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gaudiorContext: So Wiscon has rescinded Elizabeth Moon's Guest of Honor invitation.* People reacted in the comments thread, many of them accusing the Wiscon committee of "fascism" and "censorship."
So let's discuss some definitions.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, usually by a governing body. It involves editing out or removing parts of someone's speech/writing, taking legal action to prevent that speech/writing from being published or disseminated, destroying written materials, legally prosecuting people for their speech/writing, outlawing the sale of said speech/writing, etc.
Here are some things which are not censorship:
*criticizing someone for what they said if you disagree with it
*refusing to give someone your money in exchange for them saying or writing things you disagree with
*refusing to give someone special honors and rewards for saying or writing things you disagree with
I believe very strongly in freedom of speech and expression. People should be able to say and write anything and everything they want.*** Not only should Elizabeth Moon have the right to say that American Muslims are bad citizens for, for example, requesting police protection for mosques after the September 11th attacks, she should also have the right to write scathing and vicious attacks on all Muslims everywhere. A person should, in fact, have the right to write an obscenity- and hate-filled novel about how Muslims are The Most Evil Things Evar and want to destroy the earth. I stand behind anyone's right to write that, and I stand behind their right to try to publish it.
But I also believe, more or less, in capitalism.**** I believe strongly that people have the right to vote with their wallets, to support people they, personally, agree with, and to not give money to people they don't. I support the right of any publisher to refuse to buy Teh Evil Muslim Conspiracy, either because the publisher doesn't want to spread hate or because the publisher doesn't think it will sell. And if someone does publish it, I support the right of any reader to not buy it, either because they don't want to support hate or because they don't think it's a good book. And I feel that critics and readers and reviewers have the right to write anything they want about what a terrible book it is, and how nobody should buy it.
None of those things are censorship. Disagreeing with someone, not supporting them, and not using your resources to promulgate their message are not censorship. They are not things you are doing to the person. They are things you are not doing for the person. That's different.
If a convention chooses someone to honor for her writing, and then discovers that the person has written something they have no interest in honoring, I support their right not to pay to bring the person to their convention, give the person money, and ask the person to make a speech. Wiscon would be practicing censorship against Moon if they were a governing body which could prevent her books from being published. They aren't; they can't. They didn't even try to prevent her from expressing her views-- they did not forbid her from the convention, and if she had come, I doubt they would have forbid her from being on panels or speaking. That's not censorship. That's just an explicitly political con, one which has been working on improving the experience of its participants of color, choosing not to honor someone who has written things which explicitly contradict the con's goals.
There are all sorts of things which can be debated about this situation. But yelling at sf3 for "censorship" is not a useful one.
--R
*Further context: Elizabeth Moon (writer and invited Guest of Honor at the upcoming WisCon) made a livejournal post about the non-Ground Zero non-Mosque** saying basically that Muslims should have expected this project would lead to trouble, and therefore were not being good citizens by proposing it. Although she did acknowledge that this has historically been problematic and still is, she said that some assimilation by new groups is necessary for multiculturalism to work, and that after the September 11th attacks, Muslims in America should have been careful to "avoid doing those things likely to cause offence." [sic] She went on to speak about "the long, long chain of Islamic hostility" and how problematic it is that non-Muslims "lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom." And how she doesn't want anyone persecuted, but she wishes Muslims would realize how forbearing everyone else is being in putting up with them going around asking for rights and respect and things.
There ensued about 300 posts in the comments section in which people pointed out many ways in which what she had said was problematic. After engaging with them for a while, Moon deleted the comments and announced that everything had been said and answered, repeatedly, so there would be no further discussion.
There ensued, perhaps not unpredictably, discussion.
**Thanks to K. Tempest Bradford for the phrase! Source here.
***Within a few specific guidelines. Namely, according to the law, if you lie and it causes someone damage, it's illegal. There's nothing wrong with shouting "fire" in a crowded theater if there's actually a fire; libel and slander are both illegal because they misrepresent someone in what claims to be a factual manner. Neither stating opinion nor repeating accurately what the person said publicly are illegal, and neither should, in my opinion, be censored.
****I would really like to have a kind of capitalism where the market is free and where legislators made laws to protect workers and the environment and things like that.
So let's discuss some definitions.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, usually by a governing body. It involves editing out or removing parts of someone's speech/writing, taking legal action to prevent that speech/writing from being published or disseminated, destroying written materials, legally prosecuting people for their speech/writing, outlawing the sale of said speech/writing, etc.
