{"id":64461,"date":"2015-02-26T14:15:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T14:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=64461"},"modified":"2017-03-23T16:03:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T16:03:08","slug":"padraig-reidy-there-is-not-a-limited-amount-of-free-speech-to-go-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=64461","title":{"rendered":"Padraig Reidy: There is not a limited amount of free speech to go round"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Illustration:

(Illustration: Shutterstock)<\/p><\/div>\n

There is, I am told, a war going on in feminism. A war between \u201cintersectionalists\u201d (I think) and TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, as far as I can tell).<\/p>\n

I am not about to stick my oar into this particular boating lake, for two reasons:<\/p>\n

Reason 1. Self-awareness. I am a white middle class western European media professional, north-London dwelling male, born in a time when there is little chance of conscription. I am practically the most privileged thing that ever existed, and the last thing people struggling for equality need is me, turning up, cheerily shouting \u201cOnly me!!!\u201d like Harry Enfield\u2019s Mr-You-Don\u2019t-want-to-do-it-like-that, and telling people how to do a real feminism. That is not to say I do not have a right to have an opinion, but…<\/p>\n

Reason 2: lurking in that apparently placid boating lake are piranhas, reading to chew up and spit out any oarsman (or woman) who does not know every ebb and eddie of the lake.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a horrible sight to see. Every so often some poor naive jumps in their little pleasure boat, having been assured by the man that it\u2019s perfectly safe, and rows happily to the middle of the lake. You watch from the shore. They wave back. What\u2019s that sound? They\u2019re singing Sister Suffragette from Mary Poppins, their rowing keeping a brisk beat with the jaunty marching tune. \u201cShoulder-to-shoulder\u201d and-stroke-and-stroke.<\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to them, the piranhas have smelled blood. They row on. Gleefully, they reach the crescendo: \u201cOur daughters\u2019 daughters\u2019 will adore us…\u201d. They raise their hands to punch the air. An unattended oar slips into the water. The piranhas stir. Daughters? That sounds like determinism. The water begins to froth. The poor unsuspecting oarsman (or woman) is still singing. Eventually they catch the commotion in the corner of one eye: they hear it grow louder, under the boat, which now seems irresponsibly flimsy.<\/p>\n

They sing still, but now in trepidation: \u201cNo more the meek and mild subservients we!\u201d.<\/p>\n

The frenzy grows stronger, at what was certainly a slight on members of the BDSM community (well, the Ms anyway). Stronger and stronger. Our rower tries to resist, we can see, but the boat is now falling apart, as if rotten, under their feet. Our previously carefree rower feels first a nip, and then a rush. They are simultaneously drowning and being eaten alive.<\/p>\n

A final defiant shriek from a the near-eviscerated pleasure seeker, and then there is nothing. The waters are calm once more.<\/p>\n

We tut, from the shore. Such a shame, such a loss. Did you see the cowbell dog<\/a>?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one version, but then try to see it from the fishes\u2019 point of view. Fish have got to live. Piranhas have been, for years, maligned as a generality by the mainstream. The very word \u201cpiranha\u201d is thrown around as an insult. Piranhas are irrational, illogical, even abominations against nature. And of course, there is more than one type of piranha, and not every piranha has the same experience of what it\u2019s like being a piranha. Piranha identity is complex, to say the least. But that doesn\u2019t mean piranhas shouldn\u2019t bond together and work together. What outsiders view as a \u201cfeeding frenzy\u201d is actually the best – only – way piranhas can continue to exist safely.<\/p>\n

Besides, the piranhas grew up in this lake. They know it like the back of their fins – how to navigate, how to communicate. If anyone\u2019s in a wrong place in the boating lake, it\u2019s not the piranhas.<\/p>\n

This is not an unreasonable case. The question then (and here\u2019s where the horrendous tortured boating lake analogy comes to an end, you\u2019ll be pleased to know) is: Was George Bush right? Can the human beings and the fish coexist peacefully?<\/p>\n

The issue emerged again recently with a terse exchange of letters in the Observer newspaper, which followed the cancellation of a show by comic Kate Smurthwaite at Goldsmith\u2019s college. Smurthwaite said she\u2019d been banned because some university feminists who are pro sex work were threatening to protests against her anti sex work views, and the college security didn\u2019t want the hassle.<\/p>\n

A letter was put together, as letters are, decrying campus censorship and the narrowing of debate (with specific mention of the National Union of Students\u2019 policy of \u201cno-platforming\u201d feminist Julie Bindel for statements on trans people). There was a response, disputing the facts of the first letter and suggesting that there are bigger campus free speech issues – around student protest for example – than whether certain already powerful people can take part in a panel debate or a comedy show.<\/p>\n

The problem here is the commodification of free speech: who is allowed it and who isn\u2019t, and, in hierarchical societies (i.e. pretty much every society we\u2019ve come up with so far) who grabs it as theirs and who should be granted more in order to even things out, and who can \u201cuse\u201d free speech against whom.<\/p>\n

This is to treat free speech as a weapon rather than a space. There is not a limited amount of free speech to go round: rather, there is a (hopefully) ever-expanding free speech arena in which we can argue. The signatories of both letters have actually identified the same problem, the narrowing of the space, particularly in education. Perhaps it would be beneficial for them to defend the space in which to argue rather than trying to push the other side overboard.<\/p>\n

This article was posted on 26 February 2015 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is, I am told, a war going on in feminism. A war between \u201cintersectionalists\u201d (I think) and TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, as far as I can tell).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6903,581,21],"tags":[4215,6971,6973,5970,590,6972,2469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64461"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87044,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64461\/revisions\/87044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}