the scum were shut down and (hopefully) kicked off facebook for life. a small punishment for bigotry and violent prejudice, but a good step in the right direction.
there is also a reactionary group that formed to call attn to the ignorance of the prior group, regrettably called "the group 'laws women will abide by' makes me want to cry" (i was hoping for something a little stronger, but whatever.)
funnily enough, if you do a search on facebook now for the group, a feminist group shows up in its place:
the only "law women will abide by" now?
1. Doing as they please as the equals of men.
now how's that for justice?
my work here is done,
stephanie
5 comments:
"it was only a matter of time before the scum were shut down and (hopefully) kicked off facebook for life. a small punishment for bigotry and violent prejudice, but a good step in the right direction."
While I agree with you that the guys that did this are probably idiots and most likely scum, I can't help but feel that there are some free speech issues here.
I can certainly understand your feelings, or as least as much as one can without being a woman, but it seems there's an idea in your writing that's a little dangerous, the idea that bigotry and prejudice deserve punishment.
It seems like this argument boils down to "these people's words are wrong and offensive, and so they should be punished." (correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption) Personally, I'm sure that I have dozens, if not hundreds of beliefs/ideas that are probably wrong and probably offensive to someone, so I feel some uneasiness when these are the criteria that determine punishment.
I don't think anyone really wants to live in a world where we can't be wrong and we can't offend one another. I don't even think we could avoid it if we tried. I feel it's perfectly acceptable, maybe it's even our responsibility to use our freedom of speech to convince them exactly how wrong/stupid/sexist they are, but I would draw the line there. The idea that they should be punished and their words silenced doesn't feel right to me.
Of course, the second they turn their words into actions, I'm all for throwing the book at them. If they even use their words to make specific threats of action, I'd say lock 'em up. But until then, all I think we can do is point out how wrong they are.
Admittedly I didn't have the time to read the background info on the group or it's removal. In fact I don't even really have the time to be writing this. The point is I fully acknowledge I could be completely wrong in any number of my assumptions here, and feel free to tell me so.
Also, I apologize if I misrepresented what you were saying or what you intended, I just felt like ranting, I suppose. Oh, and full disclosure, I lifted my argument more or less verbatim from the book "Kindly Inquisitors" by Jonathan Rauch. It's an excellent read, if I do say so myself.
OK, back to finals...
it's funny how even the most liberal-minded person such as myself can employ this kind of rhetoric when aggravated enough, isn't it?
yes, i see that what i was advocating for is basically a contradiction of my beliefs, that being the freedom of speech. but i'd like to remind you that constitutionality is often broken for much worse causes.
take media history as an example: in the interest of protecting the public from "objectionable content" (which i would say this definitely qualifies as), the Supreme Court ruled to beef up the FCC's regulatory rights. this included stronger regulation of the radio, TV, and yes, even the internet.
then, when they realized this was UnConstitutional, they decided to deregulate, basically handing over all government control of the media to, that's right, the corporations.
so there's really no freedom of voice, no freedom of choice either, in this crippled democracy. the freedom of use on the internet is really not as pristine as we'd all like to think. while we'd all like to see our freedom of speech protected and practiced, the fact is it simply doesn't happen in a world in which our freedoms are limited to the options the corporations make available to us.
that is, zuckerburg has a monopoly on this, and we are merely his commodities. the fuck is making $ off every visitor to his site! and how? with advertising and brain-washing. he's peddling an illusion of choice to us and we're eating it up, saying thank you then begging for more.
i'm sorry, but facebook is not a democratic medium. you have to be in a school to use it, therefore limited ppl's participation in it - this makes everyone on facebook a customer, and as such, they have the right to demand that their service be met at the expense of others' rights, especially if those rights are being abused. remember, OH just passed a smoking ban. is it not a smoker's right to smoke if s/he believes that's what s/he wants to do? that's his/her freedom of choice. but a smoking ban actively and forcibly truncates that right, and is in fact, not unConstitutional.
and we're getting rid of transfats now too!
it's amazing what happens in the name of "the public interest." (Reagan redefined this to mean "whatever interests the public," rather than "whatever is in the public's best interest") and i would say that banning bigots, bigotry, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia WOULD interest the public, in addition to being in its best interest.
just my opinion.
The group didn't get taken down, only the admins. A feminist group now pops up because the Wellesley women led a hostile take-over, but its still the same group. As for freedom of speech, it declares that the government won't punish you, however you still have to deal with the consequences of your actions from your fellow humans because they have THEIR freedom of speech. :)
Seems the point is being able to decide what happens is always at issue. Should we only decide according to guidelines alone? Rules are made to be broken. The rest just becomes about what degree of conformity you want.
Next it will all boil down to who we choose to decide for us. Rather than leaving Choice itself open and independent of influence, we end up letting the courts decide how the state of the internet, for instance, is to remain for those of us who choose to use it.
well said.
with net neutrality in particular, there's a funny rhetoric of "ask the FCC to regulate... to save us from the corporate takeover!"
it's a funny mix of a willingness to give up some freedom of speech to save freedome of speech/ access to democratic mediums.
you gain some, you lose some, just hopefully in all the right directions.
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