Can a Man be a Lesbian? Tonje Gjevjon's Criminal Investigation in Norway Reveals a New Absurdity in the "Hate Speech Law"
Can a Man be a Lesbian? Tonje Gjevjon's Criminal Investigation in Norway Reveals a New Absurdity in the "Hate Speech Law"
Tonje Gjevjon describes herself as an artist, a woman and a lesbian, while in Norway she is also called a transphobic, racist, hater and sexist. This is because, she says, men cannot be lesbians.
When Tonje Gjevjon went on Facebook on October 1st last year, she knew exactly what she wanted to express and how to write it. The day before, the Norwegian Supreme Court had convicted a man for "hate speech", as according to the court, he made derogatory posts about another person on Facebook in March 2021 that were potentially seen by 585 people. The person who was the subject of these Facebook comments was a man who had changed his gender. "Do you really think anyone thinks you're a woman and not an old man with weird fantasies?" the convicted man had asked the other party. He further commented, apparently in the course of an argument, that "perverted creeps1 who role-play being little girls have no capacity to offend anyone". The man also wondered why hadn’t the authorities taken the children from the man who called himself a woman. The Norwegian Supreme Court agreed with lower court rulings that such comments were punishable by law. The convicted man was sentenced to 15 days of suspended imprisonment and fined NOK 15 000.
The ruling set a precedent – for the first time, the Norwegian Supreme Court upheld a conviction under the hate speech section for not recognising another person's gender identity. Gender identity and gender expression were added to the hate speech section of the Norwegian Penal Code in 2020. This section is designed to protect minority groups by preventing discrimination and has its roots back in 1961. At that time, Norwegian society was reacting to a wave of anti-Semitism, the so-called swastika epidemic of 1959-1960, which had started in West Germany and spread to other Western countries, including Norway. A clause was adopted prohibiting public incitement to hatred, insults and threats against any group of people on the grounds of their religion or origin. From 1970 onwards, the provision was gradually supplemented by the addition of a prohibition on incitement to hatred on the grounds of race, colour and disability, as well as religion and descent. In 1981, homosexuals were added as another vulnerable group. Now, in 2020, “gender identity” was added to the list. Violators of the law can face fines or up to 3 years in prison. Until recently, very few people were convicted under this section, but the trend has changed. This may be due to the fact that, since 2014, the prosecutor's office of the country has made the hate crimes one of the priorities of the police.
Of course, there were people in Norway who, before the last amendment to the law, said that this would mean that people would no longer be able to criticise men who call themselves women, because it would be criminalised. Anine Kierulf, an associate professor at the University of Oslo's law faculty, told Reuters at the time that the threshold for prosecuting someone would still be high. She said it would have to be a case of direct incitement to hatred or dehumanising language.
Imitating the convict
The country's top court ruled that, in practice, this high threshold can mean no more than a few sharp comments and a potential maximum of 585 people on social media who might have seen it.
After reading the same verdict, Gjevjon made a Facebook post. "Men who permanently role-play that they are lesbians and women are, as I see it, discriminatory against women and are perverted fetishists,"she wrote. "It is as impossible for men to become lesbians as it is for men to get pregnant. Men are men, regardless of their sexual fetishes."
Gjevjon says she deliberately imitated some of the wordings used by the man convicted in court. "I just linked those words to being a lesbian myself," she says. Some time later, she was summoned to the police – she was under investigation for violating the “hate speech” section.
Not just free speech, but women's rights too
In fact, in her post, Gjevjon wrote at length about what is wrong not only with hate speech law, but with the so-called trans ideology more broadly. She also named specific people with whom she had been arguing on this issue for a long time. One of them – and she directed her criticisms towards that person – was Christine Jentoft, formerly known as Christer Jentoft, an adviser to a Norwegian LGBTQ organisation. Jentoft now identifies himself as a lesbian mother. "Heterosexual lesbian men, such as Christine Jentoft, have been awarded legal power – according to a parliamentary decision – to press charges against lesbian women like me and all other women and men that express aversion at these male attempts to employ the law against heterosexual men/women and lesbian women, who point out how damn humiliating it is that we have to accept the bullshit-rubbish the gender identity withholds and which is packaged as the vulnerability of minorities," Gjevjon wrote.
This means that her post was not something impulsive or random, but a conscious choice, a protest, as Gjevjon has been fighting for women's rights for years, standing up against the gender ideology that tramples them underfoot. As an artist, she has been working on various forms of femininity and the female body, as well as lesbianism, since 1999 and has been personally involved in the LGBTQ movement. She is now active in the Norwegian branch of the international women's rights movement called Women's Declaration. It is a volunteer-based organisation dedicated to defending the gender-based rights of women and girls.
A turning point in 2016
Gjevjon has been struggling with gender ideology for the past six years. "We didn't notice that anything was wrong until the Gender Equality Act was passed in 2016. And it's one of the most extreme gender equality laws in Europe," she says. Under the law, which was adopted in June 2016, anyone aged 16 or over can change their official sex if they wish to do so, having to just inform the relevant public authority. In essence, it has now been legalised that a person has no biological sex, but has a gender identity, which can be easily changed even if no sex reassignment operations follow. There is no need to consult any third party – psychologist, doctor, anyone. In the case of children aged 6-16, parental consent is required to change gender identity. If one of the parents refuses, the matter can be referred to a state representative, who will then pass a decision.
