Quote:
Originally Posted by BBXX
You can diminish hate speech to "being a dickhead" if you wish, but that doesn't diminish the actions words do have. People do, will and always have acted upon the words of people, take a look at history. The people spreading negative messages about women are usually not actually assaulting them themselves physically, but their words illicit a response in incels to so do. The influential people spreading anti-LGBT rhetoric aren't beating up a gay couple who are just enjoying a drink outside a pub, but they inspire others to do so, not through orders, but simply by helping stir the pot of simmering homophobia already present.
You simply cannot put your head in the sand and act like the effect of words end at the moment they leave the tongue, that they're "just words" and "offence is taken and not given". It's not about that. It's about the impact the words have on others who want a reason to think it's justifiable to punch a gay man in the face.
LGBT people are four times more likely to be a victim of assault than straight people and compared to five years ago there is a 56% increase in hate crime against LGBT people.
But yeah, the real issue is the slippery slope that starts with telling people if they say discriminatory words they will be reprImanded.
(Suffice to say, none of this is now referring to what Mickey said by any stretch, the conversation has moved far beyond Mickey onto a much larger subject at hand)
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I understand what you're saying, but I'm just going to use the same point that I use when people try to blame GTA for an increase in violence.
If someone (for example) wants to beat someone to death because they're gay, then unfortunately they were on the brink of committing the crime anyway, no Andrew Tate Podcast saying Homophobic stuff can alter his viewers mindsets.
Tbh, if someone is a fan of Andrew Tate unironically it probably already means that the individual was messed up to begin with, the same with any other political extremist on the right.
And I too am concerned about the worrying increase in violence against gay people as well, but I honestly think that silencing people from what they really think, otherwise their life is ruined will send them more down an extremist path than just debating it out with them why their opinion is wrong.
Because challenging these extremists views is extremely important (and also is apart of free speech,) but challenging them in the mainstream is better than letting them build their own echo chambers, where most people don't even see these lunatics coming.