Not Everything Deserves a Platform

I have become increasingly annoyed by the way the word censorship gets thrown around whenever someone pushes back against a statement that is cruel, discriminatory, dehumanizing, blatantly unsupported by evidence, or simply no longer defensible in light of what we actually know. Somehow, we have reached a point where asking people not to spread harmful nonsense is treated as some terrifying attack on free speech, as though every opinion deserves an equal microphone and every person is entitled to have their most damaging ideas broadcast to everyone else without anyone being allowed to object.

I do not believe that.

I believe in freedom of thought, freedom of expression and the ability to question authority, challenge popular beliefs and have uncomfortable conversations, but I also believe that society has every right to establish boundaries around what we normalize, amplify and allow to cause harm. Those things are not contradictory to me. In fact, I think a functioning society requires both the freedom to speak and the willingness to recognize that words have consequences, particularly when those words are being used to justify discrimination, encourage cruelty or present demonstrably false claims as though they were established facts.

What bothers me most is how easily people use the word censorship to shut down any criticism of their own beliefs. Someone makes a claim that has been thoroughly investigated and disproven, someone points out that the claim is not supported by evidence, and suddenly the person challenging it is accused of wanting to silence them. Someone says something deeply discriminatory about a group of people, someone objects to it, and suddenly the conversation becomes about the supposed oppression of the person who made the discriminatory statement rather than the actual people being targeted by it.

I find that incredibly backwards.

Being told that your statement is harmful is not censorship. Being criticized is not censorship. Losing social approval because people find your beliefs cruel is not censorship. Being asked to provide evidence for a factual claim is not censorship. Having a platform decide that certain content violates its rules is not automatically censorship either, particularly when that platform is a private space with its own standards about what it will and will not host.

We have to stop pretending that every disagreement is an attack on freedom.

I also think we have become far too attached to the idea that every opinion deserves to be treated as equally respectable simply because it is an opinion. I do not believe that all opinions have equal value, and I certainly do not think we should be required to pretend otherwise. If one person says something based on decades of research and another person says something that has been repeatedly disproven, I am not interested in pretending that these positions belong on some perfectly balanced intellectual scale just because both people are technically expressing an opinion.

Facts do not become optional because someone feels strongly about them.

When evidence changes our understanding of something, I want people to be capable of changing their minds with it. I want us to be able to say, "We used to believe this, but we know more now." I actually think there is something deeply admirable about that kind of intellectual humility, because being willing to update your beliefs when reality gives you new information requires far more strength than stubbornly defending something simply because you have already invested your identity in it.

What I find particularly disturbing is when people use the language of free speech to protect ideas that are not merely unpopular but actively dehumanizing. I do not think we need to bend over backwards to make cruel opinions comfortable for everyone else. If someone expresses an opinion that treats other human beings as inherently inferior, deserving of fewer rights, worthy of humiliation or somehow less deserving of empathy, I am completely comfortable with society pushing back hard against that.

In fact, I think we should.

I am not interested in living in a world where being "open minded" means keeping the door permanently open to cruelty. I am not interested in treating discrimination as just another perspective that deserves polite consideration at the dinner table, and I am certainly not interested in pretending that refusing to tolerate dehumanization makes someone intolerant.

For women in particular, I think this matters because women have spent an extraordinary amount of time being told that speaking too firmly makes us difficult, emotional, hysterical, aggressive or unreasonable. We are often expected to make our objections softer so that other people do not feel uncomfortable, even when what we are objecting to is genuinely harmful. I have no desire to carry that expectation into every area of my life, where I am supposed to carefully cushion every boundary and every criticism so that the person behaving badly never has to experience the discomfort of being challenged.

I can be respectful without being endlessly accommodating.

I can believe that people deserve basic dignity without believing that every belief they hold deserves protection from criticism.

I can support freedom of expression without supporting the idea that society has an obligation to give every harmful idea an unlimited audience.

For me, the real problem is not that people disagree. I actually think disagreement is necessary, because no one person has perfect knowledge and societies absolutely need people who question assumptions and challenge established ideas. The problem begins when "free speech" becomes a magic phrase people use to avoid accountability, evidence and consequences, particularly when what they are defending is not some courageous challenge to conventional wisdom but a recycled piece of prejudice that has already been examined, disproven or shown to cause real harm. Cruelty that is so profoundly lacking in empathy or concern for other people's humanity that I have no interest in treating it as harmless intellectual entertainment.

Some things deserve debate. Some things deserve correction. Some things deserve a firm social boundary.

Those categories can coexist without destroying free expression.

I want to live in a society where people are allowed to question, debate, criticize and disagree, but I also want to live in one where evidence matters, where discrimination has consequences, where cruelty is not rewarded with endless attention and where nobody gets to hide behind the word censorship simply because other people refuse to applaud what they are saying.

Freedom does not mean freedom from criticism.

It does not mean freedom from consequences.

It does not mean that everyone else has to provide you with a platform.

It certainly does not mean that harmful nonsense deserves to be treated as equally legitimate as evidence simply because someone is determined to say it loudly.

I think we should be much more comfortable with drawing that line, because protecting people from genuinely harmful misinformation, discrimination and dehumanization is not the same thing as banning every uncomfortable opinion. A healthy society should be able to tell the difference, and I wish we stopped acting as though having standards automatically makes us enemies of free speech.

I would much rather live in a world where people are encouraged to think critically, change their minds when the evidence demands it, challenge cruelty when they see it and refuse to normalize discrimination than one where we are so frightened of being accused of censorship that we become passive spectators to other people's harm.

Thankful for your presence, Neja