Upon returning Philosophy Professor Mary Kate McGowan’s book, Just Words, to the departmental library the other day (and which was the subject of my previous blog), I noticed another book on the shelves entitled Speech & Harm, Controversies over Free Speech, edited by Professor McGowan and Ishani Maitra. As with the first book, this one caught my attention because its many contributors share thoughts about how language can subordinate and society often silences marginalized peoples. Some of the authors argue that this even may be considered a violation of free speech. Thus intrigued, I asked to borrow this book as I did with the previous one. I found it most interesting.
A common theme among the chapters is that speech can cause fear and thus be ‘direct harm’ and that it can affect and perpetuate the (lower) positions of certain groups within a social hierarchy and thus cause ‘indirect harm.’ In both situations, speech is power and speech has power. There are debates about whether there should be more speech or less speech, e.g. by regulation. A problem discovered by one author is that victims of offensive speech rarely respond in kind and therefore the social inequality is perpetuated. One remedy proffered is to provide support to those who could benefit from learning effective ‘counter-speech’ techniques. Another idea is to help remedy the harms through education by giving us the tools needed to become unreceptive audiences of harmful speech.
Another point that resonated with me is one that is attributed to the legal scholar and author Catharine MacKinnon in one of her 1987 writings:
“powerful and respected members of society get to do more, say more, have their words count for more (emphasis in the book Speech & Harm), than do the powerless.”
Having societal power allows a person to use their words to exert influence and thus shape the environment. Lacking such power renders others’ words silent to potential listeners and therefore their words are ineffectual. This has a “self-reinforcing cycle of marginalization” (West, p. 245) and is most often experienced by those who have been historically marginalized. Interrupting this cycle is yet another remedy to utilize.
I believe in the proffered remedies referenced above and offer to our campus one-on-one coaching and/or group training so that we can all improve our responses for ourselves and also as bystanders for others. I feel that in some ways it is a duty of those of us who have been fortunate enough to “have” voices to respond to this call.
Again, my thanks to Professor McGowan and her co-editor for putting together such a compelling collection of essays … and to the department for so generously lending out their valuable books.
