There are other forms of dangerous "speach". I referred to the legal concept of fighting words earlier. But words intended to incite violence are not themselves violence.
You might call someone a jerk to provoke a physical fight. Or you might call someone a jerk in the hope that the word itself will harm them in some way.
But can words do harm? Well, libel and slander can harm a person's reputation. And fraudulent claims can harm a person's economic interests.
And of course people can bring civil claims for "emotional harm" arising from being effectively libeled or slandered. I wouldn't be surprised if there are already such civil suits on the books, with judgements in the plaintiff's favor.
But is emotional harm akin to physical violence? I don't know.
Medicine understands impairment to the physical body. Bruises, lacerations, broken bones, damaged organs. We understand that the natural functioning of a healthy body can be disrupted by physical force. That a period of healing is necessary to restore the body's former functioning. In extreme cases, there can even be an irrevocable loss of some part of the body, or even the loss of the life that animates it. We all know how physical violence works.
Calling someone a jerk is not physical violence. Is it mental violence?
Medicine also understands impairment to the mind. I won't belabor the DSM here. I will say that it seems to me that a sustained program of verbal abuse could possibly provoke an emotional or mental breakdown, or even trigger some sort of psychosis. Especially if the victim sees no hope of escape, and has no way to relieve the pressure on their psyche.
Lock someone in a room, feed them slop, and roll a tape vilifying them for six hours out of every eight, and they'll go mad. That's a fairly contrived situation. A more "natural" occurrence is a spouse who subjects their partner to constant verbal and emotional abuse.
So at what point does being intentionally misgendered on a college campus pass from ordinary rudeness to actual violence resulting in actual harm? How would the harm be measured?
Hypothesis: If commonplace insults can be acts of violence, then we should expect to see many such allegations in the media, and many such cases in the court system. Bitch, ****, ******, faggot, scumbag, commie, pinko, fascist, nazi, hohol, vatnik, dickhead, limp-dick, fatso, Democrat, chud...
The human capacity for insult is as varied as it is endless. So where are the headlines proclaiming that Andy harmed Bob by calling him a faggot in the quad last week? Where are the court cases where Andy seeks to prove that Bob merits a criminal conviction, for the harm he allegedly caused by calling Andy a faggot?
So no, I don't think casually misgendering someone, even intentionally, even maliciously, can be considered an act of violence. A sustained program of verbal abuse might engender some civil liability for emotional distress, but that's still nothing like physical violence. A single punch thrown is already violence, is already a crime. A single epithet, intended to give offense, is not a crime. Certainly not a violent crime.
I think perhaps the worst thing about this guideline is that it encourages students to think of misgendering as a criminal offense, akin to actual violence. It encourages students to react as if criminally aggrieved, whenever someone says something rude to them.
I don't think this is a mindset we, as a society, should encourage. I don't think this is something we should normalize. It's no big deal as long as it's a fringe idea that has no real acceptance in popular culture. The authors of this guideline aren't trying to keep the idea fringe, though. If we want to keep this idea from becoming mainstream, we need to acknowledge acts - like the publication of this guideline - that tend to normalize it, and push back against them.
"It's no big deal," says the person who knows it's a bad idea but doesn't want to say so in plain language. "Why make a fuss?" And the answer to that is that it is a bad idea, and we make a fuss now to keep it marginalized, to stop it from becoming a big deal. We don't want to end up, ten years hence, in a society where someone can be brought up on criminal charges for misgendering.
Or do we? I suspect some of us do want exactly that. If so, I hope they will speak plainly about it.
