Juno News - Andrew Lawton with Lindsay Shepherd： Standing up for Free Speech in Canada Pt 2

00:00:00.000 We are back. Andrew Lawton here with True North for part two of my interview with Lindsay Shepard.

00:00:13.400 We spent the first part of our discussion talking about not just what went on at Laurier University back in 2017,

00:00:20.840 but the legal battles, plural, that have taken place in recent months stemming from that.

00:00:26.280 I wanted to turn to another aspect of the cultural battle surrounding free speech here,

00:00:32.100 and that is the woman that many people have heard of as a controversial figure,

00:00:37.560 though if you read her words, that doesn't really describe her accurately,

00:00:41.340 and that's Megan Murphy, founder of Feminist Current, 0.93

00:00:44.420 and of course now a prolific speaker on issues of women rights and gender rights specifically.

00:00:51.440 Lindsay Shepard, good to talk to you. Thanks for sticking around for another segment here.

00:00:54.820 No problem.

00:00:56.280 So you had an event that you hosted with Megan Murphy at Laurier, part of the Laurier,

00:01:01.500 well, not at Laurier, but supposed to be at Laurier,

00:01:05.140 and now we've had that you're back in BC, Megan Murphy also doing an event in the Vancouver Public Library space,

00:01:12.440 where it really became a hotbed for controversy.

00:01:16.680 People were trying to get the event shut down, as they so often do.

00:01:19.620 You had a lot of transgender activists that were saying that this was a hateful event,

00:01:25.720 that the library should revoke the space, and thank goodness it didn't.

00:01:30.040 Talk to me about why Megan Murphy has been such a figure of controversy, 0.99

00:01:34.840 because it really reminded me a lot of where you were when this whole free speech battle for you started,

00:01:41.700 in that you check off so many of these boxes that the left claims to care about,

00:01:46.720 but when one or two issues of disagreement come up, it's you're the enemy.

00:01:50.760 Yeah, so Megan Murphy is a radical feminist, so she's the founder and editor of Feminist Current, 1.00

00:01:58.780 and in my discussions with her, it seems like she's kind of always diverged a little bit from the mainstream feminism movement,

00:02:06.980 so she has kind of different ideas about sex work, for one, and so that's a new term I learned is SWERF, 0.67

00:02:14.620 a sex worker exclusionary radical feminist, so she gets called a SWERF, and also a TERF, 1.00

00:02:21.720 which is a trans exclusionary radical feminist, so that's why she's kind of demonized by other people, 1.00

00:02:29.300 is because she's a SWERF and a TERF. 1.00

00:02:30.760 Yeah, and we've seen this really take place within feminists, where you get, I've heard of the TERF wars, 1.00

00:02:37.220 the trans exclusionary radical feminists, so the feminists that think that a woman is a biological woman is a woman, 0.98

00:02:43.700 and when you see that this side is really eating its own, I mean, if you're someone who completely is anti-feminist,

00:02:51.200 I'm sure there's some schadenfreude that you can embrace about this,

00:02:54.040 but for a lot of people, there's just completely no sense of appreciation for just the absurdities in this case,

00:03:03.920 so you had the event in, ultimately, Kitchener, did anything happen that made this a hate fest?

00:03:10.360 No, and actually, so you were right, so we originally wanted to have the event at Wilfrid Laurier University,

00:03:19.480 they were going to charge us $8,055 plus tax, in security fees, to host it on the university campus,

00:03:28.440 so that was out quite quickly, but luckily, actually, we found a municipal venue in the city of Kitchener,

00:03:35.660 that were actually quite helpful in helping us organize the event, and it went well,

00:03:41.700 there was a protest of maybe 15 people outside, but that's it, we still had to pay for security,

00:03:47.900 but not nearly as much as 8,000, so the way that Vancouver Public Library treated Megan Murphy this time,

00:03:57.580 just a couple days ago for this January event, it was really deplorable,

00:04:01.480 I mean, they released this statement saying it's hard for them to host Megan Murphy because they just disagree with her so much,

00:04:09.820 and you know, you kind of have to wonder, is it really your place to make a statement like that, you know,

00:04:15.240 and then they changed the time of the event to make it 9.30 p.m. to 11.30 p.m.,

00:04:22.120 which, you know, kind of causes problems for people, you know, people who have kids, for example,

00:04:28.340 can't find a babysitter that late, or people who have to work in the morning, all of a sudden,

00:04:34.000 it's kind of a barrier for them.

