Hacker News Reader

Comment by noir_lord | Hacker News Reader

Depends on how you look at it, if you think people have an innate right to privacy then something that stomps on their privacy is a form of violence, not all violence is physical violence.

View on HN

Ok, so you define violence to include advocating for a law that tramples someone rights. The next person says that advocating for laws is its own inalienable right, so you trampled him. And the whole semantic redefinition snake just eats its own tail.

If we want constitutional to have any force, we have to push for a world where words mean something.

Words do mean something - which is exactly why “violence” already has recognised psychological and coercive forms in law and medicine. Pretending otherwise isn’t defending meaning, it’s narrowing it for comfort. People who’ve lived under regimes of fear understand that harm doesn’t need batons to leave marks. But sure, if the only kind of wound you acknowledge is one that bleeds, then the rest of us must be imagining things.

Most people just means physical violence when they say violence, if you use the word differently you will trick many people into thinking you say something you don't.

“Most people” once thought depression was laziness and marital rape was impossible. Appealing to what most people think isn’t clarity, it’s inertia. Language changes because our understanding of harm does. The fact that many still default to the physical doesn’t make the rest untrue - it just shows how far denial can pass for common sense.

All violence is physical violence and any non-metaphorical attempt to define anything else as really violence is Orwellian.

That would surprise every court that’s convicted someone of coercive control, stalking, or psychological abuse. None involved broken bones, yet all involved measurable harm and loss of agency.

I might include threat of violence in that definition. "Give me your money or I'll shoot you."

But then that immediately opens the definition up to include all laws. "Obey this rule or we will imprison or kill you."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com