Up for Discussion: When is it hate speech?
An anonymous BFB reader pointed me to a pretty disturbing site hosted at BlogSpot, Google's hosted blogging service. This site is nothing new and has been around for about a year and a half. It's devoted entirely to pictures of fat people with large stomachs, and is given a sexist, derogatory term.
On top of that, the terms used to describe the photos sent in are just as bad. Fat people are "caught" here, the people who send photos in are "hunters" and these Actual People are equated with wildlife. The whole thing is, again, sexist, sizist, and awful - that's part of the reason I'm not linking it here.
The person who sent it in said she feared looking for more sites, afraid that she'd find plenty more like it. After all these were photos of people in public (totally legal), without faces removed or otherwise edited.
I'd found a similar site a few years ago, also on BlogSpot. I wrote to Google and cited the specific terms of service passages which forbade hate speech:
HATEFUL CONTENT: Users may not publish material that promotes hate toward groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity.
VIOLENT CONTENT: Users may not publish direct threats of violence against any person or group of people.
Now, on "hateful content" there is nothing about size (gee, there's a fucking surprise.) But that other site had violent threats, too. Google's response to me was, essentially, "We don't police content. There's no there there. Thanks for writing!"
Hate speech is protected by the Constitution here in the US even if the ideas behind it are, to put it mildly, unpopular. But when a site like the one on BlogSpot exists and has existed for a year and a half, and serves no other purpose than to promote hate, is it simply not hate speech because fat people aren't a class mentioned above?
In other words, do these sites get a free ride on BlogSpot? The answer so far is yes. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on this: at what point does anti-fat rhetoric become hate speech?
[citation needed] | New Anti-Weight Watchers Flyers
Posted by paul on January 7, 2008
If Google's TOS is anything like a certain other service's TOS that I happen to be familiar with, and they protect themselves with the "we don't police content" bit, they won't do anything until there's a court order to remove the content. If you can prove to authorities (legal ones, not Google ones) that the content is in fact hate speech and threatening, and get a court order, they have to ask the person who the blog is registered to take it down.
From a non-legal-red-tape standpoint, it's most definitely hate speech. But service providers have to comply with laws and whatever, so they usually fall back on what's stated in the TOS (ie: it's not our content! don't blame us! you own your own content! we're just the service provider!), rather than being accused of censorship and violating "free speech" blaaaah blah blah.
Now if they had stolen those images from a copyright holder and you had a legal DMCA take down notice, I'm sure Google would have that content removed real quick.
It's a bunch of legal crap.
Note that I've never read Google's TOS, my opinions are my own and not those of my employer and I basically only know as much as I've seen in my experience. *covers butt*
It sounds like hate speech, no doubt.
There is a feature on Blogger where you can "flag objectionable content."
The "Flag?" button is a means by which readers of Blog*Spot can help inform us about potentially questionable content, so we can prevent others from encountering such material by setting particular blogs as "unlisted." This means the blog won't be promoted on Blogger.com but will still be available on the web — we prefer to keep in mind that one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Or something like that.
When a person visiting a blog clicks the "Flag?" button in the Blogger Navbar, it means they believe the content of the blog may be potentially offensive or illegal. We track the number of times a blog has been flagged as objectionable and use this information to determine what action is needed. This feature allows the blogging community as a whole to identify content they deem objectionable.
However,
Here are some examples of content we will not remove unless provided with a court order:
# Personal attacks or alleged defamation
# Parody or satire of individuals
# Distasteful imagery or language
Therefore, there is little to nothing that can be done. Overweight people are not covered by Blogger's hate speech definitions.
Do you think it's worth sending evidence of this site and any others to public health bodies and possibly organisations representing medical professionals, explaining that this is part of the reality of their insistence that stigmatization of fat people must be maintained, in the 'fight against obesity' and asking them if this is the kind of thing they sanction? Ask them if this is OK by them, if not how far do they think it should go? What is the acceptable face of 'discouraging obesity'?
Good question. I do think it could be a tool taken either way, though - either the "this is disturbing and disgusting" angle or the "well, that's why you need to lose weight!" one. But I can't imagine professionals taking the later stance. At least I'd hope they wouldn't.
This is probably a rhetorical question, but that's not going to stop me from trying to answer it:
is it simply not hate speech because fat people aren't a class mentioned above?
It looks like they are taking the language of their TOS from federal hate crime laws, which don't include weight as a protected class. So, while there is no law regarding "hate speech" specifically, doing harm to someone because he or she is fat is definitely not a hate crime under the law. If hate crime legislation were expanded to include weight, Google might well change its terms of service. But for now, the answer to your question is indeed no.
I like wriggle99's idea. If we have to live with that crap, why not use it to our benefit?
I think you raise an interesting point on the legal techincality of the issue, ottermatic, I also think that this is unlikely to change whilst so many in poisitions of authority on health matters believe that pressure on us to lose weight should be constant and unyielding.
This muddies the waters by making it seem to have a legitimate basis, the abusiveness that is.
