On June 29, Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) councillor Vanessa Ebuka posted a comment on Facebook and Twitter, which included the following, about Toronto Pride:
“[Y]ou guys get funding for a week, to put on a sex zoo that encourages all kinds of rambunctious behaviour.”
She then added in response to a critique of her “zoo” analogy:
“Sure, people performing sexual acts in public, half-naked, and encouraging sexual liberation in an already morally corrupt generation isn’t a zoo. Totally normal…People like you need to learn that others are going to vehemently disagree with their views on stuff/lifestyle.”
There are so many things I find offensive, so many assumptions and inaccuracies, in those statements that I am limited by word count in outlining them all. Instead, I will ask: is this something that we should tolerate or accept, or do we need to realize that there is no place for this sort of comment? Is there an “inalienable” right to some illusory freedom of speech that forces us to allow people to speak without thought, without consideration, and without recognition of their responsibility as in this situation?
So conditioned have we become by the well-intentioned modern liberalism that advocates “tolerance” to all opinions, all views, that we have forgotten that certain opinions, certain views, are just not worth tolerating. No longer is this the expression of a principle, but is, instead, a form of violence, manifestly intended to retrench structures and order, discrimination and privilege, under the guise of ensuring an illusory equality.
Tolerance has now been appropriated by reactionary elements of society to protect themselves, to ensure the safeguarding of their power, and so as to prevent the advancement of marginalized people and communities. When it comes to matters of marginalization, we also need to move past a narrative of tolerance; imagine saying to someone, “I tolerate you.” Instead, we should build narratives around acceptance, recognition, agency, and love; further, we should not allow ourselves to be pacified in challenging oppression.
Increasingly often, I get the feeling that more people (ideally, everyone) should read Herbert Marcuse’s essay “Repressive Tolerance,” wherein he notes, “Equality of tolerance becomes abstract, spurious.” If we want to make it mean something when we claim to be tolerant and accepting, then we have an obligation to resist against, react to, and dismantle hatred in all its forms, and when confronted with views such as those in this CUSA councillor’s comments, we need to say, “This, I will not tolerate.”
For those who spout intolerance, and for the intolerance they spout, there should be no tolerance now, and no tolerance ever.
Arun Smith
sixth-year human rights and political science
