Free Speech and the Paradox of Tolerance

Julia Serano

Feb 6, 2017

9 min read

photo by Julia Serano

Any time activists (regardless of affiliation) protest a public speaking event, or the publication of
a particular book or article, there will inevitably be claims that such actions threaten “free
speech” or constitute “censorship.” Lately, these sorts of claims have been heard following the
presidential-inauguration-day silencing (via punching) of white nationalist leader Richard
Spencer while he was being interviewed, and after protesters attempted to force the cancellation
of Brietbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos’s speaking engagements at University of Washington and
UC Berkeley. Some people who take such a stance do so for purely political reasons — they
share Spencer’s and Yiannopoulos’s views, and invoke “free speech” to make their ideologies
appear unassailable. Many others who do not share these views may instead adhere to free
speech absolutism, and their reasoning might be summarized as follows:

1) The First Amendment to the Constitution (or analogous statutes in other countries) ensures our
right to “freedom of speech.”

2) Therefore, even if we detest Spencer’s and Yiannopoulos’s extreme racist, misogynistic, and
xenophobic beliefs, we must nevertheless defend their right to freely express them.

3) Any attempt to suppress or silence Spencer or Yiannopoulos (or their views) is essentially an
attack on freedom of speech itself. And once we start down that slippery slope, it is only a matter
of time before we find that our own freedom of speech is in jeopardy as well.
While the free speech absolutist position may sound compelling on the surface — indeed, it is
what most of us were taught in school, and what most intellectuals espouse — the reality is not
nearly so clear-cut. For instance, the courts have ruled that false statements of fact, defamation,
obscenity, fighting words, and incitement (e.g., shouting “fire” in a crowded theater) do not
qualify as protected speech. There are also occasions where our right to free speech bumps up
against (and therefore, may be restricted by) other rights (e.g., privacy) and laws (e.g., copyright
protection).

Aforementioned exceptions aside, while the First Amendment prohibits the government from
passing laws that prohibit our freedom of speech (plus freedom of press, the right to peaceably
assemble, and so on), this by no means guarantees us the right to speak our minds however and
wherever we want. I obviously do not have the right to give a speech in your living room, or to
force you to publish my article in your newspaper. And of course, free speech does not shield us
from criticism: If you don’t like what I have to say, then you have every right (via your freedom
of speech) to criticize me, sign a petition condemning me, and/or protest my next public
appearance. An organization is free to invite me to give a talk in their space, but they are also
free to rescind that invitation upon further consideration (e.g., if they think that I might offend or
injure members of their community, or if they simply want to avoid “bad press” — yet another
manifestation of freedom of expression).

In other words, we have the right to free speech, but that right is somewhat limited. We are by no
means entitled to “free speech without criticism or consequences,” nor are we entitled to an
audience.

While it is important to keep these well-established limitations on free speech in mind, what I
really want to focus on in this essay — especially given the steep rise in openly expressed white
nationalist rhetoric over the last year — is the paradox of free speech. Here is what I mean:
Spencer has used his right to free speech to call for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” — presumably
this entails scaring people into fleeing and/or using the legal system to forcibly purge all people
of color and indigenous peoples from the United States. Wouldn’t that be tantamount to silencing
these groups, thereby violating their freedom of speech (not to mention countless other rights)?
Or take what happened to actor/comedian Leslie Jones last summer: She was forced to leave the
social media platform Twitter and had to shut down her personal website after Yiannopoulos
incited a fierce campaign of doxxing and harassment against her. In other words, he used his free
speech to suppress her free speech. (And for the record, he has done this to many other people.)

Hate speech, and other speech acts designed to harass and intimidate (rather than merely express
criticism or dissent), are routinely used to thwart other people’s freedom of expression. Free
speech absolutists tend not to consider or fully appreciate this, probably because most of them
have never felt silenced by pervasive or systemic hatred and intolerance before. Others of us,
however, have experienced this first hand.

