“Gender critical” TERF joins right wing extremist Tucker Carlson in crusade against trans women
The Norwegian “gender critical radical feminist” Christina Ellingsen has been interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox. Yepp, TERFs are actively helping the extreme right in their anti-LGBTQA efforts now.
Carlson is one of the most aggressive propagandists of the American extreme right. He supports the ban on abortion, fetishizes guns, defends Trump’s attempted overthrow of American democracy, promotes racist arguments, is anti-LGBTQA etc. etc. He has a high score on the fascist scale, to put it mildly.
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) are now actively helping the reactionary men who want to control the lives and bodies of all women everywhere.
To hear Ellingsen complain about being called a fascists on the TV show of a a man who serves the interests for right wing extremists and fascists everywhere is cringe-worthy, to say the least.
Ellingsen is member of WDI, a transphobic “gender critical” organization that is collaborating with extreme right wing organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Research Council.
Reported to the police for hate crimes
Ellingsen has been reported to the police for having actively and maliciously harassed Christine Marie Jentoft, a Norwegian transgender woman and activist.
Carlson and Ellingsen are trying to to spin this case as a Norwegian ban against saying that trans women are men. So this becomes a matter of freedom of speech, instead of a matter of harassment and bullying.
This has proven to be an effective tactic for the transphobic left as well as the anti-trans right, because many find it hard to distinguish between the freedom to argue that gender equals biological sex on the one hand and the way this belief is communicated on the other.
This is harassment, and not about freedom of speech
Anyone who have seen the way Ellingsen has treated this trans woman, will know that the intent has been to invalidate and hurt her, and not to engage in an open and informed discussion about sex and gender.
Attacking someone for their gender identity is a hate crime according to Norwegian law. To give one example: Accusing someone for being a pedophile can be an act of violence. Ellingsen is using the right wing “groomer” argument for all it is worth, also against Jentoft. This is evil, plain and simple.
Saying that trans women are “biological men”, is not illegal according to Norwegian law. Nor does Jentoft argue that it should be. But using such arguments to actively hurt a trans person is. The key word here is intent.
TERFs have become a threat towards democracy, professor says
Professor Elisabeth L. Engebretsen from the University of Stavanger made the following observations about WDI Norway and associated twitter-accounts in the recent book Populism and Science in Europe:
“…it is clear that anti-gender movements in Norway and their transnational reach are part of this complex threat to democracy and must be taken extremely seriously in the time to come, when growing reactionary populism and disengagement from knowledge, facts, and research are seriously undermining international human rights protocols and even democracy itself.”
And just to be clear: Gender and gender identity cannot be reduced to a binary based on biological sex. That is not science. For Carlson and Ellingsen to hide behind “science” is therefore not only misleading, it is an insult to real science.
