Tuesday 22 March 2016

Listen! Me at Bristol Festival of Ideas on the End of Freedom of Speech

Listen! As Spanky Wilson sings at the start of Light my Fire.

On Saturday I was very honoured to join Julie Bindel, Maryam Namazie and Sarah Ditum at Bristol Festival of Ideas to discuss no-platforming and freedom of speech.

Listen now

I spoke about my activism work building platforms for women to speak from - including the Bristol Feminist Network, Ladyfest Bristol 2007, Reclaim the Night rallies and The Bristol Women's Literature Festival.

My two favourite bits were when Maryam Namazie said:

'I did not flee Iran to be banned in Britain'

And when I said something like this, VERY LOUDLY:

'Every day, women's voices are brutally and violently silenced. There are 90,000 rapes in the UK every year, every week two women are murdered by men. We are already being silenced and it makes no sense to me that no-platforming movements are trying to silence women again.'

I mean, I paraphrase. You can hear what I actually said for yourselves.

It's a shame you can't see the footage as I can assure you I was wearing a BRILLIANT OUTFIT.

Thank you to everyone at Festival of Ideas for inviting me, and to my fellow panellists for refusing to allow marginalised voices to go unheard.

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