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Title: Hate speech, the Confederate flag and feminism
Source:
judgybitch.com
URL Source: http://judgybitch.com/2015/06/25/ha ... confederate-flag-and-feminism/
Published: Jun 25, 2015
Author: JANET BLOOMFIELD (AKA JUDGYBITCH)
Post Date: 2015-06-26 05:04:46 by Gatlin
Keywords: None
Views: 486
I grew up with a father who spoke English as a second language and a mother who was intelligent, but not especially intellectual, and I went off to study film theory at college armed with an arsenal of words I knew the meaning of, but did not know how to say, because I had never heard them pronounced. It was a revelation when I first heard “paradigm” spoken in a lecture. My mind struggled to match meaning to the word I just heard – “para-DIME” – what the hell is a ‘para-DIME”? Oh, it’s a “para-DIG-uhm”. Paradigm. Assuage. Indict. Coronet. Affidavit. Heinous. Bobbi Brown helped me out with prerogative. ASS—you-wodge. I was pretty sure that was not right, but never stumbled on ass-WAGE. English is funny. By the time I left college, I was armed with many more words, all of which I knew how to pronounce and the meaning of, to the extent the words had any meaning left after filtered through the bullshit of liberal academics. The liberal arts professor who didn’t barf up a word salad in place of any interesting ideas or concepts was a rare professor indeed. A great deal of film theory is concerned with ‘semiotics’, the study of signs and symbols and how to interpret them. Semiotics is divided into three subject areas – semantics (what does the sign refer to?), syntactics (is there a formal structure the sign belongs to?) and pragmatics (how are signs interpreted by users?). I relay these things not because I think you will find them interesting, but as a testament to just how ridiculous liberal arts theories and degrees can be. Ooh, so rigorous! This is what most women study in college. How to use big words to say pretty much nothing and sound like an asshole while you’re doing it. A memorable concept that took a 90 minute lecture to explain was semantic hieroglyphic valence. Even the most gung-ho, pretentious hipster asshats rolled their eyes at that one, as I recall. Drawn from psychoanalytic theory (the word salad to end all word salads), semantic hieroglyphic valance describes an idea most three years can grasp easily: sometimes the bad guy wears a black hat, and sometimes he doesn’t. These are all bad guys, no matter what color their helmet. Yeah, that’s pretty much the whole concept right there. The ‘signs’ in semiotics can mean more than one thing. Alert the damn presses, who knew? The color red can mean passion, danger, stop, alert, lust, energy, power, vibrancy….whore! Because I was inadvertently studying feminist theory disguised as film theory, I learned that whenever a man directed a film and used the color red in proximity to women, it meant he hated women, thought they were dangerous and considered them all whores because semantic hieroglyphic valence, dontcha know? It was never because he thought women were strong, powerful, passionate, vibrant beings. Respect for women doesn’t fit the feminist narrative about evil, misogynist men and patriarchy and dominance and blah blah blah…. Let’s keep all this in mind and turn to the issue of the rebel battle flag – the Confederate flag currently causing a big fuss in the liberal media. The Confederate flag is a symbol, and thus has semantic value. It exists in a formal system and is therefore syntactic (there are formal ways to understand its meaning). There are several ways to interpret this symbol and multiple formal systems it exists within, and thus the pragmatics are varied. This is where the liberal media falls off the intellectual cliff. Liberal media insists that the Confederate flag means one thing, and one thing only: white supremacy. It is a symbol whose main power is to signify formal structures of racial inequality and it can have no other meaning. In essence, liberal media is attempting to rewrite history to reflect modern concerns about racial inequality, casting themselves in glowing light that eradicates all their own tendencies towards being racist. It’s moral-upperhanding – yeah I just made that term up. If I wanted to go full retard, I could call it scrupled hypernymynous cadence or something equally ridiculous, which would earn me a big fat A+ in college, but well deserved contempt in real life. Liberal arts degrees do not prepare people for real life very well. The Confederate flag, in addition to reflecting an antebellum South and slavery also reflects rebellion against government tyranny and all the screaming in the world isn’t going to change that. Liberals don’t get to decide the meaning of cultural symbols, nor change the way people understand certain symbols, to reflect their own preferred ideologies. The closest analogy I can think of is the swastika. A black swastika in a white circle on a red background means women are whores – oh wait, sorry, got my liberal theories mixed up there for a second. This swastika… …means something very different than this one…. …and both exist in the same culture at the same time. An Asian family decorating their American home with traditional symbols from their culture of origin are no more signifying that they want to kill Jewish people than people featuring the Confederate flag on their license plate are signifying they want the return of slavery. This whole issue is about controlling the dominant narrative, controlling who gets to speak, whose interpretation of reality prevails and whose vision of history reigns supreme. And that in and of itself is not really a big issue. Bring your best