Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

Cosmic Yak said:
Apparently not. The police are saying the case is still open. Odd, considering they have the photo of the person involved.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/police-scotland-claim-decapitate-terfs-33288170
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CameronAllen.png


On the left, the scumbag holding up the "Decapitate TERFS" sign
On the right, scumbag Cameron Allen, who together with another scumbag, drugged, raped and murdered Calum Simpson.

They look like the same person to me!
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I have to say, that identification is by no means certain. I've seen it discussed in detail, and there is a better candidate for the holder of the "decapitate" sign, a woman. There are fewer discrepancies between her appearance and the person in the "decapitate" photo, and the appearance of Cameron Allen.

If nothing else can be taken from this, it is that neither identification can be considered proved, and indeed given that there are still photos of two people who might plausibly be claimed to be the culprit, there might well be a third or even a fourth.

As I still haven't bothered to get my Twitter account sorted out, I can't be more specific than this.
 
smartcooky said:
[qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/10748ggmiyicn5yy01t6e/CameronAllen.png?rlkey=tzy5oelmwpc4vykqbfzkgdh68&raw=1[/qimg]

On the left, the scumbag holding up the "Decapitate TERFS" sign
On the right, scumbag Cameron Allen, who together with another scumbag, drugged, raped and murdered Calum Simpson.

They look like the same person to me!
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‎
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Not to me, and pretty far from it. Chin, lips, crease down by the nose ...
 
The cleft chin. (The possible appearance of a cleft chin in the photo on the left is a shadow or something, there is another better shot from the same event that doesn't show it.) There is also another picture of Cameron Allen with his hair cut that looks nothing at all like the picture on the left. I don't think anyone knows the dates of these pictures or whether he had short hair at the time of the demo in question, but it's another consideration.

For my money it's the woman whose photo has been touted as a likely candidate, but the main thing this shows is that still photos shot from particular angles are not good ways to confirm an identity, and the three images - the demonstration, Cameron Allen and this woman - could be three different people.
 
All of this was covered in my link.
Cameron Allan was convicted at Edinburgh High Court alongside Dylan Brister of drugging and raping a young father who died due to drugs intoxication. The 21-year-old filmed the depraved attack in Methil, Fife, with the judge describing the evidence heard as being "the most harrowing nature that this court has ever had the misfortune to listen to.”

Social media sleuths have claimed that he looks similar to the man pictured with the offensive sign, but there is no evidence that this is the same person.
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Cosmic Yak said:
All of this was covered in my link.
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If people are making the assumption that the person holding the sign is a man, that could explain why the person hasn't been identified. The sex is ambiguous in the still pictures I've seen, and the best fit guess for the identity is a woman.

But it's true the authorities don't seem to be trying particularly hard to identify the person.
 
d4m10n said:
They are too busy interviewing tranphobes.
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Police have limited resources. You can't expect them to waste time on trivial matters like death threats and incitement of violence when they have to devote 10 months to investigating a tweet about male doctors performing intimate examinations on patients who requested female doctors.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Indeed.
Do I need to repeat that I am not defending the British police, or have we got that now?
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You do not need to repeat it. Nobody cares whether you're defending the British police.

What some of us care about is that British law and policy makes it easy incite police harassment of someone for expressions that are actually legal - much easier than in the US. British police harass people for expressing legal gender-critical views. This is a problem, and it undercuts the claim that British law has strong protections for freedom of speech.
 
theprestige said:
You do not need to repeat it. Nobody cares whether you're defending the British police.

What some of us care about is that British law and policy makes it easy incite police harassment of someone for expressions that are actually legal - much easier than in the US. British police harass people for expressing legal gender-critical views. This is a problem, and it undercuts the claim that British law has strong protections for freedom of speech.
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This!

There is little point in having an activity such as speech officially protected in law, if the front-line enforcers of laws are going to ignore that protection and harass people for expressing that protected speech anyway.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Is it any wonder that I'm getting frustrated here?
EC: I am not missing the point. I have said almost exactly this, for example, here:




You accuse me of 'missing the point', when you use literally the exact same words that I did, to describe the point you think I'm missing.
Unbelievable. :rolleyes:
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Let me rephrase: You're missing the point that posters in this thread are making.

