Worth Being Offended

Nobody likes to hear criticism. That’s a fairly well known maxim although it is perhaps less true for some. Similarly people often do not like to hear views which conflict with their own. We’ve all been to that gathering, often with our much loved relatives, where two people have argued at length about politics or religion. Tempers fray, people say things they regret.

Most if not all of us are guilty of saying something stupid that we regret at some time in our lives. I once told a close friend that I’d lose all respect for him if he didn’t agree with me about how his son should have played a certain hand during a poker match. It was a ridiculous thing to say upon reflection and a good example of how emotion can so easily shift us to the most illogical of views from time to time.

Whilst sometimes a person’s views can offend us, those of us in Australia like to think that we highly value freedom of speech. I’d suggest that on balance this is true. Australians value freedom of speech and in the main we are able to exercise it. I’m exercising it now. Compare us to say Saudi Arabia where blogger Raif Badawi was recently convicted of insulting Islam in an online forum. He has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes.

However the right to free speech is something which can be subtly undermined over time. Sometimes this can be purposeful and sometimes it’s the by-product of something unrelated. I feel my right to speak freely has diminished in my lifetime. The recent actions of a few extremists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office highlighted this for me in an unexpected way. Jeff Sparrow recently published a piece entitled “We can defend Charlie Habdo without endorsing it". A link to the piece is below.

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-09/sparrow-we-should-support-charlie-hebdo-not-endorse-it/6007836  

As soon as I saw the headline I swore but I forced myself the read the article. After some more swearing I managed to finish it. The article made me very angry. You see I am one of those ‘you have the right to say anything’ types. The idea that my freedom to express myself should be impinged upon because someone else lacks the ability to accept my right to hold a view that differs from their own is utterly abhorrent to me.

I actively seek out views that differ from my own. That’s why I forced myself to read the article. I do this for a number of reasons but perhaps the most important of these is that it forces me to continuously examine my own views and ensure that I can still qualify them. This is not to say that I never read anything that broadly supports a view which I already hold, merely that I strive to at least examine as many sides of a debate as I can.

So after reading Sparrow’s piece it was a couple of days later that I realised that as unpalatable as I might find his views personally he had managed to highlight something that should have already been obvious. We in the west who so champion the right to free speech do not apply that right equally to all people and across all issues.

No one in Australia was criticising Charlie Hebdo prior to the attack on their offices and very few people are criticising their content now. Would people be so supportive of Charlie Hebdo if their cartoons were lampooning feminism, or perhaps homosexuals? Many of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are caricatures that could be interpreted as racist, yet they face no public censure for those – why not?

Consider the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. This act makes it “unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person, or of some or all of the people in the group”.

In Western Australia the criminal code was amended in 1998 to criminalise the possession, publication and display of written or pictorial material that is threatening or abusive with the intention of inciting racial hatred or of harassing a racial group. The penalties range from between six months to two years imprisonment.

Now go and google offensive images by Carlie Hebdo. I’m not sure how you could argue that some of them are not “reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people” with those people being radical Muslims. As completely unacceptable as the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices was, clearly members of that racial group felt harassed. If those cartoons were published in Australia it’s hard to see how the person or persons publishing them would avoid a criminal conviction. 

It’s a fairly obvious inequity in my view and I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t acknowledge it before. On reflection though, it’s once again the kind of thing which we all do from time to time. Despite all our best efforts, subtle inequality can sneak up on you. Now having said all that the law, both at a Federal, and at a State level in most cases, can result in;

A criminal conviction and jail time.

Because of a cartoon.

Which offends someone who believes in an imaginary being whose existence they are unable to prove?

I won’t agree with that.

A society which prizes free speech is not perfect. To champion free speech you need to accept that some people’s views are offensive and that this is acceptable. Quite frankly everyone should be offended every now and then. It reminds us that as a society we are not perfect because people are not perfect. We show poor judgement at times. We sometimes hold illogical views.  

Furthermore those with extreme views should be encouraged to speak them. In this way the more reasonable of us are able to engage with these people and perhaps help them to see how unreasonable views such as racism and sexism are.

Those with extreme views are often so easily debunked. There is no science that supports the view of one race being ‘better’ than the others. There is no science which proves that men are inherently better than women. Yet if we do not hear these views, debate them in public, debunk them where appropriate, then where do kids go to find balance when their father tells their mother she is worthless? What stops the child of white supremacists from becoming like their parents? 

What’s not ok is to use violence to physically impose your views on other people. For that reason, whilst I concede the cartoons published by Carlie Hebdo are offensive, I find it very difficult to sympathise with someone who is ready to kill because of a cartoon.

But I’m almost as unsympathetic to those who think that we should limit free speech for any reason. Jail someone just for speaking their mind however misguided they might be. In order to discover the middle of a line you need to know where both ends of the line are. To find the centre of a circle you need to know where the edges are. How can we as a society find the middle ground on any issue if we cannot hear the extremes of the debate because we have forbidden people to express their view?

Yet it is so important to be able to find that middle ground on an issue. It provides context for your own views and can allow a person to transition from one view to another should the known facts around an issue change. Whilst reading something we find offensive is uncomfortable, surely the discomfort of being offended from time to time is worth the benefit which the occasional offensive view can provide.