It’s been a tumultuous week at the office.

My bosses here at NOW Magazine hold a controlling interest in the North By Northeast music festival, about to start in two weeks’ time. The uproar around Action Bronson’s originally scheduled appearance at Yonge-Dundas Square as part of that festival has meant a lot of emergency meetings, a lot of festival coverage scrapping and rebuilding, a lot of important discussion about freedom of expression versus censorship, public versus private space, and misogyny in music.

Whether or not the Queens rapper ends up playing NXNE at a ticketed venue, as the fest has offered him, stressing emphatically that Northby is against limiting artistic expression, I’m still left feeling shitty about the things a lot of men say about women in their songs and do to women in their videos and album artwork and life. This is not a new feeling. I’ve felt it ever since I was a teenager super into L.A.’s glam metal scene and working at becoming a musician myself, only to find barely a woman musician among the hedonists, and certainly none pushing back against the misogynist tides.

Prior to Erica Shiner’s petition to keep Bronson out of YDS, I’d been only vaguely aware of his lyrics and image, based mostly on former NOW music editor Julia LeConte’s scathing review of his Toronto show in 2013 – when he brought a woman onstage to grope for a while and then fling aside. When the petition came out, I read his lyrics to Consensual Rape and I watched the Brunch video for as long as I could without throwing up. I read the lyrics to a lot of his other songs, too, and then some by other musicians called out on similar grounds. And maybe I just haven’t been exposed to enough violent pornography in my life, but sheeit, did my skin crawl.

It was a kind of self-inflicted shock and awe campaign, enhanced by learning of Bronson’s transphobia. That night I walked home alone from a show, besieged by thoughts of Jian Ghomeshi, of the sustained threats made to female game developers during Gamergate, of the group of soccer bros who wouldn’t apologize or back down after CityNews sports reporter Shauna Hunt confronted them about yelling “Fuck her right in the pussy” during her live report. I thought about how at that moment I was holding my keys in my fist, ready to fight off a rapist, a habit I’d picked up from one of my older sisters decades ago.

And now as I sit here typing, I think about Action Bronson and the types of fans he attracts all gathered together at a free, all-ages public show at Yonge-Dundas Square, within earshot of the gay village and the Ryerson campus and my desk at NOW, and how sometimes freedom of expression needs to take a flying fuck.

Our city drew a line, and the NXNE team listened and changed course, and I’m glad for it. That line will be different for everybody. It’s true that the lyrics on Bronson’s new Mr. Wonderful album aren’t nearly as vile, though he’s still never explained himself re Brunch and Consensual Rape. And Ty Dolla $ign still gets to play that show despite his over-the-top graphically sexual lyrics’ probably being inappropriate for YDS, too. Bronson’s “Don’t single me out” reaction is valid.

All I know is that when it comes to misogyny – in music or anywhere else – we’ve had enough. And if the overwhelming support for this petition (42,738 signatures and counting) signals that we’ve reached a point of zero tolerance toward those who promote the degradation of others through music or any other way, then three cheers from me.

carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis

Commenting has been turned off on this piece.