Sound and Fury: When Opposition to Facilitated Communication Functions as Hate Speech

Abstract

Keywords

facilitated communication, hate speech, freedom of expression, human rights, civil rights, oppression

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the political aspects of the controversy over the use of FC as a communication tool and the ways in which anti-FC rhetoric oppresses FC users. In the face of studies that have validated the authorship of FC users, and given the growing number of former FC users who now type independently, continued anti-FC expression functions as hate speech when it calls into question, without substantiation, the intellectual competence of FC users, thereby undermining their opportunity to exercise their right to freedom of expression.