The scare for me is that the "right not to be offended" or "hate speech victimhood" can be extended to those who are not the target of siad speech or even part of the conversation. you see this with the definition of hatespeech being peddled all over the place on most news outlets and even on the UK West Yorkshire Police website:

"A Hate Incident is any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a persons disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity or perceived disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity."
- https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/advice/abuse-anti-social-behaviour/hate-crime/hate-crime-hate-incidents/hate-crime-hate-incidents

Perceived hate... by anyone is a "Hate Incident". This is where it gets out of hand and is indefensible, how do you put up a defense against such an accusation? banter with a good friend could be perceived badly by someone else and you've then commited a "Hate Incident". If people have a "right" not to be offended its nt hard to see "hate incidents", which are also reportable anyway, become a "hate crime".

The honor culture parallel had never occurred to me and I find it very interesting.

Well, I agree that we all have free speech, and if someone was offended, then they have the right to say so, but their right doesn't trump someone else's rights. Being offended, or having you feelings hurt should never trump logic and reason. If you don't like what someone said, use logic and reason to counter it, not claim that your feelings are hurt as if that somehow disqualifies a logical and reasonable statement someone had made.

Agreed, however I think these rights should be valued equally in context of the law and wider society. People getting offended is not necessarily an argument against the logic and reason of a position, it may merely serve as a way gauge the public's thoughts on the matter. If you espouse an opinion and it offends lots of people, you can use that information to restructure your argument so it is more palatable for the general public and thus better educate them on the core principles of your position.

As a matter of fact, that is why people resort to "I'm offended." - because they don't have any logical or reasonable argument to make, so they resort to trying to shut the other person up by claiming their feelings are hurt. Again, one's feelings have no bearing on what is true or not.

I am not sure this is true in all cases. Some? Definitely. Most? Probably, but there are a lot of people out there that are simply not eloquent enough to properly formulate their thought process into an appropriate argument and so they resort to "offence" as a reflex. They may have a valid argument, but are simply unable to or are not smart enough to take on a formidable debate opponent. .

This is exactly what I've tried to explain - that different people can be offended by something that someone else isn't offended by. We need to explain why this is the case BEFORE we just start giving people rights that can override one of our other, more fundamental, rights - free speech.

I think you may be misunderstanding this part slightly. Some people are going to get offended and some people are not, true, but my argument here is that being offended on behalf of someone else is completely asinine and counter productive to the point of "being offended" in the context of social discourse. Otherwise, I agree.

I think a good start would to be to ban knowingly stating an opinion as a fact defining the difference as an opinion being the default and fact being information proved to a sufficient (Maybe ~95%? Depends on surcimstance? Ideas?) degree on an independent standard and have freedom to express opinions trump the right not to be offended but only when there is no way of using the former that does not violate the latter. Also perhaps a law against ranting at people who have expressed dislike of the view and/or speaker but I dunno how this could be enforced. For exsample the almost universally offensive with good reason phrase "Trans people should die because they all have HIV" would be changed by the first to "I think trans people should die because I suspect they all have HIV" would be changed by the second to "I dislike trans people and I suspect they are desies vectors". This is still not good but random assholes may be the cost of not possibly acsidentaly blocking comments with some value some time in the future. At least this is the best general ruleset I can think of without preventing flow of any opinions completely. Also questions, like what if someone wants to ask " do Jews really eat babies?" It's not a nice thing to be asked but what if this person was raised in an isolated and bigoted place and is honestly unsure? An unpleasant question is better than this person continuing like that.
TL:DR I think preventing offensiveness completely could be a problem, like what if there's opinions that can't be expressed without being offensive, it should be said if for no other reason that people should know to avoid that person.

Yeah, I thought Cathy Newman's question points to the terrible state of modern academia and our education systems, of which she is a product.

To take seriously even for a moment the proposition that people have a "right not to be offended" seems to me to be quite mad.

People certainly have something like a right to due consideration and politeness, etc., depending on context. But a "right not to be offended?" - the abyss opens up right there. It really is just a power play by a quasi-religious political cult that seems to have blindsided Western civilization and wormed its way to a frightening degree of cultural hegemony (particularly as exacerbated by social media).

Enough is enough, it's time we stopped indulging these lunatics.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, known for his critique of political correctness and offense-sensitivity in the context of higher education, has presented a formidable defence of his position in a recent interview with Cathy Newman.

