(LifeSiteNews) — Dora Moutot is a famous (and best-selling) French author, feminist, and social media influencer – and she is yet another prominent European being taken to court for the alleged crime of “misgendering.”
From Reduxx:
Two LGBT associations, Mousse and SOS Homophobie are backing a complaint lodged against Moutot on February 15 on behalf of the mayor of Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes, a trans-identified male named Marie Cau, and Hanneli Escurier, a female journalist who identifies as a man. One incident cited in the suit involves comments Moutot made last October during an episode of the popular talk show Quelle Époque!
Journalist Léa Salamé asked Moutot whether she regarded the mayor as a woman, to which Moutot replied, ‘To me, Marie Cau is a man.’ A statement released by Mousse accused Moutot of ‘violently attacking’ Cau by calling him both a man, and a ‘transfeminine man.’
Cau, whose given name is Nicolas, became well known in France after he was elected to political office in 2020 and was celebrated in media reports as the first transgender mayor in the nation. After he won the election in the small town of Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes, which has a population of approximately 500, Cau expressed an ambition to run for president.
Moutot is not the first to face such charges. Vassilis Tsiartas, widely considered to be one of the greatest Greek soccer stars of all time, was convicted last fall of “transphobic” social media posts and given a 10-month suspended prison sentence and a 5,000 euro fine due to his “public incitement” of “violence or hatred for reasons of gender identity.”
In Norway, filmmaker and actress Tonje Gjevjon is under criminal investigation for “misgendering” a trans activist, with another Norwegian woman – Christina Ellingsen – also being investigated after accusations by the same trans activist. Those found guilty of even private remarks under these laws could be fined or jail for a year; three years is the sentence for public comments.
In the United Kingdom, Greece, Norway, and now France, all it takes is accusations by trans activists to trigger criminal proceedings. Moutot has been accused of both “misgendering” and “transphobia,” the latter for an August 25, 2022, post in which she referred to Hanneli Escurier as a “trans-identified woman.” The legal complaint alleges insults on the basis of gender identity as well as public incitement to hatred or violence, charges similar to those Tsiartas faced.
According to Moutot, however, Escuerier herself had referred to her ideological opponents as “TERFs” and “threatened to physically harm Moutot herself at a drag event in 2020 that was held at a club in Paris.” Ironically, it was in an Instagram post referring to Ecurier’s threats that she called her a “trans-identified female,” triggering the complaint.
Ecurier’s lawyer didn’t see the irony, claiming in a statement that: “The struggle of transgender people is therefore first and foremost a constant struggle to exist, to be recognized as transgender people. When Dora Moutot declares that Hanneli [Escurier] is ‘a trans-identified woman’ and that Marie Cau is ‘a trans-feminine man,’ she strikes precisely where it hurts. She denies their existence as transgender people in a still largely transphobic society.” The very concept of self-created identity is being granted the status of a human right, with people – even prominent people – being charged for refusing to play along.
Indeed Moutot, like any woman who speaks out on the issue of biological men identifying as female, has found herself the subject of enormous abuse. “I’ve been harassed for almost four years now by trans activists for saying that a woman is a human female and not a feeling,” Moutot said. “They send me insults and threats, they put my address online, and they ruined my reputation by saying that I’m transphobic, and that I am a far-right accomplice.”
Trans activists have also attempted to get her fired and cancelled, including contacting bookshops to demand that they pull her books. In a statement written with another feminist, Moutot wrote: “We are angry. We live in an absurd time when the answer to the question ‘What is it to be a woman?’ is no longer obvious to everyone. According to some media, academics, activists, political figures and institutions, being a woman is now a feeling and not a biological reality.”
Moutot also told Reduxx that she has been the subject of graffiti calling her a “danger” to society, and that other street graffiti in Paris has called for the murder of so-called “transphobes”: “Are you a transphobe? Die.” Moutot’s defence of biological sex, however, has received more coverage than death threats against women who insist that their femininity is more than just a feeling.
“I also think that we need a common sense of reality. Everyone can distinguish who is a male and who is a female just by looking at someone for a second. It’s a natural thing we all have in the brain, the capacity of distinguishing male and female,” Moutot told Reduxx. “Trans activists are at war with reality, but it’s not because they don’t like it that we should all agree with them.”
If Moutot is found guilty, she could receive a fine or a suspended jail sentence. On February 27, an open letter signed by more than a dozen prominent intellectuals defended Moutot on the basis of freedom of expression.
“In France, psychologists Caroline Eliacheff and Céline Masson, Marguerite Stern, Sophie Robert, and others have been perpetually harassed, threatened, defamed, insulted, physically abused because they denounce the excesses of transgenderism,” the letter states. “Will they soon be arrested by the police too? Do we want France to take the same path as the Anglo-Saxon world? In what kind of society do we want to live?”
If trans activists are responding to that question, the answer is yes – and they are building it around us as swiftly as they can.