As for your latter point Paul, check out this link courtesy of an SP poster called Sarah: Please be warned the content is deeply unpleasant link
My God wriggle99, that link is truly horrific. If that's what my GP thinks of me when I show up with a chest infection or whatever then you can bet it will be at least another 3 years before I again darken her doorway.
But of course, thin people don't really *hate* fat people! They're just concerned about our health!
This sort of thing is everywhere, and it would seem that the only place one is completely safe from it now is within the online 'fatosphere' itself. By way of example, I'm a regular poster on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' web forums. Now, being the 'right-on' BBC, they're heavily modded and generally better than most when it comes to removing comments which make personal attacks on lone parents, asylum seekers, Muslims, and those who fall into various other vulnerable minority groups who don't benefit from the statutory hate speech protection of say, black, gay or disabled people. Unless of course the debate is about Teh OMG Obesity Epidemic, in which the gloves are off: fat people should be used as forced labour; fat people should be shot and made into petfood; fat teens (and bear in mind that nasty comments about kids are normally considered beyond the pale) should be shackled to treadmills or exercise wheels and used to power the National Grid - that one on a debate a few days back about climate change.
Without exception my complaints about such comments have fallen on deaf ears. The BBC have an 'alert a moderator' function, and yet every single time I've used it the result has been the same - 'Complaint Rejected'. My emails questioning this policy have to date met with complete silence - indeed knowing how such organisations work, they're probably by now the source of much lunchtime mirth on internal BBC employee networks, forums etc.
So if the BBC don't consider this sort of thing hate speech, it's clear that fat people really are the last group that it's acceptable, indeed, in many spheres encouraged, to publicly express hatred toward. Those behind the pseudonyms no doubt cling to the idea that it will motivate us to become thin, or maybe they don't care, for if we all compliantly starved ourselves to social acceptability or otherwise removed ourselves from the face of the earth they'd have no material for the literally millions of snarky Blogger pages, Flickr streams, Facebook groups, Myspace pages and Livejournal communities out there.
Unpopular opinion, perhaps, but I will stand up and say that people have the right to be absolute a-holes and that "hate speech" is a concept that is just plain wrong. We are adults. We have the right to disseminate and consume information at our pleasure. If like-minded people want to join in, that is their right. No matter how distasteful or offensive it may be. If you don't like it, either engage or ignore. This is the world wide web we are talking about, not a workplace or a public school. I don't think the hate speech code should exist at all, much less be expanded.
Wow, "fat people should be shot and made into petfood" really appeared on the Beeb boards and they did nothing about it in response to complaint? Damn it.
In most cases, I would favor hitting transgressors in the wallet wherever possible. But when this hate speech is paid for by tax dollars, and you're supposed to thank people for enlightening you on how disgusting you are and being forced to pay for it to boot...shit. We really are crossing into Weimar territory, and I don't use such terminology lightly.
First of all, yes, I feel it IS hateful to make fun of anyone like that. And secondly, there is a difference between free speech and hurtful destructive speech... it's not free speech if it hampers someone ELSE'S freedom which any type of hateful speech does.
But there is a line between illegal and bad taste and no one knows exactly where that line is to be drawn especially when it comes to things like size.
The problem generally going on - I feel-, is that much of society thinks that fatness is a choice which we know here, is NOT true - it's a bodytype. There are many of us (myself included) who are considered "morbidly obese" i.e. BMI over 40, who live a healthy lifestyle, eat lots of veggies and exercise and it does make us very healthy but doesn't do a THING toward causing a weight loss.
So, I think the way to stop this sort of thing is to have a massive campaign educating the public ABOUT fat and fatness and body types etc. There is plenty of science to back up what we know to be true - that about 80 percent of our size is genetic. (What Dr Rudy Leibel, obesity researcher has said many times). We just have to get this TO the public somehow which is hard because it is hard to outshout the diet industry funded programs and commercials on TV, the most usual form of media educating the people.
If we in the size acceptance movement could get some funding to buy billboards, to fund PSA's in prime time and things like that, it would help greatly. I have always dreamed of making an infomercial... about fat acceptance, about the truth about WLS and the like....
I have often, shared the results of the (yet unpublished) Russell Williams study... 6 caterers who had served both NAAFA conventions as well as others where the expected attendees were mostly "normal weight"., were asked to compare the amounts of food consumed at the NAAFA conventions with the amounts of food consumed at other conventions. This result was very interesting and is a good one to quote if you have a moment or two to educate someone:
3 of the caterers said the amount of food consumed at the NAAFA convention was THE SAME as that consumed at other conventions... and....
3 of the caterers said that the amount of food consumed at the NAAFA convention was LESS than that consumed at other conventions.
That takes a few minutes to relate and kind of lets folks know that it seems most fat people are NOT fat because they (like the TV would have us believe) consume 18000 calories a day.
Since right now we don't appear to be able to get the funding for mass education, it may be a thing of educating people, one or two at a time.
And I do wonder... what if someone took a group of anorexic models and made fun of them... would that be allowed?
The link provided by wriggle99 has some absolutely vile sentiments. Maybe it's my naivete, but I have to ask, is there any way to know if that is truly an MD site? I mean, I could start a site or blog and say that I'm an MD and no one would know I'm not.
