I do not know what this woman is accused of. [UPDATE: Commenter John did know, and linked to this Mark Steyn interview and this Mail story from October 2022.] It is always possible that things will look different if ever we get to hear the full story – not that Surrey Police seem inclined to tell us. But if this is half as bad as it looks, Caroline Farrow is right: it is important – and frightening.
I’m going to do a thread and limit replies. You’ll see why. Please do not speculate with names. But I think what is happening to me is important. I am not prohibited from talking about things in general terms.
— Caroline Farrow (@CF_Farrow) June 7, 2023
To save space, and to keep a sequential record of them in case they disappear, I have written out the rest of the tweets in her thread as bullet points. The following was written by Caroline Farrow, not me:
—
After some miscommunication, they sent through a bundle for a court hearing.
I am due in court tomorrow morning.
They wanted me to go to a court hearing without access to the accusations and alleged evidence.
On page 1 of the bundle repeated misgendering is cited.
Here are the prohibitions they are seeking tomorrow morning.
I will not be allowed to use any Social Media, Social Networking, Gaming, Dating (lol) site without this person’s written permission and having supplied them with usernames and passwords for all sites within 3 days.
1. Allow Police Officers to enter your registered address(es), between the hours of 8am and 8pm, to conduct a risk assessment, monitor devices, and manage compliance of the order
2. Provide your Offender Manager with any mobile, digital, or internet enabled devices for examination, review, and monitoring purposes, immediately upon request. You must also your provide your Offender Manager with any access PINs, passwords, or patterns. Examinations may be completed manually on scene, or could entail them seizing your device(s) for examination by agencies contracted by the police for that purpose. Failing to disclose the existence of a device in your possession to your Offender Manager will count as a failure to comply with this condition.
I believe that while presenting a significant interference with the respondent’s privacy rights, it is an appropriate course of action in the circumstances.
“I consider that in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 8 of HRA, an interference by this force as a public authority is in accordance with the law and is necessary.”
5. Possessing, owning or using more than one mobile phone and one SIM card, unless with written permission from your Offender Manager in the area that you reside. You must provide the telephone number and unique identifying numbers of all device(s) within three days of this order being granted or within three days of and supplying any changes within 3 days of any such change.
Natalie,
This interview with Mark Steyn last October, before he was Ofcom-ed off the air, provides a lot of detail.
https://youtu.be/pFj3kvMCZ4k
The Daily Mail to its credit also covered the story.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11282263/Moment-police-swoop-house-devout-catholic-mother-malicious-online-posts.html
There are several other stories which can easily be googled but they all boil down to Mrs Farrow, either bravely or foolishly, clashing online (and as a guest in a tv studio) with members of what is arguably todays most protected class and thereby incurring the wrath of Surrey police.
This is the point where Mrs Farrow should steadfastly refuse to comply with all this bullshit. Sometimes it’s worth going along, putting your head down, but when the state is demanding your passwords and telling you how many phones are you allowed to own, you are past that point.
This is the Crispus Attucks moment.
Refuse. Force the menacing state to imprison her over her refusal to go along with this. Let the outcry commence. And make it loud.
Ferox, you’re asking one individual to carry quite a load in the fight over the people’s rights.
This rises to the point where people ought to be ringing her residence, waiting for the police to try whatever they will try. If she is to risk imprisonment over this, everyone ought to be out there. If they succeed with her, no one is safe.
(One of the claims is that she tweeted “What she did to her own son [the youngest person in the world to undergo transgender surgery] is illegal. She mutilated him by having him castrated and rendered sterile while still a child.” Entirely appropriate. If this statement is banned, kiss freedom goodbye.)
I don’t like to type the following, as it is so damned . . . impolite . . . to the several decent people I know to whom it applies, and I apologize to them now, but just as it’s my right to be a jerk, it’s my right – and now duty – to type this:
Trans-women are men.
