On his book Degradation: What the History of Obscenity Tells Us about Hate Speech
Cover Interview of March 28, 2011
In a nutshell
This book attempts to place hate speech into a context of long lineage.
While hate speech has almost undoubtedly been around for as long as people have been able to recognize differences between their groups and others, the recognition that there is an impropriety in the speech is of far more recent vintage.
But there is another variety of expression that has long been regulated: obscenity. I do not argue that hate speech is obscene—but that the concerns that lead a society to place certain sexual material in that category are similar to the concerns raised by hate speech.
While obscenity has focused on sex, the concern has been less about sex and more about degradation.
Cultures that have allowed rather explicit pornography do not view sex as degrading. It is in cultures that do see sex as degrading that pornography comes to be considered obscene—and subject to restriction.
While there are certainly subject matter distinctions between classical obscenity and hate speech, they may be seen as similar—in that both may be viewed as degrading.
If there are to be restrictions on hate speech, as exist in many countries and in some situations even in the United States, the relationship between obscenity and hate speech may provide a basis for identifying racist, sexist or homophobic speech. The path of the law in defining obscenity may provide guidance in identifying expressions of hate.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
In a nutshell
This book attempts to place hate speech into a context of long lineage.
While hate speech has almost undoubtedly been around for as long as people have been able to recognize differences between their groups and others, the recognition that there is an impropriety in the speech is of far more recent vintage.
But there is another variety of expression that has long been regulated: obscenity. I do not argue that hate speech is obscene—but that the concerns that lead a society to place certain sexual material in that category are similar to the concerns raised by hate speech.
While obscenity has focused on sex, the concern has been less about sex and more about degradation.
Cultures that have allowed rather explicit pornography do not view sex as degrading. It is in cultures that do see sex as degrading that pornography comes to be considered obscene—and subject to restriction.
While there are certainly subject matter distinctions between classical obscenity and hate speech, they may be seen as similar—in that both may be viewed as degrading.
If there are to be restrictions on hate speech, as exist in many countries and in some situations even in the United States, the relationship between obscenity and hate speech may provide a basis for identifying racist, sexist or homophobic speech. The path of the law in defining obscenity may provide guidance in identifying expressions of hate.