I grew up during the 1970s and ’80s, during a time when transgender people were extremely
stigmatized and not tolerated by society at large. As a child, I saw how gender-variant people
were openly and relentlessly mocked, so I decided not to tell anyone about what I was
experiencing. As a young adult, I continued to remain quiet about my identity. Colloquially, we
call this being “in the closet,” but that’s just a fancy way of saying “hiding from hate speech and
harassment.” Of course, I technically had free speech, but that doesn’t count for much if
speaking your mind is likely to result in you being bombarded with epithets, losing your job,
being ostracized by your community, and possibly other forms of retribution. When I attended
my first transgender support group in the early ’90s, we held our meetings in a secret location
because, despite our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble, it was simply not safe for us
to meet in public or be discovered by others.

Free speech absolutists love to cite George Orwell’s 1984 as harbinger of what might come to
pass if we fail to adhere to complete unadulterated free speech. I find this ironic, as it was my
favorite book growing up. This was not because I was fascinated with its futuristic dystopian
setting, but because the world it described very much reflected my own personal circumstances. I
identified with the main character Winston — the panic he felt as he wrote in his journal, his fear
of what might happen if he were ever found out. Years later, I would name myself Julia after the
female protagonist of the book — like me, she was a passionate person who kept that part of
herself hidden from an inhospitable world; she was a survivor who took pride in her ability to
conceal what she was really thinking.

I think that “freedom of speech” is a lovely aphorism. And aphorisms are useful. But I am not
gullible enough to believe that “free speech” (as free speech absolutists envision it) actually
exists, or that it is something that I have ever truly possessed. The truth of the matter is that there
are two types of speech or expression: those that we (either as individuals, or as a society) are
willing to tolerate, and those that we do not. (This is explained compellingly here.) You may
cherish a particular word, idea, expression, or identity. But if enough people collectively refuse
to tolerate it, well . . . you can shout “free speech!” at the top of your lungs all you want, but it
isn’t going to protect you.

Believing that freedom of speech is generally a good thing — an ideal worth striving for — but
also knowing that speech can be (and often is) used to suppress other people’s freedom of
expression, the question becomes: How do we best strike a balance between these two competing
forces? I remember expressing a potential solution to this problem in a conversation that I had
with a friend in the late ’90s. I told him that I tolerate all forms of expression, except for
expressions that convey intolerance toward others. My friend was a free speech absolutist, and
found my pronouncement to be hypocritical. He argued that being intolerant of intolerance was
itself a form of intolerance. I argued the reverse: If I tolerated intolerance, that would not make
me a tolerant person; it would merely make me an enabler of, or accomplice to, intolerance.

Years later, thanks to the invention of Internet search engines, I discovered that the line of
reasoning that I had forwarded had been previously (and more eloquently) expressed by someone
who had considered this problem far longer and in more depth than most of the rest of us have.
In The Open Society and Its Enemies, philosopher Karl Popper described this as “the paradox of
tolerance.” Here is how he put it:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited

tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society
against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with
them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the
utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and
keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we
should claim the right even to suppress them, for it may easily turn out that they are not
prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument;
they may forbid their followers to listen to anything as deceptive as rational argument, and teach
them to answer arguments by the use of their fists. We should therefore claim, in the name of
tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching
intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and
persecution as criminal, exactly as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping;
or as we should consider incitement to the revival of the slave trade.

Popper’s words are (unfortunately) highly relevant to our current situation. (Much of The Open
Society and Its Enemies is concerned with how societies can avoid plummeting into
totalitarianism.) There is a reason why expressions of white nationalism are suddenly cropping
up everywhere — in our high schools and colleges, on social media and in the mainstream press,
and worst of all, in our federal government. Until recently, we (as a society) viewed such
expressions as reprehensible, and we absolutely refused to tolerate them. But Trumpism has
pushed the envelope — shifted the Overton Window, as they say — such that now increasing
numbers of people perceive white nationalistic rhetoric to be merely “radical” rather than
“unthinkable.” These people (most of whom are not personally threatened by white nationalism
and/or have not seriously considered the paradox of tolerance) now seem to view extreme
expressions of racism and xenophobia, and the misogyny that often goes hand-in-hand with
them, as merely unsavory rather than anathema. Increasingly, people are mistaking this blatant
hate rhetoric for simply another form of “free speech” that we must reflexively defend.

