The Free Speech Facade: Inviting Steven Pinker and the Hypocritical War on "Woke" as Strategy for Protecting Powerful White Men

In February 2026, as Aotearoa New Zealand navigates intensifying debates about speech, equity, and national identity, the Free Speech Union NZ (FSU) invited Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker for a high-profile event in Auckland. Framed as "An Evening with Steven Pinker" at the Bruce Mason Centre on February 2, the gathering promised insights on reason, progress, and free speech—core tenets of Pinker's public brand. FSU's chief executive, Jillaine Heather, promoted it as a vital contribution to "the fight for free speech in New Zealand."

At first glance, this appears unremarkable: an esteemed thinker engaging a public audience in a democratic society. Yet closer examination reveals this invitation as exemplifying a troubling pattern in contemporary "free speech" advocacy—one that selectively safeguards expression to protect influential figures with problematic associations, while simultaneously deploying "war on woke" rhetoric that frames marginalized communities as existential threats to liberty and safety.

This analysis examines how the FSU's platforming of Pinker operates within broader structures that shield powerful men—including those with documented connections to networks of exploitation—under the banner of open discourse, even as dissenting voices from marginalized communities face systematic delegitimization and targeted harassment. Drawing on the culture-centered approach (CCA) as analytical framework, I argue that such "free speech" advocacy serves less to expand democratic participation than to maintain existing hierarchies of power, particularly along axes of race, gender, and colonial relations.

Contextualizing Pinker: Credentials, Connections, and Complicity

Steven Pinker's scholarly credentials are substantial. A cognitive psychologist and linguist, his works including The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now have influenced public discourse about rationality, progress, and societal development. His arguments about declining violence and expanding reason have made him a prominent public intellectual, particularly among those who position themselves against what they characterize as irrational "identity politics" or "wokeness."

However, Pinker's associations with Jeffrey Epstein—the financier and convicted sex offender whose network systematically exploited vulnerable young women—complicate this public image in ways that deserve careful examination. The documented connections include:

A 2002 flight on Epstein's private aircraft, often referred to in media as the "Lolita Express" due to Epstein's crimes against minors. While a single flight doesn't establish deep involvement, it demonstrates Pinker's presence within Epstein's social and professional network during a period when Epstein was already known in elite circles for his interest in cultivating relationships with prominent academics and scientists.

Appearances at events with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Photographs from 2014 show Pinker at gatherings where Epstein was present. Pinker has stated he found these encounters uncomfortable and avoided interaction with Epstein, attributing proximity to event seating arrangements rather than social choice. Nevertheless, continued participation in spaces where a convicted sex offender maintained social presence raises questions about the normalization of such figures within elite intellectual networks.

Most significantly, a 2007 linguistic analysis that Pinker provided to Epstein's legal team. At the request of Alan Dershowitz, Pinker analyzed the language of a federal statute regarding the transportation of minors for sexual purposes. His interpretation—that the statute's use of "for the purpose of" suggested required intent rather than incidental outcome—was incorporated into legal arguments that helped secure Epstein's remarkably lenient 2008 plea deal. This agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor, serving only 13 months in a private wing of county jail with extensive work release privileges, while potentially shielding co-conspirators from federal prosecution.

Pinker has expressed regret for providing this analysis, stating he was unaware of the full context and would not have assisted had he known the details of Epstein's crimes. He has characterized Epstein as "repellent" and denied receiving payment or having social relationship with him. These statements deserve consideration—professional consultations occur routinely, and Pinker's discomfort is documented.

Nevertheless, the material effect remains: Pinker's scholarly authority in linguistics was deployed in service of legal strategy that helped insulate a predator from fuller accountability. This occurred within a broader pattern where Epstein leveraged connections to prestigious institutions and individuals—including substantial donations to Harvard, MIT, and other universities—to maintain legitimacy and access despite growing evidence of systematic abuse.

Epstein's network wasn't merely social—it was strategic. He cultivated relationships with scientists, academics, and public intellectuals, positioning himself as patron of important research while using these connections to enhance his reputation and potentially shield his criminal activities. When prominent figures continued engaging with Epstein even after his conviction, they reinforced the normalization of his presence in elite spaces, contributing to conditions where his continued exploitation became possible.

