inky I'm sorry you've had to go through that, and yes, it's ludicrous.
That article is worrying, Crasacre - what is construed as 'hostility'? And are the police really investigating this as seriously as all that, or is it a bluff.
The fact is that these stickers are absolutely not directly encouraging a certain type of crime. They are neutral in that respect. So in this case it is not the stickers on their own which would incite a crime. You need someone who is already hostile towards trans people in order to end up with a situation where a crime has been committed. So why, given the content of the stickers, should the blame for this extend to the person who did the stickering? Does the person who undertook the criminal activity not shoulder the whole responsibility? Do they not have critical faculties and a choice as to whether to react to that message or not? So many questions!
So sloppy and unjust to try to draw a direct line from stickers to genuinely hostile behaviour without even explaining what these 12 hate crimes constitute.
I would have thought by that measure that pushing the notion that lesbians like dick is much more subliminally harmful and directly consequential but I don't see anyone trying to criminalise that rather than the consequence (which in this case would likely merit being named as such). Because very few people are drawing a causal line between the two despite the fact it would be deserved rather than tenuous.