To think when police resources are allegedly so stretched and crime levels are on the rise, this isn't a good use of an inspector's time?

[GabrielleNelson]

twitter.com/HarryTheOwl/status/1110503943245688832 Twitter thread starts here.

EweSurname collated it on another thread. Conversation between Harry and a police inspector goes like this:

Harry The Owl - Limerick Criminal
‏@HarryTheOwl*
I am stunned, shocked, upset, aghast and fuming.Just had Inspector Wilson from @Humberbeat call me re my complaint

Me: Did I commit a crime?
Him: No. But you have upset a lot of people in the trans community.
Me: I do not believe Trans women are women. How do I state that without it causing upset?
Him: Why would you tweet that? Why do you feel the need?

Me: Because I am taking part in a national conversation.
Him: But why do you feel the need to do that?
Me: Because I am a citizen and believe political engagement is necessary. Why are you asking me this?
Him: Because I don’t see why you feel the need to say this.

Me: I can’t believe you, a police inspector, are questioning my involvement in politics. What right have you to do that?
Him: You do have the right. I’m just asking why you feel the need to engage in hate.
Me: Hate? Where’s the fucking hate?
Him: Maybe it’s the wrong wording.

Me: you are a fucking Inspector. You do not get to tell me that expressing a legally held view is hate. And you don’t get to pressure me to stop debating politically.
Him: If you swear, I will end this conversation.

Me. Ok. But I’m angry that you are ringing me and asking me why I’d want to be involved in politics.
Him: You have every right to be involved in politics. But why would you tweet your views when it upsets the trans community?

Me: let me get this straight. I said I do not believe trans women are women, and you ask me why I feel the need to tweet that. Right?
Him: Right. Exactly.
Me: I am ending this conversation now.
Hangs up

I am devastated.

Now, whether or not you think transwomen are women, transmen are men, there are obvious freedom of speech issues here.

Last week Caroline Farrow was called by the police because she had misgendered Susie Green's child on Twitter and she was lambasted by Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid on GMB yesterday for not being nice.

On Thursday Dr Julia Long was physically ejected from a public meeting for which she had a ticket by seven police officers because the people running the meeting thought she might be about to ask an awkward question.

What's going on here? When did the police get powers to stop people being blunt and causing hurt feelings to the thinskinned?

This worries me.

Stompy what's your definition of 'woman'? This conversation isn't going to go anywhere without getting that nailed down.

Sudocreme I remember a time when in was commonly felt that it was a biological fact that sexual relationships should only be between men and women. We now understand that was a bigoted position, and there is nothing wrong or abnormal about being gay.

You must have a long long memory as the Greeks and Romans knew it was a biological fact that gays could have sex.

Yanbu. That is a ridiculous use of police time, personal opinion is not a hate crime.
I agree with you trans women are not real women, how can they be if they were born with a penis.

Excuse me, where have you got the idea that there's a minority I dislike? I didn't say that and I don't think it. There is much behaviour associated with being a fanatical transactivist which I dislike but that's a very different thing from saying I am prejudiced against a whole group because of a characteristic they share, which is what you're suggesting I said.

I also don't know where you're getting the idea that I don't think people should be able to talk freely about groups I'm OK with. That's not what I said. I explicitly said that I think the police should back off trying to referee in debates over belief/religion/ideology. It's dangerous to free speech.

And finally, when two sets of rights clash, yes, one or both sides may well end up losing something. In this instance women currently have legal protection for single-sex spaces for reasons of physical safety, privacy and dignity, and this is something which most women value. The right to have a bio female HCP for a smear test or any health care, only bio women staffing and living in a refuge, providing rape counselling, or providing intimate care to a disabled or elderly woman, only bio women in a women's prison where so many prisoners have suffered DV and sexual violence, the option of a toilet or changing room just for bio women (and their young children), separate sporting competitions for girls and women so they have a chance of winning and setting records against those of similar physical development. All these things would be lost if we move from sex-segregation to gender-segregation or no segregation.

Woman=Adult Human Female
So a trans woman has to be excluded from that description
It is biologically impossible for humans to change sex.

On mn I often get the idea that people feel that transgender people are trying to take something away from women, and I don't think they are

Yeah what do women and girls need with privacy, dignity, sports, their own toilets, anyway?

What a frightening state we're in.
What an immense fucking waste of already stretched police time. I am completely losing faith in common sense right now.
Who prioritises the chasing of people who tell the truth about inconvenient biological facts on the internet? Why is it wrong for Harry and the rest of us to state that we don't believe trans women are women?
I don't believe God exists, it's fairly obvious that I'm allowed to say that.
There's more evidence for trans women not being women than there is for the existence of God.

I wont collude in something that I know is damaging women's rights and undermining the safeguarding of children.
OP, YANBU, not at all.

Stompy :

The point I was trying to make was that I'm not sure you are talking about free speech. You feel strongly that people should be able to speak freely about a minority that you dislike, but you don't think people should be able to speak freely about groups you are ok with.

Please provide evidence to back up this statement.

No one is suggesting that transgender people should be protected instead of women. There is not one police officer making a choice about whether to investigate a rape or challenge someone inciting bigotry against transgender people.

Yes they are. Yes there is. Disagreement with an ideology is not bigotry.

On mn I often get the idea that people feel that transgender people are trying to take something away from women, and I don't think they are.

You need to think again then because that is exactly what the aim is and it is already happening.

On mn I often get the idea that people feel that transgender people are trying to take something away from women, and I don't think they are.

