Police Interrogate Stay-at-Home Mom for Tweets Critical of Teen's Sex Change Surgery
Police in England interrogated a stay-at-home mom for tweeting her disapproval of sex reassignment surgery for a minor, a move some say indicates alarming governmental censorship of free speech, especially speech related to transgenderism.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a self-described feminist and mother of four, was contacted by police in early February because Susie Green, CEO of Mermaids, a U.K.-based charity that supports transgender persons, had reported her to them in July. Twitter supplied Keen-Minshull's details to the police and the officer told her she was a "test case" in a new "human rights" fight they were undertaking.
This "test case" came as a result of comments Keen-Minshull made on social media. Specifically at issue were tweets critical of transgenderism, postings where she referenced how Green had taken her son to Thailand to have his genitals removed when he was 16. He was reportedly the youngest person in the world to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Green's son is said to have been prescribed puberty blockers by a doctor in Boston at age 12, and Jackie Green — who was born Jack — told the Daily Mail in 2012 that he has always been and never doubted he was a girl.
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"It's just that my body didn't match because, as far as I'm concerned, I had a birth defect," he said.
During the initial phone call, the policeman also reportedly likened this new transgender human rights endeavor to prior struggles of blacks and gays, Keen-Minshull explained on her website, recounting the events. The officer contacted her a second time and arranged a sit-down interview with her, mentioning that if she did not attend she would be considered "wanted." When she inquired what that meant, he responded that should she attempt to leave the country she would be arrested, and that if she happened to be pulled over while driving she would be arrested.
"I may remind everyone here that I am a stay at home mother to four children and that I am a wife! I'm not Jihadi John, I am not part of a grooming gang or paedophile ring, I haven't hurt anyone or abused anyone. I am a woman with an opinion," she said on her blog.
Keen-Minshull was summarily forwarded a disclosure containing eight of her tweets spanning from October 2016 to August 2017, six of which mentioned the Mermaids charity. Susie Green's major complaint was that Keen-Mishull had referred to "castration" in tweets about her son, something that occurs in sex reassignment surgery. Green had also complained about others on Twitter but Keen-Minshull was the only one in England so she was the one police targeted.
"As far as the transgender ideology stretches I believe it is one of complete submission. Those that even raise questions are silenced with threats and accusations of bigotry," Keen-Minshull commented in an interview with The Christian Post Monday afternoon.
"We all have the capacity to be offended and offensive. We have to decide whether we want to criminalize this offense," she added, noting that "in a world of billions I would hope the liberty of free speech is one we would extend to all, not just those we agree with."
Police formally questioned Keen-Minshull on Feb. 23 and her case has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service where it remains to be determined whether or not charges, and therefore a prosecution, will be brought. She told CP she is presently awaiting their decision and that this is a "how long is a piece of string" timeframe, when asked where everything now stands.
Reports say that the Crown Prosecution Service has taken direction from the Mermaids charity when developing its transgender policies, and the group's helpline has been distributed to school students all across the U.K.
During her interrogation, a police officer and a civilian hate crime officer peppered her with all sorts of questions to which she replied a defiant "no comment" each time. At one point, the civilian hate crime officer asserted that she was "factually incorrect" when she had expressed that sex reassignment surgery involves castration.
"I will not kowtow to an ideology that demands I cannot speak the truth. I will not be compelled to say a man is a woman, or that sterilising children is okay, that encouraging kids who don't fit in or who struggle with their identity that a good solution is puberty blockers and cross sex hormones and a life time of drugs," Keen-Minshull wrote.
"I will not pretend that I think a charity courted by the police, children's charities and even the Royal family is one with great outcomes for all children it touches. I will not pretend that a woman who circumvents UK law to give her son treatments not allowed in the UK is right or good."
Kaeley Triller Haver, writer and co-founder of the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, an ideologically diverse group of women resisting transgender activism — particularly the legal push to replace sex with "gender identity" — considered the police tactics appalling.
"It is simply staggering to me that police in the most dangerous county in the U.K. have time to conduct full scale interrogations of a law abiding stay-at-home mom simply because her tweets hurt somebody's feelings," Haver said in an email to CP Monday.
"West Yorkshire is the crime capital of the entire country, and the people tasked with fighting it are haggling over pronouns. As long as they're taking Twitter conduct so seriously, though, I think maybe it would be a good idea for all the local women who receive routine rape and death threats from transactivists to submit their screenshots and demand the kind of equality the police seem so sincerely committed to providing."
She added that it was grimly ironic that during International Women's Month, women are being silenced like this, all in the name of "progress."
"Police are supposed to be defined by courage to defend freedom and protect people from tyranny. What we have here is the opposite; they're indulging tyranny to save their own necks from scrutiny," Haver said.
"Maybe what they need is to hear that the people will have their backs if they tell the truth."
