Freedom of Expression and Virtue

Some thoughts on principles

I. Consequentialism

I would like it if people read writing¹ I think is good, and didn’t read writing I think is bad. I take active steps to make this happen.

I think this is the elephant in the room in a lot of discourse about freedom of expression.² Principled believers in freedom of expression are a tiny and lonely minority. The vast majority of people who cry “freedom of expression!” are mad that someone is making it harder to access writing they like. If someone’s making it harder to access writing they don’t like, they’re all for it. They’re just claiming to have principles because having principles makes you sympathetic in arguments.

On the left, of course, we have people who suddenly start caring about freedom of speech once their own tactics start being used against Students for Justice In Palestine. On the right, we have people taking a break from complaining about cancel culture to get a graphic novel memoir about trans people removed from public libraries. Or free-speech warrior Chris Rufo getting so offended by the political opinions of faculty at my alma mater that he took everything that made it what it was and destroyed it and built a different, worse school out of the buildings.³

Or, this blog loves picking on Abigail Shrier, let’s pick on Abigail Shrier. Abigail Shrier has argued that Amazon should be legally required to carry “the widest array of books.” She argues:

As a direct result of Amazon’s action [removing the anti-trans book When Harry Became Sally], many outstanding books will now go unwritten; they will not be commissioned whenever Amazon’s distribution is the slightest bit in doubt. As I write this, authors are being dropped by agents or politely refused representation, based on what the agents now know Amazon will not carry. “I’m just thinking of your career,” agents will say. “Why not try something a little less inflammatory?” (A little more Amazon-friendly). Publishers will apply endless euphemisms for “no,” to otherwise worthy proposals. Why should publishers spend sleepless nights worrying that Amazon will unaccountably vaporize their investment?

This is the “chilling effect” of censorship, John Milton called the “greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him.” When censorship is imposed by the government—or the world’s third largest multinational—it forbids new life like a frost.

Now, Amazon occasionally refuses to carry unpopular culture war books, this is true. But by far the most and most arbitrarily censored group of people are writers of erotica. Amazon provides no guidance about what books it will refuse to carry, but the good people at the Erotica Authors subreddit have managed to put together some of its ever-shifting criteria. You can’t write stories where consenting adults agree to roleplay a rape. You can’t write teenagers having sex. You can write stories about people having sex with nonhumans, as long as those nonhumans either are humanoid or bear no resemblance to currently living animals. Sex with sapient T. Rexes is okay, but sex with sapient mammoths is not (too close to elephants). Sex with werewolves is okay if they’re in human form, but not if they’re in wolf form. Sex with Cthulhu is all right. Sex with mermaids is Right Out.⁴

Bestiality? Photo by Emily Goodhart on Unsplash.

Needless to say, books about teenagers having sex, consenting adults roleplaying rape, and mermaid sex are all protected speech under U.S. law.

In short, if the law Abigail Shrier proposed passed, it would lead to the publication of approximately three anti-trans books and three million books where the hero fucks a mermaid.

I… do not think that this is Abigail Shrier’s intention? Maybe she’s better than I think she is, but everything I’ve read of her writing suggests that she would prefer that people not have access to nigh-infinite amounts of bestiality porn. She just… didn’t think about it. When she says “Amazon should be legally required to carry the widest array of books,” she doesn’t mean books like that, gross books, sexual books, books that—well—she doesn’t think people should read. Amazon should be legally required to carry books that Abigail Shrier thinks are legitimate and deserving!

When I say this is unprincipled, I don’t mean it’s bad. Like I said, I too like it when it’s easy to read writing I think is good and when it’s hard to read writing I think is bad. I am mad about what happened to New College of Florida because I love my alma mater, not because I have some kind of universal opposition to bringing in a new board of trustees to change the direction a college is going. I object to the reviewbombing of innocuous novels that happen not to follow social justice shibboleths, but not of the Holocaust romance novel where the Jewish heroine falls in love with a Nazi. I am mad that people were cruel to science fiction writer Isabel Fall; I don’t have a moral objection to ever criticizing a story you haven’t read.⁵

But I think it’s good to be clear on what you believe and why. You don’t think that Amazon should carry the widest array of books; you think that Amazon should carry books you agree with. I don’t object to harsh criticisms of stories the criticizer hasn’t read; I think you shouldn’t speculate that an author using a female pseudonym is a cis man because only a cis man would write something so offensive. That’s fine! You can believe that people should say some things, which have good consequences, and shouldn’t say other things, which have bad consequences! You are allowed to have opinions which are responsive to the facts of the situation!

II. Deontology

But I am, in fact, one of the lonely few with principles, marching around with a sign that says I HAVE ABSOLUTE CONTEMPT FOR YOU, BUT AS MUCH AS IT PAINS ME I GUESS I’LL DEFEND YOU EXPRESSING YOUR REPREHENSIBLE IDEAS.

