Kellie-Jay Keen, a women’s rights campaigner who often posts YouTube videos about what she calls child safeguarding and not wanting men to use women’s spaces, said she was visited by two Wiltshire Police officers after someone complained that one of her videos was being “being untoward about pedophiles.”
Keen said that when she questioned whether it’s a crime to be untoward about pedophiles, the police officers told her that it’s not a crime but “the person was offended” and the incident has been recorded as a “hate crime.”
Additionally, Keen claimed that the police officers told her they hadn’t even watched the video that was the subject of the complaint.
According to Keen, the complainant took issue with a segment in her “Thank you Marjorie Taylor Greene” video. In the segment, Keen read part of an article about Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene calling for children attending drag shows to be made illegal. She also read a section of the article that claimed “Greene is one of many conservatives to have recently railed against events like ‘Drag Queen Story Hour,’ while also saying that the LGBTQ community is attempting to ‘indoctrinate’ or ‘groom’ children.”
After reading these parts of the article, Keen said she agreed with Greene’s stance and that children attending drag shows is “grotesque.” Keen added, “It is often sexualized and I think that’s because with some men, more than some women, there is a disconnect between what is appropriate and what is inappropriate in front of children.”
Keen’s report of police visiting her over a YouTube video and recording it as a hate crime comes days after the UK’s College of Policing issued new guidance that told officers to focus on catching criminals instead of going after those that post social media content that’s deemed to be “offensive.”
And in her video about the incident, Keen accused her local police of ignoring burglary, theft, and other crimes in the area.
“I definitely know that there are people in this town, small town of mine, who will not have had any police response to being burgled or broken into or their bike being stolen or anti-social behavior,” Keen said. “There are people who go in local businesses and choose not to pay. The police don’t come. The police don’t care about any of that but they’ll knock on my door.”
The UK police have become infamous for investigating retweets, podcasts, and more and recording them as “non-crime hate incidents.” Over 120,000 non-crime incidents have been logged in the UK since 2014 but the UK Court of Appeals ruled that non-crime hate incidents were unlawful last year.
Despite non-crime hate incidents being ruled to be unlawful, the UK is still pushing a new “hate crime” strategy to encourage more people to report hate crimes. Campaigners have warned that this strategy could criminalize comedy.
The UK’s communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) has also told tech platforms to protect women from “potential harms” – a term that it admits refers to something that may not cause any actual harm.
