"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?

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

Imagine if the boot was on the other foot in another reality, and your comment about feminism was considered "hate speech". How would you feel about that? Because you could theoretically make many of the same arguments, that your comment is a "dog whistle" inciting violence towards women.

Plus it's fake news and disinformation, so there's that.

This.

Excellent post, with three really good points. I feel the same cynicism.

The nuance and ability to express outside of hyperbole and extremes is something much missing in present culture. It needs bringing back. Without it, there's no rationality, balance, understanding or tolerance.

Currently 'tolerance' actually has come to mean on twitter shouting at someone "be tolerant or I'll hit/rape/kerb stomp you". It essentially means a toddler "do what I want or I'll hurt you", while borrowing from words that show an awareness that these words have successful manipulative value towards those with ethics and social care for others. And it also shows that the Tweeter has enough self awareness of their behaviour to not try shouting their true message undisguised.

The whole thing is indulging the infantilization of adults, except instead of trying to fix some wise, entirely balanced and just Nanny type figure of government who will be the arbiter of nursery manners and punishments, it has been exploited to make it more a Lord of the Flies experience. The road to hell is so often paved with good intentions, but it seems fairly obvious at this point that the paving slabs are red hot. Hate crime is a bad idea and needs ditching from law.

I really dislike this.

I think MN has the right to decide some kinds of posts don't meet their standards of civility. But that does not actually make them illegal speech.

It's dangerous to conflate these things.

Hate Speech is well defined. It is the saying/posting of hateful and prejudiced content against an individual, group or community about their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. It can take the form of derogatory, demonising and dehumanising statements, threats, identity-based insults, pejorative terms and slurs.

Is there such a thing as an insult that isn't 'identity based'?

If they are fully aware of the court cases then why do MN censor protected beliefs?

I suppose you could say very personal things. When I was a small kid we had a sort of gang of local children, and when we were pissed at one of the others we had standard insults we used. Mine was rhyming my name with a particular slur, one which we didn't know the meaning of. One kid was mocked for his skin colour. And another was called "round head" which didn't refer to his political affiliation but rather the fact that he had a very large round head like a pumpkin.

These days the first two would be considered identity insults, and the last wouldn't, although in reality for us they were all personal and didn't relate to any group identification as such.

But the idea that it is actually worse, as an adult, to insult someone for a group membership, say being a Catholic, than for a personal characteristic, like being near-sighted, is interesting. Of course if you could claim near-sightedness was really a form of disability and so the insult was abelism, maybe you'd be back in business. It does raise a lot of questions though about how we decide which things are group identifications and which are personal.

i've used it and found it appropriate for anti christian (catholic) rhetoric. i was pleased to see it as an option.

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"?

This is covered under incitation to violence and all humans should be afforded this protection.

Ah. There you go.

It’s only hate speech if it’s an identity based insult regarding the race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity of an individual, group or community.

Identity based insults regarding sex or age are not covered by hate speech laws.

I'm asking about the idea that we can't insult people based on their 'identity'. I'm not sure I even understand what 'identity' actually means. An idea in our head? Or is that just 'gender identity' diluting and trivialising all the other characteristics?

Where's the line between making an observation and making an insult? Who decides if its insulting? Is there a list of words that are forbidden, and if so, can we see it?

It’s only hate speech if it’s an identity based insult regarding the race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity of an individual, group or community

Identity based insults regarding sex or age are not covered by hate speech laws

The fact that 'gender identity' is protected at all is absurd. Why do you need to protect someone's self image or personality?

Biological facts are now 'hate speech'
But men call call women anything they like with no issue. Nice.

Identity in this context is referring to the characteristics that make a person or group different from others.

So an identity based insult would be calling an Arabic person a “towel head” as part of what marks out an Arabic person is the keffiyeh they wear. Classic identity based insults also include “limey” referring to English habit of ensuring sailors ate limes or had a dose of lime cordial to prevent scurvy (the science was unknown and other nations thought we were ridiculous). And another is “Frog” for the French obviously from the fact the French ate frogs legs…ie something different about them that is used as an insult toward them.