According to Gjevjon, this law and this way of thinking are not only wrong, but dangerous for children and women. Men are men and women are women. Only women can be mothers. Only women can be lesbians. Men who say they are women cannot be put in the women's category in a sporting competition because it would be an unequal competition – men are simply physically stronger. Convicted rapists who say they are women when they go on trial cannot be put in women's prison – as referenced by a recent case in Scotland where a convicted rapist claiming to be a woman was initially sent to women's prison, but was transferred to men's penitentiary, following widespread protests. There is a reason why, as a society, we have created different spaces for women and men to do certain things – whether it's a girls' changing room or a toilet that men can't use, or something else. Women do not feel safe sharing these spaces with men. "It's completely absurd that we have to explain the adults that men and women are different," Gjevjon says.
“I have lost my livelihood”
Gjevjon says that before the 2016 law was passed, it was possible to debate in public about being a man or a woman, to oppose novel gender identifications and attempts at encouranging children to change their gender. But then the debate disappeared and was replaced by cancellation of people who objected to the views, and self-censorship then followed. And to be fair, the nullification of diverging views has been greatly aggressive in the trans activist realm, and not just in cursing, but in things that have had a very real impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. "I have lost my livelihood. That's what they do, especially to women – they try to take away your livelihood, destroy your reputation. One by one, they are taking us down," says Gjevjon. In December 2021, one of the gallery owners in Oslo told Gjevjon that she was now a "blacklisted" artist with whom the gallery could no longer be associated with and then cancelled a signed agreement on an exhibition Gjevjon had been working on for over six months. She had had a long time work relationship with the same gallery and her performance group Hungry Hearts had perfromed there several times.
Whenever Gjevjon does appear at events, the trans-activist groups try to disrupt those or convince the event organisers not to invite her.
It is not just a matter of trans ideology advocates openly calling Gjevjon a transphobic Nazi bigot and other such things. Anonymous letters are being sent to all her associates demanding them to stop working with 'such' a person. In March last year, a complaint was also sent to her wife's employer, accusing her of being a hate-monger – at a demonstration for women’s rights, her wife had stood next to a placard that said: "Transgender women are men".
Such letters to the employers of people who have openly expressed their opposition to transgender ideology are, according to Gjevjon, common and effective in Norway. If activists write to an employer saying that the person poses a threat to trans people, the employer will usually ask the person to stop expressing such views. "So people can be silenced very effectively, and this is what happens with many women, so it is almost impossible to have a discussion on this subject in our society," Gjevjon says. "Most people don't dare to talk about it anymore because they have families, they need money, they need to keep their jobs," she adds.
For example, one company dismissed their female employee because they had received a complaint about her post on social media. In the post, made with heavy sarcasm, the woman had written that "gender reassignment may lead to sterility, sexual dysfunction, lifelong hormone dependency + complications". The fired woman took her former employer to court.
In addition, Gjevjon notes, most women's organisations in Norway accept men who have identified themselves as women into their ranks – they are welcome to attend their meetings, have a vote in their organisation and influence its positions. "They want to legalise surrogacy, buying sex from prostitutes. All these traditional struggles that women have had with their organisations – now you can have a hundred men coming in, saying they identify themselves as women and they can easily alter the messages these organisations carry into something that you would never think of women's rights movements to advocate," she says. She adds that organisations that exclusively admit women to membership – such as the Norwegian branch of Women's Declaration – are readily demonised and cancelled.
Investigation closed at the request of transactivists
And sooner or later all that the law allows will happen – those that don't keep quiet will be reported to the police. Of course, Gjevjon is not a singular case among women's rights activists. One of the leaders of the Norwegian Women's Declaration, Christina Ellingsen, was the subject of a similar criminal case in May 2021. And the same person was also involved as the “victim”, this time on Twitter – Christine Jentoft, a man, who now identifies as a lesbian and a mother. Ellingsen's assessment that Jentoft is a man and cannot therefore be a mother or lesbian, was the reason for instigating the investigation. The investigation was closed some time later without charges being brought.
In February, Gjevjon received a similar message from the police – her investigation had been closed. According to her, the members of the trans activist group had eventually gone to the police themselves to stop the case from going to the court. "If a lesbian artist is on trial for what I said, and on the other side there is a heterosexual man pretending to be a lesbian, people would come to understand that something is wrong," Gjevjon says, noting that what is now incomprehensible is why had the man whose words she was imitating been previously convicted.
She adds that the government's “hate speech law” has created a situation where people are afraid to take part in the debate. "Few people do and this situation is harmful for everyone. Most people get depressed when they can't talk about what they see with their own eyes or have to use language that they find utterly absurd." she says.
1 A direct translation of the Norwegian word used by the man means 'male-pig', but it is used to describe a very unpleaseant person, therefore the word “creep” might be more accurate in this case.
Klaus Schwab and his Great Resetters must be rubbing their hands with glee, as the world's most developed nations embrace their warped vision of homo sapiens as a race of sexless, soulless transhumans.
Makes me glad to be an octogenarian who can live out his remaining time on earth with memories of happier times when Mother Nature ruled, before she became a lesbian with a penis.