Good money-making opportunity for someone to print out bumper stickers with this motto. I doubt Amazon is going to handle distribution for you, though, which firmly places Amazon on the coppers’ side of this fight.
Just remember this: there is no law, policy, rule, or regulation so small that the state will not kill you to enforce.
I am at a loss to understand why liberals, lefties, democrats, labour are not implacably opposed to this. Free speech used to be something they really cared about. Even now I got lots of complaints on my SM feeds about “I’m with the banned”, “When in history were the good guys the ones banning books?” and other posts explaining their opposition to the banning of books. However, when you point this sort of stuff out they are mute or are all “yeah I believe in free speech but ….” The left used to be warriors on this. The ACLU used to passionately defend free speech. What happened to them?
How did we get to the point of “I’m a passionate advocate of freedom of speech, for the type of speech I agree with…”
What the hell happened to Britain? It is the mother of western freedoms, and now it is this petty little tyranny.
If you live in Britain you seriously need to think about getting out before the bastards find some minutia over which to throw you in the clink.
Fraser,
It’s simple. They won. They no longer need to pretend to care about those things. And they know the apparatchiks won’t push back because a guaranteed pay check and the bennies outweigh liberty.
Exactly. I am not asking one person to carry a load. I am asking one person to take a stand, and for a million people to stand up with her.
Fraser, I think that there is a discussion relevant to the point in Jared Diamond’s recent book Upheaval. As I recall, he takes the recovery of Finland from Soviet invasion to illustrate the point that values that may have been held sacred will be compromised in extremis. He identifies compromises on the liberal values of freedom of the press and the taboo on ex post facto laws as tactics that characterized the era that gave rise to the use of Finlandization as a perjorative.
I don’t know whether I am doing Diamond an injustice in noting that he failed to identify a third compromise: on the taboo on the repatriation of refugees with a well founded fear of persecution. However, whether I am or not, the different contemporary perspectives on these three values suggest to me that the particular mutually-reinforcing set of sacred values that one acquires through formative influences may be subject to historical drift through a larger space of potentially sacred values. The sanctity of (positive) refugee rights has grown even as the sanctity of (negative) intellectual and civic freedoms has withered.
I recognise that may just be a long-winded way of saying We are all getting old! Alternatively, we could ask what is the true nature of the underlying crisis which is triggering the psychology that Diamond identifies, and whether it is real or purely imaginary.
I think there is more to this story. Partly because there always is but partly because I have never heard of these powers being exercised before.
Bobby b, I don’t think it is anyone’s duty to say “Trans women are men”, though it is certainly everyone’s right to say that, as it is to say “trans women are women”. I genuinely believe that thinking one must answer the question plays too much into the hands of authoritarians (some of them well-meaning) who think that the way humans should deal with each other is to assign everyone a category – or rather to discern their true category – and then look in the law book to see what is forbidden and allowed to people of that category.
I don’t want those laws to exist at all. If I may quote myself,
@Steven R
It’s simple. They won. They no longer need to pretend to care about those things.
I’m not talking about politicians, I am talking about regular folks many of whom really did believe in these ideas. The fact that they are all up in arms about banning books tells you that there is a kernel of freedom of speech left over in their hearts. They are concerned about this (as am I, FWIW) not because of some political maneuvering but over a genuine concern.
@Patrick Crozier
I think there is more to this story. Partly because there always is but partly because I have never heard of these powers being exercised before.
I think the answer may be in the Daily Mail article. Apparently they tried this back in 2019 and it was a “fiasco”. There is no more serious crime in a tyrannical state than embarrassing the authorities. You need only look at what is going on in the USA with regards to Trump, and the lawfare going on against him to see what happens when you don’t give our overlords their props.
@natallie, I always cringe a little when I hear the word “duty”. It is mostly used by people trying to manipulated other people into doing what they want, whether it be your duty to take a bullet for the king, or your duty to give up your time to serve on a jury. “Duty” is a substitute for making a convincing argument. It is much like my mother’s answer to that perennial childhood question: “Why” — “because I told you to.”
