Earlier today, I RTd a tweet linking to this story by Tauriq Moosa for The Guardian, which takes the position that comments sections should either be heavily moderated or simply shut down. I strongly agree with this position.

I got a few tweets in response to my tweet.

One response said, “You agree because you lot ironically can’t handle criticism, not entirely because people are nasty.”

Well, no, the issue for me isn’t criticism, unless you consider it “criticism” when people leave comments calling me a “tranny” or an “abomination” or that, in more subtle yet no less hateful ways, make an issue out of my being trans. 

In this great conversation between bell hooks and Laverne Cox (at around the 46:30 mark), hooks tells a story about inviting the writer Janet Mock, who is trans, to her home. “One of my sisters,” hooks says, “was like ‘Well, I’m not coming to your house because she’s an abomination,’…and there are times then in our life when we have to choose and I had to say, 'Well, you’re gonna have to stay away,’ because I don’t allow that kind of violence." 

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I love that. And just as I wouldn’t allow people in my home to spout hateful ideas, I don’t believe that sites should, either. It is important to establish that certain views are simply not permissible. In fact, I think it is vital to the advancement of our culture that the expression of such ideas be strongly discouraged, that people who engage in such expression be shamed, that the ideas themselves be treated as reprehensible. It is some small sign of progress, for instance, that more people now think twice about publicly throwing about homophobic slurs that were a lot more common 20 or 30 years ago. Treating ideas that are rooted in hate as ugly and unacceptable is part of how we move forward.

When we stand by and allow racist language, homophobic language, misogynistic language, transphobic language, to be used, we are saying, "These are ideas that are permissible.” We are lending them legitimacy. These views should not be treated as legitimate. If people want to create their own private online communities where they all revel in racist or homophobic or transphobic ideologies, let them do that. But we don’t all have to treat such vile notions as worthy of taking up space in discussions about this political issue or the quality of that movie or video game. Newspapers don’t have to publish every hateful letter they receive in response to an editorial, and websites don’t have to allow every comment on an article. Indeed, I think sites have a responsibility to either shape the discussion into something relevant and constructive, or to simply shut comments sections down. 

Another response I got on Twitter read, “or how about getting some backbone and shrug it off like a strong woman should.”

Ha! Look, I can fucking take it. I’ve read it all, believe you me. That’s not the issue. The issue is what it says to the people who hold these ideas if they are freely allowed to use hateful language and express hateful ideas on privately owned websites. The appropriate response of our society to racist, homophobic, misogynistic, or transphobic ideas is not to shrug our shoulders and say “Look, some people are just always going to hate trans people, just let them keep expressing their views and don’t get all bent out of shape about it." 

No. In spaces both physical and online, it should be made clear to people that such violence has no place.