Tonje Gjevjon and Christina Ellingsen

Tonje Gjevjon, Norwegian artist and filmmaker, and Christina Ellingsen, women's rights activist and publisher, discuss the current gender identity laws in Norway that affect women. Noting her cancellation from the Norwegian arts scene for her political stance on gender identity, Gjevjon considers how she potentially faces criminal charges and jail time for posting on Facebook that men cannot be lesbians. Gjevjon ellucidates how men LARPing (live-action role-playing) as lesbians are simply invigorating age-old homophobia directed at women that has taken a virutal format. Ellingsen discusses how she has been investigated for the past eight months for stating that sex is immutable, a biological truism. Although the case against her has been dropped, Ellingsen critiques how the ongoing case against Gjevjon demonstrates what is at stake today: that men claiming to be lesbians is the latest form of sexual harassment against lesbians. Ellingsen observes how this form of police and judiciary menace requires that women remain silent or risk their livelihoods and reputation in challenging the misogyny that has usurped public space over the past decade in Norway. Discussing the megalomania at the heart of gender identity politics today, Ellingsen picks apart the falsehood at the heart of this debate: that the technological control of nature is even possible. Both Gjevjon and Ellingsen vituperate the more horrific socio-political picture afoot: that of western societies foisting upon vulnerable individuals the lie of “sex change” as the mass sterilisation of this population is both encouraged and normalised.

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