[FergusArgyll]

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The 'Fire' example is overused. The speech alone can directly cause physical harm. Racist, xenophobic and other distasteful speech does not. Free speech, in the USA means you have a right to distasteful speech, actively harming someone with speech is just as bad as harming them with a stick, therefore it can be prohibited.

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[squigz]

The fire example does not directly cause physical harm - unless they're Dragonborn, I suppose. What does, as with racism and other hate speech, is how people react to it. Do they panic and rush out the door? Do they act on the racist rhetoric?

[_heimdall]

One of the more damaging aspects of the cancel culture, woke culture, etc (pick your overused generalization term) is that they normalized the idea of retroactively blaming someone for how others respond to them.

I can't control how people respond to what I say. I can attempt to predict and account for what I think responses will be, but I can be wildly wrong.

The whole way through it has felt to me like a lazy shortcut around the fact that proving intent is extremely hard. Ignoring intent completely is much easier, and that's exactly what a person is doing when they judge someone based on how others respond as a replacement for understanding what that person originally meant.

[afarviral]

I've encountered this idea before from people with anti-woke tendencies; that they think woke people are holding them responsible for causing offense as though causing offense is the harm that the woke crowd believes needs to be stopped. Anyway, I just thought that view on things was funny. If anyone claiming to be woke does think this than they are more of a prude/puritanist/pedant than woke. I understand the thought that anti-woke people have but it's just a misunderstanding. The concern around hateful speech is around actual harm such as systematic ostracization of a group.