As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong), in the UK not humoring troons can mean a prison sentence. Highly selective enforcement of course, as with much else.
Terrorizing people into compliance is supposed to change reality.
My guess is the Sergeant Schultzes enforcing the law do not think this (orders you know), but the troons really act like it's true.
It's theoretically possible under a public order offense but you'd have to be demonstrably doing something pretty bad like following a trans person down a dark alley yelling "you're a man" to get anywhere near the sentencing guidelines for a custodial sentence. Yelling "YWNBAW" at a trans person would almost certainly still only be classed as a Section 5 Public Order Offense at most (so a fine + community service), because it's unlikely to have had more than a transitory effect, and if they're already yelling "FUCK TERFS" at you then it's likely not even that because they're already engaged in an aggressive dialogue with you so cannot be considered to be intended as "harassment".
None of that's
really about political beliefs anyway, it's more about disorderly behaviour or harassment. Being gender critical is a protected belief and therefore it's fully legal to say negative things about trans people as long as you can argue you are not intentionally attempting to harass or provoke anyone and are merely calmly stating your beliefs (and that you are behaving in a
reasonable manner - that's a defense against the Public Order Act, so saying "trans women are biological males and women's sports should only be for women" when discussing women's sport doesn't generally count even if you know it will cause significant emotional distress to the person you're talking to) is a-ok from a criminal law perspective. This is why we've earned the moniker "TERF Island", because there are many talking heads in media and academics writing books or giving talks (like Kathleen Stock) who are not being charged with criminal offenses.
What trips people up is the Equality Act, because while it's not criminal law it is something an employer is duty bound by, and therefore while you might not get the handcuffs you might be getting a P45. The Maya Forstarter case was an exception as the employer had not implemented a social media policy. There's some allowance in workplace law, but essentially you're not allowed to misgender trans people in the workplace because if a customer/colleague complains then the employer basically has to sack you or risk getting taken to court (in practice this rarely goes anywhere if it's e.g. a small time mechanic or a little office in Slough, but any chain retail or corporate office job is going to give you marching orders or at least a final written warning) and likewise posting on a publicly identifiable social media account can result in similar if colleagues/customers complain.
Posting YWNBAW at a troon on UK social media with your real name allows the tranny to file a Hate Speech claim against you with the police. People foolishly believe that citing Reality is some sort of legal defence, and so end up digging their legal hole deeper during interrogation by continuing to insist a man cannot magically transform into a woman instead of wising up, shutting up, agreeing with the nice desk sergeant that you'd had too much to drink and would never, ever normally type such terrible things against a poor defenseless minority, and basically talking your way out of the situation with an on the spot banning order forbidding further contact with the sex pest. Contrary to online perceptions, the police were never overly-zealous about prosecuting this sort of bullshit misuse of the law set up to protect legitimately innocent asians from being firebombed after every Truck Of Peace incident, and have further calmed the fuck down over this sort of thing in the past couple of years as Keffals found out to his chagrin, yet the legislation is still on the books.
Yeah I think, again, it's the nuance here. Posting YWNBAW
at a troon is going to be using "threatening, abusive or hateful" language with the intent to cause "harassment, alarm or distress" in said troon (although that comes under the Malicious Communications Act - sending messages "for the purpose of causing distress or anxiety”). Same for using no-no words in conversations on public social media (wouldn't be the case in closed social media groups where you reasonably could not expect someone present to take offence) - but what constitutes a no-no varies, and arguably something like "trans identified male" is not a no-no.
You're allowed to not agree with gender ideology, you just have to be polite about it, and
the courts have now established you can even misgender someone on social media on purpose. Although you're right, the smartest thing to do is just recant.
