"Hate Speech" on MumsNet

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

Has anyone else noticed that when we report a post, one of the buttons to give a reason for the report is now "Hate Speech"? I have raised this on Site Stuff because I find the term really disturbing. And I'm raising it here because isn't this the term that's used by the police to harrass gender critical women?

It’s a general term. I’ve used it for racist posts.

I'm fine with this so long as all characteristics are equally treated. Ableism for example. Comments about how homosexual people are committing apartheid if they won't be bi/pan on demand. Revolting comments about heterosexuality recently which led to some deletions. There are nine characteristics, not one: it is the equality of treatment I care about.

And yes, I'm sure MN are fully aware of the outcomes of the court case where the police and judiciary examined the concept of 'hate speech' in detail. But are dealing with some highly litigious people who do not like women being permitted to have opinions or talk freely, and living in an age where a major site has been deplatformed solely because a small group found it inconvenient and used a lot of leverage around social justice narrative. Which is bloody scary as who appointed that lot the commanders of public discourse? Are they fit for that power? What qualifies them? Where's the transparency?

So I don't blame HQ for doing anything at all that protects them and their business from the risk of malicious exploitation by questionable political agendas.

The issue will be when they tot up all the reports of 'hate speech' from this board without actually verifying if any it was in fact hate speech.

As we all know, most of the things, or facts, that the TRA's think are 'hate speech' are just things they don't like women saying and are not hate speech at all.

It can be a useful term, but it's now so often misappropriated by arrogant people and/or those with an agenda, in order to invalidate other people's rights to an opinion.

Genuine hate speech is an abhorrent thing and should rightly be clamped down on, but far too many people nowadays manipulate it to mean (or, worryingly, genuinely think that it does mean) anything that they disagree with, however peacefully and respectfully expressed.

See also the word 'violence', which is now often used entirely erroneously and manipulatively. As a general rule, if somebody feels the need to 'qualify' it and says "This is actual violence", it often means that it isn't what most people would currently and historically understand the word 'violence' to mean.

Some of the same people will also proclaim that they 'don't feel safe' (with the assumption that their perceived aggressor will be promptly removed/restricted/punished) in scenarios where they are never in any danger whatsoever and could so easily shrug and walk away from or just ignore the person with a different viewpoint from theirs.

Shame that misogyny wasn’t ruled to be hate speech. Come to think of it, who gets to decide as to what and what not constitutes hate speech?

I agree. A lot of reports for “hate speech” will be moderate, lawful, protected free speech. Seems like a hostage to fortune.

I share some of the concerns about how this monitoring information would be used, and branding reasonable speech "hate speech" based on people's say so. It seems open to abuse.

As raised in court, yes. It's all terribly wibbly wobbly stuff and highly subjective, and actually highly questionable as to what is being policed and why.

But HQ are giving the option of asking them to examine something on the basis of it being 'hate speech' (whatever that is. We're not sure.) They're not by any means by doing so saying that the mods will always agree it is, and delete accordingly.

Anything that gives women a voice helps.

I also share concerns.

Some of what is posted by TRAs on this board could easily be construed as hate speech against women and homosexual people, if the bar for what actually constitutes hate speech is set as low as activists seem to think it is.

Obviously some exceptions, but I rarely report posts, as I prefer to counter with an argument or evidence and also believe in free speech. I think this is more informative for casual observers.

The amazing thing about MN (and probably why it is so hated) is that it continues to be female dominated despite the fact males are not barred. This presents no problem for non abusive males.

Abusive males cannot resort to physical intimidation, because its online, so I guess the next step is to appeal to authorities, which traditionally works in favour of males.

I do report posts on FB and, although probably pointless, report misogyny as though they actually cared about it. The only reason misogyny isn't a hate crime in the UK is.... Misogyny!

I share your concerns OP.

Hate speech is a very contested term but it seems to mostly be used to mean "people expressing ideas I don't agree with."

Quite. “Hate speech” and “That which someone hates to hear spoken” are very different things.

I don't have that option yet, on the app.

They definitely need to define it, so we can use it correctly.

I find the FB report algorithms useless, as so much that needs addressing doesn't land in their tidy categories.

The one left out very clearly shows who has the power to decide these things.

Is it defined? Or is it like transphobia, gender and non binary - a bizarrely amorphous concept?

'Hate speech' is a tricky phrase and yes, far too open to abuse.

And has been very vigorously abused.

I have been concerned about attempts to criminalise "hate" - you cannot criminalise a human emotion. Also, obviously in social rhetoric there has been a massive inflation of the concept of "hatred" so as to destroy all calibration of negative attitudes to selected (always highly selected) groups or entities. What happened e.g. to indifference, mild distaste, irritation, dislike, aversion, scepticism, antagonism, opposition...? I have become wholly cynical towards anyone uses the term 'hate speech' - they are either using the term mindlessly or are authoritarians.

It is designed for abuse similar to the new-fangled concern for disinformation and fake news. I live in an authoritarian one-party Asian country with a tightly controlled press, effectively a government propaganda tool. They were extremely happy with the western left's preoccupation with fake news from 2015 onwards and quick to institute laws to counter this new "menace". Many people in the west have no idea what they have destroyed of their own freedoms.

It can be a useful term

How is it a useful term?

I was a bit perplexed to see a sign up in Gregg's saying that they refused to tolerate abuse of their staff - a very good thing, of course (although sad that they have to actually point it out); BUT as well as 'abuse', they also mentioned homophobia and transphobia. I didn't quite understand why they used a perfectly understandable catch-all phrase to cover all clearly unacceptable treatment of staff, but then went on to highlight just two of those separately.

I hope it wasn't their intention, but to me as a customer (who, I must add, had no intention whatsoever of offering any abuse of any kind to the staff), it did have a real air of suggesting that there was an 'abuse hierarchy': i.e. abusing staff because of their race, sex, disability, religion etc. is 'kind of bad-ish' but doing do for either of those two reasons in particular is really unacceptable.

What do posters who think there should be no laws or bans on "hate crime" think about comments like "n***rs should all be killed" or "Jews should all get in the oven"?

MN are clearly aware of what is actually hate speech and what isn't, and when people are abusing the report button.

Please answer: do you think that comments using the N word written out in full (directed at a black poster) constitutes hate speech?

Do you think hate speech exists at all, and has the potential to be dangerous (eg how racist propaganda directly led to the Holocaust and to German citizens either turning a blind eye or actively helping to beat up Jewish people, destroy their homes and businesses, and help round them up to be sent to the camps)?

Or is this yet another attempt to exploit gender critical feminism as a trojan horse for far right extremism and white supremacy?

How many members of your family were murdered in the Holocaust, out of interest?

How many members of your immediate family have been physically assaulted within the last few years by Neo Nazis, or had their homes or places of worship destroyed by Neo Nazis?

Because I can tell you how many of mine were.

How do you know anything at all about the oppression my family or I directly may have experienced and why are you pressing the emotional nuclear button? Was it speech that murdered jews or something infinitely worse? If I were a jew, I would want to know what words were used against me so that I could counter it.