Laurence Fox has lengthy positioned himself as a defender of free speech. The correct to say regardless of the hell pops into his head – penalties be damned – is considered one of many jagged hills that the ‘actor’ has chosen to die on. Is it a coincidence that Fox appears to completely use this God-given ‘proper’ to incite misogyny and hatred? We expect not.
GB Information has suspended Fox after he went on a misogynistic rant about political journalist Ava Evans. He appeared on Dan Wooton’s present to debate feedback made by Evans about males’s psychological well being earlier than launching right into a tirade about her look, intercourse attraction, and why he would ignore her in a bar.
“Present me a single self-respecting man that wish to climb into mattress with that girl ever, ever, who wasn’t an incel,” Fox stated to Wooton, who was smiling alongside. “We want highly effective, sturdy, wonderful ladies who make nice factors for themselves. We don’t want these kinds of feminist 4.0. They’re pathetic and embarrassing. Who’d need to shag that?”
In a assertion, GB Information confirmed it could be investigating Fox’s feedback and “apologising formally” to Ava Evans.
Evans tweeted that she felt “sick” concerning the feedback, including, “That is the form of speak that you simply fear that males have about you if you’re not within the room […] There’s all the time a fear behind your thoughts”
“You’d assume that Laurence Fox can be defending Evans’ proper to free speech – irrespective of how divisive – reasonably than spewing a litany of sexist abuse.”
So what had Evans performed to deserve such an assault? Nicely, she’d exercised her proper to free speech by showing on a BBC Politics Stay dialogue about whether or not there needs to be a authorities minister particularly for males’s psychological well being. Her stance – there needs to be a minister for psychological well being extra typically – was met with some negativity on social media. She has since tweeted that she regretted her feedback.
You’d assume that Fox and the remainder of the free-speech brigade can be defending Evans’ proper to voice her private opinion – irrespective of how divisive – reasonably than unleashing a litany of sexist abuse.
However, in fact, for individuals like Fox, free speech is not truly about free speech. In her seminal work The Second Intercourse, Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “Illustration of the world, just like the world itself, is the work of males; they describe it from their very own perspective, which they confuse with absolutely the fact.” And her phrases definitely ring true in relation to Fox: he relentlessly muddles up his subjective opinion with goal reality. Thus when he is given a platform on the likes of GB Information, he deludes himself into believing that he is talking the reality to the lots reasonably than merely spewing misogynistic tripe to different misogynists.
In response to the backlash, Fox predictably employs reductive logic to justify his feedback, stating, “If a girl needs to go on tv and belittle male suicide, she is completely inside her rights to take action and never apologise, simply as I’m completely inside my rights to say that I wouldn’t need to shag a hyper offended fourth wave feminist and never apologise, simply as persons are completely inside their rights to be offended by my stating I might run a mile in the wrong way from ladies like her, ought to our paths cross in a bar.”
Oh, if solely that had been the case, Laurence! Sadly – and excuse me whereas I’m going “hyper-offended fourth wave feminist” over right here – nobody’s phrases exist in a vacuum. The truth is, all our phrases exist inside a deeply patriarchal society, which is hell-bent on suppressing ladies’s voices whereas uplifting males’s. In a stonking essay about free speech and feminism, Mary Anne Franks writes that free speech, in follow, can “obscure the gendered nature of energy and the particularities of girls’s lived expertise.” So enticed by the attract of free speech, Fox would not trouble to ponder how males’s and girls’s phrases land in a different way inside an unequal society.
Had a person expressed the identical opinions as Evans, would Fox have lambasted their sexuality? In fact he bloody would not! As a result of on some sub-conscious degree, he is aware of that free speech is for the unique enjoyment of white, heterosexual males. And ladies who dare to voice unpopular opinions – ladies like Ava Evans – pose a menace to this enjoyment. No marvel he is throwing his toys out of the pram.
For extra from Glamour UK’s Lucy Morgan, observe her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
