Juno News - October 20, 2019


Toronto Public Library’s stand for free speech


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

175.11429

Word count

881

Sentence count

39

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The latest standoff for free speech exists in Toronto's public library system where a prominent feminist writer is due to give a speech that has become subject to protests and attempts to deplatform and even attempts to have the city owned library deny her a speaking space.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Free speech is not hateful. Free speech is not something that oppresses. Free
00:00:14.240 speech is not something that marginalizes. Free speech is actually the
00:00:18.360 way that anyone in Canada, anyone in a freedom-loving country can find a way to
00:00:23.760 work through whatever disagreements and discourses society has. This shouldn't
00:00:29.600 need to be utter. This shouldn't need to be driven into people's minds but
00:00:35.040 apparently it does. The latest standoff for free speech exists in Toronto's
00:00:39.840 library system where Megan Murphy, a prominent feminist writer, is due to give 0.72
00:00:44.720 a speech in just about a week's time. A speech that has become subject to
00:00:49.280 protests and attempts to deplatform and even attempts to have the city-owned
00:00:54.400 library deny her a speaking space. Now the reason that this left-wing feminist is 1.00
00:01:00.400 finding herself at odds with other left-wingers is that she takes the
00:01:04.960 radical feminist view of transgender identity namely that you can't just 0.96
00:01:09.600 become a woman. That if you have a penis you shouldn't be entitled to all of the 1.00
00:01:13.280 things that are there in society for womanhood like access to women's 1.00
00:01:17.200 shelters and women's prisons. You may find the point disagreeable but it's her
00:01:21.200 perspective and more importantly it's the perspective in a debate that exists
00:01:25.360 right now in Canada. A debate that some people on the other
00:01:29.200 side of it want to have shut down. Now thank goodness Toronto's library is
00:01:34.640 actually standing up for free speech. The city's librarian
00:01:38.960 has given a very strong statement defending free speech not even just from
00:01:42.800 Megan Murphy's perspective but in general
00:01:45.360 the idea that we should not have city agencies or government agencies telling
00:01:49.920 people no you're not allowed to have a room because we don't like that
00:01:53.200 perspective. The problem however is that the left
00:01:56.320 does not accept the premise that free speech is a good thing.
00:01:59.600 The left accepts that free speech is about finding ways to slice and dice it
00:02:04.160 and finding this caveat or that caveat finding all of the excuses possible so as
00:02:09.200 to not have to uphold free speech. Like saying oh but it's not free speech if it
00:02:14.320 marginalizes other people's free speech or oh what about the rights of the
00:02:18.400 people against whose rights she's speaking huh what about them.
00:02:22.640 But all of this is made up no one is saying that transgender people
00:02:26.400 shouldn't have the right to speak up in fact
00:02:28.480 I would encourage them if they have an issue to book a room at the library
00:02:31.920 and have their own discussion have their own session that offers a
00:02:35.280 counter-narrative to the position that Megan Murphy is putting in. 0.79
00:02:39.040 If a private business a private venue wants to say you know what we're not
00:02:42.880 comfortable hosting this belief they should have that right. Governments
00:02:46.800 however do not. Toronto Mayor John Tory gave a ridiculous statement in which he
00:02:52.560 said you know I don't think it's the role of
00:02:55.200 politicians to decide who should get to book space and who shouldn't
00:02:59.360 but even so I'm telling the librarian I want her to reconsider.
00:03:03.040 The librarian to her credit a woman by the name of Vickery
00:03:06.640 has not given in. She has said time and time again she is not going to
00:03:10.960 reconsider. She gave an interview with CBC's Carol
00:03:14.400 off in which she similarly stood in which she similarly stood firm
00:03:20.080 on her support of free speech which she says in a library of all places
00:03:24.640 is supposed to be embraced but what she also had to deal with was a question
00:03:29.440 that basically tried to pin violence against transgender people
00:03:34.240 on those who support discussing transgender issues freely.
00:03:38.080 This is the question that Carol off had put to her she said well given what
00:03:41.520 trans people have to deal with how is it just about free speech. 0.82
00:03:45.120 This is a paraphrasing of the question which you can see
00:03:48.160 up on the screen there and thankfully the librarian didn't take the bait. 0.92
00:03:52.160 She said look I'm not at all talking about trampling on anyone's rights
00:03:56.400 which is why we need to embrace free speech.
00:03:59.840 We are living in times now where free speech is not seen as a virtue.
00:04:04.000 It's not seen as an unalienable right. It is seen as something that gets in the way
00:04:09.920 of a progressive narrative which makes it all the more important to stand up for free speech.
00:04:14.080 Not because it dismantles progressive narratives for the opposite reason.
00:04:18.000 Free speech is there for everyone and you'd think that libraries
00:04:23.600 of all places would understand that. Thankfully in Toronto they do.
00:04:27.840 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.
00:04:34.000 How can you shop.
00:04:35.760 All identified by prices and renting housesах to open,
00:04:38.040 or also the building houses where sheames.
00:04:39.680 Or cutoffments are meant to attach to zoom in a recall.
00:04:42.160 ã…‹ã…‹ã…‹ã…‹
00:04:43.320 conoom
00:04:45.840 What if you like money saving is 0% social land.
00:04:47.800 Back in 2017
00:04:50.400 Before the affront from Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central, 41, 2017
00:04:54.920 Always driven home is up to human devices
00:04:57.240 Estaoe
00:04:59.240 I'm Breathing