Huh, I noticed that I have a sort of knee-jerk reaction to “defamatory” which I conjecture is similar to a knee-jerk reaction some others here have about “racist”—something like “while this term has an explicit definition that refers to some stuff I mostly agree is bad, in practice it is so often used as a way to forcibly shut down speech (including some that I agree with) that I do not wish to grant the concept itself legitimacy”.
(I think I have this reaction to “defamatory” bc I encounter it mostly as a legal concept, where speech that has been ruled defamatory is to be suppressed (and of course I don’t always agree with such rulings). Even though, like, I agree you shouldn’t say false bad things about people.)
I think this maybe makes me a little more sympathetic to this kind of knee-jerk reaction about “racist”? I do already think we should often taboo this word in this kind of situation, but also I do think that at least some things best described as “racist” are in fact bad and ought to be avoided.
(Ironically I kind of wish the people with this knee-jerk reaction would do more decoupling and notice when accusations of racism are more like “this person believes something that is quite possibly true but that a social justice person would think is racist, so they should be shunned” and when they are more like “this person is an epistemically sloppy asshole about race, so I wish we wouldn’t hold them up as an ideal of how to be”. To be fair it can take some work to determine which is true even if you’re specifically trying to.)
Huh, I noticed that I have a sort of knee-jerk reaction to “defamatory” which I conjecture is similar to a knee-jerk reaction some others here have about “racist”—something like “while this term has an explicit definition that refers to some stuff I mostly agree is bad, in practice it is so often used as a way to forcibly shut down speech (including some that I agree with) that I do not wish to grant the concept itself legitimacy”.
(I think I have this reaction to “defamatory” bc I encounter it mostly as a legal concept, where speech that has been ruled defamatory is to be suppressed (and of course I don’t always agree with such rulings). Even though, like, I agree you shouldn’t say false bad things about people.)
I think this maybe makes me a little more sympathetic to this kind of knee-jerk reaction about “racist”? I do already think we should often taboo this word in this kind of situation, but also I do think that at least some things best described as “racist” are in fact bad and ought to be avoided.
(Ironically I kind of wish the people with this knee-jerk reaction would do more decoupling and notice when accusations of racism are more like “this person believes something that is quite possibly true but that a social justice person would think is racist, so they should be shunned” and when they are more like “this person is an epistemically sloppy asshole about race, so I wish we wouldn’t hold them up as an ideal of how to be”. To be fair it can take some work to determine which is true even if you’re specifically trying to.)