In response to Ms Newman’s question why his right to freedom of speech should trump a person’s right not to be offended, Peterson said: “Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive. (...) You’re certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth.” (Daily Wire) To Ms Newman’s credit she did not attempt to push the point, what was a wise thing to do as she would be committing what Jürgen Habermas called a ‘performative contradiction’. Peterson’s argument is almost a textbook reference to Discourse Ethics, a transcendental-pragmatic position developed by Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel (see On What is Right: The Problem of Grounding in Ethics).

According to Apel (Selected Essays: Ethics and the Theory of Rationality. Humanities Press International, 1996), “Humanity is in essence linguistic, and therefore depends always already for its thinking on consensual communication.”(p211) “The logical justification for our thought” therefore commits us to “understand arguments critically” and to “mutually recognize each other as participants with equal rights in the discussion.”(p29) The claim of ‘right not to be offended’ is incompatible with these conditions, as it either monopolises the discussion (makes a subjective demand of another to limit expression) or precludes understanding (if both parties claim offence). In any case, subjective judgement about what is offensive cannot even hypothetically be the basis of a normative principle (Setiya, Kieran. Explaining Action. The Philosophical Review, 2003). Setiya shows that subjective judgement provides only explanation of our reasons, not their objective justification.

There is a deeper logical consequence to Apel’s premise that all meaning, and therefore all thinking, is a product of public deliberation. If we were limited only to discussing things we already agreed on then no new meaning could ever emerge, no evolution of rationality, language or consciousness would be possible, because the process of transition from meaninglessness to meaningfulness would be barred. Deliberation is possible only if there is a mutual capacity to tolerate disagreement, but its application transcends disagreement even if explicit resolution cannot be achieved. It makes us who we are for ourselves and for one another, being the basis of our existence as thinking, conscious agents: a necessary condition of everything we believe in and of everything we value.

If disagreement can be used as a justification of personal offence than this is not an indictment on the subject-matter, the truth-claims or the value-commitments we disagree about, but an indictment on the possibility of rational justification of being offended. By imposing limits on what can be publicly discussed, on what claims can be defended, on what words can or must be used, deliberation is shut down, and little by little our meaning and therefore our identity fade away... in the ‘safe space’ of non-contention. The ‘right not to be offended’ entails that we value our existence, or our identity, but it also entails active nihilism, a pursuit of non-existence and non-identity, therefore a contradiction. If we do value our existence then we are rationally committed to accept the necessary condition of our existence - tolerance of disagreement - even if we don’t like how disagreement sometimes makes us feel.

(this is an abridged version of my article originally published on CulturalAnalysis.Net)

Actually, I don't know exactly what laws govern free speech in Canada. In the US, the first amendment concerns what the government can and can not do: — Bitter Crank

Free speech in Canada is not absolute, we define "Reasonable Limits", acceptable and justifiable in a free and democratic society, as per the Canadian Charter of Rights.

For example, telling someone they should commit suicide here is a serious criminal offence that can land you a decade in prison, weither or not suicide actually ensue.

Peterson did not just offend. He offered to create a Watchdog website tracking and scoring Higher Ed teachers according to their degree of Marxism/Pomo-ism. That's libel right there.

I do n`t even get why it might be considered that an individual has not got the right not to be offended in the first instance? I get that he might not have the power to off set a legal process where he or she was perceived to of been the victim. That is an entirely different concept though. It must be jargon for something entirely different then?
Do you consider that it should n`t be a criminal offence to offend someone no matter in what circumstances. Say, for instance, and it happened, I`m leaving the gym floor by the stairs but my punching the air, I`d managed a personal best time, causes a girl to have a panic attack,, and from this time on I`m accused of being a pervert and potential paedophile, thus compromising my safety. Is this not to be considered criminal?
I experience most of the threads here as no more than a group of people trying to prove how logical they are of thinking, and masterful they are of writing, but take me to anywhere where actual philosophy is in progression.. Even if it were the subject matter would likely be so obscure as to have no value beyond its mental exercise. All that could be worthwhile philosophical process is passed over presumably because it is considered beneath one to concern themselves over it?

Did you know that one of the 7 viable legal defenses for libel is that the libel in question is actually true?

I'm taking a different approach to this right not to be offended.

It's quite confusing this whole issue.

One might say that if one has a healthy sense of self-esteem then some acts are offensive and need to be reacted to. Taking offense then is part of being a normal human being.

Viewed another way, immunity to offense is virtuous of character. Only the sage or the enlightened are wise enough to know that insults are empty of any real content and if they show anything its weakness of character on the part of the offender.

All in all it seems one doesn't need a right to be not offended. Rather one needs wisdom to be not offended.

I've been pointing out in this thread that we need to get at the reasons why some are offended and some aren't, but no one seems to want to tackle it.

