"So what was with #IStandForHateSpeech on Twitter?"

Assuming you saw it trending last night, you're probably asking that question. I was asking that question as well, though I had a small bit of context.

The second I saw it, I knew it probably had something to do with the ... Gamegates? The Anti-Feminists? Not sure what they're calling themselves nowadays, but the point still stands. Anyway, a bit of research later and I found that the hashtag was in response to a European Union ban on all hate speech across major social networks. Okay, that makes a bit more sense -- here in the United States things tend to go more around the way of "You're allowed to say what you want, but you're going to have to suffer the consequences for it". A ban like that would likely never be allowed in the US, so its reasonable to believe that Americans -- particularly the young conservative "anti-SJW" kind -- would be very upset at such a ruling. And to be honest, it makes sense, and I too disagree with the ruling. So, that's it then? Actually not. In fact, that entire paragraph was just the context. In reality, this article will be answering a different central question:

Who the fuck thought this hashtag was a good idea?

Awhile back, I wrote an article called "Opposing Fronts: Why both Radical Feminism and Men's Rights are Stupid". Looking back on it, I don't really like a majority of the article because it feels like for the most part I was trying to stray away blame that I wasn't actually receiving. The whole thing seemed kind of pointless, except for one key part:

"...some moron somewhere decided it was a fantastic idea to name two opposite ends of the spectrum the same thing. Seriously, I used to have an early post up called "Feminists are fucking hilarious" because it was before radical feminists were even called anything, not even SJW. People just decided to go all "literally" on it, except "literally" isn't an extremely controversial topic that constantly gets confused on which one you're talking about. "Yeah, I saw a guy bashing feminism..." Which one? The one we all believe is wrong, or the one we all believe is right? I understand that most of us by this point have been able to find our own words for radical feminism besides just feminism, but I feel like there's just enough of the population who is using the same word for both that it STILL manages to be an issue."

And could this statement be ANY more right than with this case right here? Like I feel as though I don't even need to explain it any farther than that. Of COURSE the hashtag "IStandWithHateSpeech" is going to sound bad to practically EVERYONE who isn't involved in your movement, and isn't the point of a movement like, I don't know, to get other people into it? Like which autismo on 8chan stepped up and said "You know what? Know what we should call our hashtag? We should call it ISTANDFORHATESPEECH". And who AGREED WITH THAT? Who actually thought that was a good idea? If you gave people some fucking context on the topic, they would likely agree with you. But if you just say "I Stand with Hate Speech" they're going to think you're some sort of bigoted white supremacist. It's like saying "I hate white people" in a crowd of white people when in reality you're just talking about like the Nazis. And then you get mad at those white people and call them Nazis for liking the Nazis, but then the white people think you're just calling them Nazis because you hate th- listen the point is that this whole thing is really stupid and you all need to STOP

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