Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Hate speaks for itself

On the internet we read a lot of homophobic hate speech but I think it is often not treated as severely as it should be. Of course, even spoken homophobic hate speech is rarely greeted with more than a tut - but written rarely gets even that. It's written off, ignored, passively accepted.

I also think people who aren't a victim of homophobic hate speech probably don't hear so much of it as they read it. I also think there are a lot of bigots willing to take to twitter or blogs and type things that sound far starker when spoken.

And, in some ways, text is more santitised than the spoken word, it lacks the human element, it lacks the impact, it lacks the immediacy - it brings home to you very much that this is a person saying this vile thing

And that's why this video I found on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters is so powerful. It puts spoken word to the typed vileness we see every single day.

Naturally it's triggering

And yes, these are real tweets and this is why most days I approach Twitter like it's a rabid lion on crack

This hatred? Isn't any less harmful when it is typed. It isn't meaningless because it's on twitter or blogged or in a comment section or been sent in a vile email to a GBLT blogger or celebrity or, gods above, struggling teen seeking support and making a video on YouTube. We see that immediacy because we have our own horrendous experiences to draw upon. I can't read certain words without hearing them spoken in my mind, without remembering the times they were said to me, without remembering the actions that came with them

But for many, reading them, they lack the immediacy and don't see what the words they type, the emails they send, the words they allow in their moderaton actually do, actually mean and how they actually hurt