00:04:36.820 Yeah, so this was going, and if it was going to be a brawl, now they've just made it like a late night brawl

00:04:41.060 at the library after hours, right, I mean, by having it so late, and again, you had people that were,

00:04:47.360 one in particular, a notable trans activist, Morgane Auger, who is herself a trans woman,

00:04:53.760 so a biological male, lives as a woman, and Morgane, who said this was no different than a

00:04:59.180 Holocaust denial event, according to one report, that, you know, if a bunch of Holocaust deniers

00:05:05.160 were to book a space at the library, it would be no different than a feminist talking about what 1.00

00:05:10.860 she perceives to be women's issues, alongside several other people, in fact, and I'm wondering if

00:05:16.920 you think, as someone who's put on these events before, that people are ever going to tire out

00:05:23.000 about these things, or do you think that as long as there's a Megan Murphy event, there's going to

00:05:27.140 be a Morgane Auger and a bunch of other minions trying to shut it down?

00:05:33.940 Do you mean, like, the protesters will get tired of protesting, or?

00:05:38.800 Well, yeah, I mean, the protesters themselves, that the venues will just say, you know, completely

00:05:45.140 we're tired of doing this, really, you could, will any of the people that are trying to, that have

00:05:50.040 the power to block this, give up?

00:05:53.660 Well, I mean, actually, the Vancouver Public Library, after this event, they said, this year,

00:05:59.420 they plan to review their policies for renting out meeting rooms, so that's a very disappointing

00:06:05.900 thing to hear, because we know what that means, it means the activism against this event was

00:06:12.220 in some way successful, in that they've at least pressured the library to maybe not rent

00:06:18.140 out to these events anymore, and this is a huge problem, because something I faced a lot when I

00:06:22.680 was organizing events on campus, is people would say, you know what, we don't want this speaker

00:06:28.880 on a campus, take them somewhere else, rent a space somewhere else, and it's like, okay,

00:06:35.700 well, now you're trying to make excuses for the library, now you're trying to say, we

00:06:39.960 can't have an event at the library, because the library is a safe space, the Vancouver

00:06:44.020 Public Library hosts some sort of LGBTQ reading circles, that's why people were mad, is they 1.00

00:06:50.380 were saying, oh, you host this reading circle, but you're not a safe space, and also Janice

00:06:55.780 Spiamengo, who's a professor of English at UOttawa, she was shut down by fire alarm at the 0.91

00:07:01.460 Ottawa Public Library last year, in March or April, so, I mean, so people can say, you

00:07:07.660 know, don't have this speaker on campus, have them somewhere else, well, there's going to

00:07:11.540 be nowhere to go.

00:07:13.280 Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned some of the issues that Janice Spiamengo has encountered,

00:07:18.260 I mean, we're not talking about firebrand type people here, we're talking about academics,

00:07:23.340 I mean, in the case of Janice, an English professor, in the case of Francis Widowson, a very far-left

00:07:28.320 professor who's seen very similar things, Megan Murphy, again, a feminist blogger, I

00:07:33.880 mean, most people never would have thought that someone like that could be such a lightning

00:07:37.760 rod, and I remember when I was involved in the infamous Ann Coulter tour back in 2010,

00:07:43.380 you almost expected it, because, okay, well, it's Ann Coulter, whereas now to trip that radar

00:07:49.500 of these radical anti-free speech activists does not take much, like, you don't need to be

00:07:55.460 that significant, I don't know what that says about me, that no one protested my talk

00:07:59.400 at Laurier, but you don't need to be all that significant to really get this, I mean, we're

00:08:03.860 talking about an event that had a few hundred people, I don't know how many of those were

00:08:08.160 supporters, observers, versus people that were at odds with Megan, but I guess I wonder

00:08:15.060 where the endgame is, because the best case scenario is that free speech wins out and eventually

00:08:20.100 everyone goes home, but these people live for that fight in a way that a lot of the people

00:08:25.280 that want to talk about these issues, whether it's transgender identity or any other issues,