I also find it very disturbing and tribal to put people into categories and judge them based on their group rather than their individuality. “To judge them on the content of their character not the color of their skin” is surely one of the most profound and important statements of the 20th century.
However, in this case categorization is necessary, since there are some places where reality dictates categories. It is ridiculous to have people with all the biological advantages of men compete in women’s sport (as was seen recently when the US Women’s team were slaughtered 12-0 by a local men’s club). This isn’t because the women’s team is terrible, on the contrary they are spectacularly skilled players who rightly deserve to be competing at the very highest levels. But their bodies are simply not made the same, and can no more compete with the men than they can wrestle a chimpanzee. And also when it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms. Demanding that girls have to change in front of men who are “fully equipped” goes against every instinct and fear in our society. Or putting a rapist in a women’s prison is insanity gone wild.
So the “categorization” of trans-people is important and necessary; one of the few times it is. People who do suffer from this affliction (or “celebrate in this variation” depending on your view of the matter) certainly deserve to be treated with fairness and dignity, but so does everyone else who isn’t trans. Forcing VEPs (vagina equipped people) to undress and change in front of PEPs (penis equipped people) goes against every instinct we have as humans. The idea that we would allow it, never mind require it would have been called tin foil hat crazy five years ago. Nonetheless, we live in a world where denying it isn’t just unacceptable, it isn’t just unseemly, it is more and more being considered criminal. And that is a very bad place to be.
I read somewhere that a famous British guy, whose name I forget, but is famous for setting up Christian missions in foreign countries who said that Christians face less persecution in the UAE than they do in the UK. I’m not a Christian, but this speaks volumes.
Natalie, I think it is my duty to say that, not because of the truth of the utterance, but because it puts me in opposition to those who tell me I can not say that.
If my government told me that I could not say “the sky is green” – on pain of arrest – I would become a new adherent to the School Of The Green Sky.
I have no duty towards gender purity. I have no particular personal stake in “what is a woman?”. I do have have a duty – if I wish to be free – to fight and aggravate those who would order me about.
Remember, this trans fight has little to do with transgenderism. It has moved into the realm of “we’re going to make you give in to us by doing the most outrageous things we can think of and then demonizing you when you object.” This is about the new intentional move to force the issue by bringing kids into the mix, so that they can claim that opposition to cutting kids’ genitals off is “homophobia.”
(Strangely enough, some of the most opposed to this new trend that I have met are gay. This is all being built on their backs, and they want no part of it. )
During transition I said, “I’m a woman with an asterix.” After surgery and given some time for things to settle down, it was “I’m a woman with a past.” Your mileage may vary.
When the activists and the politicians come out to play, that is a different matter. If people treat me politely and with consideration, it’s no great deal. If they start trying to cancel, demonize, or make people sign loyalty oaths, that is a very different matter. I’ve met fanatics. They pollute everything they touch.
From accounts at the time, J K Rowling simply supported a woman for saying transwomen are still men. How that steamrolled into her reassignment as Lady Hitler was wrong.
Caroline Farrow expressed her opinions – I am old enough to remember when that was not a crime in Britain (at least when the opinions that are treated as crimes were far fewer in number), and when British institutions (hello Central Office, Brigade 77, and all the rest of you) at least for Freedom of Speech – not the persecution of dissent in the name of “Diversity” and “Inclusion” (which means, in our Orwellian world, Uniformity and Exclusion).
As for the police – to some extent the police are also victims, victims of insane Statutes – passed by Parliament with most MPs not opposing the “Woke” legislation in front of them – because politicians (not just policemen) are terrified of being called “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, “Islamophoic”, “Tranphobic” and-so-on.