Those of us who are passionate about free speech, and who want to live in a truly open society,
cannot afford to be bystanders anymore. We must absolutely refuse to tolerate intolerant speech
and the people who promote intolerant ideologies. The First Amendment may prohibit Congress
from passing laws censoring white nationalist beliefs, but the rest of us are well within our rights
to wholly refuse to accept, and to refuse to provide a platform for, anyone who espouses or
enables such intolerant ideologies.

Skeptics might ask, “Well, how do we precisely define intolerance, and who gets to make that
determination?” This is admittedly a potential point of contention (one that I plan to write about
soon), but it is not formally any different from current debates we may have over what counts as
protected free speech (e.g., does a particular statement constitute libel or fighting words?). While
we may each have somewhat different opinions on precise definitions, I believe that we can (and
should) easily come to a consensus that people who explicitly advocate ethnic cleansing (as
Spencer has), or who incite campaigns of hate speech and harassment targeting women, people
of color, transgender people, immigrants, and other minorities (as Yiannopoulos has), are clearly
attempting to suppress other people’s right to free expression, and as such, they are promoting
intolerance. And we should not tolerate them!

The strategy of free speech absolutism has seemed to suffice over the last fifty years, but that is
not because it works per se. Rather, in a post-World War II, post-civil rights world, most (albeit
not all) Americans collectively decided not to tolerate blatant unabashed bigotry — that is what
kept nefarious ideologies like white nationalism at bay. But cracks are now showing in this
shared public commitment. And free speech absolutism will not save us from this — if anything,
it will only make matters worse by allowing intolerance to fester, to proliferate, and to garner
momentum. In this sense, free speech absolutism is akin to laissez-faire approaches to economic
policy: Both seem to promote unadulterated freedom (after all, what could possibly be more free
than a completely hands off approach?). But any system that entirely forgoes standards or
regulations will ultimately result in atrocities, infringements on other people’s rights, and the
consolidation of power in the hands of a few.

This is what we face now. And the only way to stop this from happening, to reverse this trend, is
to absolutely refuse to tolerate intolerance.

on 2–19–17, I published a follow-up post addressing many comments & questions I received
about this piece.

This essay was made possible by my Patreon supporters — if you liked this piece and want to
see more like it, please consider supporting me there. You can learn more about my writings
and activism at juliaserano.com.

Refusing to Tolerate Intolerance

Julia Serano

Aug 23, 2017

18 min read
·

photo by FreeImages.com/Nermina Filipovic

About half a year ago, I published Free Speech and the Paradox of Tolerance (along with this
follow up) as debates raged on about whether alt-right darlings Richard Spencer and Milo
Yiannopoulos should be given a public platform (such as media interviews and college speaking
events) to promote their unabashedly racist, xenophobic, sexist, etc., views. In that essay, I
focused on a fatal flaw of free speech absolutism (the belief that we should not place any
restrictions or limits on speech, regardless of content or context), namely, that people often use
their “free speech” to thwart other people’s “free speech.” Citing philosopher Karl Popper, as
well as my own personal experiences being coerced into silence as a young transgender person, I
instead argued that we — as individuals and institutions — should strive to tolerate all forms of
expression except for those that espouse intolerance toward others.

In the wake of the violence that unfolded a week and a half ago at the “Unite the Right” rally in
Charlottesville, and last weekend’s protests in Boston that drowned out a white nationalist-led
rally there, and with other white nationalist rallies scheduled to take place where I live (the San
Francisco Bay Area) next weekend, I figured that this would be an ideal time to pen the long-
promised companion piece to that essay. Due to its length, I am splitting it up into two posts.
This piece (“Refusing to Tolerate Intolerance”) is concerned with other inconsistencies and
hypocrisies that plague the free speech absolutist position, particularly when contemplating hate
speech. The second part (“Hate Speech versus Call-Out Culture”) will provide a framework for
thinking through how we might balance concerns about intolerance expressed toward
marginalized groups with claims about how “call-out culture”/“identity politics”/“political
correctness”/etcetera may be getting out of hand.

