Freedom of speech: Where do we draw the line?

Twenty years ago you could not mention the acronym “ANC” for fear of being thrown into a jail cell for threatening to over throw the government. Twenty years ago the “no-no” words were “Freedom of speech”. These days the one word that sends shivers down every politically correct yes man is “censorship”. We’ve evolved far too much since the 1980’s to possibly even utter that horrific word. Censorship does not exist in today’s society. That is at least what we are constantly reassured. This opinion piece is centred on a debate that I have heard many people arguing over the span of my short life. At University, however, one stops hearing the generic forms of the argument and instead receives some actual substance. This debate is the typical freedom of speech versus censorship argument except with a bit of a twist. Instead of the usual “I got in sh*t for spray painting ‘evil homophobe with a small penis’ on my principal’s wall, but they cannot shut me up because I have freedom of speech” style argument. In fact I want to steer clear from that angle completely and the question that I’m asking is where is the line drawn? We can all go around parading our freedom of speech bubbles but sometimes I feel like there should be a way to make someone shut the hell up.

I heard a story the other day that made me partly want to tear up at the eyes and partly walk around with a baseball bat embedded with sharp nails. A friend of mine who has a few facial piercings was walking through pick ‘n pay when a middle aged man and his two daughters passed her. The fully grown man then turns to his daughters and says something along the line of, “look at that freak”. I do not think that people like that man should be allowed to procreate let alone have the freedom to choose his own words. If I had it my way that man would have every word from now until the day he dies scripted for him. It is people like this man who make me wish that we had some sort of device that could force people to eat their own words.
The thing is that I may be coming off as a bit of a hypocrite to my friends who know as the girl who WILL get punched in the face one day. The difference is that I joke with people and people like that joke about people. I am not Miss P.C. but in the past few weeks I have started to believe that the line between freedom of speech and hate speech is often blurred. For example a columnist as popular as David Bullard gets fired from the Sunday times and the media is at full attention. An incredible racist group is created on facebook and the only way that I heard about it was through my journalism lecturer. Seems a little bit strange doesn’t it?

I am going to leave this opinion piece open ended so as to encourage debate. If you would like to comment please do so. I would also like to know how many people out there find this column by satirist Ben Trovato as humorous and how many find it revolting? I will post my own answer up next week. http://www.iol.co.za/general/other/lol_container.php?click_id=2904&art_id=vn20080408055345915C514014&set_id=40