When the Critical Theory (“Woke”) Marxists came up with the idea of “medicalising dissent”, of calling opponents “ists” and “phobes” they did indeed come up with a brilliant tactic – a tactic of using the liberal desire to be tolerant to DESTROY liberalism (real liberalism – liberty). This s NOT a new tactic – it goes back a long way (in the United Kingdom the idea that intolerant speech should be a criminal offence goes all the way back to the Act of 1965 – “incitement to racial hatred” was made a crime, opinions were made crimes, emotions such as hatred, were made crimes), it is just being pushed much more now.
Encouraging crime is also part of the destroy “capitalism” project – and has proceeded to an extreme in some American cities, and using “Social Justice” or “Equity” as an excuse for crime is also not a new tactic – again it is an old tactic which is just being pushed more now.
Only a few years ago people could go to the police station in Kettering (my home town), but the police station is closed now – as they are in other towns. The Magistrates Court is closed as well (we do not want ordinary people sitting in judgement of such things as shop theft now do we – ordinary people might not understand that “Social Justice” justifies shop theft), and the County Court is closed – let people go to (well I am not sure where people are supposed to go – Northampton?) for Civil Justice in disputes.
The police? Mostly nice people – scared of being called “ists” and “phobes”.
“But Paul – they would arrest you in a heartbeat for expressing opinions that were mainstream only a few years ago”.
Of course they would – but that is NOT because the police are nasty, they are not. They would arrest me to protect themselves – they would arrest me as an “ist” or a “phobe” for fear of, if they did not, being denounced as “ists” and “phobes” themselves.
The Soviet Union may not have had formal EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – what in America is called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the same Critical Theory Marxist program), but it did have a saying to cover this general situation.
“You today – me tomorrow”.
That is the PRIVATE attitude – the British police do not enjoy persecuting people for their opinions, most police officers do not, privately, believe in this Frankfurt School Critical Theory Marxist stuff, but they have to do it – or their own head will be the next one on the chopping block.
“You today – me tomorrow”.
The unofficial motto of the old Soviet Union – is now the unofficial motto of the Western World.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/06/09/the-dominican-republic-a-world-leader-in-trans-tyranny/
On subject of legislation and law enforcement today’s article from Spiked describes current or proposed law in the otherwise disparate countries Ireland, Norway, Spain and the Dominican Republic.
To say something is afoot would be an understatement.
https://twitter.com/Tantrumfly/status/1666725101675446272?s=20
More on the Caroline Farrow situation. 137 thousand views, good but not nearly enough.
John – I did not know about what is happening in the Dominican Republic.
This shows just how widespread this evil, this evil of punishing people for their opinions, is.
It is very much an international movement – part of Agenda 2030 (the cultural aspect) Sustainable Development Goals, and the DEI (or EDI) and ESG movement pushed by the fiat money (Credit Money) banks and corporations, as well as by governments – including the despicable Biden/Harris Administration.
But, as I have to say so often these days, Mr Putin is no solution to any of this – Freedom of Speech does not exist in Russia either.
Bobby:
I submit that this is the wrong strategy.
I believe that a better strategy is to hit the head of the snake. The real problem is not trans people, it is
1. Trans activists and
2. In this particular case, the British police.
Therefore, one should say:
1. Trans activists are delusional, and they are delusional because they are brain-damaged (and they are brain-damaged because of the #### that they eat).
2. The British police have become little more than a tool of political repression.
My theory about the British police is that they have become a tool of political repression because
A. They have quotas of arrests to fill;
and
B. They cannot fill these quotas with too many minorities (for instance, from ‘grooming gangs’).
Have to disagree. The filth are absolutely loving this.
Bobby b writes, “I think it is my duty to say that, not because of the truth of the utterance, but because it puts me in opposition to those who tell me I can not say that.
If my government told me that I could not say “the sky is green” – on pain of arrest – I would become a new adherent to the School Of The Green Sky.”
If the government banned Islam, would you become a Muslim?
