M.I.A. finds being labelled an anti-vaxxer frustrating.
M.I.A. has spoken out against the COVID-19 vaccine
The 'Paper Planes' hitmaker has come under fire over her comments on the COVID-19 vaccine but she insisted she is simply speaking from her own experiences and should be able to draw her own conclusions.
She said: “The language they use to attack anybody is to say: ‘Oh, she’s an anti-vaxxer’ or blah blah blah. And it’s like, no, not really.
“I know three people who have died from taking the vaccine and I know three people who have died from COVID. This is in my life, in my experience. If anyone is going to deny that experience and gaslight me, saying: ‘No, that’s not your experience,’ then what is the point of anything?
“What is the existence that you are trying to protect by giving me a vaccine if I can’t even have an experience and process that information in my own brain and come to some sort of conclusion? And live within a society where I have to make choices every day?”
The 47-year-old rapper - whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam - insisted people don't have as much freedom as they think they do.
She added to the Guardian newspaper: “There’s this weird idea that we’re all free, and that we fight for everything, and we can say what we want, but on the other hand, I feel like there’s even more of a crackdown on that.”
And M.I.A. hit out at cancel culture, insisting "open conversation" should be welcomed.
She said: “I think everyone should be having open conversations – we don’t all have to, like, build effigies of people and burn them in the street for saying something, going after them like Guy Fawkes, because of fear of being seen as the other.”
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