Who used "hate speech"? I wouldn't classify one blurted out offensive word as speech.

Does sitting on one side of the fence (the one were you're the victim of homophobia) mean you fully understand homophobia? Just like a straight man can't understand what it's like to be a victim of it, a gay man can't therefore truly always understand the actions/thinking of the accused surely?

McDermott made some pretty good comments on it IMO.
Whilst he did say Hardaker was wrong and a ban is fair he also pointed out that this wasn't a sustained attack or continued series of actions or views. It was a couple of words, one of them being a normal swear word.

Had Hardaker been guilty of a sustained or targeted attack, action or view, done with clear thinking then I'd be as appalled as anyone on here, but he isn't guilty of that.

Its a pretty poor example though isn't it, because it would never happen. Let's be honest. So not something that can be regarded.

A nearer example is calling someone a big girl, when they are male. Would you find offence to that?

You wouldnt class someone talking as speech?

No, i havent said i do. But there is a difference between something being offensive and me personally being offended. Only in the same way that a rapist can't understand what it's like to be a victim of it, therefore a woman (largely) can't understand the actions/thinking of a rapist.

and nobody has accused him of that, so im not sure its relevance.

Quote ="Gotcha"Its a pretty poor example though isn't it, because it would never happen. Let's be honest. So not something that can be regarded. A nearer example is calling someone a big girl, when they are male. Would you find offence to that?'" And yet it has happened. Your streak of wrongness continues. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 934543.stm the fact you can't tell the difference between 'big girl' and 'f'cking faggot' is ridiculous.

Quote ="Gotcha"Its a pretty poor example though isn't it, because it would never happen. Let's be honest. So not something that can be regarded. A nearer example is calling someone a big girl, when they are male. Would you find offence to that?'" And yet it has happened. Your streak of wrongness continues. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 934543.stm the fact you can't tell the difference between 'big girl' and 'f'cking faggot' is ridiculous.

I think this is largely true. If he had done that, then clearly 5 matches would be woefully inadequate.

Personally, I understand the ban for Hardaker, I see what they're trying to do in terms of sending out a strong message, but I think it's trying to sweep a bigger problem under the carpet. Hardaker has unwittingly become an emblem of a pretty pervasive, and largely unconscious homophobia. So in that regard, I don't personally believe that throwing the book at him was the answer.

In short, I don't believe his crime was so very great. It was a symptom of a wider issue, which is (and I'm honestly not trying to get into the finger pointing here) also revealed in the number of people who think this is not an issue because everyone does it and they don't really mean anything by it. Rather than criticize people who hold those views, I think there needs to be a lot of collective thinking done about the more subtle connotations of that and whether it leaves us in a position that we're really happy with.

Quote ="SmokeyTA"And yet it has happened. Your streak of wrongness continues. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 934543.stm the fact you can't tell the difference between 'big girl' and 'f'cking faggot' is ridiculous.'" I was communicating with El Diablo, not you. There is no "wrongness", regardless of your barrel scraping attempts to push your agenda. My comment to El Diablo stands. Your is one of clear racism, not a white man to a white man. Thanks for the link though, as it highlights how far out of proportion this Hardaker thing has being blown. When clear racist abuse is dealt with, with just one more game ban.

Quote ="SmokeyTA"And yet it has happened. Your streak of wrongness continues. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 934543.stm the fact you can't tell the difference between 'big girl' and 'f'cking faggot' is ridiculous.'" I was communicating with El Diablo, not you. There is no "wrongness", regardless of your barrel scraping attempts to push your agenda. My comment to El Diablo stands. Your is one of clear racism, not a white man to a white man. Thanks for the link though, as it highlights how far out of proportion this Hardaker thing has being blown. When clear racist abuse is dealt with, with just one more game ban.

I'd say classifying one single offensive word as "speech" is pushing it in the extremes



Not really a crime committed by a hatred/dislike/aversion towards the victim like homophobia is so that's a pretty poor comparison.



I know they haven't, I didn't say anybody has. Pointing out the contexts of things, but it either it went over your head or you just can't think of a response.

Why is it not realistic? People used to use inaccurate ethnic slurs all the time when I was a kid. The use of the term "paki" as an insult was pretty commonplace. I would argue that it's unlikely to happen now because people are more firmly programmed to think its unacceptable.

Would I find offence to it? No. I wasn't, to be clear, personally offended by the use of the word "faggot" either. I don't think I have to be to accept that other people could be.

