Norwegian prosecutors are investigating “hateful” tweets by feminist Christina Ellingsen directed at a man claiming to be a lesbian woman. If convicted, Ellingsen faces up to three years in prison.
“You are a man. You can’t be a mother,” feminist Christina Ellingsen said on Norwegian national television. She responded to remarks made by Christine Marie Jentoft, representative of the trans activist group Foreningen FRI.
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As CNE News reports, Jentoft is a biological male who identifies as a lesbian. Amnesty International Norway accused Ellingsen of “harassment” because of this. Ellingsen tweeted:
“Normalizing the idea that men can be mothers is a defined form of discrimination against women.”
Ellingsen questions why FRI teaches young people that men can be lesbians. “Isn’t that conversion therapy?” said Ellingsen.
She later wrote how “crazy” FRI was, an “organization that supposedly protects the interests of young lesbians.”
Now the Norwegian Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating Ellingsen. The charge: hate speech. In the worst case, she faces three years in prison.
According to CNE News, the accusation has to do with the concept of gender identity was added to the Norwegian law paragraphs on insult and hate crimes in January 2021.
The fact that police can legally investigate and prosecute women who advocate for women’s rights is concerning, Ellingsen explained: “This is new territory in Norway, so the outcome of the investigation is important.”
According to her, women in Norway are not protected against so-called hate speech. “But men who claim to be both lesbian and a woman are protected based on their gender identity and sexual orientation,” Ellingsen notes.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Ellingsen reports that she receives much support from different quarters and criticism. She would be compared to someone calling for genocide. She is also said to be a fascist or a Maoist. Ellingsen does not express surprise at the matter, saying it was to be expected.
“If you can’t talk about biological reality, it’s inevitable,” Ellingsen said.
She has been allied with radical feminism, Ellingsen further explains. She also had consistently voted for the left. On the other hand, she is much more critical of what they say. Ellingsen concludes:
“All parties in Norway support this pseudoscience”.
As CNE News lets it be known, in 2021, a Norwegian man was already convicted of “insulting” and “misgendering” a trans man on Facebook. He was sentenced to 21 days in prison and a fine of about 1500 euros.
A ban on hate speech is also being worked on in the Netherlands to protect gender identity from “insults,” CNE News explains. He added that the issue is also playing a role at the European level.
At the end of 2021, the European Commission proposed to add hate speech to the existing list of “EU crimes.” A decision on this is to be made next week in Luxembourg. According to Bas Tichelaar, director of CitizenGo in the Netherlands, it is:
“… a tactic of the radical left to censor any criticism of their ideas worldwide. By changing the definition of freedom of speech, freedom of expression is threatened. When it is suppressed, the system of government turns into totalitarian tyranny.”
CitizenGO launched a petition, in the beginning, to advocate for freedom of expression in Europe, which has been signed by nearly 150,000 people so far.
“We see more and more how laws against hate speech can be misused to persecute people with a different opinion,” Tichelaar said.
Another problem, he said, is the lack of a clear definition of hate speech and hate crimes.