Freedom of speech and expression

Freedom of speech and expression is under threat due to our tendency to legislate for the minority who abuse it

No, I don't believe in unlimited freedom of speech and expression- it should be bounded by the responsibility to be considerate towards others and not actively encourage actions that impinge on others' freedoms.  I have no problem with society frowning upon expression of views like, "X is inferior because he's black", for example.

The problem is a variation on the "legislating for idiots" problem that I have also blogged about.  When clamping down against unreasonable speech and expression, we tend to feel obliged to show a hard-line approach, which means being willing to tarnish innocent speech and expression by association.  Such an approach can be "justified" on the basis that "the minority have to spoil it for everybody else" because "that's life", and/or by setting up rules that mandate it and then insisting that "rules are rules".

Example 1:  Clamping down against those who support illegal activities, and in doing so, stifling the ability of others to question the correctness of the law without being jumped on by association.

B.  As a community we do not tolerate views that condone/support copyright infringement.  Anyone who expresses such views will be banned.
A.  Download copyrighted file P from file-sharing site Q.  Here's a link.
B.  Instant ban for A.  That's the sort of thing that we don't allow.
C.  I believe that copyright law X is too restrictive because it prohibits activity Y, and Y probably doesn't erode content creators' sales and benefits the consumer.
B.  Therefore you condone Y, which is a form of copyright infringement, so you will be banned too.

Such "no condoning copyright infringement" policies are common on internet sites to guard against people like A, who could potentially get a site sued by copyright holders for posting links to illegal downloads.  But they are also used against people like C when they try to speak out against what, in their opinion, are unreasonably stringent copyright laws.

Example 2:  We clamp down against dangerous activities and the expression of views that support them.  As a result, those who speak out against the punishment of innocent people by association with offenders end up having their views stigmatised by association with those of offenders.

B.  We do not support reckless driving because of the way that it results in tragic loss of life.
A.  I want to be allowed to drive as fast as I like, because I find it fun.
B.  If you want to drive as fast as you like, go to a race track.
C.  I don't agree with the progressive tightening up of traffic restrictions.  While a minority do drive recklessly for pleasure, and I support clamping down against those people, a lot of people currently get enjoyment out of driving in a safe and legal manner too.  If the restrictions are tightened too much, this will be lost, and I don't support phasing out the recreational side of driving as part of clamping down against the minority who abuse it.
B.  Pleasure should never come before safety.  If you want to enjoy driving, go to a race track.

In effect, C's views are tarnished by association with those of A, since C is not arguing that "boy racer" type behaviour should be allowed, but is rather arguing that the freedoms of responsible law-abiding motorists should not be sacrificed as part of clamping down against it.  I am very used to arguing positions like C and being dismissed simply with the one-liner, "Go to a race track."

Political correctness and avoiding offence

The term "political correctness" is often over-used.  Here, I am thinking mainly of the philosophy where we outlaw language that can cause offence and/or encourage negative stereotyping of vulnerable groups, in the hope that it will make people question widely-accepted stereotypes and lead to a breakdown in values that encourage discrimination.

However, this policy encourages the punishment of innocent people by association with offenders.  In the past, when bigots used words offensively, the general public would often start using them as more general terms of abuse and water them down, forcing the bigots to find other words to use abusively, such as when we cycled through "idiot", "moron" and "imbecile" as terms for the mentally handicapped.  But today, when bigots use words offensively, we tend to outlaw them altogether, which results in the bigots getting a much larger say in what words are and aren't acceptable.

Also, we often have too much emphasis on the "avoiding offence" aspect of political correctness, as opposed to the "avoiding inciting negative stereotypes of vulnerable groups".  In some cases it is taboo to express opinions that are perfectly reasonable but might offend certain people, by association with related views that are unreasonable, such as the two examples that I provided above relating to road safety and copyright laws.