Your example does probably wander into some of the "shades of grey" that (I think) ThePrinter alluded to earlier. There is a subtle difference, for instance, in the fact that calling him a girl is transparently enough not plausible that there is an element of farce. Michael Monaghan clearly could feasibly be gay. It is vanishingly unlikely that he is a girl. The main impact of this being in the likelihood that it would be used in quite the pejorative way that the word "faggot" was used in this case. There was nothing particularly jovial and banter-ish about this incident, if we're being honest. But personally I wouldn't use it in a very public sphere, and I wouldn't use it at work. "Girl" is also not actually a pejorative term, whereas "faggot" clearly is. Surely you would agree that there is an important difference in that? I'm not even sure I know a pejorative term for girl.

In light of that, perhaps "jew" or, more accurately, one of its less pleasant colloquial synonyms might be a better example. if Hardaker had abused Monaghan by calling him a "f**king yid" would that be OK because Monaghan isn't Jewish?

No, it was a black man to a black man. You know, like earlier on when we heard it was ok because sometimes gay people use it.

"The words were just in the back of my head and they were just words I automatically use with people I hang out with, but not in a racist way," Swap the word 'racist' for 'homophobic' and that is your fanboy defence of Hardaker.

You do realise that speech means the vocalized form of human language yes? Using one word is 'speech'.

This is different from A Speech. Nobody is pretending that Hardaker is out there giving Homophobic speeches at rallys or anything.

Erm.......I'll leave the specific list of wrongs in that sentence well alone.

Well it was a rubbish straw man. It didnt even have a hat.

This is perhaps easily said as I don't have any strong personal interest in this - I have gay friends but none of them would be offended by this incident, but I think we have to be able to have this debate without name calling and finger pointing.

As with racism, I think the competing views need to be aired, discussed and debated. As soon as people can't raise points like those being raised by ThePrinter and Gotcha (among others) on here (and they are views that have similarly lucid counterparts in racist/anti-racist discourse) without being branded ignorant or as supporting or being part of the prejudice we're talking about, we start creating more problems.

It's important that people can talk about these things. That has to be within reasonable boundaries, but I don't think anything on this thread has stepped outside those boundaries.

Yes fully aware of what you could come up with if you searched the different meanings of speech.

You labelling what happened as hate speech though, well......what was that about clutching straws again?

I would find offence, yes. Not as a man per se, but on behalf of women. In this context the implication is that it is somehow 'inferior' to 'be a woman' and that it isn't the right way to be.

A man can get angry, get upset, cry and sulk like anyone can. It's just that a lot of men perceive crying (for instance) as being 'unmanly' so therefore use condescending terms like 'stop being a woman'.

What they actually mean is 'stop reacting in such a way that I feel uncomfortable with as it confounds my notions of "masculinity".'

But instead the aggressor will tend to say things in such a way that it persecutes another and stops them acknowledging their own vulnerability and sense of insecurity.

In a rugby context, for instance (seeing as this is a rugby board) say if one of the players gets walloped tonight and rather than lamping the aggressor several times, the cry on they well up and show some pain. So what? They are not 'being a big girl' they are merely being themself - a man. A different man with different outlooks and reactions to another in that situation, but no less of one (nor 'no more' of one either).

I do a lot of work in my job working with notions of identity and of 'isms' that people experience and how it affects them. This one of 'being a girl' comes up a lot with young men / boys and adult men that i work with.

Conversely, some young women / girls and adult women i work with have started saying how they feel they are criticised or looked down upon by showing emotional vulnerability and sensitivity.

Look at the Snickers advert - they have been sly in saying 'have a snickers, you turn into a right diva otherwise' (rather than saying 'a right woman' but i think this was a clever side-step to avoid more offense). Then 'get some nuts'.

Due to the double intonation of 'get some nuts' - here 'get a snickers'; generally meaning 'be a man / get some balls' they are suggesting that being a 'diva' is 'not ok' and that 'having nuts' is what is needed.

Why is it?

I suspect Gotcha may be the type of person that would buy in to such messages acceptingly; i am not. Yet we are both men. Gotcha is no more manly than I. I am no more than him. He may be stronger than me and could beat me up if he wanted - I might be more emotionally resilient than him and could support him with problems, relationships and emotions better than he could himself.

Swings and roundabouts really.

Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of e.g. race, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation

Thats the definition from dictionary.com

I have yet to see any definition which refers to the length of what the person said.

I'd be wary of being a slave to a dictionary definition here. "Hate speech" does seem a rather strong description for this incident (there's a lack of hatred in it, for a start). I'm not sure it's that helpful to use that sort of language in this case.

