House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee inquiry into Freedom of Expression Online
Question: Is freedom of expression under threat online? If so, how does this impact individuals differently, and why?
Talking about the two sexes can lead to loss of social media accounts
“You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
are routinely used by activists to report women talking about the material reality of sex in order to silence them.
○ @Ellierestless “you are one unpleasant bloke”
○ @helensaxby “in the last decade in the UK a male transgender person was more likely to murder someone than be murdered”
○ @beajaspert “We need to talk about male violence. Males kill trans women. Males kill women. Males kill men. Most killers are male - vastly, disproportionately. Very, very few killers are female. Lets take action together to #stopmale violence.
○ @angels_ackiz “All rapists are men. In UK law, rape is a crime only committed by a person with a penis. Twitter ban
○ @havkom “Men are not women. Women don't have penises. Lesbians are female homosexuals.”
○ @renee_jg “Believe what you want dude”.
Talking about the material reality of sex online can lead to people being targeted at work
● Dr Eva Poen of the University of Exeter was accused of “abhorrent bigotry” after she posted on social media that only women can have periods. In response to a post on Twitter calling for a fitness app to change its wording from “female health” to “menstrual health”, she said: “Only female people menstruate. Only female people go through menopause. ‘Female health’ is exactly what this is about.” A student complained to the university, claiming that her comments were making transgender people “live in fear” and demanding that she “stop spreading vitriol”.
● Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at Oxford, has been accused by students of being “transphobic” on the basis of her tweets and speeches. The students claimed that: “The power dynamics of providing a platform to Selina Todd in the name of ‘academic free speech’ means putting trans and non-binary members of our community into the position of having to defend their right to exist. Her views refuse to acknowledge that trans women ARE women, that trans women’s rights ARE women’s rights.”
● Allison Bailey, a criminal defence barrister; feminist; lesbian; lifelong campaigner for racial equality, lesbian, gay and bisexual rights; and survivor of child sexual abuse, opened a crowdfunder to finance the legal costs in a discrimination case that she is pursuing against her chambers and Stonewall. After receiving complaints, the platform she was using to raise funds to support her case, CrowdJustice, closed her crowdfunder, saying that her background information breached its policy against “discriminatory or hateful content”, with “gratuitously violent language and accusations regarding trans people”. In fact, it consisted of careful, factual statements citing government statistics and an account of her own experience of sexual abuse as a child.
● Maya Forstater, a researcher, lost her job at the Centre for Global Development after colleagues expressed concern about her writing and tweeting about gender identity and sex. She is pursuing a belief discrimination case in the employment tribunal. An appeal on the question of whether her belief is a protected belief is due to be heard in the Employment Appeal Tribunal in April.
Saying something mildly offensive can lead to criminal investigation
● Harry Miller posted a number of tweets between November 2018 and January 2019 about transgender issues as part of the debate about reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004. In one tweet Mr Miller wrote: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don't mis-species me.” This tweet was among several reported to Humberside Police as “transphobic” by a Mrs B. Humberside Police told Mr Miller that although the tweets were not criminal, “they were upsetting many members of the transgender community who were upset enough to report them to the police”. It later turned out that this was not true. There was only one report. “
● Sarah Phillimore is a barrister and a campaigner on sex and gender issues. She was contacted by an account on Twitter informing her that she had a “record for life” of “hate”, as her tweets had been reported and recorded by the police under “Hate Crimes Operational Guidance”. She requested information from the police and received 12 pages of tweets they had recorded as a transphobic and religiously aggravated “non-crime hate incident”. Phillimore says: “The tweets I posted contained nothing that any reasonable person could describe as 'hatred' - for example one is discussing that my dog likes to eat cheese!” 
● Miranda Yardley, a transsexual, was prosecuted for a transgender hate crime after a complainant, who worked on behalf of the charity Mermaids, alleged harassment. Helen Islan frequently campaigns on transgender issues via social media on the basis that she is the mother of a transgender child. Yardley had posted a tweet linking Islan’s full name to her Twitter handle and stating that the “self-interest of Helen Islan is in justifying to herself her decisions to trans her daughter”. The information was contained in a screenshot of a Google search which had also brought up an image of Helen Islan and her children. The CPS unsuccessfully applied for reporting restrictions to prevent Islan’s full name being published (on the basis that this was necessary to send a message to future victims of “transgender hate crime” that the courts would protect them by granting anonymity). The judge stated that there was no evidence of harassment, that issues of freedom of speech, as enshrined in Article 10 of the ECHR, were clearly engaged and that it was a case that the CPS should never have brought.
● Caroline Farrow was reported to police after she referred in a tweet to the child of Mermaid’s CEO Susie Green, who was taken to Thailand at the age of 16 to have sex reassignment surgery. Farrow wrote: “Susie Green is in breach of Samaritans policy about how suicide should be discussed and broached in the media. What she did to her own son is illegal. She mutilated him by having him castrated and rendered sterile while still a child”. Farrow said she was told by police that the complaint was about misgendering. Susie Green later withdrew the complaint and Mermaids issued a statement: “The tweets are a lot more serious than about misgendering. They were allegations of serious misconduct and vile and spiteful personal attacks.” Sex reassignment surgery on under-18s was already illegal in the UK, and was subsequently made illegal in Thailand.
