(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.
The son of pastor Artur Pawlowski could be facing massive fines and jail time after he preached Bible verses outside a drag queen story time held at a public library over the weekend.
Nathaniel Pawlowski was detained and ticketed on Saturday by Calgary Police Service (CPS) because he was preaching too “close” to the drag event, in an apparent violation of a new and oppressive bylaw.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski said that he was outside the event to “preach, read the Bible and just speak.”
Video of the incident shows Pawlowski along with his friend Deklan Friesen speaking to a crowd outside the library.
Calgary City Council last month passed a new “Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw” that disallows “specified protests” both inside and outside all city-owned and affiliated public buildings. Mayor Jyoti Gondek put her full support behind the buffer zone bylaw.
Please tell Mayor Gondek that the bylaw violating Charter freedoms is both unjust and absurd
The bylaw means pastors or concerned parents protesting pro-LGBT events at public buildings are barred from getting within 100 meters of any such location.
Top constitutional lawyer John Carpay recently blasted Calgary City Council for going to “war” against Canadians’ freedoms by using bylaws to target people’s ability to protest events at public facilities, including drag queen performance directed at children.
In an opinion piece published on March 17 in the Western Standard, Carpay said “freedom of expression is meaningless if citizens are only allowed to say what’s approved by the government, or if expression is banished from public spaces.”
Pawlowski noted that his ticket has no penalty listed yet, as police must “review the evidence on me and that they will be stopping by my home to issue charges.”
His ticket does have a mandatory court appearance date. Each charge under Calgary’s bylaw carries a maximum fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Pawlowski had asked the police officers if they would also be enforcing “the same law on to the other side with the Antifa protesters”, but nobody was served a ticket except for he and Friesen.
In June 2022, Calgary City Council, under its left-leaning Mayor Jyoti Gondek, amended the city’s bylaws to “specifically prohibit insulting or demeaning behavior, including unwanted sexual advances, or harassing anyone on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender, gender identity or gender expression, among others.”
In February, Gondek vowed to use the bylaw to go after drag queen story hour protesters after some of the events were postponed by pro-family objectors.
In early March, fulfilling her promise, Calgary City Council then passed the bylaw that banned protesting against drag queen story hours or any other “LGBTQ” events held at public facilities.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
Carpay noted that while there are limits to free speech, “Canadians have every right to express their views in public places, regardless of the content of the expression.”
He also wrote how a 1992 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Zundel “explained all communications which convey or attempt to convey meaning are protected by the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms], unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, a violent act) excludes protection.”
“The purpose of the Charter’s free expression guarantee is to promote truth, self-fulfillment, and political and social participation. That purpose extends to the protection of minority beliefs which the majority regards as wrong or false,” wrote Carpay.
According to Carpay, Gondek seems to “believe it is wrong or false to oppose drag queen story readings in public libraries.”
“She is entitled to express her views, but not to impose her views on others by effectively banning peaceful public protests through a so-called ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw,” noted Carpay.
There exists a “freedom of expression” which includes the “right” to choose “high-visibility locations to hold up signs or banners, sing or chant, hand out literature, gather signatures on a petition, and have a speaker get up on her soapbox,” continued the lawyer.
“Protests are often held at the locations where injustices (or perceived injustices) are actually occurring,” he added.
Christian pastor Derek Reimer was jailed and charged in early March for protesting a children’s drag queen story hour at a public library in Calgary.
Carpay wrote that the city council’s use of “coercive power to relegate peaceful protesters to obscure locations where they cannot be seen or heard,” amounts to “crushing a fundamental Charter freedom on which our democracy depends.”
“The point of protests is to be seen and heard,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that being forced to stand 100 meters away from high-visibility and high-traffic areas “reduces freedom of expression to near irrelevance.”
“Protecting entrances from obstruction is already taken care of by the Criminal Code, and does not require a bylaw that imposes up to $10,000 in fines and up to a year in jail for peacefully protesting less than the length of four swimming pools away from an entrance,” charged Carpay.
According to Carpay, the Charter’s protection for free speech applies to those at the receiving end of a person speaking out.
“Potential listeners who have the right to hear diverse points of view, and to decide for themselves what is true and false rather than having Mayor Gondek decide on their behalf,” said Carpay.
“Calgary’s ‘Safe and Inclusive Access’ bylaw violates the rights of all Calgarians, speakers and listeners, and attacks diversity of thought and belief.”
Carpay noted that “repressive regimes always take great pains to ensure their subjects are kept ‘safe’ from ideas which the regime believes to be wrong or false.”
“In the past – and still today – those living in communist North Korea, national socialist Germany, theocratic Iran, Putin’s Russia, communist China and many other places have been kept very safe from ideas that the regime dislikes,” wrote Carpay.
Carpay noted that in a “free society,” there is no way everyone can be “safe” from hearing one’s opposing views.
“The ‘safety’ which woke activists on Calgary City Council are promising is attractive to those who support children being exposed to drag queens at public libraries,” wrote Carpay.
“But beware of the erosion of freedom, because the demons of censorship cannot be controlled after their release.”
In addition to Carpay, the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) has also objected to the new bylaw, and has vowed to commence a legal challenge against the “unconstitutional” policy.
SIGN: Nathaniel Pawlowski MUST NOT be fined or jailed for protecting kids from Drag Queens
MORE INFORMATION:
Pastor Artur Pawlowski's son detained in Calgary for preaching against drag show - LifeSiteNews
Canadian constitutional lawyer rips Calgary law banning drag queen story hour protests - LifeSiteNews
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.
