Disability Hate Speech

Social, Cultural and Political Contexts

Mark Sherry, Terje Olsen, Janikke Solstad Vedeler, John Eriksen, Mark Sherry, Terje Olsen, Janikke Solstad Vedeler, John Eriksen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032086057
• eBook ISBN: 9780429513916
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Law

This book, the first to specifically focus on disability hate speech, explains what disability hate speech is, why it is important, what laws regulate it (both online and in person) and how it is different from other forms of hate. Unfortunately, disability is often ignored or overlooked in academic, legal, political, and cultural analyses of the broader problem of hate speech. Its unique personal, ideological, economic, political and legal dimensions have not been recognized – until now.

Disability hate speech is an everyday experience for many people, leaving terrible psycho-emotional scars. This book includes personal testimonies from victims discussing the personal impact of disability hate speech, explaining in detail how such hatred affects them. It also presents legal, historical, psychological, and cultural analyses, including the results of the first surveys and in-depth interviews ever conducted on this topic in some countries.

This book makes a vital contribution to understanding disability hatred and prejudice, and will be of particular interest to those studying issues associated with hate speech, disability, psychology, law, and prejudice.

Part I

The nature of disability hate speech

1 Disablist hate speech laws

Mark Sherry and Louise Walker

Political debates about the legal status of hate speech within liberal democracies tend to revolve around two competing values. One side of these debates prioritizes the value of freedom of speech while the other emphasizes the harm that hate speech inflicts in terms of respect, equality, human dignity, community cohesion, and freedom from harassment and intimidation (Bleich, 2011; Cram, 2006; Heinze, 2016; S. Walker, 1994). In most countries, it is recognized that at least some forms of hate speech must be prohibited because such speech harms, degrades, demeans, humiliates, scares, intimidates, hurts, and wounds. However, disability is often excluded from categories in such hate speech laws. This pattern reflects a hierarchy of hate, where other forms of hatred are given more acknowledgement than disability – as a discussion of United Nations human rights treaties will demonstrate. Also, using examples from a number of different countries, this chapter will discuss the ways disability may (or may not) be recognized in hate speech legislation. It will also demonstrate that what is considered disablist hate speech not only differs between countries, but also within them.

Hate speech lacks a universally accepted definition, both in jurisprudence and in academic literature (Calvert, 1997; Davidson, Warmsley, Macy, & Weber, 2017; Heinze, 2009; Klubička & Fernández, 2018; Strossen, 2018). An oft-cited early definition of hate speech was provided by Farrior (1996, p. 3) who defined it as any expression that is “abusive, insulting, intimidating, harassing and/or which incites to violence, hatred or discrimination.” Unfortunately, Farrior narrowed this definition to a limited number of target groups – those selected on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. This pattern of excluding disability mirrors the wider historical development of jurisprudence and is also typical of broader academic literature, which may expand the categories included but still omits disability (see for example Rosenfeld, 2002; Warner & Hirschberg, 2012).

Another interesting element of international differences in hate speech legislation is that some countries’ legislation places hate speech in the category of hate crimes, and some countries publish reports which do not separate hate speech from hate crimes, whereas others make a strong distinction between the two. From a UK perspective, hate speech is now a hate crime in many cases. There are also prohibitions on hate speech that have been developed by the European Union. But in the US, even if it was recognized as hate speech, it would be legal and constitutionally protected. In India, certain types of hate speech are prohibited, but disablist hate speech is not. Each one of these cases, and more, will be discussed later in the chapter.

Diagnostic terms for an impairment can be used without any hatred implied (such as in a medical context), but they can also be used as terms of derision in disablist hate speech. In such circumstances, simply saying someone has a mental illness (or a particular diagnosis, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) can be used to discredit the person – especially when the person doing the insult has no knowledge as to whether that label is true or not. For instance, calling someone “autistici” (autistic) is a common slur in Italy (Di Merlo, 2018). Long-abandoned medical terms such as “idioti” (idiot) or “cretini” (cretin) and many words deriving from Roman or Vulgar Roman are often used in Italian disablist hate speech. An example is the word “scemi” (which derives from the Latin exsemāre and the Vulgar Latin semis, meaning half). In Italy, the word “deficienti” (someone with deficiencies) is used in disablist hate speech to suggest that the person is less than fully human. Such an attitude clearly has links to wider eugenic ideologies, which are stubbornly persistent and widespread.

In English-speaking countries, the term “retard” – otherwise referred to as the “r word” by disability advocates is also a widespread term of disablist abuse. An abbreviation, “tard,” is also used as a term of abuse. Disablist hate speech abuse is also aimed at those connected to disabled people – for instance, a personal assistant might be called a “tard guard” or a “tard wrangler.” Even objects associated with disability can be given disablist names. For instance, an accessible school bus might be called a “tard barge,” “tard trolley,” “tard truck,” or (for those who are still disablist but avoid the r word) a “short bus.” Another common disablist slur towards people with intellectual disabilities in English-speaking countries is the term “window-licker” (suggesting that disabled people lick bus windows). Terms associated with antiquated medical classifications of intellect, including “moron,” “idiot,” and “imbecile” are also widely used both as generic terms of abuse and also as specific hate speech insults towards particular disabled people.