Understanding the Culture-Centered Approach as Analytical Framework

Before proceeding further, I want to clarify the theoretical framework guiding this analysis. The culture-centered approach (CCA), which I have developed across two decades of scholarship in 17 countries, offers a critical lens for examining how communication reproduces or challenges structural inequalities. The CCA attends to three interrelated processes:

Structure: The material conditions, institutional arrangements, and resource distributions that constrain or enable different communities' capacities to participate in public life. Structure includes economic systems, legal frameworks, institutional policies, and access to platforms that shape whose voices can be heard.

Culture: The meanings, practices, and ways of knowing that communities develop in response to their structural conditions. Culture encompasses how communities make sense of their experiences, what they value, how they organize collectively, and what forms of resistance or accommodation they develop.

Agency: The capacity for transformative action—how communities navigate structural constraints, contest dominant meanings, and work toward social change. Agency isn't simply individual choice but collective capability shaped by structural position and cultural resources.

Applied to "free speech" debates, the CCA asks: Whose speech gets amplified through institutional platforms? Whose gets marginalized or delegitimized? What structural conditions enable some voices to reach broad audiences while others face systematic barriers? How do cultural narratives about "free speech" serve to maintain or challenge existing hierarchies? What forms of agency become possible or foreclosed through particular configurations of speech rights and restrictions?

This framework reveals that "free speech" is never neutral terrain. It always operates within power relations. The question isn't whether we support free speech in abstract, but whose speech gets protected under what conditions, whose gets suppressed, and what material consequences these patterns produce for differently positioned communities.

The Free Speech Union NZ: Mission, Methods, and Patterns

The Free Speech Union NZ was established in 2020 as a registered trade union, explicitly modeling itself on similar organizations in the United Kingdom and United States. The organization's stated mission is protecting and expanding rights to freedom of speech, conscience, and intellectual inquiry. Their website claims representation in over 5,400 cases, spanning university deplatformings, employment disputes, and public controversies.

The FSU positions itself as ideologically neutral, defending speech rights regardless of political orientation. They point to cases involving diverse individuals—from right-wing commentators to drag performers, from academics criticizing gender ideology to those defending Palestinian rights. This claimed neutrality is central to their public legitimacy.

However, systematic examination of the FSU's actual practices—who they platform, what causes they prioritize, which legislative efforts they support or oppose—reveals consistent patterns that merit critical analysis.

The organization has repeatedly championed speakers whose work primarily targets marginalized communities. Helen Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which frames transgender identity as harmful delusion, has been platformed through FSU-supported events. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (known as Posie Parker), whose speaking tour in 2023 coincided with documented spikes in anti-trans violence, found FSU support when venues faced pressure to cancel. The film What is a Woman?, which questions the validity of transgender identities, became cause célèbre when Tauranga City Council cancelled its screening—FSU condemned this as "thugs' veto."

In early 2025, the FSU hosted Dr. James Lindsay on a national speaking tour. Lindsay, author of books including Cynical Theories and Race Marxism, promotes the thesis that "wokism" represents Marxist infiltration of Western institutions. His rhetoric consistently characterizes critical race theory, gender studies, and progressive identity politics as authoritarian threats to freedom. Critics note his use of terms like "groomer" when discussing LGBTQ+ advocacy and education—language that contributes to moral panics positioning queer communities as predatory threats to children. Through event promotion, video content, and discussions (including a meeting with Bishop Brian Tamaki about New Zealand's response to "woke culture"), the FSU amplified Lindsay's framework that positions progressive social justice advocacy as inherently anti-democratic and dangerous.

The organization has opposed legislative efforts to protect marginalized communities from hate speech and online harm. Following the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks—where a white supremacist terrorist murdered 51 Muslim worshippers—the New Zealand government proposed hate speech law reforms. The FSU lobbied vigorously against these reforms, arguing they would chill legitimate expression. Their submissions cited American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) defenses of segregationists' free speech rights in 1960s Alabama as precedent for protecting offensive speech.

