The question is unbalanced. Obviously, free speech trumps offense. The real question, I feel, is the balance between freedom of speech, and speech that causes harm, the same decision the Supreme Court had to make. There are limits to free speech, the most cited example being shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is none. Mostly, those limits relate to the harm clause. The trite example of shouting "Fire!" when there is none, for example, could cause a minimum harm of inciting a panic needlessly, to a maximum of trampling people to death.

Hate speech is a fine line here. Saying "I hate _____" or "Fuck ______" (insert any ethnic, racial, sexual or gendered slur here) will certainly cause harm, emotionally and psychologically, to members of that group. But that doesn't meet Supreme Court standards, which generally refer to actual physical harm or death.

However, saying, "Kill all _____!" is a slightly different matter, as it could be argued in court that this is a call to action, and could cause actual harm, particularly in the case of rallies, protests, or events. This is true on the far left ("Kill all Nazis!") and the far right ("Kill all not-Nazis!"). However, this is still a gray area, as because unless it can be proved that the speech directly caused harm (Nazis or anti-nazis got killed as a result of the speech), it's not a solid prosecution case.

In other words, the better debate here, IMO, is the definition of harm. Should psychological harm (not just offense, but sincere psychological damage) be considered as legitimate enough to limit someone's speech? Should the harm exception on free speech laws even exist at all, or is it right to have certain limits? This is the more interesting debate, IMO.

The phrasing is from a link.

Thanks for the source. Then obviously, I'm not surprised at their skewed results if that's how they worded it, lol. Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your question.

Mostly because I believe if we give the government the power to censor some form of speech it gives space for them to start censoring other things. There's a danger to censoring offensive things; it starts out pretty well saying racial slurs/calling for the death of certain groups is outlawed. But then it can just as easily become a thing of 'Jimmy called me a dumbass and it was offensive' so calling someone a dumbass is outlawed. And it goes from there. Of course that's an exaggeration, but I don't think we should police how people talk. If anything, at least we know which people to look out for if we let 'em ramble on and on about who they hate.

Obvs this choice. But I agree with what Cinders said on it - this is far less of a contentious issue than related questions.

^Regarding calling for the death of certain groups or inciting/encouraging violence against a person or group: that's been a criminal offence here since at least 1916 and there hasn't been a slippery slope. While the 'slippery slope' can be valid concern, IMO it's often used in this particular issue to ignore the possibility of a middle ground. It's certainly possible to prevent speech that incites violence while being okay with simply tactless or hurtful speech (Australia's been doing this for over a century - it's probs a similar case in the US too).

It's certainly possible to prevent speech that incites violence while being okay with simply tactless or hurtful speech (Australia's been doing this for over a century - it's probs a similar case in the US too).

This is what I'm fine with. And this is sort of what the U.S. has done (I believe) problem is, people keep pushing for more. Things like this link To me that's insane. They are literally policing speech. People (as far as this article says) can get fined for a slip up? Yeah I think it's disrespectful and rude to use the wrong pronouns (that is if you know the right ones) but making it illegal to do so? So yes I'm perfectly okay with them classing extremes like calling for the deaths of groups of people as a criminal offense. But things like in the link above is extreme.

Yep, calling for violence against people is just a standard, plain ol' criminal offence lol.

And I agree it'd be an overstep to make an offence out of wrong pronoun use. However, that article is massively exaggerating (basically, lying) about the effect of that Bill: it doesn't make it illegal to use wrong pronouns, very far from it. All it does is add gender identity/expression as a protected group to the Canadian Human Rights Act, and in certain Criminal Code provisions about hate propaganda, incitement to genocide, and aggravating factors in sentencing. The former makes it an offence to deny someone employment, accommodation, etc on the basis of gender identity (which makes sense considering that sex, age, race etc were already subject to such laws). The latter makes it an offence to promote genocide against members of an identifiable group (which now includes gender identity), or incite hatred against people based on gender identity (which has a pretty high threshold in court - it's hard to make out). Making gender identity an 'aggravating factor' in sentencing means that a judge can increase sentences for crimes motivated by hate or bias based on gender identity (ie. makes it possible to classify as a hate crime). So yeah it definitely doesn't apply to using wrong pronouns. Terrible, misleading journalism.

Got it, that makes a lot more sense. Fair employment and accommodation is important and very reasonable. I really do hate that so many journalists either mislead people or lie altogether...or write something just to rail people up. The above makes so much more sense than what the article was saying.

Haha we're on the same page then.

Yeah ffs it's ridiculous and terribly common. There are such extremes in journalism: True investigative journalism that sheds light on corruption and the like seems like a pretty noble profession to me... and on the other side of the spectrum there are journalists like this :/

It amuses me at the end of each of their article they're basically shitting on other journalists, calling out bias in other media outlets, and asserting they have the "real, unvarnished truth". Lel.

I swear to God these days journalists are either super alt right or super alt left. I just want the facts. But yeah I like the true investigative journalism. We just need to hire a bunch of people who don't care at all about politics or something, so they won't have too much of a bias.

Honestly they all seem to do that. It's like they're all arguing over who has the realest fake news if you will lol.

I too have a problem with large sections of the media, but I think it's possible to find good outlets with journalists that do it properly. There are a few non-partisan, non-sensationalist and well-established ones in which I have a good deal of confidence regarding accuracy and lack of bias. You shouldn't be able to discern the political leanings of a good journalist, and indeed you cannot on these outlets. There's one journalist in particular I have in mind who both sides of politics accuse of being biased in favour of the other xD Which is pretty impressive lel. So I think you can find a few such outlets which you can generally have faith in - for me, that's ABC and The Age. I'm not sure what the American equivalents are - perhaps PBS, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal? And if you want to be really thorough, you'd complement that with some known-to-have-a-bias outlets from both sides of politics. My leftie news source is The Guardian, my conservative-right news source is The Australian and my populist-right news source is 7 News. So basically I just find a breadth of news and aggregate them. Note that these are all fairly popular and/or established. I find that some sites are not just biased, but so unreliable that they're propaganda. The Daily Signal would be one - I mean, their home page is solely lined with tabs entitled 'Free Speech', 'Obamacare', 'Religious Liberty', 'Tax Reform', 'Terrorism'. That is shameless proclamation of an agenda - a massive red flag. I'd stay very far away, lol.

So basically I think we have to be sceptical, critical and questioning but not so cynical that we can't trust anything at all.