Privacy, sporting opportunity, boundaries, other women's awards/ringfenced opportunities/opportunity for representation. Safety, not because transwomen are any more likely to be dangerous themselves but because not being able to shut out transwomen also means not being able to shut out other males because it's impossible to tell one from the other.

The very definition of the category - if a male who wears a dress and conforms to stereotypes of femininity and has a deep internal feeling of girliness is a "woman", what does that make me in trousers with a strong distaste for feminine stereotypes and no deep internal feeling beyond personhood? They may be a lovely person but we have nothing in common except shared humanity. The word woman is mainly useful to me in that it tells you something about what sort of biology I have, trans ideology is trying to take that meaning away from the word.

Most may not realise they are taking from women, so not "trying" in that sense (though I think it betrays a certain lack of imagination or empathy). I think some definitely do realise and do it anyway.

The police have a duty to protect freedom of speech/expression/belief under the human rights act. This is just bullying or the old “gypsy’s warning”. I think it’s an abuse of position; the police are not security guards to be wheeled out when someone gets offended

I’m not sure I even believe in transgender. Sure, you can express yourself how you want and no one should be abused etc but gender is made up so you have to believe in gender to believe in transgender. Gender is a negative thing, why would I want to entertain that.
Anyone is free to say this or similar provided you don’t do so in a way that commits offences eg Public Order Act

I can't help noticing something here.

"The following characteristics are protected characteristics—
age;
disability;
gender reassignment;
marriage and civil partnership;
pregnancy and maternity;
race;
religion or belief;
sex;
sexual orientation."

gender reassignment.

Not sex-change: gender reassignment.

You can, people do, change gender; no problem. The law protects you if you have. And I would defend anyone's right to do so, though I think it is shameful when five-year-olds are encouraged to think they have the "wrong" body, because I foresee a lot of grief for them over the years as a result of this: perpetual discontent is a terrible thing to feel.

What you can't do is change sex, short of being reborn in a different body; you are stuck with the sex you are born with. Not "assigned with at birth", because it isn't a matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact. Having or not-having XX chromosomes is inborn, not subject to change by surgical intervention. There are a few cases, statistically, of ambiguity, XXY, Klinefelter Syndrome, whatever, but as far as I can tell trans activists are not talking about those, and also as far as I can tell most intersex people actively do not want to be represented by trans activists of the aggressive-male type -- and who should blame them? I wouldn't!

Yes, Asking, the law there seems to accept that changing sex is impossible. I'm not a legal expert but I've seen it claimed that when the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004 MPs and the House of Lords were told that a gender recognition certificate was a 'legal fiction' made available as a kindness to a tiny group of people in great distress - 5000 in total was the estimate given, remarkably accurate as that's roughly the number of GRCs issued in the last 15 years. Nobody back then talked (openly, anyway) about transwomen are women, transmen are men.

Unfortunately as far as I can make laws have not always been drafted quite so precisely and gender is often used interchangeably with sex. Confusing. And that's before we start on the implications of hundreds of thousands of people now identifying as transgender or genderfluid or nonbinary or genderqueer.

It doesn't help that birth certificates can be changed which shouldn't happen because that's supposed to be sex, not gender isn't it?

Well, I'd have said so. There's an odd approach in the law that a new birth certificate is issued and I don't think you can ever actually ask someone if they have a GRC. I don't know why all the mystery because frankly most trans people - transwomen, anyway - rarely pass as female.

'freedom of expression ... is applicable not only to “information” or “ideas” that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.'

perpetual discontent is a terrible thing to feel

I’ve often thought that some degree of “perpetual discontent” is the human condition!

It is acute in adolescence and gradually resolved as one grows older and lives through many experiences. I found that the really liberating thing in my fifties was the liberation from most of the self-doubt and angst I experienced from about 16 to 45!!

I just don't understand the gender debate. If somebody says they prefer the pronouns he or she or them or whatever they like then I'll just use them. Because it doesn't affect me in any way at all.
As for the whole "it's putting women at danger in public toilets' argument, try comparing the number of women attacked by trans women in public toilets and compare it to the number of trans women/men attacked in public toilets.

Go on then how, I would be interested to see stats so I can compare.

The whole point is women yet again are having their spaces taken away to benefit others. I as a rape victim don't want to be in a changing room with someone with a dick just because they fancy themselves a woman.

And if people can simply self ID, then single sex laws are completely and utterly pointless. They render them meaningless.

The question was posed of this is a valid use of a police inspectors time.
Reading the thread it would appear that a complaint was made by the individual TO police.
All complaints are automatically dealt with by the duty officer, an officer of inspector rank.
It's policy.

Yes, Buster, but if the complainant's report of this conversation is accurate, the inspector didn't address the complaint at all. He took the opportunity to tell the complainant off for wrongthink and not being nice enough. That's what troubles me about this. Where does it stop? And while it would be lovely if we could all be polite to each other, I happen to think the primary job of the police is to solve and where possible prevent crimes, prioritising the most serious. They're not doing terribly well on that at the moment, possibly because they have to waste time on stuff like this.

Buster, if I complained right now about your anonymous comment online stating that fact, while asserting that you'd hurt my feelings, you'd be absolutely fine with a police officer tracking you down and phoning you?

(Bearing in mind that "transwomen are male" is a fact, however much people don't like it, and that tomorrow's unpopular truth could be something you'd never have guessed at before?)

We have a fraction of the conversation. From a biased source. And as he was the one to initiate the complaint, he has wasted time....

He made the complaint aparl, no-one else.

buster so why wasn't the person rightfully told that no crime had been committed, that this was a waste of police resources?