Eliza Mondegreen has, fortunately for us, written up her experience of trans activist “protest” yesterday.

At first it was just a few saddos, and she felt almost sorry for them.

But just as I was stuffing the flyers into my backpack, feeling a little pity for the poor turnout, a surge of protesters arrived and the energy turned menacing all at once. The mob blocked access to the lecture hall. A friend and I tried to get to the doors and were pushed around as though lives depended on turning us back. We just wanted to hear a human-rights lawyer talk about a conflict in human-rights law.

It’s surreal, honestly, to be pushed and shoved and grabbed by people who are screaming about “nonviolence.” We were TERFs, transphobes, and (curiously) ‘scabs.’ A wild-eyed young man screamed: “I’M NOT GOING TO BE ERASED BY YOU PEOPLE.” We had no place at McGill. We were pinned in the middle of a raging crowd and screamed at to “GET OUT,” while prevented from going anywhere at all. I kept looking around for anyone not participating, anyone who looked uncomfortable with the way this peaceful protest had gone. But all the activists were chanting or shouting or screaming. The jumpy activists I’d observed a few minutes ago had transformed themselves into a mob, with the license of mobs. There’s no reaching people in that state, which is why it felt like anything could happen, especially after they’d already manhandled us.

It’s a very bad combination – a set of ludicrous fantasy-based beliefs and crowd energy. Their opinions are bullshit and their rage is amplified.

The activists particularly harassed two women, pushing one to the ground, and blasting them with bullhorns. At one point, the activists jeered: “Why are you even staying?” One of the women responded, very bravely, I could just hear her over the noise: “We don’t want to surrender to that kind of bullying.” And the activist shouted back: “What bullying? This isn’t bullying!”

That’s brilliant. “Why are you even staying [when we’re making it so physically unpleasant and dangerous for you]?” plus “This isn’t bullying!” Threat plus not bullying, oooookaaaaaay.

When we went outside to get away from the crush, a hulking man (who identifies as a woman and a lesbian, naturally) followed us. He said he knew all about people like us because he used to be a neo-Nazi himself.

Scratch the “used to be,” bub.

Meanwhile, back inside, the activists pushed through the doors, interrupting the talk, unplugging the projector, and throwing flour on the speaker, Professor Robert Wintemute.

…

I have no idea what went wrong with campus security. They were outside. The police were outside, too. Inside, it was completely chaotic and it would have only taken one person slightly more unhinged than the rest to send it to a very bad place. And now the activists will be emboldened. They won because they stopped anyone from saying anything they didn’t want anybody else to hear. And they won because Canadian media won’t cover the way it went down. The CBC attached the subhead “Advocates say debating trans women’s rights is harmful to all women” to its piece about activists shutting down free inquiry on campus.

Interesting that the CBC said trans women’s rights as opposed to trans rights. Almost as if the CBC knows what the problem is but doesn’t dare say so. Also, of course, absurd that the CBC says “trans women’s rights” without spelling out that that means men’s rights to force everyone to agree that the men are women, which doesn’t sound quite so rightsy and justicey.