This comparison is revealing. The ACLU's principled defense of speech rights in contexts of state censorship is indeed important civil liberties history. However, deploying this precedent in post-Christchurch Aotearoa—where the immediate context is white supremacist massacre of Muslim community members, not government suppression of civil rights advocacy—inverts the power dynamics. The question becomes: whose speech requires protection in this moment? Those mourning murdered community members and seeking safety from hate-driven violence? Or those defending the right to continue rhetoric that contributes to climates where such violence becomes thinkable?

The organization has framed Māori sovereignty advocacy and Indigenous rights as "divisive" threats to national unity. FSU representatives have opposed He Puapua, the government report outlining a pathway toward realizing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Aotearoa. They have supported academics who characterize Māori co-governance arrangements as "racial prejudice" or "apartheid," providing platform and legal support for such framings to circulate without institutional consequence.

The organization's public communications consistently employ "anti-woke" framing that positions progressive social justice advocacy as authoritarian censorship. Their rhetoric portrays trigger warnings, safe spaces, inclusive language, land acknowledgments, and anti-discrimination policies as totalitarian impositions on freedom rather than as efforts to create conditions where marginalized communities can participate in public discourse without facing constant denigration or erasure.

These patterns don't prove the FSU consciously seeks to harm marginalized communities. Individual members may genuinely believe they're defending important principles. However, applying the culture-centered approach requires examining structural effects rather than stated intentions: What are the material consequences of these patterns? Whose vulnerabilities increase? Whose power gets protected?

Ani O'Brien: Case Study in "Free Speech" Targeting Transgender Communities

Ani O'Brien, a member of the FSU's council, exemplifies how "free speech" advocacy operates to target already-marginalized communities while claiming to defend liberty. O'Brien is a writer, commentator, and former spokesperson for Speak Up For Women—a New Zealand organization opposed to gender self-identification in law. Her advocacy across multiple platforms reveals specific rhetorical strategies that merit analysis.

O'Brien's framing consistently positions transgender communities not as vulnerable minorities facing discrimination, but as powerful aggressors threatening women's rights and children's safety. In parliamentary submissions, media appearances, and social media communications, she argues that:

• Puberty blockers and gender-affirming healthcare for young people constitute "child abuse" that should be banned
• Transgender women's participation in women's sports represents unfair advantage that must be prohibited
• Gender self-identification laws enable "predatory men" to access women's spaces
• Transgender advocacy constitutes "homophobia" by pressuring same-sex attracted people to accept opposite-sex partners
• Trans-inclusive language and policies amount to "erasure" of biological sex

On the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), O'Brien's commentary employs specific rhetorical techniques:

She celebrates policy victories that exclude transgender people, framing these as protections for women and children. When sporting organizations ban transgender women from competition, when healthcare systems restrict access to gender-affirming care, when institutions reject inclusive language—O'Brien presents these as triumphs of reason over ideology.

She derides media and activists who challenge anti-trans positions, using dismissive language. References to "trans cosplay," mockery of pronouns, and characterizations of transgender advocacy as "cult-like" or "delusional" appear regularly. Such language doesn't engage substantive policy disagreements—it delegitimizes transgender identity itself.

She inverts victimhood, portraying herself and other "gender critical" feminists as persecuted truth-tellers facing censorship and violence from aggressive "trans activists" and their "woke" allies. When facing criticism for her advocacy, O'Brien characterizes this as harassment, bullying, or threats—positioning herself as victim despite her access to media platforms, institutional support, and organized advocacy networks.

This rhetorical pattern is particularly significant given the material vulnerabilities transgender people face. Research consistently documents that transgender individuals experience:

• Disproportionate rates of employment discrimination, housing insecurity, and poverty
• Elevated risk of physical and sexual violence
• Family rejection and social isolation at high rates
• Barriers to healthcare access including gender-affirming care
• Extraordinary rates of suicidality, particularly among youth facing unsupportive environments

The 2018 Counting Ourselves survey of transgender people in Aotearoa found that nearly half of respondents had seriously considered suicide in the past year, with rates even higher among younger participants. These aren't abstract statistics—they reflect material conditions of extreme vulnerability.

When public figures with platforms characterize this population as aggressive threats to others' safety, when they advocate for restricting healthcare access and legal recognition, when they mobilize "protecting children" rhetoric (historically used to justify discrimination against many marginalized groups), they contribute to discursive environments where violence against transgender people becomes normalized or justified.

