free speech & hate speech

As a barrister one would imagine that we are immune from the ideology pandemic but having attended continuing legal ed while in lockdown i was perturbed to understand that I should now put a pronoun under any letter that goes out in my name. This was apparently because according to the speaker you need to show you are not a "bad" person. I don't even put the letters of my three degrees under my name which appear to be far more relevant so why I would start engaging in delusional language is beyond me. We were also advised we needed to ask our clients their pronouns. Frankly, many women would be extremely insulted being asked such a question, especially elderly women, who might feel that somehow you thought they appeared masculine. I raised this with my client the next day who happened to be a middle aged female, and she told me she would have found the question, if asked seriously, extremely rude. I now also find myself banned from Twitter for "hate speech". I have read of many people being banned for hate speech and it concerns me that like me, their comments are appropriate and factual observations and not at all "hateful" in common parlance. On the other hand I have seen highly abusive media attacks on women by men in dresses who call themselves women and this is not only condoned but apparently celebrated. I am seeing legislation and government policies undermining and erasing women by taking away their words and dehumanising them. i am watching cases unfold in the courts where young children are allowed to continue on a path of self-mutilation with state encouragement and sanctioning. I think the general public is not aware of what is happening in the world around them while legislative gates are clanged shut and we are herded into yards where you cannot speak freely for fear of prosecution. I see newspapers falsely reporting events to encourage a false narrative. i see cancel culture where people are harassed and threatened if they challenge the narrative in any way. We have seen in history the ugliness of infection of society with extreme ideas. It happened in Salem in the witchcraft trials, it happened in 1930s Germany when seemingly intelligent and civilised people condoned the erasure of the Jewish people, we say it with the Stassi in East Germany, we saw it with the cultural revolution in China. For some reason we cannot imagine it could happen to us and yet it is. It is real. We need to tell our stories. We need to be noisy. We need to be the boy who calls the king is naked.

#australia #freedomofspeech #hatespeech #pronouns #compelledspeech #workplace

women's narcotics anonymous meeting

I was asked to chair a women’s narcotics anonymous (NA) meeting. NA is a not-for-profit organisation run by its members to support people who are re-building their lives after addiction from substance and alcohol abuse. The NA women’s meetings are held to provide a safe space for women who have often suffered trauma and hard life experiences to share and find recovery. Mixed meetings can often be dominated by men who are confident to speak more and sometimes hit on female members. The women-only meetings are fewer but offer a space away from these distractions. When I arrived at the meeting I was surprised to see a man present who had a regular commitment as tea maker at the meeting. He was in no way presenting as female and his very large male track-suited frame felt slightly intimidating. I asked the lady who took the meeting why he was here and her response was ‘That is ** and they identify as a woman’. I was shocked that the few regular women that took the meeting were ok with this and I noticed a few newcomers that didn’t speak in the meeting and looked visibly confused and slightly awkward. There were also fewer women in attendance than there had been in the past. This man spent his time talking about his feelings as a woman and how his acceptance by everyone there validated his womanliness. None of it related to addiction or the subject usually shared. I never returned to that meeting. This incident sparked my interest in this new gender ideology. I am a bisexual woman and have a previous partner who has since transitioned who I fully support in their choice. I’ve also spent my fair share of years in the gay underground party scene in Sydney and dated both butch and femme lesbians and I’ve known quite a few trans-identified people in my time. I’m generally liberal-leaning but these past few years I feel that the liberal left who are endorsing rhetoric gaslighting women into accepting male bodies in their spaces has gone too far.

#unitedkingdom #drugrecovery #supportgroup #malesocialisation #narcoticsanonymous

verbal abuse in bathroom

As someone who 5 years ago was attacked and sexually assaulted by a stranger (male) whilst alone, it changed me greatly, in that I no longer feel safe without a friend accompanying me. Until recently I was okay sharing/using spaces with trans women (Heck one of my friends is a trans woman, albeit post-op and up until 2 years ago I would have been on the side of the activists saying that they aren't a threat). That is until I had a rather badly passing trans woman, possibly transvestite, aggressively threaten me and my friend (same as mentioned above) in the toilets that they would "rape" us dumb bitches with their "lady dick", because we were in their "way"... This was despite there being enough room to manoeuvre around me and my friend who were washing our hands chatting about the film we had just seen. It brought back flashbacks to the man who had attacked me 3 years prior, and since I had not felt confident going into a changing room or bathroom without a friend or family member present. I'm not sure whether the individual in question would have assaulted me/us if my friend I was with hadn't made a snide comment that the individual wasn't the only one with a lady dick, here...

#unitedkingdom #bathrooms #toilets #verbalabuse #rapethreats