Tuit Proposing Ban on Cis-Hetero White Men's Vote Sparks Hate Crime Debate

Tuit contra el voto de los hombres blancos cisheteros reabre el delito de repruebo

Denying suffrage based on sens, race, or income was for decades the hallmark of regimes that claimed to be democratic but were not. Now, that same idea circulates as a wink from a feminist activist: "Maybe I'll start seeing this thing about banning cis-hetero white men from voting, eh?" wrote Irantzu Varela on her social media account, according to the reproduced message that sparked this discussion. It looks very much like a provocation. However, around a provocation, a rather serious dispute has been built: what is prosecuted as hate crime and what is let pass as irony.

Regarding the author, the exchange recalls her public profile: journalist and feminist activist, coordinator and one of the founders of Faktoria Lila, and creator of a feminist micro-space broadcast first on La Tuerka and later on Público TV. It is worth stating early on: a tweet does not change electoral law, and no one here has submitted a real reform. What is being discussed is the framework. Why doesn't such a phrase open investigations, while another similar one, with different protagonists, opens them within hours?

Is proposing that cis-hetero white men shouldn't vote a hate crime?

The dominant response in the exchange is that, as written, it should be. The reasoning relies on a substitution: if in the same sentence you replace "cis-hetero white man" with the label of any other group, they argue, the Prosecutor's Office would have already taken action. The harshest formulation of this thesis asserts that it would suffice for there to be a prosecutor or judge willing to apply the Penal Code without looking at the author's ID card. Opposite this is a different and quite uncomfortable argument: the police investigation wouldn't target the phrase, but those attacking the author for publishing it. Two ways of reading the same file, and neither can be considered closed with the available material.

The double standard: the complaint running through the entire debate

The real axis is not the tweet. It is the suspicion that the law is applied at different speeds depending on who signs the message. It is argued that there is a two-estimulante ilegal democracy, with leniency for some and harshness for others, and the reproach is also directed at the armed institute (Guardia Civil) and officials responsible for prosecuting hate speech. Things go so far as to propose using the own reporting mechanism for incitement to hatred against the message, including instructions for filling out the social network's form. Opposite this is the current asking not to take the bait: leaving the author in ostracism before amplifying her phrase. Either strategy ends up feeding the same monster.

From census democracy to the term «cishetero»

A part of the exchange goes to the historical origin of restricted voting: in ancient democracy and in census suffrage, free and propertied men voted, with women and slaves excluded from the precinct. The data is used here, curiously, to attack the extension of suffrage and not to defend it. Another block stops at vocabulary. Some point out that normal heterosenshetero has been renamed as "cishetero," and that renaming the majority with a stranger term has a lateral effect: it turns the common into a suspicious label, almost a botanical discovery. Language, again, as a battlefield.

Two countries, an experiment, and the identity response

To settle discussions, someone proposes an experiment: a country where only cis-hetero white men vote, another where everyone else votes, and compare results in a few years. It is a symmetric provocation and works as such. Much of the responses go along these lines, with jokes about self-defining with another identity to bypass the criterion, or directly with the idea that voting, as it stands, serves little purpose. The debate cools down in mockery, and remains installed in mockery.

What if the real criterion for opening investigations wasn't the severity of the phrase, but who signs it and which side of the aisle they sit on? No one in the exchange has managed to answer that.