Hm. Interesting piece. I’m partially sold, but not on this: ‘Further, I see little difference between how a Muslim “chooses” to get upset at disrespect to Mohammed, and how a Westerner might “choose” to get upset if you called eir mother a whore.’
I’m pretty content to call that a sort of choice, especially if you make it a fair comparison, ie a general remark not victimising one person that all mothers are whores. After all, there’s still a pretty big difference between that (or even the rather more inflammatory ‘all Western mothers are whores’), and (a sincerely offensive) ‘your mother is a whore’. One is basically bullying someone, assuming they’re not in a position to hurt you back equally; the other is the sort of casual prejudice that (cough) some of us discourage but don’t actually seek to ban.
On top of that, there’s a significant difference between drawing a picture of someone and drawing a picture of someone in a way calculated to piss people who like them off. In the Muhammad cartoons furore, it initially seemed to be Muslims who were trying to elide the difference – specifically by positioning the latter as very bad and the first as (almost) equally bad. If drawing the former is a political action against such a sentiment (or just an aesthetic statement, standing against those who’d repress a portrayal of something they thought was beautiful), then I hardly think it’s a reprehensible one. Here I think actual ‘whores’ - or rather porn stars—give a better analogy. Their portrayals offend a lot of people, but few sensible people think there’s a good argument for banning them a) because overturning our anti-censorship sentiments should require a pretty strong burden of evidence and b) because a lot of people very much like them, and why should they be deprived? After all, the naysayers choose not to look at something that exists, but the fans can’t do the reverse.
Lastly, (and leastly), there’s the question of accuracy of the original criticism. If your mother does sell herself for money, then, while victimising you for it is still pretty unpleasant, we would be more inclined to tolerate borderline cases of people pointing it out in a potentially offensive way than if it weren’t true. But most of the times when someone’s mum is aggressively called a whore, she probably isn’t. On the other hand, by most accounts Muhammad was a brutalsex pest, who most likely would have ordered suicide bombings had the technology existed for him to do so.
Hm. Interesting piece. I’m partially sold, but not on this: ‘Further, I see little difference between how a Muslim “chooses” to get upset at disrespect to Mohammed, and how a Westerner might “choose” to get upset if you called eir mother a whore.’
I’m pretty content to call that a sort of choice, especially if you make it a fair comparison, ie a general remark not victimising one person that all mothers are whores. After all, there’s still a pretty big difference between that (or even the rather more inflammatory ‘all Western mothers are whores’), and (a sincerely offensive) ‘your mother is a whore’. One is basically bullying someone, assuming they’re not in a position to hurt you back equally; the other is the sort of casual prejudice that (cough) some of us discourage but don’t actually seek to ban.
On top of that, there’s a significant difference between drawing a picture of someone and drawing a picture of someone in a way calculated to piss people who like them off. In the Muhammad cartoons furore, it initially seemed to be Muslims who were trying to elide the difference – specifically by positioning the latter as very bad and the first as (almost) equally bad. If drawing the former is a political action against such a sentiment (or just an aesthetic statement, standing against those who’d repress a portrayal of something they thought was beautiful), then I hardly think it’s a reprehensible one. Here I think actual ‘whores’ - or rather porn stars—give a better analogy. Their portrayals offend a lot of people, but few sensible people think there’s a good argument for banning them a) because overturning our anti-censorship sentiments should require a pretty strong burden of evidence and b) because a lot of people very much like them, and why should they be deprived? After all, the naysayers choose not to look at something that exists, but the fans can’t do the reverse.
Lastly, (and leastly), there’s the question of accuracy of the original criticism. If your mother does sell herself for money, then, while victimising you for it is still pretty unpleasant, we would be more inclined to tolerate borderline cases of people pointing it out in a potentially offensive way than if it weren’t true. But most of the times when someone’s mum is aggressively called a whore, she probably isn’t. On the other hand, by most accounts Muhammad was a brutal sex pest, who most likely would have ordered suicide bombings had the technology existed for him to do so.