"What happens if you misgender?"

[Childrenofthestones]

This is in reply to a thread I saw a couple of days ago but have not been able to find.
I have been back 3 pages of threads, I don't know if it was removed by MN.

Anyway, in the YouTube clip below is one man's experience of what happens if you miss gender.

Answer ......locked up in cells for a day, taken to Crown Court, your life turned upside down.

Relevant part starts at 2:20

Wow. That is frightening

Wow that's quite scary! I don't quite agree with his closing statement that suggested that the police shouldn't ever investigate online content that is deemed offensive and that we should just choose not to be offended. In some cases yes but online bullying can be every bit as frightening and threatening as bullying in person and can have just as serious real life consequences. I guess the real question should be at what point does an online poster cross that line between exercising freedom of speech and saying something that can cause someone to either hurt themselves or hurt someone else? And who decides where that line is?

When you can hear the Jackboots marching, it's already too late...

I think the far right American commentator is wildly biased, so my initial reaction was that this must be exaggerated.

How wrong was I? The arrested gentleman is on MN @vernon1964 and the incident is as he describes:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2847658-Misgendering-conviction-overturned

I have no word for this madness.

think the far right American commentator is wildly biased, so my initial reaction was that this must be exaggerated.

I don't know this guy and what camp he falls into. But I very much have the impression that the libertarian right is the only camp that consistently holds up free speech currently.
Of course you do have some on the left, who do, too, like, say, Glenn Greenwald. But they are very much outliers in my experience and that really, really scares me. It kind of feels like being kicked out from home, and now standing alone in the street, not sure where to go.

That bloke should never have been arrested. Is he expected to be able to read the minds of random mentally unwell strangers? How is he meant to know that someone who looks like a man thinks they're a woman? It wasn't even a deliberate insult!

I'm genuinely worried for some of my more gobby younger relatives, that one them will get into a stupid argument outside the pub or at the taxi rank or whatever and end up hauled into court for offending some random nutbag.

Don't look at anyone...don't talk to anyone...throw egg shells in front of you to walk upon - oh no, that's littering!

But I very much have the impression that the libertarian right is the only camp that consistently holds up free speech currently.

Many pick and choose. Free speech is often code for maintaining the status quo. The truth is that addressing existing structural inequality while strongly defending individual freedom is complex.

I think the UK generally get the balance better than the US, but we are moving in the wrong direction with stuff like this.

Many pick and choose. Free speech is often code for maintaining the status quo.

I agree that some are only interested in free speech to be able to denigrate people with different skin color or women. But I disagree that free speech is about maintaining the status quo.

Because the fact of the matter is, if speech can be policed, it will always be those who already are in power, who 'are' the status quo, who do the policing. That is why I am so shocked about the shout for censorship by many progressives. When speech is policed, progressive voices will be the first to be shut up, once their attention turns away from identity politics and towards economic inequality or anti-war issues (if that should ever happen again), issues that threaten the status quo.

Wow that is scary. Vernon seems like a lovely bloke too, if he had been shouting abuse it would be more understandable but he was just being friendly.
Seems like wanting to make an example. Poor guy.

What a waste of police time!
I think someone should be asked to explain this in more detail.

We are being squeezed by some really extreme and unstable factions so that the rational middle ground is lost. Scary.

That is genuinely terrifying.
I didn't know that the UK was a totalitarian state.

It is important to remember that he was found innocent though, and not be intimidated and censored by threats otherwise we do their work for them.

wingwarbler said

"It is important to remember that he was found innocent though, and not be intimidated and censored by threats otherwise we do their work for them."

Only on appeal.
Remember he was initially found guilty with a £360 fine, 150 hours of community service and a 2-year restraining order.
All for saying alright geezer to somebody.
He is self-employed but how do you think it would have gone down with his employer had he been a teacher or a social worker?

I'm just speechless. How can this have slipped through as law - what kind of idiots are politicians. They really need to remember they govern with consent. Consider the language just used about Theresa May and they'll be no consequences.