Europe presents itself as a global defender of freedom of expression. But freedom isn’t proven by what’s written into law, it’s proven by whether ordinary people feel able to speak without fearing the consequences. For me, that honesty feels easier abroad than at home.
Recently, I was invited to speak at a conference in London for same-sex attracted men concerned about the direction of gender ideology in today’s political climate.
For weeks, I assumed the conversation would follow a similar script from identity to belonging. The usual stuff clogging up our inboxes in early June. But when I was asked how being a young gender-critical gay affects my life, I gave a different answer entirely.
I said that identity has impacted my life less than waiting for a hospital appointment. When it’s lashing rain and the bus doesn’t show up for the third day in a row, it isn’t the sexual kind of frustration I’m left dealing with.
Growing up, figuring out who I was attracted to was nowhere near as stressful as rising rent, dropping out of college because part-time work was impossible to find, or waiting over a year to see a counsellor who looked more interested in picking his lunch from his teeth than hearing about teenage angst. Young people across Ireland are less concerned with what anyone is doing under the covers, and more with securing a room of their own.
When I stepped off the stage, a man stopped and thanked me for mentioning class. He said it was something increasingly erased from conversations about identity, as if everything now had to be filtered through a single lens, while the realities shaping people’s lives go largely unmentioned.
That conversation stayed with me. I realised how easily complex lives get flattened into a single defining narrative, especially when it comes to public debate, where arguments are often built long before the people affected are even considered.
Despite the event being largely Gender Critical focused, the most radical thing I’d said wasn’t about gender at all. It was about class. About rent. About buses. About waiting rooms. Ordinary things that don’t fit neatly into identity politics.
And that made me wonder how much of our public debate now arrives pre-filtered.
In Ireland, that filtering feels personal. I know what happens when you step outside the approved script. You’re categorised and reduced to a label so you can be dismissed instead of heard.
So when the same people who police the debate here reassure us that free expression is thriving, forgive me for not clapping. On paper, sure. In practice, it depends which side you’re on.
The Digital Services Act is presented as a necessary safeguard, a framework designed to protect democratic discourse, reduce harm online, and hold Big Tech accountable. After all, only a madman would argue the internet should operate without rules.
But the harder question is not whether limits exist. Democracies have always had boundaries. The real question is where those boundaries settle, and who gets to define them.
Everyone claims to support free expression right up until someone actually uses it. A confident democracy shouldn’t treat a simple question like it’s Hannibal Lecter whispering…
“What is a woman, Clarice?”
But from where I’m standing, competing views in Ireland are framed as social risks rather than contributions to debate.
If you want to test how confident a democracy really is, watch what happens when someone questions gender ideology. For some, the stakes centre on dignity and recognition. For others, they’re concerned about language, biological definitions, and the preservation of long-standing rights and boundaries.
Sex isn’t abstract. It shapes law, safeguarding, sport, and language. When citizens raise concerns about how these definitions are evolving, the motivations aren’t hostile, but by a belief that rapid social change deserves open scrutiny rather than social punishment.
You don’t have to agree. But if a democracy can’t even hear these arguments, it has bigger problems than the arguments themselves.
At the end of the day, no one is being arrested or professionally ruined for saying “trans women are women.” Meanwhile, those of us accused of wearing tinfoil hats know the reputational risk does not fall evenly across debates.
Growing up I believed you shouldn’t have to silence yourself because your views make someone uncomfortable. Today, that principle comes with terms and conditions.
We’ve gone from arguing with people to managing them.
Many gender critical women argue that expressing views rooted in biological understandings of sex carries growing reputational and professional risk. Whether you agree is not the central issue. What matters is whether democratic societies remain willing to tolerate unresolved tension.
If your opinion has to clear HR before it leaves your mouth, that’s not free speech.
One side argues expanded access is necessary for safety and inclusion. The other fears removing sex-based boundaries weakens the protections those spaces were designed to provide.
If you want to understand free expression, don’t look at what’s trending. Look at who’s paying for their opinion.
When Graham Linehan urged American politicians to encourage open debate on gender ideology in Ireland, reactions were predictably divided. Supporters saw a call for discussion, while critics viewed it as an unnecessary internationalisation of a domestic matter.
Whatever you think of Linehan, the reaction exposed uncertainty about where the boundaries of acceptable argument now end, and who gets to decide.
People should be free to express their identity. Others should be just as free to question it. That isn’t a contradiction, it is the foundation of any democracy worth the name.
It’s hardly tolerance if it only goes one way. It’s orthodoxy.
Institutions can survive reputational storms. Ordinary people have to put bread on the table. Defending free speech is easy when your mortgage, career, or relationships aren’t what’s at stake.
Every time I speak on this issue, I know I risk losing something. But silence has a cost too, and it is one many ordinary people feel pressured to carry.
When I think back to that panel, what stays with me isn’t controversy. It’s that someone simply wanted to talk about rent, waiting lists, and ordinary life.
Being given space to speak honestly about gender also gave me space to speak honestly about class. If that space disappears, it won’t just be one viewpoint that vanishes. It will be the unscripted parts of life.
Confident democracies don’t fear disagreement, they expect it. It is fragile ones that treat dissent as a threat.
Because once people begin to feel that certain truths are safer left unspoken, the issue is no longer digital regulation. It is democratic confidence itself.
Seán Atkinson is an Irish writer focusing on class, culture, and political narratives in Ireland. He writes regularly on Substack, examining state failure, NGO influence, and the gap between political rhetoric and lived reality.