24
JUN
21

Owning Identity

This week, the University of Toronto sought an order for police assistance in removing the BDS protest encampment that has been occupying its front campus for weeks. Among the arguments made in support of that application was the assertion that certain images appearing near the encampment were hurtful to (some*) members of the Jewish community and should not be allowed near campus.

Among those images were things as innocuous as red triangles, which are not so widely associated with antisemitism as to be known by the general public...but they are now.

Who gets to define the meaning of images and identity? Does the speaker get to determine her own identity and give it meaning? Or does the listener get to determine the speaker's identity (and give it meaning)?

In the context of hate-speech, it is the harm and not the intention that it prohibited. But can these protections be weaponized such that the speaker is wholly silenced?

 

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*  Zionism is not Judaism. Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish Zionists in both raw numbers and as percentages of their respective populations. (Lipka, Michael, “More white evangelicals than American Jews say God gave Israel to the Jewish people”, (3 October 2013), online: Pew Research Center.)

Last updated 24No21

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