Nobody is questioning the legality involved. We know that it's been deemed legally protected speech. We know that the legal challenges have failed to yield a prosecution. We know all of that, so we're a bit baffled as to why you keep bringing it up and harping on that aspect of it.

The inference that we end up making is that you are arguing that because it's legal speech and none of the charges have resulted in prosecution... there is not a problem.

But that's a response to a claim that none of us actually made.

The problem that we see, that has been pointed out several times, is the chilling effect of being arrested/detained/questioned/charged in the first place. The problem is that *despite* it being legally protected free speech, people who engage in such legal behavior repeatedly find themselves being subjected to police intrusion that borders on harassment.

That's the problem we have been focused on. When you respond by repeatedly telling us that none of the charges have resulted in prosecution... it comes across as you deflecting the issue. At a minimum, it makes it very much seem as if you're not getting it at all.

Let me try an analogy - with fair warning that analogies are nothing more than illustrative vehicles, not direct comparisons.

In the US, it's perfectly legal to say "Pentecostals are all nutty crazy people and speaking in tongues is psychosis". It's not particularly nice, but it's perfectly legal. In fact, our right to express that opinion about a particular religion is absolutely protected speech. We can even go so far as to write on social media directly in response to a Pentecostal's post "You're nuts and/or psychotic". We can even do it in all caps, or make up an entertaining song about how incredibly nutty that specific Pentecostal person is.

Is it nice? No, not at all. Is it possible that the Pentecostal in question might feel very put-upon, and even feel that they are hated by the person making the song? Absolutely.

But it's perfectly legal, and protected as such.

Now, imagine that a group of like-minded Pentecostals collectively believed that it was hateful to call their religious beliefs insane, and viewed it as being hateful for people to express that view. Imagine that this group of Pentecostals took to reporting the posters of "you're nuts" tweets and "You're a loony" tik-tok songs to the police. Imagine that the police acted on those reports, arrested and mirandized the posters of such sentiments and subjected them to hours or weeks of investigation including interrogation and intense questioning. Imagine that these Pentecostals raised such an incredible stink about the "hatefulness" of posters on social media that they managed to get people fired from their jobs because they expressed the view that Pentecostals are nutty. Imagine that the people who lost their jobs had to go to court in order to get their jobs back, costing them months of income. Imagine that this didn't happen just once, but over and over and over again - even after the first couple of courts came back and said "no, this is view is legal to hold and express and is not hateful".

Now... If I then proceed to make a post on ISF stating that these Pentecostals are abusing the legal system, and that the police and prosecutors and employers involved in this fiasco are all complicity in violating the civil rights of people who believe and express that Pentecostals are nutty....

Do you think that it would be a reasonable response for someone else to respond with "Well, it's protected speech to say that Pentecostals are nutty, and besides, I can't find a single case where the charges resulted in a successful prosecution"?

Do you think it's plausible that anyone reading that response might infer that the poster had completely missed the entire point?
 
Emily's Cat said:
Now, imagine that a group of like-minded Pentecostals collectively believed that it was hateful to call their religious beliefs insane, and viewed it as being hateful for people to express that view. Imagine that this group of Pentecostals took to reporting the posters of "you're nuts" tweets and "You're a loony" tik-tok songs to the police. Imagine that the police acted on those reports, arrested and mirandized the posters of such sentiments and subjected them to hours or weeks of investigation including interrogation and intense questioning. Imagine that these Pentecostals raised such an incredible stink about the "hatefulness" of posters on social media that they managed to get people fired from their jobs because they expressed the view that Pentecostals are nutty. Imagine that the people who lost their jobs had to go to court in order to get their jobs back, costing them months of income. Imagine that this didn't happen just once, but over and over and over again - even after the first couple of courts came back and said "no, this is view is legal to hold and express and is not hateful".
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I won't tell you what I imagine, I'll tell you what I know.