Here are some things which are not censorship:
*criticizing someone for what they said if you disagree with it
*refusing to give someone your money in exchange for them saying or writing things you disagree with
*refusing to give someone special honors and rewards for saying or writing things you disagree with
I believe very strongly in freedom of speech and expression. People should be able to say and write anything and everything they want.*** Not only should Elizabeth Moon have the right to say that American Muslims are bad citizens for, for example, requesting police protection for mosques after the September 11th attacks, she should also have the right to write scathing and vicious attacks on all Muslims everywhere. A person should, in fact, have the right to write an obscenity- and hate-filled novel about how Muslims are The Most Evil Things Evar and want to destroy the earth. I stand behind anyone's right to write that, and I stand behind their right to try to publish it.
But I also believe, more or less, in capitalism.**** I believe strongly that people have the right to vote with their wallets, to support people they, personally, agree with, and to not give money to people they don't. I support the right of any publisher to refuse to buy Teh Evil Muslim Conspiracy, either because the publisher doesn't want to spread hate or because the publisher doesn't think it will sell. And if someone does publish it, I support the right of any reader to not buy it, either because they don't want to support hate or because they don't think it's a good book. And I feel that critics and readers and reviewers have the right to write anything they want about what a terrible book it is, and how nobody should buy it.
None of those things are censorship. Disagreeing with someone, not supporting them, and not using your resources to promulgate their message are not censorship. They are not things you are doing to the person. They are things you are not doing for the person. That's different.
If a convention chooses someone to honor for her writing, and then discovers that the person has written something they have no interest in honoring, I support their right not to pay to bring the person to their convention, give the person money, and ask the person to make a speech. Wiscon would be practicing censorship against Moon if they were a governing body which could prevent her books from being published. They aren't; they can't. They didn't even try to prevent her from expressing her views-- they did not forbid her from the convention, and if she had come, I doubt they would have forbid her from being on panels or speaking. That's not censorship. That's just an explicitly political con, one which has been working on improving the experience of its participants of color, choosing not to honor someone who has written things which explicitly contradict the con's goals.
There are all sorts of things which can be debated about this situation. But yelling at sf3 for "censorship" is not a useful one.
--R
*Further context: Elizabeth Moon (writer and invited Guest of Honor at the upcoming WisCon) made a livejournal post about the non-Ground Zero non-Mosque** saying basically that Muslims should have expected this project would lead to trouble, and therefore were not being good citizens by proposing it. Although she did acknowledge that this has historically been problematic and still is, she said that some assimilation by new groups is necessary for multiculturalism to work, and that after the September 11th attacks, Muslims in America should have been careful to "avoid doing those things likely to cause offence." [sic] She went on to speak about "the long, long chain of Islamic hostility" and how problematic it is that non-Muslims "lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom." And how she doesn't want anyone persecuted, but she wishes Muslims would realize how forbearing everyone else is being in putting up with them going around asking for rights and respect and things.
There ensued about 300 posts in the comments section in which people pointed out many ways in which what she had said was problematic. After engaging with them for a while, Moon deleted the comments and announced that everything had been said and answered, repeatedly, so there would be no further discussion.
There ensued, perhaps not unpredictably, discussion.
**Thanks to K. Tempest Bradford for the phrase! Source here.
***Within a few specific guidelines. Namely, according to the law, if you lie and it causes someone damage, it's illegal. There's nothing wrong with shouting "fire" in a crowded theater if there's actually a fire; libel and slander are both illegal because they misrepresent someone in what claims to be a factual manner. Neither stating opinion nor repeating accurately what the person said publicly are illegal, and neither should, in my opinion, be censored.
****I would really like to have a kind of capitalism where the market is free and where legislators made laws to protect workers and the environment and things like that.
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Re: A slightly tangential question of censorship
Date: 2010-10-22 03:08 pm (UTC)Good question. My line is where (as I understand it) the law puts it: you don't have the right to lie about someone in a way which will harm them, and you don't have the right to explicitly threaten someone. Beyond that, anything goes.
So, yes, I believe that the Westboro Baptists do have the right to protest at funerals. I believe that it's cruel and tacky and unfeeling and insane of them to do it, and I never would in a zillion years, but I believe they have the right to.
Here's a trickier question: what constitutes threats that will cause harm? Take a queer kid who's harassed on FaceBook, and commits suicide-- if everything the other kids said was actually true, and none of it was an explicit threat, should they be held accountable for murder? I lean towards no (suicide is a person's own choice, even if others strongly influenced them towards it), but I'm not sure, and need to think about it more.