French essayists Dora Moutot and Marguerite Stern, who denounced the evils of transgender ideology in their book Transmania, have been forced to cancel a conference scheduled for October 22nd in Brussels after being subjected to violent threats from the extreme Left. This is not the first time they have been intimidated into silence. On this occasion, they felt that the risk to their safety was too great.
The two women made headlines with the publication of their essay in April 2024, denouncing the assault on Western society by the transgender lobbies. Since then, they have held a series of conferences to alert the public to the risks posed by these activists to children and teenagers, as well as to freedom of expression and women’s rights. On several occasions, the venues where the events were to be held have suffered serious damage. On a personal level, they have received death threats and are now travelling under police protection.
One of their scheduled conferences in Versailles recently had to be cancelled at the request of the intended venue. Stern and Moutot had planned to hold another conference in Brussels on October 22nd, at the initiative of the Café Laïque—founded by renowned academic Florence Bergeaud-Blacker, herself a regular victim of censorship. This time, they decided to cancel it themselves in the face of mounting threats.
Dora Moutot explained in a long post on X:
Some will be disappointed or say that we’re giving up, but that is not the case. Everything we have to say is in our book Transmania.
However, we don’t want to play with fire; we don’t want to lose an eye like Salman Rushdie, or even our lives, like the journalists at Charlie Hebdo, because a bunch of trans activists would find it “glorious” to kill us.
As Moutot explains, some of these activists explicitly call for their deaths in a manifesto circulating on the web via the Paris Lutte Info website. It was this manifesto that inspired the far-left groups in Brussels to step up the pressure over their possible visit to the Café Laïque.
Marguerite Stern added: “Faced with people who explicitly write that they want us dead, we choose life.”
Stern and Moutot have lodged a complaint against the authors of the manifesto calling for their death, which appeared on the Paris Luttes Info website. They are also asking the Ministry of the Interior to dissolve this violent group.
Once again, Brussels appears to be a place where freedom of expression is being undermined by pressure from the Left and the far Left.
In December 2022, the Café Laïque suffered damage for inviting psychologists Caroline Eliacheff and Céline Masson, authors of an essay on the tragedy of transgender children.
Last spring, the National Conservatism Conference bore the brunt of this poisonous climate, being threatened with closure by the local authorities. In the end, the conference was only made possible by legal action. In the aftermath of the event, the MCC Brussels branch published a manifesto in defence of free speech in the European capital.