If you don’t feel that way about some people you’re defending, either you don’t have freedom-of-expression principles or you’re a saint.

Partially, my reluctant sign-holding comes from humility. I’m not right about everything. And there is no guarantee that I’m only wrong about things I feel comfortable being wrong about. It is possible that—and this is very difficult for me to admit—the correct beliefs are held by repulsive, despicable people, the kind of people that I can’t argue with because I become incoherent with rage. Maybe women belong in the home submitting to their husbands, or it’s morally wrong to have disgusting sex, or Hell exists and it is right for God to torture people for eternity. Maybe it’s good when Haitian children die of preventable diseases, or when chickens contract flesh-eating bacteria because they’re so large their legs break and they can’t move out of their own manure, or when Harlow tortured monkey children for science.

After all, those people, the ones who believe those horrible things, find me repulsive and despicable, become incoherent with rage at my beliefs, and can’t imagine any world where my beliefs are right. One of us has got to be wrong. To be sure, it’s them, not me. But I am not arrogant enough to cut off all possibility that, if I’m wrong, I’ll be corrected.

The free marketplace of ideas has a lot of problems as a way of finding truth, but it is sure an improvement on the Index of Forbidden Books.

But I think freedom of expression also has a positive value. Humans are thinking, creative, and social beings. Part of living a good life is trying to understand the world around you, wrestling with ideas, coming to your own understanding of the Good. And part of living a good life is expressing your ideas, your feelings, and your experiences—through poetry, through art, through fiction, through angry and poorly thought-out Facebook posts. But you can’t try to understand the world if you’ve already written the answer you’re supposed to get at the bottom of the paper. And you can’t express yourself if you’re limited to expressions that other people find acceptable.

By the same token, other people’s freedom of expression benefits you too. Your beliefs are stronger if people you disagree with are holding you to account for sloppy thinking. Other people’s self-expression gives you insight into people very different from you, the rich tapestry of human diversity. Plus, often it’s fun to read.

And yet there are limits on freedom of expression.⁶ I’m against job discrimination based on people’s speech: you aren’t meaningfully able to exercise freedom of expression if you might lose your job for what you say. But surely the Catholic Church gets to defrock public atheists, a libertarian think tank can refuse to hire an open Communist, and a record label can end their contract with a musician who announces that she thinks redheads don’t have souls.

Freedom of expression trades off against other important values: religious freedom, the right to petition the government, freedom of association, the ability to run certain kinds of organizations at all. Sometimes it even trades off against other people’s freedom of expression. You might legitimately feel silenced by me calling you an idiot, but it would be an unacceptable limitation on my freedom of expression to demand that I always be polite.⁷

So a lot of the deontological rules we freedom-of-expression types adopt are strange and arbitrary. Not all of them are, of course: as Abigail Shrier and I both believe, Amazon is morally (if not legally) obligated to carry both anti-trans manifestos and mermaid porn. But the particular tradeoffs we wind up making often feel hard to justify.

For example, libraries have limited budgets and shelf space, so they have to decide which books to carry and which books not to carry. In the name of freedom of expression, the American Library Association has spent decades passionately advocating for the principle that library curation decisions should be made only by librarians and not by members of the public.

I mean, I agree with the ALA? While there are of course glaring exceptions, librarians in the U.S. mostly have been taught that their job is to present all points of view on important issues and to provide users with the books they want to read—regardless of the librarian’s moral beliefs. At my local public library, I can read COVID denialist propaganda, an author widely accused of making rape and abuse seem romantic, The Bell Curve, and even When Harry Became Sally. On the other hand, the interested members of the public are universally censorious assholes who swoon if they read the fuck word. I support the former group making decisions! But I can easily imagine going the other way, if librarians were snotty pretentious people concerned with “misinformation” and uplifting the proles, and the members of the public wanted their bad anti-trans books and smutty romance novels.

Similarly, Greg Lukianoff and Adam Goldstein from pro-freedom-of-expression organization FIRE⁸ defined the objectionable part of cancel culture as “campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is — or would be — protected by First Amendment standards.” A campaign is “a concerted activity” aimed at the goal. Simply (e.g.) choosing not to read a magazine, or even urging others not to read it, doesn’t meet the standard.

I like this standard and I’m going to try to abide by it. But it’s so weird!

• I’m allowed to refuse to go to a conference because a speaker thinks we should all kick kittens out third-story windows.

• I’m allowed to tell other people they shouldn’t go to the conference because a speaker thinks we should all kick kittens out third-story windows.

• The conference organizers are allowed to pick speakers based on what will make people want to go to the conference.

• I’m NOT allowed to suggest that the conference should pick different speakers who think we should hug kittens instead.

