The right to insult

[Gigaz]

Strongly against the right to insult people. There is nothing wrong about reasonable critics, but insultations are per definition not reasonable and they are ment to hurt other peoples feelings.
Insultations can hurt as much as a knife. When it comes to mobbing, they can even make people do suicide.
Imagine everyone calls you "mother. .. .. .. .er" every time at work over weeks, months, years and the only thing you can do is resign and get a new job.

 

[Dubai Vol]

Strongly against the right to insult people. There is nothing wrong about reasonable critics, but insultations are per definition not reasonable and they are ment to hurt other peoples feelings.
Insultations can hurt as much as a knife. When it comes to mobbing, they can even make people do suicide.
Imagine everyone calls you "mother. .. .. .. .er" every time at work over weeks, months, years and the only thing you can do is resign and get a new job.

If everyone at work is calling you names, chances are you need to take a hard look at yourself. Getting a new job won't help, because the people there will soon notice that you are a mother humper too.

 

[amadeus]

No; the government should control our behavior because they know what is best for everybody.

 

[Gigaz]

If everyone at work is calling you names, chances are you need to take a hard look at yourself. Getting a new job won't help, because the people there will soon notice that you are a mother humper too.

Nonsense. What if the insulters are obviously racist or sexist? Maybe you have black skin and everyone calls you n...r for fun. Image you sit in a wheel chair and people keep calling you cripple. If someone wants me to change parts of myself he can criticise me.

 

[El Koeno]

Nonsense. What if the insulters are obviously racist or sexist? Maybe you have black skin and everyone calls you n...r for fun. Image you sit in a wheel chair and people keep calling you cripple. If someone wants me to change parts of myself he can criticise me.

Well, I would never condone such insults. The problem is when you take away the right for people to say things, where do you stop. In the end there's not much you can do if somebody decides to makes sexist/racist remarks.

 

[CaveDweller]

I answered "I don't know" because you phrased the question in unintelligible Dutch-Anglo you stupid clog wearing, tulip farming, dyke maintaining... no I really love you and everybody else.

 

[luiz]

Making fun of the Mighty has always been a good form of defence/protest.

But you can kick downwards as well. All those popular deemed-hillarious-at-the-time jokes about greedy Jews and watermelon-eating Negroes of a bygone age were hardly "defense", except maybe from bogeymen in peoples' minds.

Jokes aren't really innocent in that way.

Even those obviouly malign insults should be allowed in a free society. The right to insult is very important and if we start drawing lines we're screwed.

 

[luiz]

Nonsense. What if the insulters are obviously racist or sexist? Maybe you have black skin and everyone calls you n...r for fun. Image you sit in a wheel chair and people keep calling you cripple. If someone wants me to change parts of myself he can criticise me.

If the insulters are that much racist or sexist, keeping them from insulting will do very little as they will manage to make the life of the person they hate miserable anyway.

 

[dutchfire]

Insult anybody you want, but don't complain if you end up with a piece of metal in your body.

 

[Gigaz]

I don't think that one could oversee the line between critics and insultations. The latter are ment to hurt someones feelings and to destroy his dignity. Dignity is a human right --> insultations must be prohibited.

In my country insultations are forbidden. Unless person B insults person A directly after A insulted B, then noone will get a punishment. It is also forbidden for person A to insult B when talking only to C.

 

[Gigaz]

If the insulters are that much racist or sexist, keeping them from insulting will do very little as they will manage to make the life of the person they hate miserable anyway.

500-10000 $/€ fine can make anyones mind up

 

[luiz]

500-10000 $/€ fine can make anyones mind up

As I said you can ban the insults, but not the whole attitude. They will be sarcastic, keep the person they hate without the information he needs to perform his job and try to damage him at every opportunity in sneaky manners. At the end of the day you live in a less free society but the hate is still out there and people are getting hurt. Education and progress solve these things, not bans on speech.

 

[Verbose]

Even those obviouly malign insults should be allowed in a free society. The right to insult is very important and if we start drawing lines we're screwed.

And when by common consent among the majority it's part and parcel of a collective effort at going after a weak minority?

We allow it, but also legislate against discimination? So we put these people down in a jocular way, claiming it's of no consequence?

There is an actual problem here.

 

[Gigaz]

Free speech doesn't mean you can say anything. It means that you can have any opinion or personal beliefs without fear of punishment.
An Insultation is no opinion. Liberalism doesn't give you the right to act sadistically.
There was a communist leader in pre-Nazi Germany, his name was Liebknecht. Some right-wing party printed "kill Liebknecht" on their election posters. A cople of days later, Liebknecht was dead.

 

[GenMarshall]

Depends, is it a person insulting another person? I don't think it's right to insult people. But it should not go to the extrime where you restrict someone's free speach because of it.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

And when by common consent among the majority it's part and parcel of a collective effort at going after a weak minority?

We allow it, but also legislate against discimination? So we put these people down in a jocular way, claiming it's of no consequence?

There is an actual problem here.

I think the solution to this is to enshrine certain rights, including freedom of speech, above the usual legal framework. That way limits can only be placed on freedom of speech can only be challenged by invoking other fundamental rights, such as the threat to your right to life posed by somebody shouting fire in a crowded theatre. This is more or less the approach taken by all liberal democracies, with varying success.

Mocking, insulting or even expressing hatred is and should be protected, albeit sometimes reluctantly. Inciting or actively bringing about death or oppression should be forbidden. Quite how to frame this legally is difficult and there are several approaches. Some countries feel the need to go further than others, an obvious example being those European countries that prohibit some Nazi-related symbols.

But whatever the particular implementation, the general principal should be that unless you can demonstrate that in expressing myself in a particular way I'm actually directly threatening the fundamental rights of others, I should be allowed to express myself in any way I choose, regardless of what mainstream society thinks of my views, and yes, regardless of any tyranny of the democratic majority.

 

[sourboy]

Free speech in any form, yes -- though insults have an unfortunate bi-product, per se.

 

[LucyDuke]

You certainly have the right to insult anyone. But that doesn't make it right to insult anyone.

 

[JohnRM]

An insult is just something true about someone that that person doesn't want to hear. It is largely up to that other person whether it becomes an insult or not, rather than about whether you meant it that way, though many times we do.

 

[Angst]

There is no right. Only the right that's left.