On account of a promise to a friend, I don’t post about intra-movement drama more than once a week. This week, I already blew my wad on the ever-expanding List of Known Sexists, which means I’m not going to throw in my 2¢ on the latest Twitter drama, as much as I’d love to do that. Instead, I’m going to write just a bit about the distinction between censorship and self-restraint. Censorship is when someone applies force or threat of force to prevent or modify someone else’s free expression. Self-restraint is when you do this to yourself, usually by modulating one’s message to suit the circumstances.
We practice self-restraint this everyday, usually without thinking about it. You might think to yourself, “Well that’s some racist bullshit!” but then say aloud, “Grandma, I don’t think that’s a fair and accurate representation of the black community.” You might think to yourself, “This is a complete and utter clusterfuck!” but then say aloud, “I’m not sure that would be the most efficient process change given our particular situation, Colonel.” You might think to yourself, “Goddamn, I’d love to spank dat ass!” but then say aloud, “Nice shoes.” This is just routine, everyday self-restraint.
As to censorship, it admits of all sorts of degrees. Relatively harmless censorship occurs in situations where the speakers are made aware in advance of the ground rules, such as audio bleeping in podcasts or the automatic bowdlerizing of mother***ing obscene language in online forums. For example, the Bugle Podcast producer bleeps John and Andy all the time, and it generally doesn’t detract from their message or obstruct the humor. The JREF forums have a list of words that won’t make it through the filters (still working it out by trial and error) but it doesn’t seem to detract from from the spirit of the place.
Further along the scale of censorship we have laws which prevent certain kinds of free expression, such as the famed Freemont Solstice Parade, from taking place in the less enlightened bits of the U.S.A. These laws exist primarily because Americans generally (and their jurists particularly) tend to believe that obscenity is a separate category of speech, and we can all remember what it was like getting trampled when that one guy shouted fire in the crowded theater.
Furthest along the scale of censorship, we have the Orwellian nightmare scenarios, such as the so-called ‘memory hole’ and the phenomenon of the constantly evolving text, wherein the original meaning is distorted and destroyed by subsequent editors. I’m not going to provide examples of these just now, because they would violate my own sense of self-restraint respecting intra-movement shit-stirring.
I bring up the distinction between self-restraint and censorship because they so often get confused. Whenever someone makes a case for more self-restraint, there is always some dim bulb back in the peanut gallery who hears it as a call for censorship. People too often fail to see the difference between “You ought not be allowed to say that, because it isn’t tolerable,” and “You ought to have thought twice before saying that, because it isn’t helping.” Pleas for self-restrained moderation fall into the latter category, rather than the former.