A note regarding nomenclature

In this essay, I will be using the terms “alt-right,” “white nationalists,” “white supremacists,” and
“Nazis” interchangeably, despite the fact that people who identify with these labels may hold
somewhat differing views. From my perspective, the one thing that all of these movements and
individuals do have in common (and what I am concerned with here) is that they all engage in
condemning, deriding, intimidating, and dehumanizing minority groups as part of their strategy
to assert white Christian straight male dominance in America.

There is no such thing as “free speech”

One of the most lucid critiques of free speech absolutism can be found in Stanley Fish’s 1994
book There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too. The thrust of his
argument (laid out in chapters 8 and 9, and summarized in this interview) is two-fold.

First, Fish shows that, despite it being frequently referenced as an aphorism or shibboleth, none
of us actually believes in comprehensive “free speech,” as there will always be some expressions
of speech that we (as individuals, or as a society) refuse to tolerate. I have come to think of this
phenomenon as constitutive intolerance, because it is always occurring (often invisibly) in the
background, and it essentially gives shape to our understanding of what constitutes or counts as
“free speech” (i.e., speech that we are willing to tolerate). As Fish puts it in the aforementioned
interview: “free speech is what’s left over when you have determined which forms of speech
cannot be permitted to flourish. The ‘free speech zone’ emerges against the background of what
has been excluded.”

Fish provides examples of prominent free speech absolutists such as John Milton (who believed
that we should not extend free expression to Catholics) and Nat Hentoff (who felt similarly about
anti-Semitic speech) to illustrate the ubiquity of this constitutive intolerance. Fish goes on to say:
“everyone has such a trigger point, which is either acknowledged at the beginning or emerges in
a moment of crisis.”

This constitutive intolerance was on display in the recent downfall of former Breitbart senior
editor Milo Yiannopoulos. As I discussed at length in my previous essays, Yiannopoulos has a
long history of expressing blatant racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, and transphobia,
and a penchant for doxxing, harassing, and intimidating marginalized individuals. Despite these
despicable acts, many groups — including his own Breitbart News, the American Conservative
Union (who invited him to speak at their 2017 CPAC conference), and Simon & Schuster (who
offered him a huge book deal) — championed Yiannopoulos’s right to “free speech,” while
many others took a “I don’t agree with what he says, but I defend his right to say it” position.
That is, until audio/video clips surfaced wherein Yiannopoulos suggested that teenage boys are
old enough to consent to sex with older men, at which point everybody dropped him like a hot
potato. It seems that, for these groups and individuals, condoning statutory rape is where “free
speech” ends and intolerable speech begins.

A second point Fish makes — one which haunts many legal cases and debates regarding “free
speech” — is that nobody would dare say that we are entitled to “freedom of action.” Sure, we
generally have the freedom to do as we wish, but only up to the point where our actions infringe
upon the rights and autonomy of others. I may be free to drive a car, but if I run through a red
light, or drive way over the speed limit, or purposefully crash my car into a crowd of counter-
protesters (as one Nazi did in Charlottesville), then most people would agree that I have crossed
a line and should be sanctioned accordingly.

Given these facts, the only way that the ideal of “free speech” makes any sense is if we presume
that “speech” is entirely distinct from “action” — that is, speech is imagined to be an entirely
abstract collection of utterances and ideas that are incapable of directly harming other people or
infringing upon their rights. And frankly, this view of speech is naive and flat-out incorrect.

We do not speak to simply listen to the sounds of our own voices. We almost always speak with
intention, with the hopes that our words will have tangible consequences. If I were to say, “Mark
Lilla and Angela Nagle are completely clueless about ‘identity politics’,” or “You should read
my essay Prejudice, ‘Political Correctness,’ and the Normalization of Donald Trump instead,” I
am attempting to (ever so slightly) nudge the world in my preferred direction. If you were to
express agreement or disagreement with my statements, you would be doing the same. Most of
us would agree that all of these statements fall under the realm of tolerable self-expression —
aka, “free speech” — not because our words have no intention or impact (they do), but rather
because these particular claims do not impinge upon anyone else’s autonomy or rights.
In contrast, if I were to make up salacious lies about Nagle and Lilla (i.e., defamation, false
statements of fact), harass or threaten them (i.e., fighting words), encourage a mob with
pitchforks to show up to their book readings (i.e., incitement), or post large swaths of their books
on my website (i.e., copyright infringement), most people would agree that those actions (i.e., my
speech) have/has crossed a line and should not be tolerated. Indeed, this is precisely why we
have exceptions to protected free speech, because the right to “free speech” often bumps up
against and/or undermines other people’s rights.