I always thought a "fag" was something you smoked when you needed nicotine and that a "faggot" was something you ate with mash and onion gravy!

Where have I been all this time that these simple words have been turned into homophobic slurs?



In Seriousness though, he has been caught using a homophobic slur and found not be a homophobe. He has been dealt with by the RFL who think that a 5 game ban and £300 fine is sufficient punishment for his heat of the moment mistake.

If I've read it correctly is he also spending some time with the pink rhinos and LGBT Community as an educational process? Will this make him think twice before slurring again?

In the heat of a RL game, things will always be spoken in the heat of the moment, some will get picked up and be publicised in the way that this case has and others will just fall by the wayside.

The RFL have set out their stall now and anyone found guilty of using homophobic, racist, other discriminatory language should incur the same length ban as Zak as an absolute minimum.

So we are agreed it was not white on white, and there was no wrongness. So therefore your response was irrelevant.

I'd disagree. Firstly it refers to the word not to person. Hardaker used a word which was hate speech. It is a word used by people to attack homosexuals. That i think is unarguable.

I've said numerous times that i dont believe Hardaker to be homophobic, nor that there was homophobic intent in what he said.

I think 'hate speech' is a good description of the word, because it makes it clear why it can't also be used as just a random 'frustration' word.

Thats why i use 'hate speech' to describe the word. Because thats what it is. Winding back to find something more palatable to describe the word, is pretending that it isnt used in the very very negative way we both know it is. Even if it wasnt in this instance.

Oh dear

thats your worst effort yet. Why is white on white the definitive factor in that example? Why is it different to say an asian person to a white person? Or perhaps a person of Polynesian extraction to a person of Afro-Caribbean heritage?

I think that's a problem with the language we use to describe this sort of incident. I think there are clear connotations attached to phrases like "hate speech" and "hate crime" that I think have everything to do with motivation. I am not sure a word can, of itself, carry hate. That has to be added by the user, in my opinion.

If we keep these definitions absolute then Zak Hardaker's unthinking use of a word (that we clearly both agree is not an acceptable word in this context and needs to be removed from the vernacular) sits snugly alongside other "hate speech" we might associate with Abu Hamza, Nick Griffin or Fred Phelps. I'm not suggesting that you are intentionally making that link, but it is there. I would maintain that that is not helpful.

Is that all you have all the time? I am right so I will just keep saying it?

The post to me, which was responded to did not include you, but asked regarding white man to white man. My response was would not happen,

You came in with your size 10's, and said "except it has". I pointed out your error, you say on the other page you know, and therefore shown wrong, yet here you are trying to move goalposts again.

You may think you are intelligent and can debate, but to be honest you have being proved the opposite this week, coming across as nothing more than a patronising, arrogant, self righteous, opinionated, egotistical fool.

But the reason we would call it hate speech is precisely because it is used by that type of person to convey hate.
The reason why it is unacceptable is because it is hate speech.

You can't separate the reasons why Hardaker can't use that word, from its use as hate speech. They are entirely the same thing.

If we start from a position that Hardaker didnt intend to say something homophobic or hateful, then the reason he was wrong to use the word he did was because it is hate speech used by others to convey hate and discriminate.

If he were to have intend to say something homophobic and hateful then he wouldnt have been wrong to use that word. He would be a homophobic f1ck but he would have chosen the right word.

To pretend it isnt hate speech, or to try and make the description more palatable, is also does the same thing to those who are to use it in the disgusting ways people like Fred Phelps did.

Hardakers mistake was to use hate speech not to express hate (an emotion we all believe he didnt have) but to express frustration. You can mistakenly use a fork to cut your food. Its still a fork.

Thats all very nice, but still not an explanation of why it is any different for a white man to say it to a white man, as opposed to any other ethnicity to any other ethnicity. Until You can explain why it is different. You can't hide behind the specificity of the example.

I may come across as all those things. I have however managed to not be a bigot hiding behind calling people knob-jockeys and assorted names. (though i admit i did call you a d1ck and for many reasons that was unnecessary) and that at least is an improvement on yourself.

I am not "pretending" it isn't hate speech, I am arguing for a definition of "hate speech" that requires the presence of hatred. Dismissing counterpoints as "pretending" is not a great debating technique.

I am contending that motivation is important. That is why Hardaker's offence (and you will see that I acknowledge an offence) is, in my opinion, very different to the preaching of Fred Phelps. In much the same way that manslaughter is different from murder.

Your fork analogy makes the assumption that my giving credence to motive and intent is mistaken. You are yet to persuade me of that. I duly don't accept the validity of that analogy.