In this episode, National Post columnist Barbara Kay joins me to discuss the importance of free speech, the dangers of censorship, and why we should all be fighting for the right to free speech. We also talk about the need for fathers to have equal access to their children.
00:00:00.000Joining me is National Post columnist Barbara Kay, also a board member with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms and a tremendous advocate on issues of freedom and free speech. Barbara, thank you.
00:00:15.000Oh, I'm pleased to be here. You cover everything. It's the columnist's life, everything from pit bull bites to transgender children to father's rights. You do it all, but the one thing I've found, especially in the last couple of years, is you've really taken a tremendous interest in the idea of free speech, because there's been a lot of material to work with, admittedly, but you've taken up this battle in a way that very few of your colleagues, even in the fairly right-of-center commentary world in Canada, have. Why is that?
00:00:45.000I see the erosion of free speech as the issue of our time. It frightens me very much. The trans issue happens to be a kind of focal point where the intrusion on our free speech rights have kind of landed in a very big way, and I think in a very dangerous way.
00:01:06.280But I see free speech on campus erosion, it scares me because it strikes me as quite Orwellian. The things you are not permitted to say, which is one thing, and the things that you must say, compelled speech, which is another, and a far more invasive kind of wrong.
00:01:28.440So, yes, it has, and I think also the rise of Jordan Peterson probably encouraged a lot of people to speak their minds more freely on this issue.
00:01:40.480But I've been following the free speech heroes, like Mark Stein and a lot of others on Islamophobia, for example, for a number of years now.
00:01:52.000And it bothers me terribly that so many of my colleagues in the media have kind of pooh-poohed them and said, oh, it's a kind of hysteria, you know, you're making too much of this.
00:02:05.480So I guess that spurred me even more to think, you know, you mentioned Mark Stein, when you look at a decade ago, Mark Stein versus the BC Human Rights Commission, and Ezra Levant and his Human Rights Commission battles, there was a fair amount of unanimity, even among liberal columnists, then that this was awful and censorship is wrong.
00:02:28.140And I really wonder where that went. I mean, I can name, I'm not going to, but I can name a lot of names of columnists that were very much in those gentlemen's corners and very much alongside the free speech issue as champions, because everyone in the press really specifically should be, and they've lost that.
00:02:46.800And I wonder how that happened, how even people that should be at the forefront of this battle have tended to fall into that trap of intersectionality or that trap of thinking that free speech needs to be balanced against far mushier concepts.
00:03:01.860I think they got sucked into the belief that social justice ends justified a certain amount of restraint.
00:03:15.260Identity politics has made it clear that the right to free speech ends when you start offending a certain recognized victim groups.
00:03:28.020And this is, people have stopped being interested in truth and more interested in comfort, the comfort of groups that are seen as vulnerable, that deserve our compassion.
00:03:41.600And along, and along with that compassion, accommodation, and part of that accommodation is the need for them to feel safe.
00:03:50.600So, and this new right came along, the right not to be offended.
00:03:57.600So, of course, that has been one of the issues that galvanized me even more.
00:04:02.600Where does this come from, the right not to be offended?
00:04:16.600So, look, anyone who's interested in fair play, who believes that the foundation of democracy is individual rights and not group rights.
00:04:25.600But I think, to get back to your question, I think that my colleagues in the media, a lot of them, or in academia as well, they are afraid for their careers.
00:04:36.600They are afraid to step outside the group because of the internet.
00:04:42.600I think social media has had a tremendous influence on people and it's not a pleasant thing to be Twitter swarmed.
00:05:28.600And they can't afford to, you know, become toxic or to become, I mean, look at these professors that have lost their, you know, over what?
00:05:41.600Trying to stand up for freedom of speech.
00:05:43.600So, it's become, these activist groups have achieved tremendous power, power to enforce legislation that is built on thin air, not science.
00:05:56.600The power to have people fired for a look, a gesture, a tone of voice, something that happened 30 years ago.
00:06:09.600Academics are afraid, and people in the media are afraid.
00:06:12.600And they also tend to believe that, well, if it's going to bring about social justice, maybe it's not too big a price to pay.
00:06:20.600A little bit of free speech quelled here.
00:06:24.600You know, well, if it looks like transphobia, maybe I shouldn't say that.
00:06:29.600All that, you know, once you start down that slippery slope.
00:06:34.600Because the little battles are never little when all is said and done.
00:06:38.600And this was the big problem going back to those Human Rights Commission battles a decade ago.
00:06:42.600We were so busy fighting the idea that a government agency could tell you what you can't say.
