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Published On: Mon, Apr 16th, 2018

UK assault case: Judge Kenneth Grant tells Radical Feminist Maria Maclachlan to use proper pronoun for attacker

An British judge told an assault victim to use her attacker’s preferred gender pronoun

Maria Maclachlan, 61, is a self-described Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF), part of a faction that believes men who identify as female should not be recognized as women.

The UK Telegraph reports that Maclachlan was attacked and punched by trans activist “Tara” Wolf, knocking her to the ground while telling “When TERFs attack, we strike back.”

During MacLachlan’s testimony this week before the Hendon Magistrate’s Court, District Judge Kenneth Grant chided her for not referring to Wolf, a biological male, with female pronouns.

“The defendant wished to be referred to as a woman, so perhaps you could refer to her as ‘she’ for the purpose of the proceedings,” Grant said.

“I’m used to thinking of this person who is a male as male,” MacLachlan responded.

“A hooded figure suddenly ran at me, ran past me from left to right, knocking the camera from my hand,” she testified. “They swatted it. Although it was knocked out of my hand it was caught by the strap so it didn’t hit the ground, which I thought was the intention.

Later the judge noted that “It was notable that when I asked Ms. Maclachlan to refer to Ms. Wolf as ‘she,’ she did so with bad grace,” he said, “having asked her to do so she continued to refer to Ms. Wolf as ‘he’ and ‘him.’”

photo courtesy of LC.org

Wolf claims he acted in self-defense, claiming that MacLachlan was shaking his partner “like a rag doll.”

MacLachlan says she was only reacting to the unidentified partner kicking her first and attempting to grab her camera.

He also expressed fear that she was filming the event in order to out the group as transgendered.

“Terfs have a history of taking people’s pictures and posting them in pages like GenderIdentityWatch.com, a database that makes us a target for the far-right,” he testified. [MacLachlan] “was trying to get people’s faces.”

MacLachlan admits to tweeting a picture of Wolf’s face but denies that she meant to “out” anyone or even knew the group was transgendered.

“They were not easily perceived as trans,” she testified.

The Evening Standard adds that Wolf also admitted to posting “I wanna f*** up some terfs” on Facebook prior to the event.

Ultimately, the judge found Wolf guilty of assault, and ordered him to pay a total of £430 in fines and expenses. He rejected his self-defense argument on the grounds that multiple attendees on both sides had been filming the event.

However, Grant also rejected MacLachlan’s request for compensation, “due to the unhelpful way in which the victim was present” at the protest, including her repeated refusal to stop filming.

Maria Maclachlan

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About the Author

- Roxanne "Butter" Bracco began with the Dispatch as Pittsburgh Correspondent, but will be providing reports and insights from Washington DC, Maryland and the surrounding region. Contact Roxie aka "Butter" at theglobaldispatch@gmail ATTN: Roxie or Butter Bracco

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  1. Maria MacLachlan says:

    There are a number of misapprehensions about me in this piece, please allow me to correct them.

    Firstly, I have never called myself a ‘radical feminist’. This is a label that has been applied to me by the media without consultation. Similarly a lot of the media at the time stated that I described myself as a ‘gender-critical feminist’. Again, this was a fabrication on their part. After what happened to me, I don’t particularly object to these labels but at the time of my assault I was simply a woman – an old-school feminist if you like – who was concerned about what I’d been reading about proposed changes to legislation and wanted to go to a meeting to hear more. My assailants made assumptions about my views because I was there. I had not spoken to any of them about what I believed so it’s not true to say that I’d ‘insisted . . . that men (whatever they do to or have done to themselves) can’t become female’ even though I hold this to be true. At the time of the assault my beliefs were more tentative. As a result of it and the aftermath, they have become more entrenched.

    Secondly, as I pointed out early in the court proceedings, the term ‘TERF’ is also not chosen but imposed on us against our will. It is a derogatory label used to dismiss anyone who disagrees with core tenets of trans ideology. It is used against trans people themselves who sympathise with us, as many do. It is even used against the likes of the Welsh Tory MP, David Davies, because he shares our opposition to the proposed changes to legislation. In spite of my objections, the defence counsel used the term repeatedly. I have included a page on my new website explaining the use of the term in more detail.

    Finally, although I find it impossible to think of my assailants as anything other than male, during examination I was told I could just refer to him as ‘the defendant’, which I tried very hard to do. But using nouns instead of pronouns is a very unnatural way of speaking and having to relive the ordeal in court and answer questions while watching it on video, l kept forgetting. It was at this point that the judge interrupted my recounting of my assault by three violent males and told me that as a ‘matter of courtesy’ I should refer to the one in the dock as ‘she’. You have correctly reported the response I made. It is not actually the one I would have liked to have made.

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