Of course, sometimes groups of people develop a hatred of a particular word because it is widely used offensively against them, and so it is only natural that if it is used inoffensively, they may misinterpret it and be highly offended.  People do need to be considerate of this, and take some care with their use of language, especially slang, on the internet and around people that they don't know.  However, when people use a word inconsiderately and without thinking, they should only get punished accordingly (in many cases, a mere warning would be the most appropriate) rather than being punished highly disproportionately by association with those who use the word as part of their oppression of certain vulnerable groups. 

And yes, I am seeing a worrying trend towards organisations setting up rules saying that all usage of a particular word should be punished by association with its most offensive usage, and justifying them on the basis, "The rules are right because the rules say so, and the rules say so, because the rules are right."

Instead, I refer readers back to my article on normative bullying and suggest that tackling this problem is the best way of combating discrimination.

"Normative" bullying part 2- Gender and relationships

Gender differences- Nature or nurture?

The simple answer to this question is, "both", but a more challenging question is, how much of the observed differences between males and females is nature, and how much is nurture?  I think the "nurture" component has definitely declined since the 1950s, but it is still there, and I believe that the main problem with it is that it often tends to be enforced through "normative" bullying techniques.

A frequent personal experience of mine is that, culturally, men are expected to be X, and women are expected to be Y, but I tend to be a mix of the two.  I tend to be particularly exasperated by contradictory arguments like the following:

"Like it or not, men and women are different.  There is no peer pressure to conform to gender roles- that has died out since the 1950s- there is only pressure not to conform.  Fundamentally, men are X and women are Y, and if, as a man, you aren't X, then it means you probably have something wrong with you and so should be regarded with suspicion, for a civilised society has to have norms/rules and if you don't play by the rules you should be punished.  Most other men are happy to be X, so why can't you just be X like everybody else?  Vive la difference!"

This argument is extremely contradictory, arguing that there is no peer pressure to conform to gender roles, but then saying that if you don't conform to gender roles, you should be punished for being different because "rules are rules" (if that's not a form of peer pressure to conform, what is?)

Examples of cultural differences

In many developed countries, notably the USA and to a lesser extent the UK, it is normal for men's friendships to be based on shared interests, particularly competitive hobbies, and for women's friendships to be based on emotional bonding.  Men are not expected to bond emotionally with people other than close family and men who hug close friends can be regarded with suspicion, whereas women can hug close friends without any worries.  These gender divisions are harmful for both genders, since they make it difficult to find friends who will provide both shared interests and emotional bonding (male friends tend to provide the former and female friends the latter).  The lack of emotional bonding in men's friendships, in particular, tends to result in them being perceived as short-term and disposable.

For men

The norms relating to "Men don't bond emotionally with friends" have no biological basis.  They stem from the way that close friendships involving men were stigmatized during the Victorian era due to the fear of being accused of being homosexual, as there were strong criminal penalties for homosexual men, as Oscar Wilde found out to his great cost, for example.  The stigmatization of emotional bonding in men's friendships relates to the idea that men are not emotionally sensitive, and if they are, they are unnatural and probably have something wrong with them.  This issue has significantly fuelled the recent paranoia over child-molesters in the UK, where every man who behaves inconsistently with his gender role in the vicinity of a child is suspected of wanting to molest the child.  But it is at odds with biological evidence suggesting that about 15-20% of humans, both male and female, are born "highly sensitive".  

I suggest that this is an example of what I call "normative" bullying.  Men who are more "sensitive" than the expected norm end up feeling compelled to hide their sensitive traits, for fear of being socially rejected for being different, and even suspected of wanting to molest children.  In today's culture of "the minority spoiling it for everybody else", when there is a perceived threat to our safety, we look for innocent people to target by association with the likes of rapists.  Homosexual men traditionally used to be the easiest targets, but now that homophobia is becoming recognised as a significant problem, it is becoming easier to focus on "sensitive" men instead as they are not widely recognised as being vulnerable to discrimination.

