‘I’m a lesbian who would not consider males will be lesbians: Take me to court docket’

My title is Tonje Gjevjon. I’m an artist, a girl, and a lesbian. I’m at present below investigation for breach of the Norwegian Hate Speech Legislation for refusing to name males ladies.

I don’t consider within the idea of gender identities. I insist on my proper to reject this perception and for a few years have articulated how degrading and damaging gender id laws is for girls. As an artist, a girl, and a lesbian, I’ve witnessed and skilled a tradition of abuse developed and legitimized within the wake of the laws geared toward defending gendered identities.

In 2019, I wrote that, had trans activism been round once I was a younger tomboy, I might possible have been one of many ladies sacrificed, explaining:

“I’m a lesbian tomboy who grew up in an age the place the idea of being ‘born within the incorrect physique’ didn’t exist. If I have been a baby at present, I wouldn’t have stood an opportunity in opposition to trans activism.”

Over the previous six years, I’ve completed every part I can to warn in regards to the harms — to each ladies and youngsters — of changing the time period intercourse with gender id. I’ve printed articles, participated in public hearings, and engaged in debates about intercourse, gender roles, sexual orientation, and LGBTQ tradition because the early 2000s.

Earlier than 2017, it was potential to debate these points, disagreeing fiercely one second, and head to a bar the following, to have a beer with dissenters. However the second the Gender Recognition Act was launched into Norwegian laws in 2016, permitting people to easily declare a brand new intercourse with none medical analysis, any try and ask questions or provide difficult views was met with “no debate.”

Those that problem gender id laws are cancelled, demonetized, topic to emotional black mail, and threatened with lack of employment. Lesbians contained in the “Rainbow Household” who tried to boost consciousness about how gender id laws may hurt ladies and youngsters have been particularly focused and remoted — ridiculed, harassed, and ostracized with little if any help. Lesbians like me who say males can’t be lesbians are labeled as transphobes and TERFs, much like the way in which lesbians within the 70s who have been labeled as frigid man haters. The powerlessness I’ve skilled within the face of the mob has broken me and people near me.

At this time, the Norwegian authorities doles out 30 million NOK a 12 months in funding for LGBTQI+ organizations. These organizations have largely left the “LGB” behind, and make use of heterosexual males who name themselves ladies, lesbians, and moms. These males additionally educate and advise kids and homosexual youth. In Norwegian faculties, kids are taught that they themselves determine which gender they’re.

Regardless of the actual fact those that communicate out in opposition to gender id ideology are vilified and censored, trans activists complain that the police don’t punish us harshly sufficient. The chief of the Nationwide Affiliation for Gender and Sexuality Variety (Foreningen FRI), printed a press release encouraging people to contact the police in the event that they encounter “hate speech” on-line, no matter whether or not the speech technically qualifies below the regulation.

He explains:

“I’ve lowered my threshold for reporting issues to the Police Online Patrol. For those who come throughout hate speech or issues that you just assume are within the gray zone, you’re welcome to take a screenshot and tip off the police. It’s not reporting however helps them get an summary of the members and the speech local weather. I’ll be blissful to ship it in in your behalf when you don’t wish to do it your self.”

It appears Norway is main the way in which in direction of McCarthyism 2.0.

Cancellation 

As an expert artist, I’ve made and produced movies, movies, performances, visible artwork, and songs commenting on points associated to ladies, lesbians, the feminine physique, the LGBTQ motion and the “Rainbow family” since 1999.

In 2018, I used to be invited to take part in an exhibition at Haugar Artwork Museum known as “Hen — Fluid gender.” Initially, the exhibition aimed to current completely different views on gender. I used to be invited as a result of my focus as an artist has been on ladies, lesbian love, and the feminine physique, and the exhibition meant to discover how gender points have been addressed in up to date artwork. However, the exhibition took a flip, specializing in gender id and the Norweigen phrase, “hen” — a 3rd pronoun which means neither female nor masculine. I had deliberate to carry out “Vagina Anthem,” a track I wrote addressing the way in which through which ladies are attacked for talking out about sex-based rights, our organic actuality, and gender id. Just a few days earlier than the opening of the exhibition, the curator knowledgeable me, over the cellphone, that she and the leaders of the Haugar Artwork Museum had determined that the lyrics of “Vagina Anthem” would possibly offend trans individuals, explaining particularly that the strains, “I’m a hateful ugly Terf” and “We’re ladies with vaginas” have been “provocative,” and will trigger a security danger.

In October 2020, I signed an settlement to curate an exhibition that includes the works of a deceased lesbian artist at Kunstplass Contemporary Art in Oslo. In December 2021, the gallerist knowledgeable me that I used to be cancelled from the exhibition as I may now not be related to as an artist. She advised me I had been blacklisted. Afterwards, she was quoted in a newspaper, saying, “At one level, we [determined] that an exhibition produced by Gjevjon can be incompatible with our profile and our values.” The gallerists knew me and have been conscious of my outspoken views on gender id, so this assertion got here as a shock to me.

