Take the shocking case of Norwegian filmmaker Tonje Gjevjon. In October, Gjevjon expressed an opinion on Facebook that until very recently would have been entirely uncontroversial – namely, that men cannot be women. Responding to another user who called himself a ‘lesbian mother’, Gjevjon, herself a lesbian, wrote: ‘It is just as impossible for men to become lesbians as it is for men to become pregnant.’ ‘Men are men’, she continued, ‘regardless of their sexual fetishes’.
For this alleged crime – for stating that a biological man cannot be a lesbian mother – she is now under police investigation for a ‘hate speech’ charge, which could land her in jail for three years.
Gjevjon is being prosecuted under a law that criminalises speech that ‘promotes hate’, ‘threatens’ or even simply ‘insults’ someone on the basis of certain criteria, such as their religious beliefs or their ‘gender identity or gender expression’. Needless to say, ‘insult’ is in the eye of the beholder. One man’s fact is another man’s folly. Hate-speech laws that are based on whether someone feels offended can be used to criminalise almost anything.
Sadly, Gjevjon’s case isn’t a one-off.
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