O'Brien's involvement with events featuring Posie Parker (Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull) illustrates these dynamics concretely. Parker's March 2023 speaking tour in New Zealand, supported by groups O'Brien has aligned with, generated intense controversy. Parker's rhetoric about transgender people is unambiguous—she has stated that transgender women are men, that they pose threats to women and children, that gender identity recognition represents destruction of women's rights.

During Parker's Auckland event, physical confrontations occurred between supporters and counter-protesters. Video footage showed some Parker supporters performing Nazi salutes, generating widespread condemnation. The event descended into chaos, with Parker ultimately fleeing the scene citing safety concerns.

In the aftermath, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported a 42% increase in hate crimes against transgender people during the period of Parker's tour, with incidents spiking specifically around the timing of her events. While correlation doesn't prove simple causation—reporting patterns, media attention, and other factors influence such statistics—the temporal relationship between high-profile anti-trans rhetoric and increased violence against transgender people merits serious concern.

O'Brien's response to this context is instructive. Rather than reflecting on whether the rhetoric she amplifies might contribute to environments where transgender people face increased violence, she has:

• Condemned counter-protesters as violent aggressors while minimizing or justifying supporter aggression
• Characterized criticism of Parker as "censorship" rather than legitimate concern about harmful speech
• Portrayed transgender advocates' expressions of fear and harm as "moral blackmail" or "manipulation"
• Continued amplifying similar rhetoric through her FSU platform and personal advocacy

This pattern reveals the core dynamic: rhetoric that materially endangers already-vulnerable communities gets defended as essential free speech, while those communities' expressions of harm or requests for basic safety get characterized as authoritarian censorship.

The Structural Inversion: Framing the Marginalized as Threats

A central insight from the culture-centered approach is that dominant groups maintain power partly by claiming victimhood—inverting actual power relations to position themselves as threatened by those they dominate. The FSU's rhetoric, exemplified by O'Brien's advocacy, performs this inversion systematically.

Transgender advocates seeking healthcare access, legal recognition, and basic safety become reframed as "gender ideologues" imposing authoritarian demands, threatening women's rights, endangering children, and censoring legitimate debate. This characterization erases the actual power asymmetries: transgender people face structural discrimination across institutions, elevated violence, restricted healthcare access, and constant public delegitimization of their identities—yet they are positioned as the powerful aggressors.

Māori communities pursuing treaty rights and sovereignty become reframed as "divisive separatists" imposing "racial privilege," threatening national unity, and demanding special treatment. This framing erases the ongoing effects of colonial dispossession, the structural inequities Māori communities face in health, education, employment, and incarceration, and the fact that treaty rights represent legal obligations, not generous concessions.

Ethnic minority communities highlighting experiences of racism become reframed as "playing the victim card," demanding "special treatment," or imposing "political correctness" that silences legitimate concerns. This dismisses documented patterns of discrimination while positioning those who benefit from existing racial hierarchies as the real victims of "reverse racism" or "woke tyranny."

This inversion operates through specific communicative strategies:

Selective Attention to Harm: The FSU expresses deep concern about restrictions on expression—deplatformed speakers, cancelled events, employment consequences for controversial statements. These are presented as grave threats to liberty requiring vigorous defense. However, the organization shows minimal concern for harm experienced by marginalized communities targeted by the speech they defend—increased violence against transgender people, trauma experienced by Muslim communities facing Islamophobic rhetoric, Indigenous peoples' systematic exclusion from decision-making about their lands and futures.

Abstraction of Context: Speech gets discussed in abstract terms—"ideas," "debate," "inquiry"—divorced from power relations and material consequences. When someone argues that transgender identity is delusion requiring psychiatric intervention rather than affirmation, this gets framed as "questioning gender ideology." The concrete effects—transgender young people denied healthcare, adults facing discrimination, communities experiencing increased violence—disappear into abstraction about "free inquiry."