So to summarize, whenever somebody says something controversial or potentially harmful,

rather than reflexively shouting “BUT FREE SPEECH!” we should instead ask ourselves
whether the speech acts in question potentially infringe upon the rights or autonomy of other
people, and we should engage in an honest and serious discussion about what expressions of
speech we are willing (or unwilling) to tolerate.

“Free speech” can be used to suppress other people’s “free speech”

Free Speech and the Paradox of Tolerance was primarily concerned with a fundamental problem
that free speech absolutists routinely ignore or refuse to seriously consider: People often use
speech acts to suppress other people’s freedom of speech. As I detailed in that piece, back when I
was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, transphobic beliefs and expressions were so rampant in
our culture that it was simply not safe for me to come out as transgender. Even in the early-to-
mid-’90s, when I first began to participate in trans communities, we gathered in undisclosed
locations and vetted people who wanted to attend our meetings for fear of what might happen if
we were ever publicly discovered. (Harassment? Ostracization? Potentially worse?)
Unfortunately, what we experienced back then was not in any way specific to transgender
people. Throughout human history, dominant majority groups have often freely expressed hatred
and bigotry toward minority and marginalized populations with the intended effect of silencing
them and making it unsafe for them to peaceably assemble or have a collective voice.

“Hate speech” is a catch-all term to describe language that promotes hatred or hostility toward
people based upon their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and
possibly other characteristics. Numerous countries outside of the U.S. characterize hate speech as
incitement and/or defamation, and as such, it falls outside of the realm of protected free speech.
In the U.S., free speech absolutists are always quick to point out that we have no First
Amendment exception for hate speech. But of course, the First Amendment only applies to our
government and the laws it may pass; it does not prohibit individuals and institutions from
refusing to tolerate hate speech. In fact, your school, workplace, the businesses you patronize,
the Internet platforms you utilize, and so on, all likely have some kind of non-discrimination
policy in place that sanctions hate speech. (Whether these policies are carried out effectively is
beyond the scope of this essay.) These non-discrimination policies tacitly acknowledge that the
proliferation of hate speech in these arenas would likely have the very real and chilling effect of
silencing minority voices and viewpoints.

The standard free-speech-absolutist response to hate speech is to simply call for “more speech”
to counter it. More speech can be helpful in situations like the recent “Unite the Right” rally in
Charlottesville, where far more U.S. citizens condemned all the Nazi slogans, symbolism, and
slurs than supported them. Although it must be said that the turnout of hundreds of white
nationalists, the firearms they brandished, and the terrorist act one of them committed, are likely
to make some people hesitant to speak out against them in the future.

But what about the suppression of my speech as a young trans person? Back then, trans people
had some allies, to be sure, but they (like us) constituted a tiny minority of the population. And I
can tell you first hand that the “more speech” strategy actually does far more harm than good
when greater numbers of people hate your minority group than accept you. In such cases, calls
for “more speech” simply enable and promote hate speech against you, rather than mitigating it.

Calls for “more speech” also suffer from the misconception that we, as a society, are all in the
midst of some grand rational debate, and that marginalized people simply need to properly plea
our case for acceptance, and once we do, reason-minded people everywhere will eventually
come around. This notion is utterly ludicrous. Prejudice and discrimination are not driven by
rationality or reason. They are primarily cognitive biases. (If this at all surprises you, then there’s
a whole field called Social Psychology that I’d like to introduce you to . . .)

I have been an activist most of my adult life, and I’ve had a handful of occasions where a speech
that I have given, or an essay I have written, turned someone from being suspicious of trans
people to accepting of us. A handful. But in the vast majority of cases, people who are
antagonistic toward trans people will see what they want to believe, rational arguments be
damned. The purpose of trans activism (and I’d argue that this applies to all social justice
movements) is not to persuade die-hard transphobes (and bigots more generally), but rather to
convince those who already accept us to refuse to tolerate transphobia (and other forms of
marginalization) in their communities. This is an important point that I will return to (and which
will make even more sense) later in the essay.

