Callate said:
But where I get nervous is where Bob seems to be saying that there is no private place for attitudes or ideas that the general public finds offensive, only the public sphere where it comes right out of the gate to get immediately pelted with fruit for its intrinsic wrongness.
...
But I don't see the harm of Mac users quietly echoing to each other the superiority of users of their chosen platform, or "furries" sharing fantasies with one another, to give two examples (neither of which include me), despite the fact that expression of those ideas in the public sphere might get those who express them treated with derision and disgust.
I see the problem with expressing a bad attitude in public as though the public should accept and mainstream that attitude. I'm concerned with that form of indignation, however righteous, being carried over into areas where people who may recognize their attitudes and ideas are "niche" want to share them with each other.
Volf said:
My thoughts exactly, a person should have the right to express unpopular opinions in a private setting.
...people should have a right to express themselves freely in a private environment.
I always wonder about posting replies to comments from pages ago, but I have something to say, so... well here it goes.
I don't dispute that people should be allowed to express any opinion, no matter how unpopular, from a view that the the Star Wars prequels are better than the original trilogy to an opinion that the rightful place of a woman is in the kitchen, generally any time they wish, but certainly in a private place, such as a user group or one's own home. However, I don't think Bob was suggesting that this shouldn't be the case. First of all, Bob was responding to an attitude people display more than the actual opinions they hold, which is a whole different thing, though not irrelevant. Second, he wasn't suggesting that we should be going "thought police" on people we disagree with. Rather, he was suggesting that we stop normalizing views that we have good reason to think are wrong (and are morally significant, such as in the case of racism, as opposed to a preference about Star Wars)
and, as another point, that we should stop tolerating harmful attitudes and behaviors, like the casual use of racial slurs and the word "rape." This isn't to say that those who feel differently or who have unpopular opinions shouldn't be allowed to express themselves, but instead that we should react appropriately to them when they do - that is to say, with disapproval. His point, to put it another way, is that
if we can agree that calling your opponent homophobic slurs over a match of CoD is ignorant and hurtful, then we are justified in expressing our disapproval of such behavior and should, in fact, discourage it when we can. That doesn't violate someone's right to free speech, and I agree with him about this; it's the proper way to go about encouraging what we think is right and discouraging what we think is wrong.
And in more direct response to Callate's post, Bob was talking about a very specific genus of actions, attitudes, and behaviors - those that are offensive and otherwise harmful to others, as in the case of racial, sexual, or gender-related slurs, or the casual inclusion of rape in humorous contexts. Now, I may not precisely agree with Bob about what kind of things are "harmful" (I love off color jokes as much as the next guy), but I can certainly get with the spirit of his sentiment. He's making a claim about some category of things being wrong and saying we should discourage them, not suggesting that
whatever society deems offensive should be discouraged. This means that Bob does
not intend to include furries and Mac elitists in the group of people he is criticizing here.
