Christina
Good news – but we’re still furious.
Here’s the story from last June:
The Norwegian Public Prosecution Service investigates “hate-mongering” tweets by feminist Christina Ellingsen, addressed to a man who claims to be a lesbian woman. If found guilty, Ellingsen could face up to three years in prison.
Ellingsen posted the tweets between February 2021 and January 2022, in reaction to statements of Christine Marie Jentoft, representative of the transactivist group Foreningen FRI. Jentoft is a biological man who identifies as a lesbian.
A (“biological”) man can’t be a lesbian. It’s all in the definition. Only women can be lesbians.
“Why does FRI teach young people that males can be lesbians? Isn’t that conversion therapy?” tweeted Ellingsen. Later, she wrote about how “bonkers” FRI is, an “organisation that supposedly works to protect the interests of young lesbians.”
Amnesty International Norway recently accused Ellingsen of “harassing” [Jentoft] after telling him on national television that he was male. “You are a man. You can’t be a mother,” said Ellingsen. “To normalize the idea that men can be mothers is a defined form of discrimination against women.”
Jentoft is harassing women.
In 2021, a Norwegian man was already convicted for “insulting” and “misgendering” a trans-identified man on Facebook. He was sentenced to 21 days in prison and a fine of approximately 1500 euros.
Can you imagine? I’d be dead of rage before the first day was over.
Best way forward for Amnesty International Norway IMHO is to demand a purge of all dictionaries in all libraries, schools and other institutions, as well as those in private homes, and to get rid of all pronouns, adjectives and common nouns as well, thus returning the language to a series of Neanderthal or primate grunts, snorts and screeches. And howls. Don’t forget howls. Howls cover a lot of bases.
I suppose this was the best that could be hoped for under the circumstances, but the fact that things were alowed to go so far in the first place doesn’t bode well for the integrity of our institutions. As they say, the process is the punishment, and even if this particular Kafkaesque show trial didn’t end in a conviction, it can’t help having a chilling effect on free speech in general. Thus the activists in our police and our legal system win even when they lose.
If misogynistic hate speech (the real kind!) were treated with 1% of the same severity, half the male population of Norway would be behind bars for life, and hardly anyone would be off the hook entirely.