Censorship is the action of the powerful against the powerless or the less powerful. Censorship prevents dissenting opinions from finding an outlet, promotes or commits attacks against said dissenters, silences the vulnerable and the unprotected.
Censorship is also a term that gets bandied about a lot. If one refuses to publish a comment on one’s site, whether because one believes it to be unhelpful, cruel, irrelevant or anything else, one runs the risk of being accused of censorship. Ironically, one is frequently accused of censorship by the would-be commentator openly in the public realm, suggesting that the blogger who tries to censor is not very good at censoring.
Only the powerful can censor. The rest of us may be dismissive, unkind, unrelenting, closed-minded or mocking, but we cannot censor.
Ok..that brings up a good question. Does “free speech” mean the right to say anything anywhere at any time? If one decides certain things are not acceptable in some personally controlled vehicle (i.e., an internet site), is that censorship?
Or does “free speech” and “censorship” apply at a larger level, say, a governmental level?
Comment by dreamy5 — April 15, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
Amen.
Comment by frog — April 16, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
Censorship is something that the state does and it is about effectively stopping a person from communicating with others throught the written or printed word. Censorship is about having your computer taken away, books destroyed, being thrown in prison, stopping other people from employing you etc.
Free speech is not the same as being entitled to other peoples time and resources and it’s not a licence to force other people to listen.
Comment by Arantxa — April 16, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
“Censorship is something that the state does and it is about effectively stopping a person from communicating with others throught the written or printed word. Censorship is about having your computer taken away, books destroyed, being thrown in prison, stopping other people from employing you etc.”
That’s right; only the gov’t can censor. One person telling another to shut up is not cencorship.
This segues perfectly to this: CoolAunt’s take on the First Amendment at Feminist Law Professors. http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=1121 When Ann Bartow asked to copy it at her blogsite, it was one of my proudest moments.
Comment by CoolAunt — April 17, 2007 @ 12:40 am
MMM hmmm
Comment by Burrow — April 17, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
Very true – only those with power can censor. Of course, power has many forms. For instance, when you won a blog, you have the power to censor because you can simply remove any comment you want. That is power that only a blog owner (or very good hacker…) has on her blog.
There is also power by influence. For instance, if you put up something about your mother on your blog and she doesn’t like it and calls you and tells you ‘take that down’ you, of course, are not obligated to, but hey, she’s mom, and so you take it down. Now, she used her influence to censor.
It is important to note that the illegal kinds of censorship are all about government censorship, and with good reason. In fact, the same law that prevents government censorship also allows private censorship. People have the constitutional right not only to express an idea but not to be associated with an idea as well (in the sense of not having to sponsor it or put up with it on your property).
So, in sum, whomever owns a given forum (a blog owner on a blog, a billboard owner on a billboard, etc.) has the power to censor in that forum. Whomever has influence on that owner also has power to censor, indirectly. But unless the censor is the government, generally there is no legal recourse.
Comment by Disgusted Beyond Belief — April 20, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
That should be own, not won, though I suppose it would be an interesting contest if the prize was a blog…
Comment by Disgusted Beyond Belief — April 20, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
Wiki defines censorship thusly:
“Censorship is the removal or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. Typically censorship is done by governments, religious groups, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of official secrets, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship when it remains within reasonable bounds. Because of this, the term “censorship” often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
Censorship has a very negative connotation. By using the term “censorship” to describe control over one’s own domain, one employs exactly the sort of influence Disgusted so astutely observed above: One casts said control over objectionable material in one’s own domain in a negative light.
If this is, as Disgusted persuasively argues, censorship, there needs be a re-evaluation of the term. Do we have the right to edit — “censor” — that which we find objectionable from spaces we sponsor? Fuckin-A!
In summary, either we need to clarify and make explicit the implications of the word “censor” and personal rights or we need to make a distinction between censorship and the right to determine what is and is not acceptable in one’s personal domain.
Comment by dreamy5 — April 20, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
There’s free speech and there’s acceptable speech.
I understood free speech as a concept protecting the individual or groups from government censorship (and harrassment). I’m working from a U.S. historical view here.
Acceptable speech is about what we find, well, acceptable in public forums. So, the Imus controversy wasn’t about free speech, it was about acceptable speech.
I really stopped by to say that I think comment 6 above is spot-on with power — it comes in many degrees and forms, and a more nuanced understanding is helpful, if not vital, when discussing censorship.
Comment by Melinda — April 29, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
I understand that people want to show the fact that censorship is something other than what these intruders are trying to say it is. It also be true that the law supports the stetements made by laurelin and others here.
As for me I dont really care what the law of man says. patriarchal law is based on traditional ethics, not feminist ethics the central aspect of the new ethics is that is is based on caring and the community. traditional ethics are based on power relations and hierarchies, the application of laws and enforcement of those laws are further molded by those with the POWER TO NAME.
also,
“FEMINIST ETHICISTS are committed, first and foremost, to the elimination of women’s subordination — and that of other oppressed persons — in all of its manifestations.” A feminist approach to ethics asks questions about power — that is, about domination and subordination — even before it asks questions about good and evil, care and justice, or maternal and paternal thinking. Focused as they are on questions about power, those developing fully feminist approaches to ethics offer action guides aimed at subverting rather than reinforcing the present systematic subordination of women.”
