I write about free speech. And I’m tired of writing about free speech. I’m tired of needing to write about free speech.
I’m tired of needing to defend women’s freedom to discuss our long-contested bodies without being plucked and waxed into acceptable, tidy language, bland and inoffensive as a Playboy Bunny’s perky smile. I’m tired of needing to defend a blogger or cartoonist’s freedom to poke fun at other people’s idols, when it’s men with guns in Paris, not roués with ink, who make me feel ‘unsafe’. I’m tired of the death of irony; I’m tired of the death of good faith. But most of all, I’m tired of student unions.
This week, the story is the University of Manchester’s student union (next week, it’ll be another). As the Daily Beast explains in full, Manchester’s Free Speech and Secularism society had invited Julie Bindel and Milo Yiannopoulos to debate ‘From liberation to censorship: Does modern feminism have a problem with free speech?’ on 15 October.
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