I always took free speech & expression for granted. I thought we had it & had it for good. When people waxed on about it I thought they were annoying pedants. I also supported limits to free speech & thought ppl in ‘free speech battles’ were automatically bigots.

And then I got into in the gender wars. And I got excommunicated from social circles, & booted from a community group for mothers. But it wasn’t until the @VPL tried to shut down the #MeghanMurphy event I was organizing & had the @JCCFCanada fight for our rights that it hit me

I never fathomed that *I* would be a person in need of having my right to free expression upheld & defended. It was incredibly stupid & naive of me to have thought this, in hindsight. It’s embarrassing even to admit. But I was a smug lefty on “the right side”.

What the @VPL did affected me deeply. It was a terrifying glimpse into what can happen if we don’t all take free expression seriously. (My god—a public library was trying to stop women from talking about women’s rights!)

Of course I understood the role of public spaces, but before this I had blinders on: I was confident that the VPL or other institutions were trustworthy & would only limit speech within the law. I was wrong.

In the aftermath of this I’ve gone from believing in acceptable limits on speech to believing in free speech absolutism. I do not trust anyone to put in place limits on speech. It terrifies me to see all the hot takes from ppl who want such narrow limits on speech enforced.