I was arrested for insulting the trans mob

Something odd happened before I even boarded the flight in Arizona. When I handed over my passport at the gate, the official told me I didn’t have a seat and had to be re-ticketed. At the time, I thought it was just the sort of innocent snafu that makes air travel such a joy. But in hindsight, it was clear I’d been flagged. Someone, somewhere, probably wearing unconvincing make-up and his sister/wife’s/mum’s underwear, had made a phone call.

The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two – five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets. In a country where pedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak, the state had mobilized five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for these tweets (and no, I promise you, I am not making this up):

…and then, a follow up to that one:

When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists.”

The officers gave no reaction and this was the theme throughout most of the day. Among the rank-and-file, there was a sort of polite bafflement. Entirely professional and even kind, but most had absolutely no idea what any of this was about.

“Kind” because the officers saw how upset I was – when they began reading me my rights, the red mist descended and I came close to becoming one of those police body-cam videos where you can’t believe the perp isn’t just doing what he’s told – and they treated me gently after that. They even arranged for a van to meet me on the tarmac so I didn’t have to be perp-walked through the airport like a terrorist. Small mercies.

At Heathrow police station, my belt, bag, and devices were confiscated. Then I was shown into a small green-tiled cell with a bunk, a silver toilet in the corner and a message from Crimestoppers on the ceiling next to a concave mirror that was presumably there to make you reflect on your life choices.

By some miracle – probably because I hadn’t slept on the flight – I managed to doze off. After the premier economy seat in which I’d just spent ten hours, it was actually a relief to stretch out. That passed the time, though I kept waking up wondering if it was all actually happening.

Later, during the interview itself, the tone shifted. The officer conducting it asked about each of the terrible tweets in turn, with the sort of earnest intensity usually reserved for discussing something serious like… oh, I dunno – crime? I explained that the “punch” tweet was a serious point made with a joke. Men who enter women’s spaces are abusers and they need to be challenged every time. The “punch in the bollocks” bit was about the height difference between men and women, the bollocks being closer to punch level for a woman defending her rights and certainly not a call to violence. (Not one of my best as one of the female officers said, “We’re not that small”).

He mentioned “trans people.” I asked him what he meant by the phrase. “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.” I said: “Assigned at birth? Our sex isn’t assigned.” He called it semantics, I told him he was using activist language. The damage Stonewall has done to the UK police force will take years to mend.

Eventually, a nurse came to check on me and found my blood pressure was over 200 – stroke territory. The stress of being arrested for jokes was literally threatening my life. So I was escorted to A&E, where I write this now after spending about eight hours under observation.

The doctors suggested the high blood pressure was stress-related, combined with long-haul travel and lack of movement. I feel it may also have been a contributing factor that I have now spent eight years being targeted by trans activists working in tandem with police in a dedicated, persistent harassment campaign because I refuse to believe that lesbians have cocks.

The police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce. Some were even Father Ted fans. Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists. The male officers were mostly polite but clearly nonplussed by the politics of it all – just doing their jobs, however insane those jobs had become. The female officers seemed more tuned in to what was actually happening. One mentioned the Sandie Peggie case in a certain way, and I realized I was among friends, even if they couldn’t admit it.

I looked at the single bail condition: I am not to go on Twitter. That’s it. No threats, no speeches about the seriousness of my crimes – just a legal gag order designed to shut me up while I’m the UK, and a demand I face a further interview in October.

The civility of individual officers doesn’t alter the fundamental reality of what happened. I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online – all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.

To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.