About Riley Dennis
Now we’re not allowed to talk about it. Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx:
An Australian woman was reported to police after making posts on social media about a male who identifies as transgender participating in the women’s football league. Kirralie Smith was visited by New South Wales Police after speaking to media about Riley Dennis, a trans activist who had been the subject of mass complaint last month after reportedly injuring female players.
Police visited Smith on March 30 and handed her an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) requiring that she does not discuss or approach Dennis – despite the fact that Smith lives over 200 miles from Dennis. The AVO acts as an interim order that will stand until a hearing later this month, at which point the court will decide whether it is justified.
So now the police are ordering women to shut up about men who are invading women’s sports and physically harming them.
It’s insane. Just fucking insane.
Included among the stipulations of the AVO lodged against Smith by Dennis are prohibitions against electronic harassment. As a result, her statements on social media have come under legal scrutiny and, in some cases, have been censored by an arm of the Australian government dedicated to combatting “cyber abuse.”
On February 20, Smith’s public Facebook page was removed at the request of Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. Smith had set up the page in 2016 and used the platform to advocate for the rights of women and girls being harmed by gender identity policies. At the time of its deletion, Smith’s page had over 47,000 followers.
What about the eSafety, and real world safety, of women? What about the threat Riley Dennis poses to women? Why aren’t the police and Julie Inman Grant worried about that? Why are men allowed to steal women’s sports and bash the women who persist in continuing to play, while women are punished for talking about it?
The actions taken against Smith by eSafety Commissioner Grant are not the first instances of a government-endorsed push to digitally protect Dennis.
Last week, Reduxx was contacted by the eSafety Commissioner and advised to censor or delete an article naming Dennis as having been the subject of complaint after he was alleged to have injured female players during a match in March.
Riley Dennis is a current active threat to women. Why is Australian officialdom intent on protecting him and thus putting women at even greater risk?
The U.S. gets a lot of things wrong, but it is so much better on free speech issues than even other liberal democracies.
This is a classic illustration of why, as much as possible, you don’t want the government empowered to decide which speech is “reasonable,” because government officials will indulge their own biases and political agendas.
An example of why I remain queasy of “ hate speech” as a crime. It can be disdained, have social consequences, etc. But a crime? As distasteful as it is, racial st and sexist and other speech should not be a crime. I may get pushback on this, but I am not even a fan of “hate crimes” per se. Is there violence? Throw the book at them.
Brian M. I agree with you. If we have free speech, then ‘hate speech’ cannot be a crime. If it is a crime, then we don’t have free speech. And what is defined as ‘hate speech’ depends on who is defining it. With the recent use of the Comstock laws in a court case in the US, it should remind us of how nebulous our free speech rights are.
Social approbation? That’s another thing altogether. Make it socially unacceptable to call someone by a racist or sexist slur, and people will utilize their free speech more responsibly. But don’t give the power of law enforcement to those who dislike our speech unless it lurches into violence, in which case, there are already laws to cover it.
It scares me that I have to get into bed with people like anti abortion KJK/Posey Parker and the Islamaphobic opponent of same sex marriage, Kirralie Smith, but here we are.
We must take our allies where we find them, and fight them on the other issues separately. I am
disappointedangry that so many otherwise good people of the Left have hidden their faces and refused to publicly stand against the genderborg, while a few old fashioned Leftists like myself have to make alliances with people I would otherwise despise.For those who need a little background on Ms Smith:
https://www.binary.org.au/
https://rairfoundation.com/kirralie-smith-not-merely-an-accidental-activist/
She would be an ideal GOP candidate were she American.
I had thought the UK was alone in having genderist capture of their police. I was wrong.
We know that police in Britain are more interested in silencing women than prosecuting rapists, or screening them out of police work. Are the Australians following the pattern, or creating their own?