Valorization of "Uncomfortable" Speech: The FSU consistently positions speech that makes marginalized communities uncomfortable or unsafe as the most important speech to protect. The more offensive, the more essential—because offense supposedly indicates important truth-telling that power wants suppressed. This ignores how power actually operates: dominant groups can speak "uncomfortable truths" about marginalized communities constantly, across multiple platforms, with institutional support. What's actually being defended isn't brave truth-telling but the right to continue targeting those with less structural power.

Dismissal of Structural Analysis: When critics point to patterns—that "free speech" advocacy consistently defends anti-trans, anti-Indigenous, anti-immigrant rhetoric while opposing protections for these communities—the response is accusation of bad faith, identity politics, or censorious "wokeness." The structural analysis itself becomes characterized as illegitimate attack rather than necessary examination of whose interests are served.

Connecting Epstein, Pinker, and the Protection of Powerful Men

The FSU's decision to platform Steven Pinker must be understood within this broader pattern of whom "free speech" advocacy protects and whom it targets.

Pinker represents a specific archetype in contemporary discourse: the elite white male academic who positions himself as defender of reason, science, and progress against "politically correct" challenges. His work consistently minimizes structural inequalities, arguing that racism and sexism have declined dramatically, that concerns about persistent discrimination are overblown, that data shows we live in the most enlightened era in human history. This framing is enormously appealing to those who benefit from existing arrangements—it suggests that current hierarchies reflect merit rather than structural advantage, that calls for transformation are misguided, that defending the status quo equals defending reason itself.

When such a figure has documented connections to Jeffrey Epstein's network—including providing legal analysis that aided Epstein's defense—and "free speech" organizations choose to platform him prominently, this choice communicates something significant about priorities.

Consider what the FSU is NOT doing:

They are not platforming survivors of Epstein's trafficking network to discuss how elite institutions protected their abuser. They are not hosting critical examinations of how academic prestige and "genius" narratives shield powerful men from accountability. They are not centering voices of those harmed by the systems Pinker defends.

Instead, they platform Pinker himself, framing him as a voice of reason deserving amplification, treating his Epstein connections as irrelevant or unfairly emphasized, positioning any critique of this choice as "guilt by association" or "cancel culture."

Simultaneously, through council members like O'Brien, the FSU aggressively targets transgender communities using "child safety" rhetoric—characterizing gender-affirming healthcare as "abuse," portraying transgender people as threats to children, mobilizing "groomer" panic.

The asymmetry is stark: A man who provided legal assistance to a convicted pedophile's defense gets celebrated as defender of enlightenment values. Transgender people seeking basic healthcare and recognition get framed as predatory threats to children.

This pattern isn't unique to the FSU. Across Western democracies, we see similar dynamics:

In the United States, the "Intellectual Dark Web"—including figures like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and others who frequently collaborate or align with Pinker—positions itself as defending reason and free inquiry against "woke mob" censorship. Yet this network consistently platforms and defends powerful men facing accountability for misconduct while characterizing feminist, anti-racist, and LGBTQ+ advocacy as authoritarian threats.

In the United Kingdom, the Free Speech Union led by Toby Young (who himself appears in Epstein's files) platforms Tommy Robinson and other far-right figures while claiming to defend open debate. Young's organization vigorously opposes "gender ideology" and "critical race theory" in education, framing these as indoctrination, while defending speech that targets Muslims, immigrants, and transgender people.

Across these contexts, we see consistent patterns: "Free speech" advocacy that rigorously defends expression by or about powerful men (even those with troubling associations) while opposing protections for marginalized communities facing coordinated harassment, violence, and systematic delegitimization.

The culture-centered approach asks us to examine the structural functions this serves: What hierarchies are maintained? Whose power is protected? Whose vulnerabilities are exploited?

The Post-#MeToo Backlash and Far-Right Free Speech Mobilization

To fully understand the FSU's Pinker invitation requires situating it within broader reactionary responses to feminist and anti-racist movements that gained momentum in recent years.

The #MeToo movement, beginning in 2017, created unprecedented public accountability for sexual misconduct by powerful men. Across industries—entertainment, politics, academia, business—men who had used their positions to sexually harass, assault, or exploit others faced consequences including termination, criminal charges, and reputational damage. This represented a significant shift: behavior that had been tolerated, minimized, or ignored for decades suddenly carried real costs.