Calls for “free speech” are never politically neutral

Having laid that groundwork, I now want to revisit the Milo Yiannopoulos debacle.

As previously discussed, Yiannopoulos has a history of not only expressing and encouraging
racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and transphobia, but also routinely inciting his followers to dox,
harass, and intimidate (thereby silencing) members of those marginalized groups. For these
reasons, earlier this year, students and activists attempted to “no-platform” Yiannopoulos from
his upcoming college speaking engagements — they did this by petitioning college
administrations and protesting the events (i.e., they exercised their right to “free speech”). Many
mainstream media pundits, however, decried these actions as an assault on Yiannopoulos’s “free
speech,” and/or on “free speech” more generally.

Then the audio/video clip of Yiannopoulos seeming to condone statutory rape surfaced, leading
CPAC to cancel his speaking appearance, Simon & Schuster to cancel his book deal, and he was
forced to resign from Breitbart News. In other words, he was no-platformed by those
organizations. Tellingly, all the media outlets and pundits who had previously portrayed anti-
racism/sexism/etc. activists as a threat to “free speech” were suddenly conspicuously silent. I did
not see a single op-ed or complaint about how Breitbart News’s, CPAC’s, and Simon &
Schuster’s actions constituted a threat to “free speech.”

There are several lessons to be learned from all this.

First, as I discussed earlier, this demonstrates the existence of constitutive intolerance: All those
pundits who took a “I don’t agree with what Yiannopoulos says, but I defend his right to say it”
stance are in fact hypocrites, because they clearly do not believe that the right to “free speech”
should be extended to, or be defended in the case of, people who condone statutory rape. I have
absolutely no qualms with people who refuse to tolerate Yiannopoulos’s comment to this effect,
or who choose to no-platform him because of it. But I must point out that, by drawing the line
there, these pundits and institutions were implicitly saying that everything else that Yiannopoulos
has said and done — his doxxing, harassing, and intimidating marginalized individuals both
online and during his talks — all of that is just fine. Absolutely tolerable. Within the boundaries
of normal discourse, in their eyes. (btw, I’m looking at you, Kurt Eichenwald.)

Second, if constitutive intolerance does exist (it does!), and if we all have a tipping point at
which we will stop defending a person’s right to say certain things, then that means that calls for
“free speech” are never neutral. Rather, they signify support for the thing that is being said. To
be clear, defending someone’s “free speech” is not tantamount to agreeing with what they have
said wholeheartedly (although research shows that there is generally a good correlation between
the two). But what I am saying is that, if you go out of your way to vocally defend someone’s
“free speech,” it indicates that you believe that what they have said is just fine. Absolutely
tolerable. Within the boundaries of normal discourse. (For past and future Milo-free-speech
defenders, that means that you are okay with this and this and all these other things.)

There is an obvious corollary to this: If activists (of one stripe or another) utilize their “free
speech” to express disapproval or dissent toward another person’s “free speech” — e.g., by
complaining online, writing letters to the editor, signing of petitions, participating in protests,
organizing boycotts — and you go out of your way to accuse those activists of assaulting or
undermining the basic tenets of “free speech,” then this likely signals that you disagree with, or
are outright intolerant toward, their cause. It also demonstrates that you are a “free speech”
hypocrite who believes that some people are entitled to “free speech,” but other people are not.

Third, it is worth mentioning that Yiannopoulos did not state that he had committed statutory
rape. Rather, he simply suggested that, in certain instances, statutory rape may not be as horrible
as everyone thinks. Therefore, everyone who believes that Yiannopoulos’s comment was beyond
the pale and worthy of no-platforming him seems to understand (at least in this particular
instance) that words are not merely abstract mystical entities — rather, “speech” has
consequences (it’s an “action”), and as such, it can cause real harm.

