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A Norwegian women’s rights activist challenged a man who wants to believe he is a lesbian. Men cannot be lesbians, she said, and men cannot be mothers.  He was offended by her words and reported her to the police.  The police opened an investigation.  If convicted she faces up to three years in prison. 

It sounds unbelievable like something from Orwell’s 1984, but it’s a true story happening now.  Selfishly, the man, who cannot be a lesbian nor a mother even after an investigation, is helping the Party to usher in Orwell’s dystopian thought police (“Thinkpol”).

“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.” – The Principles of Newspeak, George Orwell

Oceania 1984: Newspeak and Thinkpol

In 1949 George Orwell’s book ‘1984’ was published as a warning against totalitarianism. The chilling dystopia has made a deep impression on readers and many of its concepts, such as Big Brother and the Thought Police, are instantly recognised and understood, often as bywords for modern social and political abuses.

The book is set in Oceania which is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother. The Party has created a propagandistic language known as Newspeak, which is designed to limit free thought and promote the Party’s doctrines.

Newspeak or “new speak” should not be thought of as “news speak,” although mass media is guilty of its use for its propaganda.  Newspeak was created to supersede “oldspeak,” Orwell wrote, “or Standard English, as we should call it.”  Newspeak isn’t just a set of buzzwords, but the deliberate replacement of one set of words in the language for another.  In an appendix to ‘1984’ titled The Principles of Newspeak,   Orwell introduces Newspeak’s vocabulary, dividing it into “three distinct classes,” A, B, and C. 

The B class contains the compound words: sinister doublethink coinages like “joycamp (forced-labour camp)” and “Minipax (Ministry of Peace, i.e., Ministry of War).” These, Orwell explains, are similar to “the characteristic features of political language… in totalitarian countries” of the early 20^th century.

The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.

The B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate and forcible than ordinary language.

The words of which they were made up could be any parts of speech, and could be placed in any order and mutilated in any way which made them easy to pronounce while indicating their derivation. In the word crimethink (thoughtcrime), for instance, the think came second, whereas in thinkpol (Thought Police) it came first, and in the latter word police had lost its second syllable.

The special function of certain Newspeak words, of which oldthink was one, was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them. These words, necessarily few in number, had had their meanings extended until they contained within themselves whole batteries of words which, as they were sufficiently covered by a single comprehensive term, could now be scrapped and forgotten. The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.

No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral … So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary.

The Principles of Newspeak, 1984, George Orwell

Further reading: George Orwell Explains How “Newspeak” Works, the Official Language of His Totalitarian Dystopia in 1984, Open Culture, 25 January 2017

Wikipedia 2022: Newspeak

“Transgender … is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer.” – Wikipedia, as edited 7 June 2022, retrieved 11 June 2021

“Non-binary or genderqueer,” Wikipedia states as edited on 6 June 2022, “is an umbrella term for gender identities that are not solely male or female‍.”

Wikipedia’s two sentences above are littered with Newspeak, the Party’s political ideology. How many can you identify?  If you’re finding it difficult to identify them, please read our previous article titled ‘Destroying the Toxic Trans Narrative: What is a Man & What is a Woman?’.

Two of Wikipedia’s sources for the first statement quoted above are also notable, for different reasons: Encylopedia of Social Deviance and a case study of two, just two, students. Their third source, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (“GAAD”), is a group engaged in activism which doesn’t necessarily equate to fact.

As if the wording was not sufficient to make their point that their pages are merely concerned with pushing the Party’s ideology, Wikipedia’s latest edit was to move a “more relevant sidebar” higher up the page.  According to Wikipedia the “more relevant” sidebar – after the virtual signalling “transgender flag” – is the “transgender sidebar.”  This sidebar is presumably more relevant than Wikipedia’s “LGBT sidebar” according to the preferred political narrative of the day.

As Orwell wrote: “No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral … So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary.”

UK 2019: Newspeak, a real-world example

A sexual assault in 2019 provides a good example of how newspeak confuses and blurs established safety rules and enables crimes against women and girls.

A teenage boy, who self-identified as a girl, sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in the female toilets of a Morrisons supermarket in Fife, Scotland.  This was not the first time he had entered a female toilet attempting to violate a young girl. If the rule was that no boy or man can enter female toilets would the crime have been as easy for him to commit? 

Shockingly, after his conviction, it was discovered the young male sex offender was living in a women-only hostel.

The teenager avoided prison and was threatened with being sent to a young offenders institute if he did not follow the conditions of his community order.  Would that be a young offenders institute for boys or girls?  If he were to be sent to an institution for girls, well, that would serve as encouragement for him to offend again, wouldn’t it?