On the other hand, I worked for 5+ years at a hospital (not as a medical professional) and I hated hearing how the doctors talked about their patients when they thought no one else was listening--and not just about weight issues either.
I read the original post on that link. It struck me as juvenile and inane. "I have nothing against fat people"? Bullshit.
Then there was "his BMI was, like, a trillion."
Like, seriously, dude? You sure it wasn't like, a gazillion?
Besides, his whole point seemed to be that fat kills, but what was his example? A patient who was ALREADY dead. You think that patient cared about how his body was disposed of? Worst, this so-called medical professional misses the point: the guy died DURING bariatric surgery. Ya think maybe it was the f-ing procedure that killed him? Maybe the message ought to be: "don't have WLS!"
I guess I'm just an old hippie but I think hate speech should be countered by love speech, or by disagreement speech, but not by attempts to ban the speech. I would want to start a blog that takes the same pictures of people with large stomachs and discusses how cute they are.
(I won't actually do that since the pictures are taken without the people's consent, though.)
Ok I'm gonna go read a, like, book now, dude, before I get totally, you know, really upset by that crap.
"The problem generally going on - I feel-, is that much of society thinks that fatness is a choice "
And even if it were a choice, it would not give anyone the right to say that we should "be shot and made into pet food", or anything like that.
I salute you richie for your tenacity with the BBC, to think people accuse them of sometimes being overly fastidious with their terminology, i.e. terrorist or freedom fighter, etc they try to pass off a crusade as a debate. And charge fat people for the priviledge.
I agree poccomummy that anyone can set up a blog claiming to be a medical professional, I followed up a couple of the listed contributors and they also had blogs regarding their experiences as medical professionals and other linked blogs, but who really knows?
I can really appreciate if you encounter dead bodies on regular basis, as part of your job/profession, i.e. police etc., you have to have some heavy defenses it takes its toll. But what annoyed me about the post fits into the -if you truly believe there is an obesity crisis, why don't you behave as if you believe it- list.
We are being told constantly that a BMI of 30+ is a swan dive into sickness and eternal oblivion, and yet they fail to accomodate this. I assumed that this had been resolved with the redesign of coffins etc., but I never realised that this is still an issue.
What about his family? They presumably had hopes for the surgery which turned out to be fatal, were they aware of the true risk to him. Even worse are they the ones running around try to find a way to deal with his body, in a state of grief, are they aware of what was proposed if they cannot find a solution?
Also, is there a new policy on people who would have been refused this kind of surgery on the grounds of weight? I saw a programme on Sunday called 'half ton mum' regarding a lady called .
Renee Williams
Sorry to post again but I got cut off!
If surgeons are succumbing to the desparation of some of those at the top of the weight scale to operate, this is really worrying, does anyone know more about this?
I read the article about Ms. Williams, and I'm deeply p***ed off that they describe her as "six times the size of a healthy woman in her age group."
No sir and no madam.
She was six times bigger than an *average sized* woman in her age group. That hypotetical average sized woman they compare her to could have any health problem from an autoimmune disease to cancer to a drug addiction - and we would never know just looking at her.
It's so sickening that people won't get it through their skulls that size does not mean a single thing, in and of itself, as an indicator of health.
I'm kindly asking folks to move the discussion about Williams to a separate thread on the forums. Thanks!
When is it hate speech? When irrational hatred is expressed toward an individual or a group of individuals with no provocation or reason. Which, the site on Blog*Spot appears to be. I mean... does the owner of that site have any rational claim for hatred of fat people? Did a fat person sit on and squash his kitten? Did a fat person eat the last ration of food when they were shipwrecked on the desert island? I fucking doubt it. So, it's hate speech. And even so, if I'm robbed at gun point by a Russian man, I'm not going to hate all Russian men. I'm not going to slander and belittle Russian people because they're the same nationality as the man who robbed me. There is no excuse for hate speech, period. All hate speech is irrational.
I don't know. I really don't know.
I tend to believe that people who make truly hateful anonymous comments (like the dog food one) have something seriously wrong with them - how can they harbor that kind of hate and violence to fellow human beings? Perhaps they need to be tracked down and enrolled in some kind of psychological counseling, just to be sure they don't act on their impulses.
On the other hand, I do kind of agree with the "we're all adults" argument. Yes, there are people out there who are assholes. I would honestly, frankly, rather see that those people identify them as such (by their speech) straight off so I can "consider the source" than have to deal with someone who smiles and pretends to be kind and all and then goes for the emotional slam.
At any rate - I hate ALL of those anonymous-photograph sites. I tend to feel that a person should have the right not to be photographed - especially without their knowledge - and especially have the right not to be used as a source of derision. (Part of this is, I teach, and I live in horror that one of my students may snap an unflattering cell-phone picture of me when I'm flailing my arms about mid-lecture, or some such thing, and then post it on their webpage for the amusement of them and their friends. I think people are owed some kind of basic dignity in this life and being an anonymous object of derision violates that). Of course I do not know any reasonable way to police that, but I feel very deeply about the whole people being entitled to not be photographed thing.