For women

"Women don't engage in competitive hobbies/interests" does have a limited biological basis, as women tend to be less aggressive and competitive by nature.  However, much of the gender division is still caused by social conditioning.  From an early age, girls are taught that females "grow out" of competitive activities like computer games (especially violent games), chess, ten pin bowling etc., and that females who persist in doing them are acting unfeminine and childish and stooping to the males' level.  Another, related, problem is the patronising, "macho" type of reaction that females get from some males who are strong at such activities, like, "She can't be as good as us- she's female." or "I'm not playing against her because I couldn't stomach being beaten by a female."

I remember cases from my childhood where people applied the rule, "Boys shouldn't hit girls, but it's OK for girls to hit boys" (which is dubious in itself, for while girls are, on average, physically weaker than boys, the rule doesn't take into account the individual-on-individual variations from the average, or the fact that it is possible, up to a point, for weaker people to inflict significant harm on stronger people) and but then decided that it was OK for boys to hit girls who took part in these competitive activities because "they aren't real girls as they do boys' things rather than girls' things".  An extreme case admittedly, but one that strongly highlights the problem.

So, again, a significant reason why many girls don't engage in these activities is because if they do, they will be socially rejected for being different. This is reflected by the fact that once it becomes relatively "normal" for females to do a traditionally male-dominated activity, we usually get a sharp rise in the number of females who take an interest in it, and by the fact that many girls who take up these activities tend to give them up during their teenage years, which is when peer pressure tends to be at its most rampant.

All of the above is strongly relevant to areas where there is a problem with women being under-represented in the workforce- sometimes the above attitudes are quite prevalent, and tend to be accepted without question, such that people (both male and female) bully women out of wanting to be part of them, without even realising it.

I am not a fan of positive discrimination

I am a believer in equality of opportunity, which is not the same thing as equality of attainment.  There are some areas where biological differences between the sexes will result in there being more men than women (or vice versa) succeeding at a particular activity, e.g. men are at an advantage, on average, in activities that require a lot of physical strength.  And we get variations either side of the mean, so Company A may find that most of the best applicants for a job are male, while Company B might find that most of the best applicants for a similar post are female.

I can see that positive discrimination can go some way towards addressing the problems that I described above.  If women are under-represented within a group, and we push to get more women involved, then it will become perceived as relatively "normal" for women to take part, and therefore, less likely that they will be socially rejected for being different, and thus discouraged.  

However, positive discrimination can result in the jobs not going to the best candidates, with inferior candidates getting priority because of, say, their gender and/or skin colour.  It can also result in us unrealistically trying to aim for a 50-50 gender distribution in an organisation, where there may well be a genetic difference that, if we left "nurture" out of the equation, would make it more like 70-30.  These issues put a lot of people off from supporting what is a very important cause.

Once again, the problem that we're dealing with here is normative enforcement of "rules", i.e. the "If it's normal, it's OK, and if it's different, it's not OK" mentality.  I feel that it would be most beneficial to try to tackle this directly.  People should be punished for doing things that are likely to be detrimental, not purely for being different.

"Normative" bullying - Part 1 - Basics

Definition of "bullying"

There is no formally-agreed definition for the term "bullying", and it is important not to define "bullying" too widely, for if the problem is over-diagnosed, it trivializes the problem and makes it appear that bullying is "normal", where the traditional line of thinking goes, "It's normal, therefore it's OK".  Thus, I am opting for one of the narrower definitions of bullying:

Taking advantage of a perceived imbalance of power to repeatedly hurt/intimidate others, using force, threat or coercion.

"Normative" bullying

In many cases of bullying, the bullies are violating social norms.  But in "normative" bullying, the bullies actually see themselves as enforcing social norms.  A group within society sets up norms (unwritten, socially-enforced rules) that mandate compliance with conventional/traditional ways of doing, being and thinking, and rejects those who fail to comply.  When these norms are typically based on, "Because we said so", rather than wider moral considerations, it results in suppression of individuality and creative, independent thinking, and, worse still, marginalisation of vulnerable/minority individuals or groups purely because they are considered to be different.  But when, say, a group of native whites ostracise a black person because of his or her skin colour, often, they don't see it as discrimination, they see it as punishing the black person for failing to comply with their rules, by analogy with how the police punish criminals for failing to comply with the laws of the land.