For those with physical impairments, the terms “spastic” and “spaz” are often used in disablist hate speech in English-speaking countries. While the term has also been used in medical settings (for instance, in describing spastic cerebral palsy or spastic paralysis), its more widespread in the language of insult. The terms “cripple” and “lame” are also widely used, but seem to have less stigma attached (and are seen as less hateful), even though they still function in ways that reinforce stereotypes, prejudice, and negative images of disability (Deal, 2007). Of course, language must always be understood in context: in certain situations, terms such as “cripple” can be menacing, harassing, and hate-filled.

Another common practice is to use an abbreviation of a diagnosis as a slur – for instance, a French study of slurs found that a common insult involved calling someone with schizophrenia “schizo” and calling someone with Down Syndrome “triso” – short for Trisonomy 21, the chromosome which is affected in Down Syndrome (Ratouis, 2016). “Schizo” is also used in disablist hate speech in many countries (Findlay, 2017; Pryal, 2017; Reeve, 2012). The term “flid,” a crude variation of “Thalidomide,” is also used in disability hate speech, in Britain in particular (Conroy, 2013). It Italy, the slur mongoli is common – it translates to “Mongoloid,” a form of disablist hate speech which is also used in many other countries. This hate speech is noteworthy because it combines both disablism and racism – one might hope that such hate speech was therefore prohibited under racist hate speech laws. But unfortunately, in this case, it seems like the connection to disability trumps the racist connotations of the term, and prosecutions are nonexistent. This connection is an example that also demonstrates the importance of intersectionality in discussing hate speech. The links between hate speech based on racism and disability are profound (Benton & Dionne, 2015; Farmer, 2001, 2006; Idoiaga Mondragon, Gil de Montes, & Valencia, 2017; McCauley, Minsky, & Viswanath, 2013; Santiago-Irizarry, 2001; Sherry, 2007; Smedley, Stith, & Nelson, 2002).

Often, courts have made decisions which have greatly disappointed disability activists, seemingly allowing the perpetrators of disability hate speech free reign for their words. A notorious case from Italy involved a person without a disability parking permit being reported for his actions and replying

To you handiccap (sic) that yesterday you called the brigade I would like to tell you that to me 60 euro do not change anything but you always remain a poor handicapped. I’m glad that this misfortune happened to you.

(De Grillo & Stimolo, 2017)

The basis for this decision was that the comment did not name any individual victim in particular – even though it said it was directed to the person who made the complaint. From the point of view of disability activists, such decisions fail to recognize that hate speech has two victims: the individual person to whom it is aimed, and the broader community who share the same identity (Sherry, 2010).

Interestingly, one court in a particular country may support strongly punishing hate speech while another does not. In Italy, for instance, a contrasting decision was made by the Court of Verbania in 2016, which sentenced two people for hate speech against a woman with achondroplasia. She has been the victim of denigration on Facebook, where hateful, defamatory, and discriminatory comments were made about her dwarfism. The two defendants were sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, even though the prosecutor had recommended a sentence of 8 months. As well, they were ordered to pay compensation for damages to the victim and also to three organizations that had joined the civil action. Including legal fees, they were ordered to pay €50,000 (Lega Per I Diritti Delle Persone Con Disabilità, 2016).

Some jurisdictions within a country adopt much more stringent laws against hate speech than others. For instance, the Australian state of Tasmania has some of the strictest hate speech laws. Section 9 of its Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 prohibits people from inciting “hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or a group of persons” on the ground of race, disability, sexual orientation, or religion. In contrast, similar wording in Part 4, Section 124A of Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 prohibits the incitement of hatred on the grounds of race, religion, sexuality, or gender identity, but omits disability. The New South Wales legislature excluded disability from its 2018 law entitled “Public threats or incitement of violence on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or intersex or HIV/AIDS status.” The failure to include disability as a protected category demonstrates how obtuse lawmakers can be when it comes to disablist hate speech.

While this chapter provides a broad overview of hate speech legislation, it does not cover laws around the transmission of hate speech online since that is the focus of a specific chapter later in this volume. Additionally, the chapter does not cover the raft of other criminal and civil laws which might be broken concurrently with acts of hate speech. For instance, hate speech can involve threats, including threats of bodily harm and threats of murder. These are obviously serious criminal acts in any country, but they are not within the remit of this chapter. Likewise, crimina...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: The nature of disability hate speech
• Part II: The personal impact of disability hate speech
• Part III: Disablist hate speech within a geopolitical context
• Index