The Amish Jihadist

Agreed. I’ll take my riot grrrls over any politician any day of the week!

No surprise on some of these issues regarding free speech. I knew Harvard would be there! 

As I’m sure you’ll agree, a few of these instances are not as black and white as painted here. For instance, the fraternities (an ongoing problem at a number of institutions) shouting violent obscenities to, specifically, women, is a form of harassment that terrorizes, belittles, and positions these women into a position of submission in so much as they just have to ‘take it’, and it creates violent atmosphere that women should have the ‘right’ to not have to endure (just as it did in the 60′s with white people exercising their ‘free speech’ to harass people of color). So, when the school says, “You cannot do that”, this is not simply a matter of, “You’ve trampled on my rights!” as much as you have the competing claims of rights of the people being jeered at to not have to endure being harassed. This is especially the case, for instance, at private universities where your social contract with them extends their power over you to determine what you can and cannot say and wear. So, while just as some fundamentalist universities actually police interracial dating (or forbid same sex relations), the opposite end of the spectrum also has a tendency to police those they deem ‘dangerously’ conservative. It’s a mess, to be sure. The issues, in some cases, is how we allow speech that does actively do harm and where that line is drawn for the protection of our citizens. It’s not always easy to know, but the lovely thing about a participatory form of democracy (I’ve heard rumors that these exist) is that we are the government and we can make these sort of decisions. 

Well, sometimes. I don’t know. But yeah, in the case with Pussy Riot (thank God I’m allowed to write that without being policed on here–ahhh….ya see!?), if their actions could be considered a form of trespassing that would be one thing, but it seems that they are just expressing their frustrations with their government (and its connections to the Church–which is interesting given Russia’s history) and the government (or the Church) is just not having it. That’s why these gals wear masks. They’re have no real choice. As the great punk rock band Anti-Flag once wrote, “Why do you make us scream at you?” (That’s a paraphrase, I need to find the actual quote).