I don’t always agree with Allison Pearson but I will defend her right to free speech

Protesters demonstrate outside the Scottish Parliament as Scotland's Hate Crime Law comes into force on April 1 2024
‘We are in a strange retreat at the moment from any dissent, any discomfort, anything that makes others feel “unsafe’’’; protests against Scotland’s Hate Crime Laws - Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Free speech is a fairly abstract construct until someone threatens you or your job over it. I once thought that the principle of free speech was fundamental to a liberal, even Lefty view of the world. I found out the hard way that I was wrong. You don’t really know what is unsayable till you say it. In my case, I wrote a piece for The Guardian saying biology was real, that women’s rights mattered, that puberty blockers were suspect, that we should be worried about transitioning young gay girls. Four years ago, that was enough for me to be deemed horribly transphobic and, realising I could no longer say what I wanted, I left that newspaper.

What happened to me was nowhere near as awful as what also happened to many women who were pushed out of their jobs in the public sector, in the arts and in other areas of publishing, and who ended up losing all their income.

Four years on, post the Cass Review, post the self-ID fiasco, most of what I said was absolutely correct. But that does not matter. What matters is encountering the shutting down of debate and shutting up of anyone who questions the orthodoxy. A once-cherished value of the Left has now been ceded to the Right, if indeed these terms mean anything anymore. This is how I feel about the treatment of Allison Pearson. We have completely different world views: I disagree strongly with some of her opinions and I am sure she does with mine. The point is we co-exist in this space and, old-fashionedly, I believe in some solidarity among journalists when one of us is under attack.

That is probably one of my more ridiculous views given my experience of the liberal authoritarianism, in which anyone deemed outside the cult must be further monstered. These same people send you messages in private saying that what is happening is all a terrible business; in public one is met with embarrassed silence. Denial. Moral cowardice.

Outside of this strange bubble, I know of no one who thinks two police officers turning up at a journalist’s door at a weekend, over an allegedly offensive tweet that was a year old, is a good use of police time.

I feel exactly the same way about Julie Bindel’s experience, in which police officers visited Bindel’s home over an alleged hate crime following a complaint “from a transgender man in the Netherlands”. Allison, Julie and I have all been round the block a few times and, I dare say, are used to being “disliked” – it comes with the territory. We are not of a generation who lives by “likes” on social media, and we are not easily intimidated. But what has happened to Pearson and Bindel is horrible and cannot be defended.

And yet I see that it weirdly is. The “liberal” reaction in The Guardian and on The News Agents podcast to Pearson boils down to “Well, she was asking for it”, that somehow Pearson has a persecution complex and wanted to be arrested. Seriously? I guess all these people are absolutely sure that they will never get a knock on the door, because their opinions will never stray from the particular orthodoxy of their employers.

How very blinkered they are. But then there is a strange retreat at the moment, post-Trump, from any dissent, any discomfort, anything that makes others feel “unsafe”. Which so often turns out to be a woman with a voice.

If you go on Bluesky (hello trees, hello sky), the social media platform that numerous people are now using instead of Elon Musk’s X, and say that you don’t think men can be women, you will be marked as “intolerant” or thrown off that platform altogether. Compelled speech is precisely what so many of us have been complaining about for some time, the policing of language, the erasure of words such as “mother” or “woman” in favour of “birthing person” or “menstruator”, for instance. Because we want the fundamental freedom to define ourselves properly.

That the Left could not stand up for this basic liberty breaks my heart, but it’s all too late now. The new authoritarianism says that words are actual violence and somehow people must be protected from them. The Mullahs said that over Rushdie’s work, never forget that. As that great man once said: “Nobody has the right not to be offended.” If you will only defend the speech of those you like or agree with, then you are not a social justice warrior, you are a weak simpleton.

And if that offends you, dial 999.