One's self-esteem is the key here. It is those with high self-esteem that don't get offended and those without it do get offended. I don't know of anyone with a healthy dose of self-worth that gets offended by someone else's words. It is only those that are weak-willed and overly invest their emotions in whatever belief that they have that get offended. When someone questions their belief, they get offended.

It is when you have a reasonable and valid counter to some "offensive" statement that you don't resort to saying, "I'm offended." It is only when you don't have a valid counter, that one resorts to being "offended". If you had a valid counter, why would you ever resort to being "offended"? Which would you choose if you had the option - being offended, or logic and reason?

Society is promoting mass delusion. People think that because most people believe it and regurgitate it, then it must be true. They don't bother questioning the veracity of the belief. They just follow the herd. The moderators (or at least one of them) are one of these kinds of people. They just delete posts when they don't agree with you. They don't have a valid argument to make. Instead they resort to being offended and delete your posts. The standards are set pretty low to be mod. Why bother trying to reason with someone and explain why your post shouldn't be deleted when they don't value reason in the first place? They only value their opinion and anything that counters it is just offensive because they don't have any way to back it up, so they use their "hurt feelings", or the possibility that it hurts other people's feelings, as an excuse to shut other people up.

It is not libel then is it, so you would n`t require a defense for libel,, only the evidence that it is true. it`s the other six that we might not know., short of pressing a few buttons that is. In that case which I exampled the girls panic attack was serviced by an overly jealous older man, I had already known him to be jealous, and quite possibly also a sociopath, he was jealous or otherwise required to service his psychological projection. Jealous not because of anything to do with this girl, I`d never communicated with her, nor even knew her, but jealous because I was noticed by younger women., this one as luck would have it for him in the wrong light. I`m not here, only words on a page, perhaps at best 40% of full communication, so it becomes a totally pointless exercise should those words not be accepted.

I am banned from most philosophy sites as consequence to being the last person to speak, so coming up with a final answer. Those that run them can apparently be very arrogant, for they do n`t tend to tolerate one person coming up with final answers on the majority of what they consider to be their topics. . I have not experienced any such arrogance from owners through moderates on this forum. They`ll do what they consider is for the best, hopefully, the debate, if they were to have one with us, would likely be an endless one, one serving further frustration.

Say, for instance, and it happened, I`m leaving the gym floor by the stairs but my punching the air, I`d managed a personal best time, causes a girl to have a panic attack,, and from this time on I`m accused of being a pervert and potential paedophile, thus compromising my safety. Is this not to be considered criminal? — celebritydiscodave

Wait, what? So you were punching the air and a girl had a panic attack, and because of this incident you are now accused of being a pervert and a pedophile? Is the implication supposed to be that this girl spread lies about you assaulting her? Because that has nothing to do with the topic of this discussion. That would be slander, which is spoken defamation. Not a criminal offense, but you can legally bring a lawsuit against the person. This discussion is about whether people do or should have a legal right to simply not be offended. In your example, you can legally sue her because she spread lies about you, not because what she said was offensive to you. There's a huge difference.

Well, a couple of questions, first.

What is meant by "right"? I think there are no rights but legal rights; those enshrined in the law and subject to enforcement under the law. When "rights" which are not legal rights are spoken of, they're spoken of as if they were legal rights, and their infringement prohibited in some real sense.

Is there a legal right not to be offended? No.

Is the question about something that isn't a legal right? I'm uncertain what that might be, but I think that what is usually meant when it's asked whether a non-legal "right" exists, is whether "there oughta be a law" or whether something shouldn't be done--in this case, whether we shouldn't do something which will offend others. And that answer to that inquiry is: "It depends."

We're on the same page. When a movement insists that a right exists, but does not exist, my reading between the lines is that they'd like it to be legislated. So, I was wondering if anyone had a compelling case to make that this would be good for society.

Personally, I find it absurd and, as I noted, scary. Just trying to check myself before I wreck myself. Sometimes the smart folks here see angles that aren't apparent to me.

Not in Canada. Libel and slander covers anything which is stated as factually true, even if it is broadly believed, and the truth or falsity of the claim is not to be evaluated by the judge. Otherwise you encourage "scorched-earth" defences, where when you would want to libel about one thing, you libel about the whole life of the person you attack, and then force the court to go through every embarassing details of the life of the accuser. Even if you end up found guilty, you've done more damaged by way of the judicial process than by the infraction itself.

CCQ 1457. Every person has a duty to abide by the rules of conduct which lie upon him, according to the circumstances, usage or law, so as not to cause injury to another.

Where he is endowed with reason and fails in this duty, he is responsible for any injury he causes to another person by such fault and is liable to reparation for the injury, whether it be bodily, moral or material in nature.