Furthermore, Yiannopoulos did not encourage listeners to commit statutory rape, he just
suggested that statutory rape might not be such a bad thing in certain cases. Thus, everyone who
was (rightfully) appalled by his suggestion clearly recognizes not only that harmful behaviors
(such as statutory rape) should be stigmatized and sanctioned, but also that attempts to de-
stigmatize and normalize harmful behaviors (as Yiannopoulos’s comments seemed to do for
statutory rape) should also be stigmatized and sanctioned (i.e., we should not tolerate them).

If you believe all this to be true regarding statutory rape, then I ask you: Why wouldn’t this same
line of reasoning be true for blatant expressions of racism? Or anti-Semtism? Or misogyny? Or
transphobia? All of these forms of marginalization (as well as others) are attempts (often quite
effective ones) to suppress or silence already disenfranchised voices. Hate speech is spoken with
the intention of denying these individuals’ autonomy, rights, and humanity. So if you are really
and truly pro-“free speech,” shouldn’t you refuse to tolerate these blatant attempts to silence
others?

The slippery slope is slippery on both sides

Hopefully by now, I have convinced many of you that we should not center these important
debates around the amorphous concept of “free speech” — a platitude that none of us
comprehensively believes in. Instead, we should focus on the more pragmatic matter of
tolerance: What acts (speech or otherwise) should we — as individuals, as institutions, as a
society — be willing to tolerate (or not tolerate)? I will share my thoughts on this subject in the
second installment of this post (“Hate Speech versus Call-Out Culture”). But here, I want to
address (and hopefully lay to rest) one final bastion of free speech absolutism: the slippery slope
argument.

Slippery slope arguments are generally considered to be logical fallacies — here is an academic
paper detailing why. The TL;DR version is that slippery slope arguments presume that we are
incapable of distinguishing between different things. For instance, opponents of same-sex
marriage often rely on this tactic, claiming that its legalization will eventually lead to the
legalization of polyamorous marriages, or incestuous marriages, or human-animal marriages.
However, each of these things is different from one another and from same-sex marriage, and
each can (and should) be considered separately based on its own merits (or lack thereof, as the
case may be). Slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies because they attempt to shift the
debate from one thing (legitimizing same-sex relationships) to some other more distasteful or
horrifying thing (legitimizing bestiality).

The free speech absolutists’ slippery slope argument typically goes something like this: “If we
censor transphobic speech (or other forms of hate speech), then what’s next Julia? What if
people start banning things that you want to say?”

For starters, who said anything about “banning” or “censoring”? Free speech absolutists love to
toss around those terms because they evoke an Orwellian dystopia of massive government
suppression, which I am most certainly not advocating. What I am proposing does not in any
way involve “banning” or “censoring” or government intervention. I am talking about me (and
potentially other people) making the personal decision to refuse to tolerate blatant and purposeful
expressions of transphobia (and other expressions of hate speech). I can choose to express this
intolerance in a number of ways, depending on the seriousness or severity of the situation: I can
argue with people who make such comments and challenge them on their beliefs, refuse to
associate with them, publicly critique or condemn them, alert other people about their behavior,
try to convince others to not tolerate them, and/or I can refuse to tolerate people who choose to
tolerate people who express intolerance toward me. All of these actions fall well within my rights
— they are expressions of “free speech,” if you will.

Second, this slippery slope argument attempts to shift the conversation from whether we (as
individuals) should refuse to tolerate transphobia (and other forms of hate speech) to some
imaginary scenario where the “thought police” come after people for saying relatively benign
things. The fact that free speech absolutists always seem to want to shift the conversation in this
manner is a tacit admission that their “we should tolerate hate speech” stance does not hold up on
its own merits.

But for argument’s sake, I will entertain the question: Whenever I am asked, “Well, what if they
start coming after things that you want to say?” my standard reply is: Welcome to my fucking
world! Ever since I was a child, my speech (with regards to my trans identity, experiences, and
perspective) has been stringently and stridently policed. Even today, whenever one of my
transgender-themed writings makes waves outside of activist and progressive circles (as
happened with these two recent pieces), I get bombarded with hate speech, libelous accusations,
and occasionally threats. (btw, if you visit those pieces, you will not find the most vile
comments, because people flag them and Medium subsequently makes them disappear — one
example of what refusing to tolerate intolerance can look like). To be clear, these particular
comments do not deride me for being “incorrect” or a “bad writer” (although sometimes people
say those things); rather they express hatred toward me because I am a trans woman. They are
intended to intimidate and silence me (as well as all other trans people) because of who I am
(who we are), not because of anything that I have said or done (other than my merely existing
and refusing to go away).

