here is the thing. we have become such an ugly people, saying whatever offensive thing we want,

[brer cat]

10. The general lack of civility and downright ugliness on DU

has been very troubling to me and it certainly puts a quietus on discussion. We have DUers telling bravenak and 1StrongBlackMan they can't define racism; we endured a long siege of very ugly comments surrounding Chelsea Manning's transition; and of course crappy things are often said about women, and particularly feminists. I honestly believe there are DUers who think that if they put HOF somewhere in a sentence, the rest of the sentence can contain vile excrement because "everyone knows" HOFers are b*****s who deserve it.

I don't think there is any question that we all support freedom of speech, but fos should never be an excuse to force us to tolerate abusive, nasty comments, or to curb our rights to call out those guilty of oppressive language. Just as person's right to carry a gun ends at my front door, a person's fos right to use abusive language should end at DU's front door. I think our jury system is failing to enforce those rights, and we need much stronger support from the admins. Of course, by saying so I may be guilty of disruptive meta-discussion which is not permitted speech under DU rules.