You Don't Agree with Someone? That's Totally Fine, but Here's What to NOT do About it

I thought this was an appropriate post to put up today considering everything that's been happening in France, primarily Paris, lately.

The world is outraged, horrified, and saddened by these tragic events, and before I go into the main idea of this post I thought I'd do my part in stopping the spread of Islamophobia in it's tracks. 

The actions of these extremists SHOULD NOT IN ANY WAY be taken to reflect the beliefs and ideologies of all Muslims. These individuals are extremists, they, quite frankly, use religion as an excuse to do awful things. (Or at least delude themselves into thinking what they're doing is right because of religion). It is illogical and unfair to tie the general Muslim population to extremists. 

Ahmed Merabet, The Muslim police officer that was killed

In fact, one of the officers killed on Wednesday was Muslim, he died protecting Charlie Hebdo's right to free speech. If you haven't already, I encourage you to look deeper into the double standards, and additional perspectives that mainstream media might not be providing.

Onto the body of the post:

Originally, this post was to come right after the Good Drowned out by Bad Post (And it'd still probably be of use to read that one before reading this one), but things changed. 

Let me begin by saying that people deciding it's okay to threaten somebody over exercising their right to freedom of expression is something that bothers me to no end. 

First off, it's seriously not cool to threaten someone period. 

Second, there is a person on the receiving end, a person who has feelings just like you, and your threat, whether you meant it or not, can make them feel unsafe, and EVERYONE is entitled to feeling safe.

It just makes absolutely makes no sense. Somebody expresses themselves, and maybe it hurt your pride, maybe it offended you, but are those grounds to threaten that person's well-being? 

To me at least, it seems like doing so is just WAY overcompensating for the harm that was inflicted on you. 

Because it's not like it's threats such as "I will slap you" It's things like "I'll kill you", "I'll rape you" (particularly common when directed at a woman) and "I hope you get Ebola". 

For me, this seems to show either calculated malice, or ignorant insensitivity (or both). 

And I've seen all of these threats made myself. The Ebola one was during a time where the Ebola outbreak was a really big thing, and it was directed toward Taylor Swift on a commercial she'd done for Diet Coke. 


The person said they hated Taylor, and wished the disease upon her. First off, how do you hate someone you have likely never met? Why would you bother to hate someone you don't know?

Second, I think it's a pretty good example of a very troubling trend with these threats. 

There will always be the generic "I will kill you", but it's things like "I will rape you" and "I will post personal photos of you" that really bother me, because regardless if they are empty threats, it displays a level of thought and deliberation on how to violate the person so that they feel as awful as possible.

Morals should not end up like this monitor

We need to move away from that, we need to stop being so negative and hateful. Yeah people's opinions can be misinformed and awful, yeah they can mean change and that can be scary, but we shouldn't be willing to throw morals out the window because somebody said something. 

And even if the person making the threat doesn't mean to go through with it, it could inspire somebody that would go through with it. 
  
Words might not be able to do much by themselves, but they can serve as ignition for scary things - after all, it was words that started and allowed some of the worst events in human history to happen.

"Yes we all have the right to an opinion, and freedom of expression and they're great things, but we don't always have to use them."

  
Many of those threats are made thoughtlessly on the internet, and that's one sucky thing about the web, what happens there seems less "real", so doing something online doesn't seem like a big deal. (rhyming unintended ;))

But the fact of the matter is that it is. It means

people feel the need to leave their homes, and if people go through with the threats, it means people are hurt. 

There are appropriate ways to express dissatisfaction with an opinion, and threatening the person that holds that opinion is NOT on of them. 

So people if we could all please just take a moment and consider what we're doing before we say/post/tweet/text etc. something? And this I mean to apply to all scenarios. Because so many hurt feelings and hurt feelings that lead to awful events can so easily be avoided. 

And this is not to say I'm cool with people expressing harmful, violent opinions. Yes we all have the right to an opinion, and freedom of expression and they're great things, but we don't always have to use them. Nobody is forcing you to speak your opinions, and if it's not going to do any good expressing it, then maybe you should consider not expressing it at all.

At the end of the day, we need to make sure it's our moral compass that guides us, not anything else, because only then can everyone live a better life. 

If you liked this post, please hit that g+1 button at the bottom. If you like my blog in general, please hit that g+1 button at the very top of the page. 

I'd love to hear what you people think, so share your opinions with me in the comments! :) 

Just a heads up, exams are coming up and I'm not going to be able to guarantee the usual post a week for the next bit. I might share some pictures or songs or something, but legit blog-y posts might take a while. 

Until next time!
- Maggs :)