The past couple of weeks has seen Canadians weigh in on the viral story of a purportedly transgender teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School wearing what appears to be jumbo-sized prosthetic breasts.
People have strong opinions about what went down, to put it mildly. They’ve made their views known at a couple of protests and, of course, on social media.
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We can quibble about what manners should be displayed in exercising your passions about this subject, but surely we can all agree that people are legally allowed to voice their opinions on this matter?
That’s not what’s happening across the pond, though.
In the United Kingdom, police have for years now been going after people who don’t bow down to activist views on transgender issues. It’s truly chilling stuff, and it serves as an early warning sign about a phenomenon that could come to Canada if we’re not on guard.
What started this latest round was Sussex Police posting a press release announcing that someone who had been convicted of sexually abusing seven children had been sentenced to 20 years in jail. The offender was known as John Stephen Dixon at the time of the offences but now identifies as a woman. The press release, while acknowledging the former male identity, described the offender as a woman.
An anonymous account wrote in response: “This is a man, committing sexual offences against children… Please get your force in order.”
The police couldn’t let it stand.
They wrote back: “Hi, Sussex Police do not tolerate any hateful comments towards their gender identity regardless of crimes committed. This is irrelevant to the crime that has been committed and investigation. Sussex Police.” (They then sent a similar response to a couple of other accounts.)
The same anonymous account then responded: “Sussex Police, I am exercising my gender critical views, which are protected in law. Can you advise whether making such statements is a crime?”
Whoever runs the Sussex Police is clearly unable to let things go and needs to have the last word, even when dueling with an anonymous account. They responded by posting a link to an online police explainer about “what is hate crime?” — which urges people to call the police if they experience the “extremely unpleasant experience” of “name-calling.”
They then told the person “if you have gender critical views you wish to express this can be done on other platforms or your own page, not targeted at an individual.”
It’s all just confined to a few silly Tweets though, right? Not really. Things far worse than that have happened in the U.K.
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Harry Miller, an ex-police officer in the U.K., had a couple of run-ins with the law for posting online comments about trans issues. In 2019, after making posts claiming trans women weren’t real women, he received a phone call from Humberside Police.
Later, in Jan. 2020, police visited Miller to caution him about other posts and write him up for what they called “non-crime hate incidents.” Police guidelines describe this as “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice”.
Miller became a test case and, last year, won a Court of Appeal ruling that said the policy had a “chilling effect” on free speech rights.
It shouldn’t have had to come to that though. It’s also curious that the Sussex Police don’t appear dissuaded now, even after such a court ruling.
The good news is that the U.K. actually seems to be experiencing a backlash from the transgender mania of recent years. A controversial government clinic that was hastily putting minors on the pathway to gender reassignment surgery has now been closed and the issue, once considered taboo to discuss, is now being seriously probed by parliamentarians and other experts.
The worrisome part is that Canada appears to be a few years behind the UK. Could the cops knock on your door if they don’t like the wording of your post about the Oakville teacher?
So far, there’s no indication that is in the pipeline. But these days, anything is possible. Maybe we should make it clear in advance that these sorts of antics won’t fly over here.