Against the Harm Argument for Censorship: On the Abuse of Psychology and the Dismissal of Rights

Abstract

<p>Several recent arguments trying to justify further free speech restrictions by appealing to harms that are allegedly serious enough to warrant such restrictions regularly fail to provide sufficient empirical evidence and normative argument. The two recent arguments critically examined here confirm this picture. Ann E. Cudd tries to make all kinds of clearly protected free speech responsible for “trauma.” However, she misrepresents the psychological studies she relies on and her account legitimizes anti-speech violence on a massive scale, which renders it morally absurd. Melina Constantine Bell tries to combine John Stuart Mill and psychological studies to argue that sexist and racial jokes and slurs produce severe harm and should therefore be restricted. Yet the studies are flimsy and the picture of Mill unrecognizable. I will, then, address, as a corrective to the one-sidedness of those who warn against the alleged harms of free speech, the harms imposed by <em>compelled</em> speech, using the topical example of compelling people to use female pronouns for males who claim to be women. I show that this practice is abusive and wrongful. I conclude with a reminder about the nature of liberal democracy. Its <em>raison d’être</em> is not protection from harm <em>per se</em> but the safeguarding of freedom. There are no convincing reasons to further restrict or, especially, to compel speech, but every reason to defend free speech.<br></p>