Two French essayists who repudiate gender ideology required heavy police protection after being targeted by a mob of trans activists armed with iron bars during a book signing at their publisher’s premises in Paris.
The two authors, Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern, have long lived in fear of being attacked for speaking out about the importance of women’s sex-based rights, and regularly receive death threats. Now, they are being hounded by trans activists over the publication of their bestselling essay, Transmania.
Writing for Unherd last year, Moutot expressed concern that radical trans activism, having perfected its censorial, proto-authoritarian campaign tactics while colonising the UK and US over the past decade, was rapidly taking hold in France and enveloping the issue of women’s sex-based rights in a culture of ‘no debate’.
“Resist and you will be tarred as a Terf [‘Trans exclusionary radical feminist’],” she wrote. “And it is dangerous to be a Terf in France. In March, on International Women’s Day [2023], the walls of Paris were daubed with “Kill the Terfs” graffiti. A conference in Nantes was cancelled because transactivists threatened speakers with eggs and baseball bats, and cowardly local politicians bowed to that pressure. Last year, a class given at the prestigious Sciences Po school was shelved amid concerns over its topic: Darwinism, evolutive psychology and differences between the sexes.”
In Transmania, Moutot and Stern analyse what they see as the deleterious effects of gender ideology for women’s rights in particular, and society in general, from what has traditionally been understood as a Left-wing, feminist perspective.
Last month, the two authors were invited to speak at the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences (ISSEP) in Lyon as part of a conference titled Comment L’idéologie Transgenre Détruit des Vies? (How Transgender Ideology Destroys Lives).
However, before the event had even begun, the venue – a private school founded by right-wing MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen – was swarmed by around 300 trans activists who vandalised the front of the institute with all their wearily familiar, cosplay civil rights slogans (“Dirty TERF”, “TERFS out of our struggle”, “No transphobes”, yawn, etc).
An explosion then occurred, and a fire broke out in a room housing an electrical meter adjacent to the venue, with security camera footage catching one unidentified individual setting off an explosive device.
The conference eventually went ahead but was held under heavy police protection.
Then, on Saturday October 5th, a signing session for Transmania, organised by the publisher, Éditions Magnus, was held in Paris, with the pattern of intimidation repeated.
So-called anti-fascist and trans activist groups first took to social media to try to prevent the event from taking place, before a mob turned up outside the premises armed with iron bars. Amid a deafening mainstream media silence, the police eventually arrested 64 activists.
In this climate of violence, a conference by the two women due to be held in Versailles had to be cancelled. The organiser, the association Les Éveilleurs, preferred to cancel it with the Théâtre Montansier, which was supposed to host the event, for fear of violence and damage. No other venue in Versailles agreed to host the conference.
Writing on X in the aftermath of the attack, Moutot pointed out that attempts by trans activists to silence them are in fact a perfect illustration of what she and Stern denounce in their new bestselling book, Transmania.