The people who were harassed and investigated by the police would sue the arses off the Pentecostals and the Police. I can immediately see violations of the constitution...

1A Free Speech.
4A Unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
14A Equal protection under the laws & deprivation of liberty without due process.

ETA: of course, this doesn't detract from the problem that exists in the first place, but if a few of these people were willing to sue the police and the complainants involved, it might go some way to deterring groups from making frivolous complaints, and to encourage Police to keep their investigations within the confines of the legal framework.
 
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Emily, you've missed one really important threat, something that worries people enormously and causes them to edit their lawfully protected speech or even shut up entirely. The possibility that the police will seize all their electronic devices. This has happened, and it causes enormous disruption to the people it happens to. They take computers, phones, tablets, the lot, ostensibly to search them for incriminating evidence against the culprit. Losing your computers and your phone, probably for months on end, is a horrific prospect in this day and age. Especially if you're not too sure about backups and whether they might seize the backups too.

Look at what happened to Caroline Farrow, the wife of a Catholic priest who was actually playing the organ in church at the time certain tweets were alleged to have been sent, who has been the subject of repeated police harrasment on account of someone who really ought to be classed as a vexatious litigant repeatedly lodging complaints about her. They wanted all her electronic devices, and I think even her children's, and applied for some sort of bail conditions to be applied to her even though she hadn't even been charged with anything never mind convicted.

Or the disabled woman in Glasgow who was hauled into a police station for questioning, then turned loose at three in the morning to make her own way home on her mobility scooter, without her phone (which they kept).

These cops are so indoctrinated with the gospel of the Holy Trans that they believe, quite viscerally, that anyone saying or doing anything that a trans person doesn't like is ipso facto a disgusting, horrible person who deserves every inconvenience they can be put to, even if in the end there are no charges against them. I don't know how it has come to this, but it has.

I know of another case, not about the trans issue, but with similar connotations. A poster on Twitter referred to a journalist (if you can call someone who writes for the Scottish Daily Express a journalist) as "an absolute disgrace" or something like that. No foul language was used, and there was no defamation. (It may have been vulgar abuse, though it was quite mild, but it wasn't defamatory.) At the time both parties blocked each other, and the tweet wasn't directed at the journalist at all. She must have used a second account or something to see it.

She complained to the Met that this constituted harassment. The tweeter was arrested and held in a cell for 15 hours, and denied his anti-anxiety medication. All his computers, which he needed for his work (he's self-employed) were taken. Eventually he was released, but without the electronic devices. Fortunately he had backups, but he had to spend a considerable amount on new hardware to continue his job. He was also racked with worry that the police might plant illegal porn on his computer and he'd find himself prosecuted as a sex offender.

That didn't happen, but his devices were scrutinised for any other evidence of online harassment to the point where several of his friends found themselves having to explain that certain bantering tweets were not in fact serious death threats and no they didn't want to press charges. It was also leaked to the press that he had been "arrested on suspicion of harassing a woman", which of course soon turned into the certain fact that he'd been arrested for sexual harassment.

Eventually it was decided that saying "SG is an absolute disgrace" on Twitter wasn't actually a criminal offence, and neither was anything else they'd been able to find on his computers, and months later he was told he could have his stuff back if he travelled to central London to pick it all up.

This is just one sample of what the police can do if they take it into their heads to make someone's life a misery. It's not funny. Even if you're self-employed, or retired, or not employed, or have a sympathetic employer who is not going to sack you for saying that only women get pregnant, this threat is something that can be used against anyone.
 
Rolfe said:
Look at what happened to Caroline Farrow, the wife of a Catholic priest
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A bit off topic, but this really confused me, and at first I assumed you must have made an error, since Catholic priests cannot marry, and married Catholics can't become priests. But turns out it's correct, because there's a loophole. Anglican priests can get married, and if they convert to Catholicism, they can become Catholic priests while remaining married.

OK, enough of that tangent.
 
Yes, that's the case here. Her husband was an Anglican priest who converted to catholicism over some doctrinal issue I forget at the moment. But as you say, it's a digression.
 
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