Two years ago, when I wrote about an attempt by students at Cardiff University to no-platform
Germaine Greer — who holds aggressively transphobic views; she even tried to get a colleague
of hers fired for being transgender — a few people asked me, “How would you feel if students
tried to no-platform you?” My response was (surprise, surprise) that it has happened to me. In
the mid-’00s, I was invited to perform a spoken word set about my transgender identity and
experiences, but conservative students threatened to boycott the event if I was allowed to
participate. Given that pressure, the organizers rescinded the invitation.

Most free speech absolutists have a huge blind-spot that they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge:
They have generally lived lives where virtually everything that they think or say falls within the
realm of tolerated discourse. Perhaps a few of their opinions or word choices are considered by
some to be “unsavory” or “edgy,” but none of it dooms them to the status of abomination or
pariah. So they are unable to see constitutive intolerance — the fact that some people and ideas
(such as trans identities and perspectives several decades ago) have been excluded from that
discourse a priori. Then, when the status quo eventually shifts, and things that people could
previously freely say (such as making transphobic remarks) are suddenly met with protest, it
feels like an attack on “free speech” to them. And they imagine themselves as the “good guys”
defending “free speech” against the “bad guys” (i.e., people using their “free speech” to protest
transphobic remarks), when in reality, all of us are doing the exact same thing: Making personal
choices and pronouncements regarding what we are willing (or unwilling) to tolerate, in an
attempt to slightly nudge the world in our preferred direction.

People who have this blind-spot are only capable of seeing a two-sided debate — pro-“free
speech” versus anti-“free speech” — and a slippery slope that goes in a single direction — from
an ideal utopia where all speech is supposedly free, to a dystopian nightmare where our speech is
heavily policed. But the world looks very different to me. Speech has never seemed “free” to me
— it has always clearly been restricted by social conventions and power dynamics. Like most
writers and public figures — including the ones who are quick to pen “BUT FREE SPEECH!”
op-eds — I do sometimes worry that something that I write or say will be taken out of context, or
be subjected to call-outs or protests (it has happened to me on more than one occasion). But I am
not so self-absorbed to imagine that such protests constitute an attack on my “free speech” —
whether misguided or righteous, such protests are simply expressions of other people’s “free
speech.”

And while other writers and public figures seem primarily concerned with the possibility that
they might be protested or no-platformed for things that they say, I (and other marginalized
people) worry more about being protested and no-platformed because of who I am (who we are)
— our identities, bodies, sexualities, and other aspects of our person that we did not
choose/cannot change, and which (most importantly!) do not infringe upon other people’s
autonomy and rights.

Over the last few years, mainstream media outlets and pundits who sport this blind-spot have
complained about how “political correctness” and the “internet outrage machine” are having a
chilling effect on “free speech,” such that comedians, college professors, columnists, and
respectable people everywhere feel like they cannot even make a joke, recommend a book,
publish an article, or share an opinion on social media without being bombarded by call-outs and
protests. If you believe this to be true — that call-outs and protests are having a chilling effect on
“free speech” and we must do something about it — then how can you possibly ignore hate
speech, which serves the express purpose of intimidating people into silence?!

If you are concerned with “call-out culture” but not hate speech, I’d argue that you are either a
hypocrite, a bigot, or quite possibly both. And I won’t waste any more time trying to convince
you that you are wrong. You are free to exit this essay now. Don’t let the door hit you on the way
out.

For the rest of you who recognize that “call-out culture” may be a problem, but so is tolerating
hate speech, and who are now confused and/or curious about how we might balance these
competing forces, I encourage you to continue on to part two: “Hate Speech versus Call-Out
Culture” (which I will link to as soon as it’s posted).

This essay was made possible by my Patreon supporters — if you liked this piece and want to
see more like it, please consider supporting me there. You can learn more about my writings
and activism at juliaserano.com.