I keep wondering where the saying and idea that goes with “Sticks and Stones” went.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally get that trauma and even lasting effects (both positive and negative) can happen by way of words ...
But (and I just heavy sighed here) ... stopping or controlling the words that other people use isn’t the way through to understanding.
Limiting speech only creates echo chambers, limits transparency and squelches new ideas.
(Here I mean speech of nearly every kind - we know that intentional words that cause groups to move too quickly and to their own detriment are a sort of line in the sand if we’re to live in relative non-chaos)
Free speech is so foundational - and I’m willing to consider that it’s a limitation on how I understand the world operates, but at the same time we create our environments by way of what we think we know - that can be a plus.
So, where there are many possibilities in this world for me to see. The foundational piece seem to trump possibility for me in this case.
The foundation is what ALL of the possibility can be built on.
Hence, I think, this (atypically static) understanding of and antenna up around the topic of Free Speech - for me.
It came up again recently.
A few weeks ago both of my daughters were home ... and one of the boyfriends.
We were sitting in the living room talking about this and that and this topic came up.
One daughter and her boyfriend are attending their first and second year at University.
So, free speech comes up and an example of a college student somewhere being canceled and kicked out of school because of video on social media somewhere with them using (in an admittedly ugly way - not like in some other instances where it’s been part of the conversation and still cancelling has happened - I need to get a specific reference for that)...
And my younger daughter was like “that seems right and proper - that’s hate speech, that person is a racist and that’s not cool” (said with certainty that can come with the notself
undefined ajna LOLOL)
My older daughter however, had a very different take - I think because she’s been elbow deep in listening to the conversation around it for the last year.
She said, “what that person SAID might be considered racist [don't ever tell me context doesn’t matter], but that’s not Hate Speech, shouldn’t automatically lead to canceling and what it makes that person is an asshole.”
Which brings me back to “sticks and stones”
I swear, I was raised on simple ideas like this - and they’ve only served me well.
——————
Things I was called growing up related to my melanin - zebra, oreo, high yellow, light skinned (in not a positive way), passing, mutt, biracial, etc.
To me they were observational, not personal. And they were about the other person - not actually “about” me.
See the difference in lenses?
Edited to add this poem that says the other truth:
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can also hurt me.
Stones and sticks break only skin, while words are ghosts that haunt me.
Slant and curved the word-swords fall, it pierces and sticks inside me.
Bats and bricks may ache through bones, but words can mortify me.
Pain from words has left its' scar, on mind and heart that's tender.
Cuts and bruises have not healed, it's words that I remember.
Ruby Redfort