speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Struggle for Respect
Jewish memories of the Holocaust, which a thousand Skokie residents
had suffered first-hand, strongly contributed to the village's
ban of the Nazi march. Women respond to pornography in light of
their daily experience of sexual harassment and objectification. The
speaker's identity may be critical: it was worse for a Jewish ACLU
lawyer to represent the Nazis, a Muslim to criticise Islam, a lesbian
to endorse sado-masochistic pornography. Style tends to overshadow
content. Islam has suffered worse attacks than The Satanic
Verses, but they were couched in less emotive language. 58 Art and
erotica shade imperceptibly into pornography. The Nazis might
have demonstrated without incident (but also without an audience)
had they abandoned their uniforms and swastika. But of course
provocation often is the purpose: Rushdie's use of historical figures,
Khomeini's fatwa, Bradford's book burning, Nazi taunts of Jews, the
Lesbian Sex Mafia's choice of a name. The speaker's motive is
central but often opaque. Did Rushdie intend to liberate Islam from
patriarchy and authoritarianism, ridicule Mohammed, titillate
readers, win fame, sell books—or all of these? Do pornographers
seek to explore sexual frontiers, objectify and degrade women,
make money—or all three?
Rejecting the nursery rhyme's false reassurance that "names can
never hurt me," critics of degrading speech hold it responsible for
"sticks and stones" and "broken bones." Pornography is the theory,
say feminists, rape the practice. Hate speech causes racist attacks.
Violence clearly does follow some speech: police killed protesters in
Pakistan, Muslims were assassinated in Belgium, Rushdie's Japanese
translator was murdered and his Italian translator assaulted, English
bookstores were bombed. But consequentialist arguments run the
risk of empirical falsification and distract attention from the real
harm—the reproduction of status inequalities by the very act of
speaking.
Alternatively, speech victims conflate representation with reality,
reduce art to mimesis, deny the very possibility of imagination.
Muslims insisted on reading The Satanic Verses as history rather than
fiction. MacKinnon asserted that "a woman had to be tied or cut or
burned or gagged or whipped or chained" to produce pornographic
films. Dworkin denounced Minneapolis for permitting "the binding
and torture of real women." Skokie Holocaust suvivors equated neo-
Nazis who applauded murder with actual Nazi murderers. Critics of
The Satanic Verses called Rushdie a "literary terrorist," attributing to
him every word, opinion, and action of his characters.
Status competition through speech tends to escalate and ramify.
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