I think the central issue here gets folded into the “utility/disutility” distinction, which makes it easy to miss. The current thing with drawing Mohammed is probably best seen as a sort of culture war between East and West—we value free speech, they do not. The opening salvo was political cartoons in a Danish newspaper. If the opening salvo had been posting similar cartoons on the side of a Mosque, the West would look a lot worse.
Generally, though, targeted offensive behaviour—racial slurs, drawing Mohammed on churches, forcing very religious people to view hardcore pornography—is of virtually no social value and the offender suffers very little from having to avoid doing it.
Conversely, untargeted offensive behaviour—the Klansmen getting upset over seeing an interracial couple—tends to be much more expensive for the offender to avoid, so the appropriate solution is for the offended person to stop being offended.
How hard something is to avoid is obviously a bit fuzzy. It seems it can break down into “intended to harm” versus “not specifically intended to harm.” The Mohammed cartoons are mostly in the latter category, as they were intended as a political criticism of a religion.
In other words, I think this is more of a debate over where the utility calculus should come out, because “offense” describes such a broad range.
forcing very religious people to view hardcore pornography
Can you point to an example where that actually happened? The vastly more frequent occurrence is of religious people objecting to the mere existence of pornography.
In all seriousness, it’s a hypothetical example. If it is something that happens, it’s not going to make the news, or probably even the interweb. I’m thinking of something like the scene in Clerks where a customer at a store expresses offense at an extremely lewd conversation the employees are having, to which an employee responds, “If you think that’s offensive, look at this!” and shows him the spread in the porn mag he’s holding.
This kind of little thing probably does actually happen, but I agree that general objections to the existence of pornography are more common, and they fall cleanly into the other category.
I think the central issue here gets folded into the “utility/disutility” distinction, which makes it easy to miss. The current thing with drawing Mohammed is probably best seen as a sort of culture war between East and West—we value free speech, they do not. The opening salvo was political cartoons in a Danish newspaper. If the opening salvo had been posting similar cartoons on the side of a Mosque, the West would look a lot worse.
Generally, though, targeted offensive behaviour—racial slurs, drawing Mohammed on churches, forcing very religious people to view hardcore pornography—is of virtually no social value and the offender suffers very little from having to avoid doing it.
Conversely, untargeted offensive behaviour—the Klansmen getting upset over seeing an interracial couple—tends to be much more expensive for the offender to avoid, so the appropriate solution is for the offended person to stop being offended.
How hard something is to avoid is obviously a bit fuzzy. It seems it can break down into “intended to harm” versus “not specifically intended to harm.” The Mohammed cartoons are mostly in the latter category, as they were intended as a political criticism of a religion.
In other words, I think this is more of a debate over where the utility calculus should come out, because “offense” describes such a broad range.
Can you point to an example where that actually happened? The vastly more frequent occurrence is of religious people objecting to the mere existence of pornography.
This?
In all seriousness, it’s a hypothetical example. If it is something that happens, it’s not going to make the news, or probably even the interweb. I’m thinking of something like the scene in Clerks where a customer at a store expresses offense at an extremely lewd conversation the employees are having, to which an employee responds, “If you think that’s offensive, look at this!” and shows him the spread in the porn mag he’s holding.
This kind of little thing probably does actually happen, but I agree that general objections to the existence of pornography are more common, and they fall cleanly into the other category.