In those cases, the bullying does become "normal" as far as the given social groups are concerned, and so they argue, "It's normal, therefore it's OK".  What is then needed is for society as a whole to turn around on them and argue either, "Just because something is normal, it doesn't make it right", or, "It's not normal as far as we're concerned".  But in practice we often get a problem where it becomes "normal" because too many bystanders stand there saying "That's life" instead of being pro-active in trying to address the problem, particularly if the social group has a lot of power.

In my experience this argument can be remarkably persuasive.  For example, I, as a very moderate drinker, had experiences at university of being rejected by social groups because their rules were, you got drunk regularly and partied until 3-4am in your halls of residence, or you faced rejection for being different.  Many bystanders, and even some authorities, took the line, "Well, it's your fault for being different.  You know what the rules are, so if you don't keep to their rules, that's your problem.  Keep to the rules and you won't be rejected by the group.  The rules are the rules, and there isn't a problem with the rules, because if everybody obeyed them, there wouldn't be a problem."  It is the same sort of response as motorists get when they complain about being fined for speeding.  

In this case, using a simplistic "social norms"-based approach to tackling such bullying is unlikely to prove effective, because the bullies are actually the ones who are claiming to be enforcing social norms.  Moral considerations have to take precedence over the need to have rules and enforce them, otherwise we leave the door wide open for people with comparative power to perpetuate this kind of bullying.

Why all of this is important

The above form of bullying is a major factor behind most issues relating to discrimination (racism, ageism, sexism, homophobia etc- it crops up in every case of it).  For instance, a group of white people may consider it acceptable to ostracize a black person because the black person's skin colour and/or ethnic background makes him or her stand out somewhat from the rest of the group, arguing, "Well, it's his/her fault for not fitting in."  Groups may develop prejudices against those that they consider to be different in some way, and then accept those prejudices/stereotypes without question, with the idea being, once such behaviour becomes "normal", it must therefore be OK.

As a society, instead of targeting this type of bullying, we generally try to legislate for it, and focus anti-bullying/discrimination efforts primarily against activities that, in terms of harm caused to the recipient(s), are actually relatively minor.  We try to clamp down against use of language that can reinforce stereotypes, and make a big thing of high-profile "one person's words against another" cases, like in the infamous English Premier League row between John Terry and Rio Ferdinand where, as part of a foul-mouthed exchange of abuse between the two players, John Terry made an inappropriate one-off reference to Ferdinand's skin colour.  While Terry's behaviour was unacceptable, it was hardly likely to be as damaging as cases where black people are routinely marginalized by social groups because of their skin colour, and yet it got far more attention.  As a result, the general public become in danger of being branded racists for making one-off misjudgements when they lose self-control in an argument, while groups that continue to marginalize ethnic groups for being different continue to get away with it because they argue that their behaviour is enforcing social norms (whereas in the above case John Terry was clearly violating social norms) and take in bystanders by arguing that "that's life" and "rules are rules".

All of this creates a public dislike of "political correctness" and related policies, which in turn damages public support for efforts to make headway against this type of bullying.

"Rules are rules"

Article updated on 08 June 2014

The problems with the "rules are rules" approach

As established in the post establishing the fundamentals of freedom and responsibility, we do need rules and regulations to help us to filter out irresponsible behaviour, and up to a point, we need to enforce them, using a combination of punishment (to give a deterrent) and rehabilitation (to reduce the incidence of re-offending).

Rules should reflect wider moral considerations and should be followed out of respect for those moral considerations, not purely because they exist.  But as a society, we often lose sight of this, and many people just accept that rules should be accepted and followed because "rules are rules"- there is no need for reasons and understanding, that's just the way it is, because some authority set up rules that say so.  This gives authorities a lot of excess power, where they can potentially set up wholly unreasonable rules and justify them on the basis, "Because we said so."