The backlash was predictable and strategic. Rather than accepting accountability, those threatened by this shift mobilized multiple defensive strategies:

Characterizing accountability as "witch hunt" that destroyed innocent men based on mere allegations, denying due process, and empowering vindictive accusers. This framing positions structural reckoning with sexual violence as itself a form of violence against men.

Invoking "free speech" to defend expression that minimizes sexual violence, dismisses survivor testimony, or questions whether reported incidents constitute real harm. When survivors speak about their experiences and face harassment, this gets characterized as censorship of "uncomfortable questions."

Deploying "anti-woke" rhetoric to frame feminist analysis of rape culture, consent, and power as ideological extremism rather than evidence-based understanding of how sexual violence operates systemically. Academic work on these topics gets attacked as "indoctrination."

Selectively applying "innocent until proven guilty" standards to powerful men facing allegations while presuming guilt of anyone challenging them. Accusers face extreme scrutiny of their motives, credibility, and behavior, while accused men's denials are taken as sufficient refutation.

Far-right mobilization around "free speech" must be understood as operating within this backlash context. The argument isn't simply about abstract principles of expression—it's about protecting specific power arrangements, particularly patriarchal relations that enable powerful men's sexual impunity.

Jeffrey Epstein represents an extreme version of this dynamic: a wealthy, connected man who systematically exploited young women, often from economically vulnerable backgrounds, using his wealth and elite network connections to facilitate abuse and evade accountability for decades. His network included prominent academics, politicians, business leaders, and celebrities—many of whom continued associating with him even after his conviction.

When "free speech" advocates choose to platform figures from this network while simultaneously deploying "child safety" rhetoric to target transgender communities, LGBTQ+ education, and comprehensive sexuality education, we see the inversion operating: actual systems of exploitation by powerful men get protected or minimized, while marginalized communities advocating for recognition and rights get framed as predatory threats requiring suppression.

What Genuine Free Speech Advocacy Would Look Like

The culture-centered approach insists that we can't simply critique existing arrangements—we must also articulate alternatives. What would free speech advocacy committed to justice rather than power maintenance actually look like?

It would center the voices of those historically silenced. Rather than treating already-amplified elite voices as requiring additional platform, it would ask: Whose perspectives are systematically excluded from public discourse? Survivors of sexual violence, transgender people, Indigenous communities, migrants, people experiencing poverty—these are populations facing structural barriers to participation. Genuine free speech advocacy would work to dismantle those barriers.

It would attend to material conditions that enable or constrain speech. Free expression isn't merely absence of government censorship—it requires resources, platforms, safety, and social conditions where participation becomes possible. People facing violence, housing insecurity, employment discrimination, or constant delegitimization of their basic humanity can't fully participate in public discourse. Addressing these structural conditions would be central to expanding actual speech capacity.

It would recognize that harassment, threats, and coordinated campaigns constitute suppression of speech. When marginalized people who speak publicly face doxxing, death threats, employment targeting, and sustained abuse, their capacity to continue participating shrinks. Current "free speech" advocacy often treats this as unfortunate but acceptable collateral damage, or even blames victims for being "too sensitive." Genuine advocacy would recognize this as serious suppression requiring active countermeasures.

It would examine whose speech receives institutional amplification versus whose gets delegitimized. Universities, media organizations, and civil society groups make constant choices about whom to platform, what perspectives to treat as legitimate, which voices to center. Examining these patterns—who consistently receives invitations, whose work gets reviewed seriously, whose concerns get addressed versus dismissed—would be essential.

It would support accountability mechanisms rather than opposing them. Hate speech laws, harassment policies, content moderation, institutional investigations—these aren't inherently opposed to free expression. When designed with community input and applied equitably, they can create conditions where more people can participate without facing constant attack. The question isn't whether such mechanisms should exist, but whose voices shape them and whose interests they serve.

It would distinguish between speech that challenges power versus speech that reinforces domination. Critiques of white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and economic exploitation punch upward at structural power. Racism, misogyny, transphobia, and xenophobia punch downward at already-marginalized communities. These aren't equivalent positions requiring identical protection—they operate differently within power relations and produce different material effects.

