Siblings and Hate Speech

My brother and I were born eighteen months apart. We haven’t lived in the same house since I was fourteen.

In between now and then there are various countries, provinces, occupations, times at home on my mother’s couch, boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancés, and mental breakdowns. Our paths have crossed maybe a dozen times. As siblings, we both fail - we are chronically out of sync, out of touch, on separate continents and life stages. But where shared genetics and experience make their mark, a sibling’s life becomes an exercise in self examination, and we remain eerily similar. He is me with a Y chromosome, and I am him, and if there were a third of us they’d study penguins in Antarctica and write ironic fiction books about romance, or lay on a beach in Panama, smoking weed all day, then be swallowed by a rip tide.

Today, he is a women’s study major in Ontario being charged for hate speech. I am in Vancouver, working at a women’s shelter, fantasizing about moving to Baffin Island and owning a chicken. I phone my mother and he answers, home for the weekend, about to watch the Ten Commandments (an Easter tradition). This is the most convoluted tradition my family has yet to produce; the ten commandments, in Biblical chronology, takes place just after Passover, a Jewish holiday, and Passover is celebrated around the same time as Easter, so there you go.

My brother is opinionated, as all Donegals should be, but while I let my causticity fester deep inside, he will share his with anyone who’ll listen. Underneath an opinionated-asshole exterior lies a thoughtful, liberal man, in sort of an opposite sugar-coating effect which has half of his professors in love with him, and one charging him with violating her civil liberties.

“I did no such thing. She asked for my opinion - I gave it.”

He is telling the truth - he criticized the actions of voting members of a union in an assigned essay, which is hardly an act of Hate Speech. She demanded a rewrite, my brother balked, the professor refused to mark the paper, neither party backed down, and now the whole thing has blown up into a stress ball of ridiculousness. I am having none of it.

“You are smart enough to know better, to know how your professor was going to react, and you chose to do it anyways.”

We discussed the predicament for a good hour - him preaching individualism and free speech, me speaking as a collectivist, as a diplomat, as a swallower of crap for the sake of the greater good. To make my point, I invoked the image of Andy Kaufman, of William Wallace, of my own brother as a twelve year old on Remembrance Day. He spoke of wars waged, of the principles of educated discourse, of personal liberties as the foundation for democratic society.

“But that’s the whole point. It’s a society - with other people. For societies to function, people have to get along, and you have to play nice. You’re not an island!”

“I am an island! Exactly. I am an island entire of itself, an island with rights.”

“Fine - you’re an island. But your island has no food. So, if you want food, you’ll have to play nice with all the other islands.”

…Conversations like this go nowhere fast.

It was good talking, though, and I wish him the best. His professor truly does sound like a douche. Until next time.