● Linda Bellos OBE, a leading feminist and campaigner for racial equality, was prosecuted for an offence of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour contrary to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The alleged offence arose out of a public event where Bellos stated that “if any one of those bastards comes anywhere near me I will take my glasses off and clock ’em”. She has said she was referring to the attack on Maria MacLachlan at Speakers’ Corner. The event was live-streamed on Facebook by Venice Allan. Giuliana Kendal, a trans woman who had watched the live-streaming of the debate, complained to South Yorkshire Police that she found the remarks threatening as a trans woman. South Yorkshire Police launched a full investigation, including interviewing Bellos under caution. In May 2018 the CPS decided there was no realistic prospect of conviction, taking into account the context in which the words were uttered and the fact that Bellos would have a defence of freedom of speech under Article 10 of the ECHR. Kendal then embarked on a private prosecution of both Bellos (under section 5 Public Order Act) and Allen (under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.) Eventually, in November 2018, the case was dropped after the CPS exercised its statutory powers to take over the prosecution and then discontinued it. Bellos and Allen had to instruct criminal defence lawyers and attend court on three occasions.
● Kate Scottow was prosecuted under s.127 Communications Act 2003 and was found guilty of using a public communications network to “cause annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety”. Her crime was to write some tweets referring to a person called Stephanie Hayden. In court it was revealed that Hayden, under previous names, had been before criminal courts on 11 occasions for 21 offences and had spent six months in prison for obtaining property by deception. Hayden had obtained an interim injunction, prohibiting Ms Scottow from publishing “any personal information relating to” Ms Hayden “on any social media platform” in either male or female identity. Ms Scottow’s tweets included describing Hayden as “a pig in a wig” and referring to Hayden as “he” or “him”. In court the judge told Scottow that “we teach our children to be kind”. As Kim Thomas wrote in The Spectator:
“Scottow’s tweets were, admittedly, uncivil. But nothing she wrote was worse than what can be seen every day on Twitter and other social media platforms, where thousands of cruel insults and threats are regularly posted without any comeback at all. Hayden herself has referred to people as ‘nutters’ on Twitter. She has also referred to social media site Mumsnet as ‘Nuttersnet’... In 2018, Hayden launched civil proceedings against ‘Father Ted’ writer Graham Linehan for harassment after he allegedly published tweets with her previous male name. The case was later dropped. Scottow was not so lucky. She was arrested and held in a cell for seven hours, and her computer and phone were impounded as evidence for months.” 
Hayden admitted during the trial to being a serial litigant in the civil courts. “I am litigious, I put my hands up. I use the law if I feel I have to use the law,” Hayden told the court. Scottow’s conviction was overturned on appeal almost two years after her arrest.
15 January 2020
 For example sex matters in areas of life, including in relation to single sex services, healthcare, relationships, sexual orientation, religion, sexual consent, data and statistics and the protection of human rights and non-discrimination.
 Stock, K (2021) The sinister attempts to silence gender critical academics, 13 January 2021, The Spectator
 Gallus Mag (2018) WordPress censors GenderTrender; Gallus Mag responds, December 6 2018. https://4thwavenow.com/2018/11/17/wordpress-dumps-gendertrender-gallus-mag-responds/
 Shepherd, L and Kay, J (2019)
Yaniv’s Other Racket: How a Single Gender Troll Managed to Get ‘Hundreds’ of Women Thrown Off Twitter, August 31, 2019, Quillette. https://quillette.com/2019/08/31/yanivs-other-racket-how-a-single-gender-troll-managed-to-get-hundreds-of-women-thrown-off-twitter/
 Karon Monaghan (2020) The Forstater Employment Tribunal judgment: a critical appraisal in light of Miller, UK Labour Law Blog https://uklabourlawblog.com/2020/02/19/the-forstater-employment-tribunal-judgment-a-critical-appraisal-in-light-of-miller-by-karon-monaghan/
 Academics and others at British universities targeted for questioning transgender orthodoxy http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/GCtargets.shtml
 Are academics freely able to criticise the idea of ‘gender identity’ in UK Universities? https://medium.com/@kathleenstock/are-academics-freely-able-to-criticise-the-idea-of-gender-identity-in-uk-universities-67b97c6e04be
 Gender Dissidents https://gender-dissidents.net/tag/work/
 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7978797/amp/Mother-two-called-transgender-woman-man-racist-series-offensive-tweets.html https://www.2harecourt.com/2018/11/30/gudrun-young-successfully-defends-leading-feminist-anti-racist-campaigner-linda-bellos-obe/
 Thomas, Kim (2020) I stand with Kate Scottow https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-stand-with-kate-scottow