Why free speech matters
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: Spiked Online
From the Inquisition to cancel culture, censorship has always been the enemy of progress. The Inquisition of today is not so savage. Our moral guardians have developed more civilised methods of satiating their bloodlust. Gone are the thumbscrews and the heated metal pincers, and in their place we see the vindictive forms of harassment and public shaming now known as ‘cancel culture’. The zeal is the same even if the methods are not. Anyone who has spent any time on social media will have witnessed the utter delight with which the practitioners of cancel culture bully and demonise those who have stepped beyond their locus of received wisdom. To take a prominent example, gender-critical feminists, who are concerned about women-only spaces for victims of domestic abuse, often have their views misrepresented as a form of heresy. For the crime of asking for an honest and civil discussion about sensitive issues, they are monstered as ‘hateful’ and ‘transphobic’ by a vocal and self-righteous minority of activists, some of whom feel no compunction in openly endorsing violence against them. Had these activists been alive during the time of Tomás de Torquemada, they would have been strapping these women to the rack.