In March 2022, I attended the Ladies’s Day demonstration in Oslo with my spouse. I and different members of WDI Norway carried a placard studying, “Trans ladies are males.” Trans activists contacted my spouse’s employers, accusing her of “spreading hate,” claiming she was unfit for her job. She was not fired, however the expertise was extremely worrying for her.

Reported

In 2020, Norway’s parliament outlawed “hate speech in opposition to transgender individuals,” which means these discovered responsible face a positive or as much as a 12 months in jail for personal remarks, and a most of three years in jail for public feedback. The primary Supreme Courtroom decision concerning hate speech on the premise of gender id and gender expression got here in September, when the Norwegian Supreme Courtroom upheld a 2021 Hordaland District Courtroom ruling, deciding {that a} 53-year-old man had violated Part 185 of the Felony Code on hate speech by making “offensive and punishable remarks” a few “trans lady” on Fb. The person was given a 15-day suspended sentence and two years probation, ordered to pay a positive of $15,000NOK.

In protest of what I contemplate to be an indefensible strategy to gender id ideology in Norway, I made it my objective to repeat the condemned speech, thereby difficult Part 185 of the Penal Code.

On October 1st, I intentionally used the identical wording as the person convicted within the Hordaland ruling in a Fb post, linking it to lesbian sexual orientation. I wrote:

“Males who perma-LARP that they’re lesbians and ladies are, as I see it, discriminatory in opposition to ladies and perverted fetishists. There are male staff at queer organizations who establish as ladies and lesbians. Certainly one of them is Christine Jentoft who was once known as Christer Jentoft. He’s employed as a guide by Foreningen FRI, who for some unusual motive nonetheless says they work for lesbians”… Queer associations equivalent to Foreningen FRI and males who fetishize being a lesbian are actually utilizing the laws handed by the Storting to press prices in opposition to individuals who don’t wish to conform to this loopy spiritual regime. It’s as inconceivable for males to turn out to be lesbians as it’s for males to turn out to be pregnant. Males are males no matter sexual fetishes — so the truth that males with fetishes are protected as a susceptible minority by way of the idiotic and fabricated idea of gender id is bananas.”

The conviction within the Hordaland ruling is related to ladies — particularly lesbians — because the judgment removes a needed device, depriving us of the appropriate to name out males’s predatory, creepy, or perverted habits. It’s needed for girls to have the ability to describe and title male behaviour that would endanger ladies and ladies, however the hate speech laws used to cost the person within the Hordaland case can simply be used to silence ladies who try to call male predators as such.

The Nationwide Competence Middle in Hate Crime reported my publish, and on November seventeenth, I acquired a letter from the police, summoning me for questioning. I appeared for questioning on the police station on December 9.

LGBTQ+ organizations don’t defend ladies, kids, or lesbians.

Because the Nineteen Seventies, ladies — and radical feminists particularly — have been the gatekeepers who stand between the pimp trade, the surrogacy trade, the porn trade and susceptible ladies and youngsters. Labelling radical feminists and ladies’s rights campaigns like WDI “transphobic” is simply one other try and destroy the gatekeepers. Laws defending males who name themselves ladies supplies safety to grownup abusers and who need elevated entry to the our bodies of ladies and youngsters.

In Norway, organizations like Foreningen Fri put poisonous males (and ladies) sporting gendered identities in positions of energy.

In 2019, an grownup man claiming to be a girl created a Twitter consumer account known as “Actual Girl.” He constructed up a reputable profile, nurtured the account, adopted the appropriate individuals, and appreciated related posts. The person used the account to contact a girl who was linked to oldsters in The Norwegian Fast Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) community. He offered himself to her as a frightened mom with a ROGD little one as a way to get data he may use to doxx and/or publicly vilify these mother and father. At this time, he’s the chief of an area division of Foreningen fri in Rogaland. This man has a outstanding voice and presence on-line in addition to in mainstream media, representing males claiming to be ladies. In 2019, he created a petition demanding I be eliminated as columnist at Dagbladet (a nationally important newspaper), claiming I’m “harmful” and “take lives.”

These are the sorts of males now dictating coverage that impacts ladies and ladies, and are working to silence ladies who communicate up.

I can’t quit till we win

With each fiber in my feminine physique, I reject the concept that males will be ladies, lesbians or moms. I’m appalled that our Parliament has made it inconceivable to reject the gender id perception system and to name out dangerous and abusive habits amongst males claiming to be ladies.

As a girl, lesbian, and artist I’ve taken the combat for women and girls’s sex-based rights to the legislative degree to see how these so-called protections for LGBTQ+  people work for a lesbian artist.

Take me to court docket!

Tonje Gjevjon is a Norwegian artist, filmmaker, and activist, in addition to a frontrunner of the lesbian efficiency group Hungry Hearts.