Can you go to jail for ‘misgendering’? One British journalist is about to find out

Mar 22, 2019 by Jill

by James Kirkup, Spectator USA:

Here we go again. Another woman in Britain is facing a police investigation – and potentially, a jail sentence – because she wrote things online about sex, gender and a person who changed gender.

So far, so familiar, but this tale has a significant feature. The woman is a journalist. A British police force is investigating a journalist over words that she published.

Caroline Farrow, 44, is the subject of an investigation by Surrey Police over tweets she sent referring to the adult child of Susie Green, head of Mermaids, a charity concerned with transgender children. Farrow says the investigation arises because she ‘misgendered’ the child, who was born male but now identifies as female.

Farrow is a columnist and occasional TV commentator. She writes and speaks from a Catholic perspective about a number of issues including education, family policy, euthanasia and gender. Her political and religious stance makes her relatively unusual among women who question transgender orthodoxy; a significant number of ‘gender critical’ feminists are on the left of politics, while others profess no particular political or religious affiliations.

I point this out here because some people are keen to suggest that anyone who challenges the trans rights agenda is automatically a right-wing culture warrior possibly in league with Christian conservatives in America. There will no doubt be those who cite Farrow’s faith as proof of that thesis. In fact, I’d suggest it proves the opposite: it shows you can find women (and men) who worry about gender issues right across the political and social spectrum.

Read here

Update: Trans group activist drops police complaint against Christian for ‘misgendering’ adult child by Brandon Showalter, Christian Post