He is also liable, in certain cases, to reparation for injury caused to another by the act or fault of another person or by the act of things in his custody.[/quote]

Not in Canada. Libel and slander covers anything which is stated as factually true, even if it is broadly believed, and the truth or falsity of the claim is not to be evaluated by the judge. Otherwise you encourage "scorched-earth" defences, where when you would want to libel about one thing, you libel about the whole life of the person you attack, and then force the court to go through every embarassing details of the life of the accuser. Even if you end up found guilty, you've done more damaged by way of the judicial process than by the infraction itself. — Akanthinos

Actually in Canada you can indeed demonstrate that the offending speech is true as a defense against a defamation lawsuit.

From the Canadian Bar Association:

"A statement may hurt your reputation, but if it is true, anyone who says it has a valid defense if you sue them for defamation. They just have to prove, on the balance of probability, that their statement is true."

https://www.cbabc.org/For-the-Public/Dial-A-Law/Scripts/Your-Rights/240

When professors openly subscribe to and promote post-modern ideas, and then some students tell one another about it, it's not the student's fault; it's the fault of the professor.

This topic seems to be making the rounds on various sites after the Peterson interview. Popping up in a lot of places (good!).

A quote from Salmon Rushdie:
“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read. If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people. I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down."

From the Canadian Bar Association:

"A statement may hurt your reputation, but if it is true, anyone who says it has a valid defense if you sue them for defamation. They just have to prove, on the balance of probability, that their statement is true."

https://www.cbabc.org/For-the-Public/Dial-A-Law/Scripts/Your-Rights/240

When professors openly subscribe to and promote post-modern ideas, and then some students tell one another about it, it's not the student's fault; it's the fault of the professor. — VagabondSpectre

Well, Bar website tend not to give the full picture. This part only applies to Fair and Accurate Report in a newspaper. Again, the Law is very clear :

Libel and Slander Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12

Where plaintiff to recover only actual damages

(2) The plaintiff shall recover only actual damages if it appears on the trial,

(a) that the alleged libel was published in good faith;

(b) that the alleged libel did not involve a criminal charge;

(c) that the publication of the alleged libel took place in mistake or misapprehension of the facts; and

(d) that a full and fair retraction of any matter therein alleged to be erroneous,

(i) was published either in the next regular issue of the newspaper or in any regular issue thereof published within three days after the receipt of the notice mentioned in subsection (1) and was so published in as conspicuous a place and type as was the alleged libel, or

(ii) was broadcast either within a reasonable time or within three days after the receipt of the notice mentioned in subsection (1) and was so broadcast as conspicuously as was the alleged libel. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 5 (2).

means that a libel suit can be pursued and won despite the alleged facts to be true, because a faithful publication of a misapprehension of facts in a newspaper that led to a full retractation can still lead to actual damages being paid.

Perhaps are you thinking about the requirement for a criminal defamation suit? That's not necessary. It's always easier to go the Civil Law route.

If you publish a misapprehension of the facts, that means you've published something that was not true, so the justification defense obviously would not work under such circumstances.

Here's from the document you've quoted (toward the bottom)

Justification

22 In an action for libel or slander for words containing two or more distinct charges against the plaintiff, a defence of justification shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every charge is not proved if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining charges. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 22.

Fair comment

23 In an action for libel or slander for words consisting partly of allegations of fact and partly of expression of opinion, a defence of fair comment shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every allegation of fact is not proved if the expression of opinion is fair comment having regard to such of the facts alleged or referred to in the words complained of as are proved. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 23.

Listen folks, If I happen to hold a political opinion that other people find offensive on an emotional level, does that mean that my right to hold and express beliefs and opinions (necessary for democracy) is trumped by the emotional whims of any random citizen?

The idea that causing emotional offense is somehow a worse reality than censoring political speech is so juvenile that it disgusts me. (you might say I'm offended, which would mean that everyone suggesting that the right to not be offended trumps free speech needs to be censored.

Why are children to interested in communism these days anyway? I was a communist when I was a teenager too, but did nobody remember to tell these twenty-somethings that the un-feasibility of large scale communism is what necessitated the gulags?

For those of you who don't know, the gulag's were a set of prisons (generally in Stalin's Siberian Russia) where they sent anyone and everyone who held political views which did not whole-heartedly support the party. Under Stalin approximately 2-3 million people were tortured, worked to death, and executed primarily because the state wanted their offensive and subversive opinions censored.

a defence of justification shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every charge is not proved if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining charges.

Reread. That only tells you how the court behaves when there are multiple incidence of a libel in a single cause.