00:06:47.600The idea, even I'd say five years ago, of compelled speech gaining such steam was, I think, foreign to even a lot of free speech activists.
00:06:55.600So, now we aren't only waging that same battle as to certain groups, universities, government agencies, employers saying you can't say that.
00:07:03.600But also groups that are saying you must say that.
00:07:21.600Yes, you must say that you're pro-abortion rights or Trinity Western University.
00:07:25.600You must disavow, essentially, what is your core religious belief.
00:07:29.600And when that side is gaining steam, and free speech advocates, I don't think, have many successes to speak of in the broader cultural battle.
00:07:38.600I think we fought an isolated incident, certain things very effectively.
00:07:45.600I think it's very difficult to tackle this because it's now systemic.
00:07:52.600And we now have, for example, on this trans issue, we now have entire medical associations that have bowed to...
00:08:04.600They're willing to say, okay, we're not going to stand up for science.
00:08:10.600We are going to stand up for the right of, you know, people to have what they want, their gender identity.
00:08:19.600And we will deny what we know to be scientifically valid.
00:08:23.600You have endocrinologist associations who are not standing behind their own scholarship, their own research.
00:08:33.600So when it's that systemic, you know, and you have politicians, social services, the academy, law enforcement, they're all in on it.
00:08:45.600They're all in on these, you know, they're standing behind the identity groups.
00:08:51.600They're not standing for freedom of speech.
00:08:54.600You have the Supreme Court entrenching the right to gender identity, which is basically saying the right for somebody's delusion to have precedence over another person's, your right as a citizen, not to be compelled to use invented words.
00:09:22.600I don't even know if I would go so far as to say it's a delusion in many cases.
00:09:26.600I mean, for whatever reason, my approach has always been almost libertarian on this, which is if you want to identify as another gender for whatever reason, I don't really care.
00:09:36.600Where I take a tremendous amount of issue is when someone tells me I have to not only care, but I have to care in a way that puts me squarely on a side that might not be my own.
00:10:03.600I've never seen a movement take hold of a population so quickly.
00:10:09.600Some people compare it to the recovered memory syndrome that turned out to be, you know, a kind of social contagion and a form of hysteria.
00:10:19.600But this is, I believe, a kind of social contagion that has infiltrated and taken over every aspect of society, as I said.
00:10:31.600And it's a campaign that just seemed to grow out of nowhere and just kind of envelop us.
00:10:39.600And the reason I did say it is a delusion, I mean, dysphoria, is the sense that you're in the wrong body, that there is such a thing as a wrong body.
00:10:49.600And by the way, gender dysphoria exists.
00:10:51.600I'm not saying it does not exist, but as you say, it's a very small part of the population.
00:10:56.600And I have no problem with them being who they want to be.
00:11:00.600What I have a problem with is them compelling me to say that biology has nothing to do with gender.
00:11:09.600That compelling anyone to say that there is no link between a person's natal sex and, you know, the gender they decide they want to be.
00:12:50.600But I will not stop identifying your reality and you can't make me.
00:12:59.600And you know, when you're an ideologue, you think if you change the language, if you force people to use language that accords with what you wish were reality, then magically perhaps that reality will become reality.
00:13:15.600I mean, there's a lot of magical thinking going on here.
00:13:18.600And in fact, it's what's being taught in the schools.
00:15:43.600Women that refuse to kowtow a feminism that also takes into account all of these other battles.
00:15:48.600And is there a possibility then that these groups will just cannibalize themselves out of existence?
00:15:53.600Well, it's certainly quite a vicious fight and it sometimes comes down to physical violence.
00:15:57.600This does not happen the other way, by the way.
00:16:00.600You don't have female to male trans people attacking biological males and having this out with them.
00:16:12.600It's only the male to female who are so, they seem very angry at feminists who insist that they have worked very hard for women's rights and there is no way they're going to have someone with male genitalia counseling a rape victim in a rape center.
00:16:32.600Like, there's just no way that is going to happen.
00:16:34.600And, you know, these activists are, see they don't, they're like the two mothers fighting over the baby and Solomon, you know, King Solomon.
00:17:30.600Well, let's say it's about justice, but really it's about us.
00:17:33.600I want to feel like I'm a real woman and in order for me to feel that way, you have to feel uncomfortable, but too bad for you.
00:17:41.600So it, there's a viciousness there that is quite scary.
00:17:46.600And the people, the trans activists on social media that I've had interactions with, they are ruthless, obsessed with this issue of being called women.
00:17:59.600They, you know, call me a woman and I'm like, no, you're a trans woman and I'm a woman.
00:18:05.600I mean, it's babyish, it's infantile, but in a way that's what it comes down to.