Norway 2022: Thinkpol, a real-world example

In mid-May police opened an investigation on Christina Ellingsen, of the global feminist organisation Women’s Declaration International (“WDI”), after someone reported her for making “discriminatory and hateful” remarks on Twitter. If convicted, Ellingsen could be sentenced to up to three years in prison.

In Norway, the sentence for sleep rape is 18 months and rape carries a sentence of between 4-15 years depending on how heinous the crime was.  So, for Ellingsen to be facing up to three years in prison, she must have committed a serious crime.  What terrible act did she commit?

She tweeted words that another Twitter user didn’t like – that was her “crime,” words.  She didn’t rape anyone, but she tweeted.  And what were these “criminal” words? The allegations are she tweeted men cannot be lesbians nor can they be mothers.  That’s the “crime.” That’s what Thinkpol are investigating.

Christine Jentoft, who is a man, advises Foreningen FRI, a Norwegian activist and lobbying group that “works for the equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their liberation from all forms of discrimination.”  The use of the word “liberation” is an interesting choice.  Liberation is not the word we would expect to be used in the context of equal rights or standing up to discrimination. Perhaps it indicates the true driving force behind the group – the political ideology of the Party.

It’s reported that, during the period February 2021 and January 2022, Ellingsen tweeted:

“Why [does] FRI teach young people that males can be lesbians? … Jentoft, who is male and an advisor in FRI, presents himself as a lesbian – that’s how bonkers the organisation which supposedly works to protect young lesbians’ interests is. How does it help young lesbians when males claim to be lesbian, too? … You are a man. You cannot be a mother.  To normalise the idea that men can be mothers is a defined form of discrimination against women.”

Read more:

• Norwegian Feminist Faces Three Years in Prison for Saying Biological Men Can’t Be Lesbians, Summit News, 6 June 2022
• Norwegian Feminist Facing Up to Three Years in Prison Over Tweets, Reduxx, 25 May 2022

After speaking with her lawyer a week or so later, Ellingsen told Reduxx she had learned that the police report made against her was filed by Jentoft himself.

“I am under police investigation for campaigning for women’s rights, because to certain groups, the fact that women and girls are female and that men cannot be women, girls, mothers or lesbians, is considered hateful,” Ellingsen said.

“Women are not protected against hate speech in Norway, but men who claim to be both lesbian and a woman, are protected both on the grounds of gender identity and on the grounds of sexual orientation,” she added.

In 2019, Amnesty published an article on survivors of rape uniting in Nordic countries.  For Norway the article stated:

Norwegian authorities have not taken the necessary measures to prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence or to address the consequences when such crimes occur. Prevailing and erroneous myths about rape make it hard for rape victims to report the crime to the police or to seek medical help. They also influence the way rape cases are handled by the criminal justice system.

Many rapes are not reported to the police, but even those survivors who do turn to the police face a lengthy and often flawed process. One survivor told Amnesty International: “It took almost two years from the time I reported in the autumn of 2016, until the case was closed in the spring of 2018. It is a long time to wait.”

Nordic countries: Survivors of rape unite to end impunity for rapists and break barriers to justice, Amnesty, 3 April 2019

Fast forward a couple of years and Amnesty International Norway recently accused Ellingsen of harassing Jentoft after telling him on national television that he was male, REduxx reported.

We haven’t checked if the situation has improved in Norway to help rape victims.  But it’s clear if someone on Twitter is offended by mere words, the authorities suddenly have the means to take all the (un)necessary measures to investigate, and promptly. And now, it would appear, Amnesty prefers to waste its resources accusing women who tell a man the obvious, that he is a man, instead of calling out crimes against women.

“Ellingsen is a champion of women’s rights as a gender class … I stand absolutely in solidarity with Christina Ellingsen,” wrote Norway Posts.

WDI has issued a statement:

Christina Ellingsen is currently being investigated by the police because of tweets she had written in reply to Christine Marie Jentoft, a man who pretends to be a lesbian and a mother. Jentoft is a representative of Foreningen FRI, an organisation which campaigns to normalise sadomasochism, general fetishism and other misogynistic practices.

Campaigning for women’s rights is not a hate crime. Women are adult human females and have sex-based human rights and needs. In order to define and defend these rights and needs, women must be able to speak openly, be free to call a man a man, to affirm that only women can be mothers and to say that lesbians are women who are exclusively same-sex attracted.

WDI statement in support of Christina Ellingsen, WDI

To quote Orwell again:

“The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.

“The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.”

Jentoft, a man, is using Newspeak and Thinkpol to cancel women.  He is no advocate for equality nor is he against discrimination. He is an activist for the Party.  We, the women, will not forget what he has done.