Free Speech - Less or More?
Let us do an experiment here on Sooey's using broad and leading statements from each opposing side in the Freedom of Speech vs Human Rights Commissions debate to see where our visceral reactions to each statement land us - shall we?:
"We need less freedom of speech."
vs
"We need more freedom of speech."
There. Now I know where I landed because, even though I'm a woman on the left, I want to know what people are REALLY thinking. I don't want them to just tell me what they think I want to hear (well, I do, but that comes from my mother's side of our family and they're all Liberals - all of them - right back to the first Cave Sooey who said, "Just tell them what they want to hear, get elected, and do whatever. Works every time.")
So, okay. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't want them to just tell YOU what they think you want to hear (think tax cuts and no mention of the Mission in Afghanistan during the last federal campaign, Dear Reader).
But back to the freedom to say what you believe without fear of prosecution.
I worked at the Provincial NDP in the 80s and we had a women's committee that did language checks on their fellow staff and, although Members were never approached for their misogynistic views, staff were regularly hauled up on the carpet for accidentally using the word "girl" when they meant "woman" - it was a real point of contention during my time there and, I swear, led to me saying "girl" more times than if I'd been running a Republican strip club. No wait, that'd be "boy" I'd be saying. Okay. Forget the analogy and nevermind that one of our Members who went on to be the Minister of Labour referred to his legislative assistant as "his girl" ALL THE TIME I worked at the NDP.
But he was a Member and, obviously, a man d'un certain age and therefore - off limits for the women's committee - who to a woman seemed to me people anyone other than the NDP would figure were best left to muttering to themselves as they shuffled along the corridors of Ward8 of The Mental - as opposed to in charge of politically correct (freedom of) speech in the workplace.
Now, the reason I mention this is because I almost got fired for calling another staff member (a higher up MAN, who was much beloved by the women's committee because they were seriously fucked up women who didn't know any better and were easily fooled by MEN telling them what they wanted to hear: "Your brain looks beautiful in that muumuu, Ms") a misogynistic pig BECAUSE he'd called me a bimbo AND was trying to get me to do work, through his boss, a Member, that would normally have been done by the Member's constituency assistant.
Alas, the constituency assistants were engaged in a strike action or work to rule or somesuch and the Member was trying to get around that inconvenient fact by having another staff member - me - who wasn't engaged in a strike action or work to rule to do what would normally be a job done by his constituency assistant.
That's called strike breaking or being a two-faced hypocrite or a bad comrade or something but, you know, when you're the Member (boss) and you want something done and you have an evil henchmen to do your bidding, it's called, "I don't give a shit. Tell the bimbo to do it or I'll have her fired."
Anyway, the guy I called a misogynistic pig I also knew to have been charged with wife assault - which the press eventually got wind of when the NDP were in power on account of he was working in a Ministry reponsible for women's affairs or something like that, and, well, I don't know, don't care what happened to him after that - perhaps he's a Liberal, or even a New Conservative, now. The important thing is, I didn't get fired but I did get a blot on my work record at the Member's insistence.
Except I didn't get a blot on my work record - the Member just thinks I did - because I didn't think that was fair, either, this right of a Member to have my work record affected because of an incident involving multiple offences all 'round, in my opinion (although, not really, since I thought the Member and his assistant - who wasn't REALLY higher up than me, now I stop and think about it - were in the wrong and I was just calling a spade a spade and he was calling me by a misogynist pig's epithet for "woman").
So, I went to our Chief Steward and she went to our Office Manager and between the two of them they came up with, "Okay. We're going to tell Him we've put the blot on your work record and you're going to act penitent and apologize to Him, but, in fact, we've done nothing. There's nothing on your work record to indicate that this altercation ever took place."
Believe me, it may sound like a wise solution but I'm not wise and boy did it bug me having to fake penitence and apologize to that asshole. Seriously. I mean - c'mon. That happened 20 years ago and I'm STILL mad about it.
But that wasn't the point of my story. The point of my story is that, not long after, or maybe it was years later, I can't remember now (it's amazing how the years BC - before children - all swim together), I went on maternity leave. While I was on maternity leave, the NDP won the election and became the first NDP Government of Ontario. And I opted to not go back to work and instead stay at home with the baby (people couldn't believe my decision but the way I saw it was, well, nevermind how I saw it - just know it was one of the easiest decisions I've ever had to make).
However, around Christmastime, I did go to a big reception at the Legislature to celebrate the win and the story I tell of that room is the lesson I think people should take from political correctness - speechwise - which is this: It took me a while to figure out where the party was because the room that APPEARED to be the party room, also APPEARED to be a sea, an absolute sea, of young to young middle-aged white men who mirrored (in that special flattering mirror kind of way) the sea of newly elected Members.
See, that's what happens when people just pay lip service. Real life. It's why you want to know what people really think, not just what they think you want to hear. Because those Members were people I could have sworn would go out of their way to bring diversity and, more importantly, women on board if they'd ever had the chance at power and when one walked into a party room celebrating something as huge as the first provincial win by the NDP ever, that you'd think you'd stepped into the United Nations of Women Also Rans, at least.
Except that I'd had that little Real Life encounter (among several others, but who has time?) already and when I realized that the party wasn't a final Liberal blow-out or a waiting in the wings Harris orgy, but the new NDP government celebrating its win - it all made sense.
Seriously, Dear Reader, you want people to say what they believe, to not be afraid to put on the record what it REALLY is they believe in because otherwise, you'll just get blindsided. And when you do it'll be your own fault for insisting they just tell you what you want to hear.