There’s no list, but they’re all wrong and shouldn’t be used. There are tons of lists and examples online of hate speech. StopHate is a good place to start if you genuinely want to understand hate speech better.

Which is all individually subjective, and related to context, so very wobbly and subject to manipulation and essentially the familiar problem: people fiddling it based on their personal religious faith and prejudices.

Hence it's fine to post actual, overt, really quite repulsively disturbed death threats towards women who are heretics, but police are questioning women who name biological truth. Hence the whole 'check your thinking' case. Read the judgement on that, it's eye opening.

It should have been basic common sense to spot extremism and actual content that matched the intention of the law. And then we started to live in an age with no common sense and a spreading evangelical ideological religion that manipulates everything to its own purposes and it got really bloody silly.

It needs to go. All of what is in it to actual purpose is already covered by law anyway, it's unnecessary, it is exploitable and has been, it has turned out to be a really silly idea with many unintentened, very unhelpful consequences. Like the GRA.

'characteristics that make a person or group different from others.' - this could mean literally anything at all.

'There’s no list, but they’re all wrong and shouldn’t be used.' Fantastic. There's no list of bad wrong words, so who will tell us when we've sinned? Who are the priests who make the decisions of what is 'hate' speech?

'Some police forces also record hate incidents based on other personal characteristics such as age or alternative subculture. Alternative subcultures include Goths, Emos, Punks, and other similar groups.

Stop Hate UK monitors beyond the five strands covered by Hate Crime legislation, this includes Gender-based violence, Alternative Subcultures, even Hate against characteristics such as weight and hair colour.'

'Hate should never be tolerated. Everyone has the right to be themselves.'

If hate shouldn't be tolerated, what about mild antipathy? Is that acceptable? If it is, why, and where should we draw the line?

And what in the ever loving fuck does it actually mean to 'be yourself'? This is policy on the level of a 'live, laugh, love' sign hung on the wall of the police station.

Quotes from: www.stophateuk.org/about-hate-crime/

I've literally never seen anything like that said on MN.

When we're talking about hate speech it seems to be more along the lines of someone saying they think there should be stronger immigration controls or that men aren't women.

Brilliant bit of straw-man nonsense here! An utterly pointless bit of posturing — is any Mumsnetter likely to say “ns should be killed” etc? Has this ever happened on Mumsnet?

But the point becomes clear in the last line: yet another attempt to exploit gender critical feminism as a trojan horse for far right extremism and white supremacy

Yup, it’s that funny US transactivist concept that women defending their rights are far-right nutters. And we’re all white supremacists, including the numerous women of colour who have fought for our rights in court cases recently.

This is covered under incitation to violence and all humans should be afforded this protection

Exactly. For eg "single mothers should be killed" should also be deleted as inciting violence, even though it isn't technically "hate speech" according to the rules.

I don't object to hate crime as an option as long as it is consistently enforced and doesn't stifle debate. For example Mumsnet openly condones attacks on groups covered by specific protected characteristic eg men or white ethnic group. Yet if similar arguments are made against other characteristics it is pulled as hate speech. I also believe that as long as the post is based in facts or a legitimate experience then this should preclude it being hate speech.

I saw a post deleted for comparing deaths from terrorism in the UK normalised by religion in the UK. It was based solely on facts it appeared as the data came from legitimate published sources yet this was pulled as hate speech. This makes me uncomfortable we should be able to discuss facts.

Mumsnet openly condones attacks on groups covered by specific protected characteristic

Bollocks it does.

Personally, I'd prefer objectionable or offensive (but legal) posts to stay up. The other day someone posted that "If I had children, I would hate it if one of them was straight. Sooo boring"! Very bigoted, but it spoke volumes about the person who said it and I think the sunlight was preferable to the censorship that left readers of the thread unclear about what exactly had been said.

But if MNHQ is going to allow posts to be reported as "hate speech" then it should publish a very explicit explanation of how this is going to be moderated so that 1) there is consistency and 2) only genuine "hate speech" (of which I've seen very little, if any) is taken down.