There are many with an authoritarian streak that impels them to seek the authority to censor the words, ideas, and deeds of others. Perhaps they simply feel that they know better or perhaps they think that this allows them to serve the greater good. In the long run, though, the results of censorship are almost inevitably fruitless.

In Blue Streak: Swearing, Free Speech and Sexual Harassment, Richard Dooling writes:

Imagine for a moment that the federal government passed a statute making it illegal to say “fuck” anytime, anywhere. The next day, some wiseguy would simply announce that in the light of the Supreme Court’s efforts to ban free speech, the word vuck will be used instead of the f-word I can’t say.

Then he would tell the Supreme Court to go vuck itself with impunity. Unless he can be prosecuted for using a word that is 75 percent indecent, vuck will be perfectly legal, until the statute is amended to outlaw the world fuck and any combination of -uck preceded by a fricative consonant, including but not limited by vuck and phuck.

Whereupon, he same wiseguy would simply regress to Chaucer and declare that the word swive will now be used in place of the f-word I can’t say. And he could tell the Supreme Court, “Swive you. Swive your mamma. Swive your little sister. Swive the nine horses you rode in on.”

What Dooling makes clear here, I think, is that even if one is successful in censoring some particular form or expression of an idea, they can’t ultimately succeed in censoring the idea itself. Censorship of the word fuck won’t successfully eliminate alternatives like phuck; censorship of even those alternatives cannot successfully eliminate even more creative alternatives like swive.

It is entirely reasonable to limit certain language in particular contexts, but no one should imagine that such limits will also therefore restrict ideas. Whether “fuck” is an expression of frustration, anger, pain, sexuality, or something else, the ideas behind the word will find an outlet in some other manner. That is inevitable.

Where censorship is merely aimed at the word due to the nature of social context, then the censorship will be “successful” because the intention so narrow. Much more commonly, however, the purpose of censorship is to restrict the ideas behind some particular expression as well. The word “fuck” is often censored because of its vulgar meaning. Many wish to censor the burning of a flag because of the “disloyal” attitudes behind it.

Such forms of censorship are ultimately counterproductive and unsuccessful because censoring the form which an idea takes not only fails to eliminate the idea but, as in Dooling’s amusing example, can actually inspire people to find ways to get around the censorship — people who wouldn’t have done anything remotely like this if the censorship hadn’t occurred. Thus there are many who would go out to burn flags or replicas of flags merely to protest laws against flag burning.

Such acts of protest are nothing less than a large, pointed, and defiant “swive you” to all authoritarian censors who inappropriately assume the mantle of judge over what others may legitimately express and how they might express it.

 

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