00:08:29.760 don't necessarily do, they're just there to talk about their research, talk about their

00:08:33.560 work, not necessarily because they want a full-out brawl. 0.89

00:08:38.140 Yeah, and I mean, sometimes the protesters don't even seem to be specifically protesting anything

00:08:45.000 in particular, so for example, at this event, which was about gender identity and women's

00:08:49.660 rights, the protesters outside were yelling, you know, no borders, no nation, stop deportations,

00:08:56.020 and you know, no KKK, no fascists, but it's like, if you go into the event, it's, this was kind of

00:09:02.680 a lefty event in a lot of ways, I mean, there was an Indigenous land acknowledgement before it started,

00:09:08.280 and we, there was this Indigenous elder who spoke for 20 minutes about, like, residential school trauma

00:09:15.340 and Indigenous peoples, so this was not like a racist or KKK event, like the protesters were yelling, right?

00:09:24.860 So for Megan Murphy, I mean, you've had a number of interactions with her, you've booked her to speak,

00:09:31.120 does she still very much identify as being on the left, or has, has the resistance to

00:09:38.280 her on the transgender issue really pushed her, similarly to, in a way that it did to you, I would

00:09:44.140 argue? No, I think she still considers herself a leftist and all that, she just, I think she's kind

00:09:51.500 of always maybe just strayed a bit from, from the mainstream, and she's always kind of been okay

00:09:58.420 with being a little bit different, and now I, I think she's just more open to talking to people

00:10:05.360 she wouldn't have normally talked to, which is the same thing I experienced, but from what I can tell,

00:10:10.860 yeah, I mean, her master's is in gender, sexuality, and women's studies, right, which is something a lot

00:10:16.480 of people would mock, but, you know, she, she really stands by her radical feminist ideas and all that.

00:10:23.500 I wanted to go back to that point you raised about, you know, we're okay with the free speech,

00:10:27.180 right, but not on a campus, because this is, is very, it's very much the same rationale as we're

00:10:33.860 okay with her speaking on a street corner, but not in a public library, and eventually the goalposts

00:10:39.520 are going to move to such a point where they aren't okay with anything. I mean, it's going to be,

00:10:43.440 well, we're, we're not okay with a library, but we're okay at some private venue. Oh, we're not okay

00:10:47.800 there, but we're okay on the sidewalk, and eventually it's, you know, you're, you're okay, you know,

00:10:52.640 in your own basement with no one else there, and, and I'm wondering what advice you would give as

00:10:57.280 someone who has hosted these events, you fought back, to push back, because one time that you did

00:11:02.860 this, you ended up raising, I forget the exact amount, but it was thousands and thousands of

00:11:07.060 dollars for security fees, you know, and as much as I love the idea of, you know, just sticking your

00:11:12.420 middle finger at the people that throw those fees on you, most groups can't raise that money,

00:11:16.660 and secondly, I don't want to be giving that much money to these, to these censors. So how can you

00:11:21.500 push back that doesn't break the bank, and that doesn't really cede this important ground?

00:11:28.100 Um, I think it's really, a cultural overhaul would be necessary. For now, it seems like you just have

00:11:36.840 to pay the fees, and yeah, you are paying, essentially, to subsidize a protest against your event,

00:11:43.060 where, you know, the protesters are intimidating people, you don't know if they're going to pull

00:11:49.060 a fire alarm. You know, with the Megan Murphy event, I mean, people came from, for example,

00:11:53.720 there was one woman who came from Oregon, um, so imagine traveling that far and, and having it shut 0.97

00:11:58.620 down, right? And when Megan Murphy was in Kitchener for my event that I organized, um, you know, someone

00:12:04.480 came from Montreal, for example. So you're subsidizing protesters who have no regard for anyone else's time or

00:12:12.300 efforts. Well, I'm glad you've been doing it. I'm glad you've been pushing back. And obviously,

00:12:17.200 we all hope it's not necessary in the long run. But Lindsay Shepard, thanks very much for coming on

00:12:22.180 today. Thanks. All right. For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.

Juno News - January 25, 2019

Andrew Lawton with Lindsay Shepherd： Standing up for Free Speech in Canada Pt 2

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