All this makes sense. You shouldn’t ethically mandate conference attendance or forbid bad reviews or attempts by conferences to make a profit. And “the conference should pick different speakers” is associated with all kinds of bad behavior: “anyone who attends this conference supports kicking kittens out of third-story windows,” “call the conference venue and let them know that this is a pro-kitten-window-kicking conference,” etc. This isn’t an accident. Not going to a conference, or advising others not to go to a conference, is a private, personal decision. “The conference should drop its speakers” moves the discussion into the realm of the public—an area with many more weapons to be used against those who disagree. No one has a right to an audience, and private-realm actions just mean the speaker has the audience that actually wants to listen to her. She has no reasonable complaint if the answer is “no one” Public-realm actions have the potential to dissuade people who actually want to hear what the speaker has to say—which is much more dangerous.

But it’s still a bit strange to draw the line at making explicit the logical implication of what you’re saying.

III. Virtue Ethics

Rules are important. The First Amendment is the best thing about America, and all other countries ought to copy it. Amazon shouldn’t censor books based on content. Librarians should make library curation decisions. The world would be much better if everyone considered it unthinkable to fire someone for speech that had nothing to do with their job.

But rules about freedom of expression are both strange and inadequate. I think that’s because they aren’t enough. A culture of free expression can’t be built by rules alone. Too many situations require individual judgment, and a one-size-fits-all rule can’t apply: a librarian deciding, based on the needs of her community, how many anti-vaccine books she ought to have in her collection; a magazine publisher trying to avoid both groupthink and spreading falsehoods; an individual picking what books she wants to read and who she wants to be friends with. And no amount of protecting freedom of expression can make you change your mind when you’re wrong. You have to do that.

In short: people need to cultivate virtuous attitudes: humility and curiosity and forgiveness and tolerance and willingness to admit error.

I am lucky enough to know many people who live out the virtue of freedom of expression.⁹ I know people who are friends with people they disagree with, sometimes people whose beliefs they think are evil. People who don’t hesitate to defend people they disagree with from unfair accusations or to step in when someone’s being dogpiled. People who strive to be civil, or alternately who strive to take it as good as they dish it out.

I’ve been present for conversations where people carefully and conscientiously make distinctions about different people whose views they despise. “This person is intellectually dishonest, but that person is careful with data, they just interpret it differently than I do. This person has reprehensible values, but that person shares my values and has different beliefs about how to put them into practice. This person is obnoxious at parties, but that person can be trusted to be polite and shouldn’t be disinvited.”

Once, at a party, I met someone I got into a very vicious fight with online, and we both decided to give each other a second chance, and we wound up getting along.¹⁰ I appreciate people forgiving me! The viewpoints I disagree with you on are only one part of me, and like most people I’m not at my best during Internet arguments. There’s no obligation to spend time with me if you find me unpleasant, but I’m grateful for people who are open to me being a complex person.

I know people who write these incredible, detailed, well-cited takedowns of novels—for misogyny, for rape apologia, for racism, for authoritarian bootlicking, for anything you care to name—without believing the slightest negative thing about people who love those books. They know that people love novels for their own idiosyncratic reasons, that novels being harmful in one way doesn’t erase the ways they’re good, that ultimately pleasure is good and joy is good and beauty is good and criticism is subordinate to all those things.

We’ve never had a culture where everyone was virtuous about freedom of expression. But we can all take steps in that direction. Rules are helpful, as a harm-reduction method for the naturally censorious or proud or vindictive, and because it’s fairer and more effective to shame people for organizing a cancellation campaign than for being vaguely intolerant. But ultimately each of us has to choose, in our individual flawed and flailing ways, to be better.

1. For conciseness, I’m going to write this like all speech is writing, but what I’m saying also applies to speeches, podcasts, TV, movies, etc.

2. I am using this term in a broad sense to mean the actual capability to say things you think, such that e.g. “you can say things you think but you won’t be able to keep a job and you’ll be homeless” is not meaningful freedom of expression. I use “freedom of speech” narrowly to refer to government restrictions on speech.

3. It’s not just about the gender studies department. To me, the best symbol of the whole mess is what happened to the mascot. New College traditionally left the mascot line blank on state paperwork, which led to jokes that our mascot was the Null Set. We were proud of being the Null Sets; it showed that we were weird and unique. Now the mascot is an angry flexing tree that could be any other school’s mascot. Literally why not keep the beloved mascot we had for more than fifty years? It’s nothing but spite.

4. Unless you’re traditionally published, in which case all this is fine.

5. I did that in the previous sentence!

6. “Your Honor, I was just exercising my right to self-expression of my experiences and feelings when I said that the sugar pills I was selling for $10,000 each cured all known diseases—”

7. And indeed most people who believe in the right of the preferred first speaker are often rude themselves.

8. Although I disagree politically with Lukianoff, I have enormous respect for FIRE’s work.

9. I don’t especially; I tend to behave as badly as those around me.

10. Someone asked where we knew each other from and we stared at each other a bit and then both cracked up.