Mick Hartley

The Brighton Argus reports:

A woman could be jailed for making online threats to kill campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen.

Except, of course, he's not a woman. 

Layla Le Fey [!], 44, posted tweets on X, formerly known as Twitter, threatening two well-known "women’s rights campaigners" Helen Joyce and Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker.

The posts described wanting to burn one of their houses down with them inside it and wanting to “physically kick the s*** out of you, pull your eyes out and break your spine”.

Three of the posts were made in March and one on June 7 last year. Le Fey was arrested by Sussex Police a few days after the final tweet. Brighton Magistrates' Court heard yesterday that Le Fey could be jailed for up to eight weeks or given a community order.

"I live in Portslade, East Sussex, UK. If you want to prove your point that some trans people are extremely violent, I’m game. “I’d be interested in setting fire to her house with her in it,” another tweet said.

Le Fey, of George Williams Mews, Portslade, pleaded guilty to four counts of sending an offensive/obscene/menacing message via public communication network.

Duty solicitor Andrew Foreman, defending, said: “It seems to be the case that this is part of the culture war between trans activists and women’s rights activists. Feelings run high between both sides.”

Reports of gender-critical woman threatening trans women were not available to back up this comment, as there aren't any. The threats of violence are all one way.

The court heard Le Fey had a “very extensive” list of previous convictions.

Le Fey, wearing a chequered suit, leopard print jacket and earrings, previously tried to steal wine from Budgens in Queen’s Road, Brighton, then threatened to hit the manager with a claw hammer.

Lovely.

There's something of a barney going on in gender-critical circles about pronouns. Both Andrew Doyle and Janice Turner have been abused by the hard-liners for using female pronouns for Debbie Hayton, the loudly gender-critical trans woman who's just written a book about her (there, I've said it!) "transsexual apostasy". I can't see the harm really in a degree of social courtesy when dealing with a man presenting as a woman if they're not in any way threatening. But I can see the other argument.

What is surely inexcusable though is this journalistic practice of referring to a violent man as a woman, when the fact of his masculinity – his trans-ness – is absolutely essential to an understanding of the story.