The silencing of women has a long and brutal history. In earlier centuries, women could be tortured for speaking out, which was seen as “nagging.” Almost unbelievably, the Scold’s Bridle, a painful metal mask intended to enforce female silence, remained on the British penal books until 1967. It controlled women perceived as publicly challenging male authority or social norms. Though laws today apply to everyone, they impact women especially hard, rendering us silent, compliant, and invisible.
Over the last decade or two, Western democracies have shifted from open societies that tolerate disagreement to managed societies that criminalise it. Laws sold as preventing “harm” or “hate” now punish lawful expression, especially when it challenges ideological fashion.
United Kingdom
The UK leads the Western world in online prosecutions, with thousands of arrests annually under the Malicious Communications Act and Communications Act 2003, often for social media posts. Many result in convictions or cautions for speech alone, something almost unimaginable a generation ago.
- Kathleen Stock
The Office for Students fined Sussex University £585,000 for failing to uphold free speech protections after harassment campaigns targeted philosopher Kathleen Stock for stating that sex is real. (Office for Students, 2025) - Lucy Connolly
Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for an offensive post about asylum seekers. Although her remarks were ugly, they did not result in immediate violence; the case demonstrates how speech alone – even a deleted tweet – can now lead to lengthy prison terms. (ITV News, 2024)
Australia
- Kirralie Smith
This Australian women’s advocate and founder of Binary Australia was repeatedly investigated under vilification laws for referring to males as “men.” Her experience shows how even mild factual statements can trigger legal scrutiny in jurisdictions with broad anti-discrimination codes.
New Zealand
- Rex Landy
This is a women’s rights campaigner charged under the Harmful Digital Communications Act after refusing to remove social media posts critical of a “trans rights” activist. Her digital devices were seized, and she faces ongoing proceedings. (Feminist Legal, 2025)
Brazil
- Isabella Cêpa
Cêpa was charged with “social racism” (a criminal category now interpreted to include “transphobia”) for misgendering a politician. Facing up to 25 years in prison, she fled Brazil and was granted asylum in Europe. (The Australian, 2025)
This essay explores how such laws impact women, including lesbians, who speak out – particularly about the harms of “gender identity” ideology. Their experience reveals that when governments decide which words can be spoken, democracy begins to erode.
Many of these laws are similar across multiple countries. Speech restrictions are framed as “harm prevention” and target anything “grossly offensive”, causing “emotional distress” or even just “causing annoyance”. But “harm” is subjective. The person most determined to be offended gains a kind of veto power over another’s free speech. Some complainants who have posted indecencies themselves claim moral outrage when women state biological facts, and courts often side with them.
In the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, activists and institutions use these frameworks to suppress dissent on such topics as observable sex and gender identity ideology. Women and lesbians who were once vocal defenders of our rights are often silenced.
This trend is part of a new authoritarianism, clothed in the language of popular psychotherapy. Governments claiming to shield citizens from emotional discomfort treat us like children, while grievance-driven litigation erodes fundamental rights.
When people see women arrested or losing their jobs for tweets, or activists dragged into court for stating facts, they fall silent. There is a “chilling effect” in free speech. Self-censorship spreads. Writers, podcasters, parents, and teachers check every word and avoid topics that could invite complaints or police visits. Public debate withers; what remains is conformity and politeness born of the fear of legal proceedings, harassment complaints, or employment sanctions. Lesbians who assert that same-sex attraction means female-only are accused of “hate” and “bigotry.” Speech must be both inoffensive and ideologically aligned, stifling democracy, innovation, and societal development.
The push to curb free speech also reveals an uncomfortable similarity between the progressive left, which seeks to erase biological sex, and the ultra-conservative right, who push women back into domestic roles. Both aim to remove women from public life.
For lesbians, whose very definition depends on recognition that sex is real, this convergence is especially dangerous. To live freely, we must speak freely. When we cannot say “women are female” or “a man is a male” without legal risk, we are no longer equal citizens. Free speech is not an abstraction.
Internationally, prosecutions are not driven by a single kind of law. Whether called Harmful Digital Communications Act, Online Safety Bill, or hate speech provisions, the logic is the same: Regulate speech to protect people from claimed emotional harm. Mechanisms differ, but the outcome is always the same – silencing those whose ideas offend current political fashion.
In stark contrast to Western silencing, repression in Iran and Afghanistan, for instance, is overt and lethal. In Iran, women advocating for basic rights face arrest, flogging, and execution. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has erased women’s voices from public life. Yet women in both countries continue to resist. Women in the West must resist laws that curtail free speech to show that liberty is both necessary and possible for all women.
Laws that punish women and lesbians for naming reality protect delusions and lies, not people. When delusions become enforceable, truth and democracy narrow. But resistance is growing. Across the UK, Australia, the US, and beyond, women, including lesbians, are pushing back – in courts, in public squares, and online. Every placard, article, submission, book, or post refusing intimidation is an act of resistance and courage. Freedom of speech is not a luxury. Women everywhere need to speak the truth as much as they need to breathe. In doing so, they defend not only their rights, but everyone’s right to think, question, and speak freely.
Lesbian Bill Of Rights International
WDI USA Lesbian Caucus
LAZ reloaded (Germany)
Lesbian Resistance New Zealand
Lesbian Action Group (Australia)
Lezbicon (Norway)
Arcilesbica (Italy)
CoAL (Australia)
One of the most infuriating trends in the leftist “discourse” about harmful speech is the muddying of definitional waters by referring to some acts of speech as constituting literal violence. It’s hard to tell if this is a bad-faith tactic to foreclose discussion, or if there is some other explanation, like lunacy. It used to be that leftists’ linguistic strategies revolved around devising new and more cumbersome terminology for existing concepts, then shaming others into using the new terms. Now they seem to have added a strategy of surreptitiously changing definitions of established words and acting as if the new definition has already been widely adopted. If people decide to change the definition of a word (like, for example, “woman”) they ought to have the good grace to explain what their new definition is. When it comes to the new definition of violence, I am in the dark.