Nearly 50% of millennials want ‘misgendering’ to carry prison time, survey shows

Nearly half of American millennials believe it should be a felony to refer to someone by their actual gender if they claim to believe they are another, a survey conducted last week shows.

According to the poll of 1,500 voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, 44% of Americans 25–34 believe "referring to someone by the wrong gender pronoun (he/him, she/her) should be a criminal offense” while 31% disagree. Among those aged 35-44, 38% say it should be a crime, while 35% disagree.

The sentiment is not shared by most of America, however. Only 19% of Americans think “misgendering” should be a crime, while 65% disagree. 

Surprisingly, millennials are also misaligned with America’s youngest generation of voters. 48% of Generation Z — those aged 18–24 — do not believe saying the “wrong” pronoun should be criminalized, while 33% say it should be a felony.

While it is not yet a criminal offense in the US, “misgendering” is already considered a hate crime in the United Kingdom.

Surrey Police have asked a judge to assign a probation officer to Caroline Farrow, a journalist and mother of five, for the offense of “misgendering”. Farrow was the subject of a five-month-long police investigation in 2019 for referring to someone as their true gender even when the person claimed to be another.

Last year, Farrow was arrested in her home for “malicious communications and harassment” while she was making dinner for her children. Photos provided by Farrow show police forcing their way into her house. When she asked to see a warrant, they replied, “We don’t need one.” Police seized several electronic devices, including from her husband’s parish next door. They then brought Farrow outside where a female officer subjected her to a body search and took her to the station.

Police did not deny the allegations.

Farrow says she did not post the offending content, and filed a civil complaint against Surrey Police.

Last month, Farrow reported that police have now filed a request with a judge to assign to her a probation officer — or “offender manager” — who will monitor all her communications and electronic devices. She says police did not provide her with documentation before the hearing so that she would come unprepared.

The journalist says that police reference several times in the complaint that Farrow “misgendered”.

If the court grants Surrey Police’s request, Farrow will be required to first seek written approval from her offender manager before using any social media, social networking, or gaming site. She will need to provide the officer with all her logins and passwords.

Farrow will also be required to allow police officers to enter her home between 8 AM and 8 PM “to conduct a risk assessment, monitor devices, and manage compliance of the order.”

She would also need to supply her offender manager “with any mobile, digital, or internet enabled devices for examination, review, and monitoring purposes, immediately upon request” along with the PINs and passwords to access them. If she fails to disclose the possession of any device, it “will count as a failure to comply with this condition”.

Farrow will also be required to re-register her home address at a police station every 12 months.

“I believe that the police are wanting to destroy my life without anyone knowing about it,” tweeted the journalist, adding that she is “being treated like a terrorist”.

“I do have to be very careful about what I say. The evidence in this case consists of my tweets and 39 screengrabs of a twitter feed, downloaded from my laptop, stored for litigation purposes. No memes,” she wrote separately.

A police officer wrote in the filing: “She has shown no remorse and whilst admitting to all the posts she does not believe that what she has done is wrong.”