Dangers of accepting that "rules are justified because rules are rules"

When we accept that rules should be followed because "rules are rules", we often end up justifying them using circular reasoning.  Many of us consider what is morally right and wrong to be defined by what the some authority's rules do and don't say, and since the rules are supposed to reflect what is morally right and wrong, we get an argument along the lines of, "X is wrong because it's against the rules, and it's against the rules because it's wrong".

Setting up unreasonably restrictive rules isn't the only way in which authorities can take advantage of the blind acceptance that "rules are always justified because rules are rules".  They can also be enforced disproportionately, and made unclear in the hope of catching out ordinarily law-abiding citizens.

Enforcement of conformity to traditional ways of doing and thinking

Individual authorities are not the only people who are capable of setting up and enforcing rules.  Social groups and societies set up social norms, traditions and etiquettes, dictating what range of behaviours are and aren't considered acceptable by the group, and these suffer from the same problem.  As long as these norms/traditions/etiquettes are based on wider moral considerations, and/or the group tolerates individuality and allows individuals to follow legitimate alternative ways of doing and thinking without being rejected, this isn't a problem.  

But all too often, groups set up rules along the lines of, "Do and think 'our' way, or be rejected", where social norms, traditions and etiquettes are justified purely on the basis, "Because we said so", and all those who deviate are rejected for being different, and the group sees it as like authorities punishing someone for stealing loaves of bread from a shop- rules are rules, no matter how good or bad they are.  This is a common cause of suppression of individuality and creative thought, and discrimination against vulnerable/minority groups.

Discretion vs. absolute enforcement

Many rules are reasonable for 90-95% of the time but can be daft if applied absolutely in the other 5-10% of situations, so we can enable authorities to apply discretion and refrain from enforcing the rules absolutely in the other 5-10% of cases.  The danger with this is that it means that the rules can be less clear, and if some people are allowed to get away with breaking rules in certain situations, then it can encourage others to try to push boundaries and see if they can similarly get away with it.  

But enforcing rules absolutely in all cases can backfire.  One example that I used to get into heated arguments about when I was younger is the road traffic law saying that responsibility for an accident should always lie with the driver of the vehicle behind, due to the need to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front.  Yes, I'd say that this law is a reasonable generalisation that works in at least 90% of cases.  But when applied absolutely in all cases, it leads to some major problems when we get scammers pulling in front of motorists, slamming on the brakes and claiming on their insurance, trying to take advantage of the shortcomings of this law.  Thus, in this particular case it is desirable for authorities to apply some discretion.

I tend to think that we need a balance (as is so often the case).  Apply discretion sometimes, but make it clear what sort of situations the discretion does and doesn't apply to, so that the rules and their enforcement is still reasonably clear to the general population.

Civil disobedience is never ideal but is sometimes necessary

In an ideal world, rules would always reflect wider moral considerations, and people would always obey them, but we don't live in an ideal world and abuse of power and authority is widespread.  It is easy to say, "If you don't like an authority's rules, campaign for them to be changed", but in my experience, campaigning for them to be changed often isn't enough on its own.  A particularly common circular argument, for example, is, "X is illegal.  People shouldn't break the law.  Therefore people shouldn't do X.  And that's why X is illegal!"  Or, just the defence of the status quo - "It's right, because that's just the way it is."

So, sometimes, one of the most effective ways of getting unjust rules changed can be civil disobedience, taking the risk of being caught and punished, but at least taking a personal stand against them, and hoping that if enough people take part in the civil disobedience, authorities might take notice.  As I say, it's not ideal, because when we behave outside of the rules, often, we have little or nothing left to guide us regarding what is and isn't responsible behaviour, and we can end up inadvertently making serious errors.  But sometimes it can be necessary in order to prevent authorities from accumulating too much power.