... it is no coincidence that this draconian, Orwellian, Hate Crime Bill enshrines within it a circular, non-reality-based definition of “gender” or “gender identity”. Here’s that definition, in all its glory:
“‘Gender’ means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.”
This is pure gobbledegook, and circular to boot (a circular definition is one where the term to be defined appears in the definition, and so it never manages to get off the ground). The thing is, there’s no non-circular definition of “gender identity” that doesn’t depend on stereotypical expectations of the sexes—and they appear here in the form of “gender expression”.
As for hate, I know what it feels like to be its target. I’ve experienced serious death threats—there’s a trans-identified man in custody right now for making gruesome, sexualised threats to kill me and Kellie-Jay Keen, another campaigner for women’s rights. He’s a man who identifies as a woman and has a previous conviction for threatening another shopper in a supermarket with a claw hammer in a row over him trying to steal alcohol. He’s terrifying.
That’s hate. He has threatened publicly to cut up my face, to tear out my eyes. He’s threatened to burn down Kellie Jay’s house. And he’s not the only person to make such threats against me and other women campaigners. He’s just one of the few who was stupid enough to do it with a Twitter handle linked to a name he uses, and saying where he is based, when he’s already been convicted of violent crimes.
That’s hate. Me saying that men are men, that no man can become or be a woman, that a man who “feels like a woman” is having an entirely male experience, albeit an atypical one—that’s not. Those statements are not just true, but in some situations essential to say, in order to uphold other people’s human rights.
Free speech isn’t just for the fun of it. It’s supposed to be legally protected because it’s precious. Irish legislators are being asked to pass a law that will criminalise “hate”—undefined. Which protects “gender”, defined circularly—that is, undefined.
This will mean that nobody can talk using ordinary clear language about what I write about in my book, namely one of the worst medical scandals in history, and it’s being perpetrated on children.
https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/joyce-activated-issue-51/
(Usually her articles are behind a paywall but HJ is so worried about this legislation that this is free to read and to be shared.)