ideas, liberals, and we’ll show you why you’re wrong. The problem is that liberals want to deploy the power of the state to compel their vision. Violence by proxy. A typical, and very dangerous strategy that must be defeated. Andrew Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court in New Jersey, has the best take on why the battle over the Confederate Flag is important: even if you believe the flag represents, is semiotically invested with hate, the government’s job is protect free speech, not take a side. If I were in the South Carolina legislature, I’d vote to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse because I’d silence all government speech except that which is universally accepted (like the American flag), utterly innocuous (like the library is closed on Sundays), or absolutely necessary for governance (like speed limits on state roads). Otherwise, who cares what the government thinks? The First Amendment to the Constitution also protects the rights of every person to embrace hatred. It guarantees all persons the freedom of thought, expression, and association. Thought and association are guaranteed unconditionally. Imagine the dangers of the government telling us how to think. Both the swastika and the stars and bars can be used to express hatred of a particular group, but that is not the only possible expression. Both symbols have semantic hieroglyphic valence. Any use of those symbols, whether hateful or not, is, and should be, protected speech under the First Amendment. This does not mean we do not respond to their use when it is hateful. Anyone can fly a Nazi flag, if they want. They will also be roundly condemned for doing so. Even dressing up in a Nazi Halloween costume will earn social censure. Having the government step in to regulate what expressions are permissible is a nightmare proposition. Government regulation is not how to defeat hate. I am in full agreement with Napolitano: Hatred, though invariably destructive to those it animates, is a protected mode of thought and expression and may form the basis for association. Groups may be formed based on hate, and the government may not interfere with them because it hates and fears their hatred. Some hate groups are merely a vessel for folklore and group comfort; some are willing to use violence to advance their nefarious beliefs. But the willingness alone to use violence is not criminal; it is only the actual use of violence that is. Thus, it is the manifestation of hatred as lawless violence that may be prosecuted, but the manifestation of hatred as a unifying idea is protected and may not be prosecuted. The remedy for hatred is reason. Hatred of persons is always unreasonable. It takes a characteristic of birth—color, ethnicity, religion, for example—and unreasonably ascribes mythological and unitary traits to it. Those ascribed traits usually appeal to the base fears and biases of the hater, feed his weaknesses, and provide him with a mental haven for his failings. Yet, reason and overwhelming opinion to the contrary can dilute hatred. Isn’t it interesting that if you replace all the male gender pronouns with female ones, and imagine a feminist, how apt the term hate becomes? Hatred of persons is always unreasonable. It takes a characteristic of birth—color, ethnicity, religion gender , for example—and unreasonably ascribes mythological [patriarchy] and unitary [all men are potential rapists] traits to it. Those ascribed traits usually appeal to the base fears and biases of the hater, feed her weaknesses, and provide her with a mental haven for her failings. Yet, reason and overwhelming opinion to the contrary can dilute hatred. I don’t wish the government to step in and regulate the hate speech spewed forth daily by feminists. I want the market to handle that. The marketplace of ideas. Tweeting #KillAllMen should carry the same social consequences as tweeting #BringBackHilter or #BringBackSlavery. Reason will defeat feminism. Readers might be fascinated to know that politicians in Sweden, probably the most feminist country in the world, are now openly declaring that they are not feminists. What would have been political suicide just months ago is now sparking a conversation about the goals and intentions of feminism. Sweden is just the beginning. Change is upon us. Reason is prevailing. The battle is not over yet, but it is well underway. #WomenAgainstFeminism has become #Meninist – Buzzfeed linked to my article 5 legal rights women have that men don’t . Denying that the formal legal structure discriminates against men is no longer possible. The syntactics of the sign “man” are changing. The wider culture is rebelling against the tyranny of media feminism. If only we had a sign we could adopt to reflect our defiance of this tyranny. If only there were some symbol we could deploy to indicate our mounting rebellion against the thought police. If only…. Lots of love, JB 
Mandatory Credit: Photo by ZUMA/REX Shutterstock (4866872e)
Pictured: May 26, 2012 – East Dublin, Georgia, U.S. – Two young women with a confederate flag at the Summer Redneck Games in East Dublin, Georgia. The games honor the southern red neck culture.
Confederate Flag Controversy – 23 Jun 2015
South Carolina Governor N. Haley has called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state Capitol. Walmart and Sears, two of the country’s largest retailers, will remove all Confederate flag merchandise from their stores. The announcements are the latest indication that the flag, a symbol of the slave-holding South, has become toxic in the aftermath of a shooting last week at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
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