As for Fair Comment, that's because statement of opinions cannot lead to a libel cause. Statements of facts and statement of opinions are to be distinguished by the court.

There's text, and there's subtext.

As un said earlier in the thread, a small group like this forum, or any voluntary society, has rules about people's remarks not being offensive. I'm glad of them; to be frank I find people ruder online than I feel comfortable with, and sometimes I don't even come to this relatively civilised forum because some posters are more aggressive than I can handle.

I quite accept that there is no 'right not to be offended'.

There is nevertheless, among civilised people, normally a tacit rule that one is not rude to others. When people are aggressive in their arguments I suspect their rationality is flimsy. When people insist that their need to express their opinion is more important than their feeling of mutual respect towards other people, I doubt their goodwill.

Reread. That only tells you how the court behaves when there are multiple incidence of a libel in a single cause. — Akanthinos

It adds a caveat that a justification defense shall not fail if the defendant stated additional untrue things which did not happen to defame the plaintiff. Are you suggesting that a justification defense can work in cases of multiple "charges" but not in cases of singular "charges"?

So if I accused you of something defamatory that was true, and additionally accused you of something that was untrue but not defamatory, you could not overcome my justification defense based on my misapprehension of the non-defamatory facts.

You `re so thick, you do n`t know how panic attacks work, and what do you imagine would be the benefit to me of coming here and making what happened up? You have no instinct for correct information, so you very definitely have no ability for philosophy. Panic attacks are not even concerned with the real world. My instinct picked up on your direction before you even moved, did n`t it, but you are clueless, and make everything up to suit your own flights of fancy as you go along. My teenage friends, mostly unemployed, qualified for nothing, are at the same time bright enough to know how their own specie functions, none of them have felt the need to question my account of events. What is the point of storing all that information when you can do nothing of any benefit to people with it, and as for the information it`s only two clicks away. I have not read much of the above because its immaturity is too far beneath me, and them for that matter, to bother. Good luck with your data storage though, pity about your philosophy.

I read through your comments in this thread while trying to discern what you actually believe, but I'm still not sure if you think you were "morally wrong" for air-boxing (different than suggesting air-boxing should be illegal) because it caused someone to have a panic attack, or if you think the person who had the panic attack was "morally wrong" (still different than legally wrong) for defaming you as pedophile and a pervert.

So hypothetically, do you think we should never air-box when strangers might see us and possibly have panic attacks?

Do you think the victim of your "airboxing" ought to express herself by labeling you as a pedophile/pervert?

I legitimately have no idea what you're on about or why you are being so hostile and insulting towards me. Is English your first language? If not, I'm assuming that's why you seem to have misunderstood me so severely. Nowhere did I say or even imply that you were lying, I was simply trying to clarify what you were actually saying because your manner of speaking (or typing, I guess) is quite difficult to understand.

Hot topic lately, which I find rather scary. To be clear, such a 'right' does not currently exist. But there seems to be a movement that seeks to establish it. Anyone care to defend the position that this would be good for society? — Roke

You are being extremely oversimplistic, in my humble opinion.

A right is a justified claim.

Rights depend on context. Something like voting in elections might be a civil right but not a human right.

With other rights, such as the right to finish what you are saying in a conversation without being interrupted, it is not so clear--we can't immediately appeal to status as a citizen or status as a human--what makes them a justified claim. It could be intuition that we have inherited from thousands of years of evolution that makes us recognize such a right. It could be that language and the use of language come with unspoken rights.

Clearly we can't just dismiss something as not being a right based on limited, biased things like our own culture's traditions, laws and values, even if the consequences scare us.

Just because we acknowledge/recognize a right doesn't necessarily mean wholesale cultural and political change. The U.S. Supreme Court could acknowledge a right not to be offended but say that it is outside of the scope of the U.S. Constitution.

In my humble opinion, your concern and the discussion it creates distract us from clearer, but well-obscured, realities. I could be wrong, but I think that it is safe to say that words--as in everyday, ho-hum exchanges, not just the exchange of ideas in political and scholarly contexts--can be very harmful and do a lot of psychological damage. If we acknowledge that words can damage a psyche and cause a lot of suffering just like pollution can damage lungs and cause a lot of suffering, that completely changes the nature of the issue. It takes us from what people do or do not like / approve of to what does or does not harm people and cause avoidable suffering. The latter, in my humble opinion, is where our focus should be. Only listening carefully and employing empathy will tell us if a social movement is the result of people's untold pain and suffering from verbal abuse or is simply people being extreme narcissists who believe that they are entitled to freedom from any words that they do not like or approve of. I don't sense that there is much of the latter going on, so I don't see what there is to be scared of.