I can sympathise with the desire to jab back at them in any way that will hurt, but it’s not even a good strategy. It is both more principled and more useful to say, “I don’t agree with these people but I defend their right to their wrong opinion” and/or “I may share some of the same beliefs as the people doing the oppression but I utterly reject my beliefs being forced on others.” That is (a) true and (b) reinforces the principle that the freedom of one is the freedom of all.
Speaking for myself: if the current US or UK governments banned Islam, i’d definitely think that Islam deserves another look.
In fact, the main if not only reason why i am wary of Islam, is that the Anglo-American establishment is waging war on “Islamophobia”. The friend of my enemy is usually my enemy.
Our current government? I doubt I could convince myself to believe the tenets of the faith, but I’d sure try to fake it.
Your strategy of reasoned persuasion is what we’ve been trying for decades, while the progressives have been following Alinksy’s thoughts. They’ve been winning. Time for us to embrace Alinsky.
These people want to felonize discussion of protecting kids from genital mutilation while (coincidentally?) lauding pedophilia. You can be cancelled on social media sites today by saying bad things about pedophiles. Better the gross violation of their sensibilities than a worry about holding a reasoned discussion with them.
And, no, intellectually I might not feel as noble acting that way, but I bet I’ll be more effective.
@bobby b,
Well, you want respect? The treatment that Islam gets points the way… IfYouKnowWhatIMean,AndIThinkYouDo…
They treat you like they do because they don’t fear you. You need to make them fear you more than they fear the pedophile-enablers, and then they’ll respect you.
You can do your own math on what that means in practical terms. I’m personally glad I’ll be dead before all this sh*t gets to the point where I’d have to take a hand in it all. Or, be interested in doing so… Right now, I’m just vastly amused at watching all these assholes deal with the logical extensions and consequences of their rampant stupidities that they enabled.
I see now where Chicago and California are talking about releasing all the “life sentenced” serial killers they have on death row. I wonder what the recidivism rates will be…
I also wonder how much more of this bullsh*t people are going to put up with before they lose their f*cking minds and start “doing the Dutch” to the politicians.
I am at a loss to understand why liberals, lefties, democrats, labour are not implacably opposed to this. Free speech used to be something they really cared about.
Is that irony? Or still not aware of deconstruction tactic?
Do you see Conservatives conserving? Most people don’t go to a political movement do to variety of reasons, but the main one is to elevate their social standing.
lucklucky – I have already explained that this is Frankfurt School “Woke” Marxism “”Critical Theory”. In this case the “Trans” are a “victim group” and anyone who is considered critical of them must be destroyed – as part of supposedly inherently evil Western “capitalist” society.
This Frankfurt School stuff now dominates the Western world – not just the “lefties” but many supposedly “conservative” organisations as well (partly out of ignorance – but mostly out of cowardice), “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” as is said in the United States, “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion” as is said in Britain – it is the same doctrine, after all American academia has been dominated by these “Woke” Marxists for many years, and the British Home Office had Marxist academic advisers as far back as the 1970s. The only surprise is that it has taken this long to totally corrupt the system – in Britain, the United States, and other Western countries.
Any discussion of Freedom of Speech that ignores the above facts, is a waste of time.
“But we must not call DEI add EDI Frankfurt School Marxism” – O.K. then let us stop talking about Freedom of Speech.
https://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2023/06/please-stop-this-nonsense.html
H/T David Thompson.
A splendid response.
Over here, the commies like to quote Marx by saying ‘under no pretext’ to pretend they support gun rights and firearm possession.
But they’ve either never read the full Address or they are lying, hoping you won’t.
These things they pretend to support – they support them only so long as its useful to them. Once they have power, as the Address later says, the guns go away – well, your guns. They get to keep their guns ‘to safeguard the revolution’.
Same here – they’ve won over there, now they feel they need to remove those freedoms in order to maintain their power. Lest the pendulum swing back.
“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom Because that is according to my principles.”