Thus it is absurd for males who are the only ones who are allowed an unqualified voice TODAY in 2007, to claim that they are being censored.
….”any number of the “Great Philosophers’” moral theories seem to be based on the moral experience of men — usually powerful ones — as opposed to women. For example, Aristotle’s ethics reflects the values of Athenian citizens: that is, property-owning Greek males. It does not reflect the values of Greek females or of slaves/foreigners — be they male or female. Nevertheless, traditional western ethicists have tried to make the case that, properly interpreted, Aristotle’s ethics applies equally well to both women and men, to both non-Greeks and Greeks; and that it would be misguided to deliberately — as opposed to nonreflectively — construct an ethics that focuses on a specific group of people. Related to the above controversy are similar controversies about women’s history and literature courses, for example. A person developing a feminist approach to ethics could argue, for example, that she is simply doing what Aristotle, Mill, and Kant should have done in the first place — namely, paying as much attention to women’s moral experience as men’s. In the same way that historians have ignored the stresses, strains, and struggles of the private world of children, church, and kitchen to focus on the economic revolutions, political upheavals, and military conquests of the public world, traditional western ethicists have focused on men’s moral interests, issues, and values, failing to notice just how significant and interesting women’s moral issues and values are. Therefore, when a proponent of feminist ethics insists on highlighting “women’s morality,” she may be doing little more than some corrective surgery — adding women’s moral experiences to a male-biased ethical tradition sorely in need of them. However, she may be doing more than this. She may be suggesting that it is not enough for traditional western ethics to incorporate women’s interests and issues, and to recognize women as moral agents who must be taken seriously. On the contrary, she may be urging the “Tradition” to rethink all of the ontological and epistemological assumptions upon which it is based; and even to consider the possibility, that far from being sources of human liberation, its principles, rules, regulations, norms, and criteria actually serve to support patterns of domination and subordination that “demoralize” everyone. If its focus on women-oppressive system and structures is indeed what makes an ethics feminist, as opposed to simply feminine or maternal, then Alison Jaggar’s summary of the fourfold function of feminist ethics cannot be improved upon in any significant way. According to Jaggar, all fully feminist approaches to ethics seek to (1) articulate moral critiques of actions and practices that perpetuate women’s subordination; (2) prescribe morally justifiable ways of resisting such actions and practices; (3) envision morally desirable alternatives for such actions and practices; and (4) take women’s moral experience seriously, though not uncritically (Jaggar, “Feminist Ethics,” 1992). Women should not focus on making the world a better place for everyone in general; rather, their primary aim should be to make the world a better place for women in particular —and perhaps also for other vulnerable people like children, the elderly, the infirm, the disabled, minorities, etc. In Jaggar’s estimation, encouraging women with supportive thoughts, kind words, and benign actions is not enough. A feminist approach to ethics entails women resisting and overcoming their continuing oppression under patriarchy. In other words, if the aim of a feminist approach to ethics is to achieve this type of gender equity, proponents argue that it must push itself out of the private realm and into the public realm. It must routinely and regularly sit at the policy table, for it is at this table that gender-equalizing rules and regulations can be formulated. Consider one aspect of the so-called fetal-maternal relationship problem; namely, the attempt to impose criminal penalties on cocaine-using pregnant women subsequent to the delivery of their cocaine-exposed infants. Feminist ethicists note that the ethics of justice has been rather blind to sexism, racism, and classism that underlies its proposals to punish cocaine-using pregnant women. They claim that what probably motivates those who would punish cocaine-using pregnant women is not respect for women as rational and autonomous agents, but fear and hate of women who seem unwilling to sacrifice their “selfish” selves on the altar of motherly love. Thus, when it comes to determining how tensions in the maternal-fetal relationship should be resolved, for example, it is not appropriate to ask what best serves the aggregate, but instead to ask what best serves women and through women the actual and potential people to whom they are related.”
All this babble originated at manspin central is just as much of an attemp to control what males view as “their’ most valuable “natural resource”. as they equate Women with “Nature” they think they are tilling her soil and planting their seed, God-kings that they think they are. All this is just more male mythologythe same as Christianity Or islam or any of the patriarchal religions, the same as racial supremacy theories,all sickly man-infestations into the body of our peoples thought.
As a male it may be easier for me to say this, especially to say it directly to other XY’s around me, and the thoughs that are expredded here i gained from reading the words of writers like Dary Daly, Catharine MacKinnon, alison jaggar Sonia Johnson, Audre Lorde, Hoagland and others.
We don’t follow your leaders. We don’t know your ‘religion’. We will modify your laws so they are for all people.
To males reading this= Stop intruding into Women’s spaces. Understand that patriarchal thinking is erroneous, that we must endeavor to leave it at the fastest rate that we can, it is not impossible.
To maintain the status quo is not responsable and is not acceptable. We have to stop fooling ourselves.
Don’t go down in history as one of the fools. make your life useful to humanity.
Comment by biophilicguy fyi — September 22, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
Laurelin, I recently addressed this issue myself. In case you want a peek, it’s here….
http://rachelcervantes.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/to-all-the-idiots-who-cry-censorship-when-a-feminist-tells-you-to-piss-off/
Comment by rachelcervantes — December 15, 2008 @ 12:55 am