Unpopular opinion: PC policing is going WAY TOO far.

[HereSince1628]

33. The limitations of free-speech are specific to a majority position...yes, but why?

Speech is a cultural tool which serves individuals and groups. Language is the vehicle for transference of ideas which assist in establishing majorities of shared attitudes and maintaining them.

Our gregarious nature requires our lives to exist within social structures. Whether we are born into existing groups or organize individuals into new groups, groupness must be maintained.

But there are many groups, and they compete.

A critical basic algebra of between group attitudes is 'we good - they bad'. If you go along with 'we good', you get to be part of Us, and stay in the group, if you don't, you become one of Them.

Consequently, behaviors which manifest that we are in Us and not one of Them must be demonstrated. Speech provides the important mechanisms to do that.

There must also be within groups patterns of language use that facilitate communicating the badness of Them. This pretty much requires the generation of a bias toward bigoted speech whose use is a display that the speaker has group membership and that the speaker is loyal to the group, even capable of chauvinistic loyalty.

What does that mean here on DU?

On DU there is pretty much universal disapproval for use of stigmatizing and demeaning terms of ethnicity, gender, religion, because we define ourselves as open and tolerant to those identifiers. Defense of those groups is a feature of Us, because we see members of those groups as within Us.

But like every other human group on the planet (good or bad, us or them) WE still need language that can convey our sense of superior goodness to Them and their badness.

It doesn't take much more than a look at subject lines on GD menu to see that communicating our superiority and goodness is contrast against Their mental defects. This is widely accepted on DU, and DUers vigorously defend their 'free-speech' rights to use language that stigmatizes, demeans, and propagates social attitudes that reinforce discrimination against the mentally ill within society.

I don't think this is so much because DUers actually consciously hate the mentally ill, and want to insult other DUers who feel the sting of that language, but, DUers -really need- language that can be used to demean persons and ideas belonging to alternate political groups. Within the context of American society the mentally ill are iconic models of the 'Dysfunctional Other'.

I think you are right that what speech is socially acceptable, and thereby 'free-speech, depends on majority positions. But I would say that can be parsed into majority positions within groups. Because across the globe there are many ways to construct group membership there will be conflicts in speech; identity of membership within groups and group identity demand such language.

So, if a society is multi-cultural it will have multiple cultural groups with internal rules of language that serve one group at the expense of another. If a society divides into sub-groups supporting competing guiding ideas and proposing different competing leaders each sub-group will develop rules and patterns of language use for at least that many sub-groups and give rise to what is seen from outside the groups as between group rudeness.

Seems to me this makes conflict involving language almost a certainty. I suspect these competing group dynamics and the demands placed on language use in groupness are why GDP looks like it does.