It would center survivors and those directly harmed rather than those accused of causing harm. When debates arise about sexual violence, about discrimination, about whose rights deserve protection—whose voices get centered matters enormously. Currently, "free speech" advocacy often centers those accused of misconduct, treating their denials and defenses as requiring vigorous protection, while treating survivor testimony as suspect or secondary. Genuine advocacy would invert this.

It would build alternative platforms and infrastructure rather than simply defending access to existing ones. If mainstream institutions consistently exclude certain perspectives, the response should be creating new spaces where those voices can flourish—community media, cooperative platforms, participatory governance structures that enable democratic rather than elite-controlled expression.

This isn't utopian fantasy—examples exist across contexts. Community organizations working with survivors of violence to share testimony safely. Indigenous media networks centering Indigenous perspectives and decision-making. Transgender-led advocacy that creates spaces for community voices rather than requiring constant response to hostile framing. Participatory communication research that treats communities as knowledge producers rather than data sources.

The culture-centered approach itself emerged from such commitments: working alongside marginalized communities globally to amplify their voices, challenge structures that silence them, and build communicative capacity for transformative action.

Conclusion: Choosing Accountability Over Complicity

The Free Speech Union's invitation to Steven Pinker crystallizes a choice Aotearoa faces—and that democracies globally confront.

We can accept "free speech" frameworks that selectively protect powerful men, including those with documented connections to networks of exploitation, while targeting marginalized communities as threats requiring suppression. We can normalize the pattern where elite white male academics who minimize structural inequalities receive prestigious platforms, while transgender people, Indigenous communities, and ethnic minorities advocating for justice face coordinated delegitimization. We can continue treating "anti-woke" rhetoric as principled defense of liberty rather than strategic protection of existing hierarchies.

Or we can insist on different standards.

We can demand that organizations claiming to defend free speech actually examine whose voices they amplify versus whose they marginalize. We can refuse the inversion that positions the structurally powerful as victims and the actually vulnerable as aggressors. We can build communicative infrastructure that centers those historically silenced rather than providing additional platforms for those already saturating public discourse.

We can ask uncomfortable questions: Why does the FSU platform a man who aided Jeffrey Epstein's legal defense while council members like Ani O'Brien characterize transgender people as predatory threats? Why does "free speech" advocacy consistently oppose protections for marginalized communities facing violence while defending expression that contributes to climates where such violence flourishes? Whose freedom is being protected, and whose safety is being sacrificed?

These aren't rhetorical questions—they have material answers visible in documented patterns of whom organizations platform, what legislation they support or oppose, whose concerns they treat as legitimate versus whose they dismiss.

The culture-centered approach teaches that structures of domination maintain themselves through communicative practices that make their operations invisible or inevitable. "Free speech" rhetoric serves this function when it frames protection of existing hierarchies as neutral principle, when it treats structural analysis as partisan attack, when it positions those challenging power as threats to liberty itself.

Exposing these operations doesn't mean rejecting free expression as value—it means insisting that we take it seriously enough to examine how it actually operates within power relations, whose expression gets protected under what conditions, and what material consequences these patterns produce for differently positioned communities.

I stand with those working to expand genuine communicative capacity for all communities, especially those facing structural marginalization. This means building platforms for voices historically excluded, dismantling barriers to participation, creating conditions where speaking becomes possible without facing violence or elimination.

It means refusing to accept that "free speech" requires platforming men connected to networks of exploitation while targeting vulnerable communities with rhetoric that increases their precarity.

It means choosing accountability over complicity, structural transformation over power maintenance, collective liberation over selective privilege.

The FSU's choices reveal whose interests they serve. Our response reveals what kind of society we're building—one that protects the powerful while marginalizing the vulnerable, or one that centers those pushed to the margins and holds power accountable.

In Aotearoa's multicultural democracy, committed to Te Tiriti partnership and Pacific solidarity, genuine free speech would weave diverse voices together in collective deliberation. It would protect communities facing violence rather than those inciting it. It would challenge power rather than shielding it.

The invitation to Steven Pinker, celebrated despite his Epstein connections while the FSU targets transgender communities as threats, clarifies what's at stake.

We can choose differently. We must.