The trouble began on Tuesday. In a reddit board devoted to UK Politics, r/ukpolitics, a user had linked to a Spectator article.
The article had been written by Julie Bindel, who, in little more than a glancing aside near the bottom of the piece, mentioned Aimee Challenor, a transgender woman and former Green Party activist.
Challenor has an extraordinarily dark Wikipedia page, the most uncomfortable sections of which refer to her father’s conviction for child rape. In 2016, while Challenor was running for the deputy leadership of the Greens, she hired her father as her campaign manager — at the same time as he was on bail on 22 charges. This, a Green Party report later concluded, was a ‘major failure of safeguarding’. More recently, Challenor’s husband has posted erotic fiction online about children.
But Challenor now works for reddit — and the company has policies in place which are designed to prevent the brigading of its employees by angry site users. So the original poster was banned, and subsequent accounts which mentioned Challenor also found themselves nixed.
This entrained a kind of mass strike by the serfs of reddit, who keep the site ticking over with all their free content and free moderation. Suddenly, over a hundred subreddits had set themselves to ‘private’ (meaning no new users could access them).
Reddit climbed down. After a couple of earlier attempts at damage limitation, by last night, CEO Steve Huffman was forced to issue a statement that they would no longer be censoring the references. Apparently, it was an ‘automated bot’ that had tripped the initial bannings. And that ‘the employee in question is no longer employed by Reddit’. The statement also noted that the company failed to vet this background ‘before formally hiring her.’
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SubscribeWikipedia leaves out the more disturbing details about Challenor. For example, as a 14 year old, he was in a sexual relationship with two men decades older than him that focused on wearing and using nappies (also one of his father’s favourite activities), as well as forced feminization. All of which he documented on social media. He supposedly wasn’t aware of his father’s activities, yet they both somehow share the same “niche” interests? And Stonewall thinks that this is the person to be sending into schools to teach kids about “diversity”?
Challenor is clearly the victim of systemic child rape. He needs to be in therapy, and everyone else should stop pretending that this is acceptable.
The sins of the father in cases like this often pass down through the genes
well said, I think your right to a larger degree there should be compassion given what he has gone through as a child.
Theres a freak show aspect to his life now that makes him easy to mock which overlooks a horrible start in life.
Unfortunately it is still the case of a victim becoming an abuser.
This is why we need a bill of rights for access to the modern service sector which protects from discrimination in all its forms. Especially discrimination on political grounds.
We’ve seen free speech curtailed on social media, banks refuse accounts to individuals and groups they politically oppose and platforms in monopoly positions banning books they disagree with.
These are not issues of freedom of association when viable alternatives are not available and access to these sectors is a necessity in the modern world.
Sordid, eh.
What’s still not quite clear after reading the article and observing the header photo is whether the Challenor person is man or woman. (I still cannot figure out which one a “transgender woman” really is. By birth, i mean.)
Good luck with that one. I’m still trying to work out what reddit is and what it is for.
I looked in there once (Redit I mean) and was at a total loss TBH
Certainly vindicates Graham Lineham whose arguments with this person has led to his being cancelled.
By birth a man called Ashton, now a trans woman called Aimee.
The reddit community got whipped up into a delightfully ferocious frothy laver over censorship on the site, it’s reddit at its best really, but through all the commotion about the challoner/knight concern no one relinked the source article by Julie Bindel.
Reddit is interested in many causes but misogyny towards those who stand and speak up for sex based rights continues to bubble away under the surface.
You always refer to them as the gender they are now, or what present as; so a trans female would once have been male (to us anyway)
Right, although it seems you’re not even supposed to mention that now, or to use terms like “biologically male” or “biologically female”, even to clarify it to someone confused about the “trans-man / “trans-woman” terminology.
It seems pretty obvious to me – Aimee Challenor is a man. I think one is entitled to name oneself what one likes, and have people respect that. But pronouns belong to the speaker, not the subject, and the sex one is born into is fixed and immanent – and in 99.99% of cases obvious and not up for discussion.
[ runs and hides 🙂 ]
It is really starting to cause me anguish (so far a modicum, no need to call HR yet) that human are expending time and energy on stuff like this. Hey, there are no bigger problems to solve. This is decadence, this is what happens while our species disappears up its own fundament.
I just read Andrew Harvey’s comment. I apologise for belittling a troubled individual.
Keep this up. We should also be looking carefully at who owns a huge portion of Reddit. Disinformation and fuelling dissent may be the name of the game as much as anything.
This was just one more attempt to bring about political acceptance of MAPs (Minor Attracted People). I’m glad Reddit users of all political persuasions stood their ground on this one.
Good Article, but contains one small lie, and small lies are what give space for big lies, which is partly how Challenor progressed through his careers.
HIS, HIS, HE, HIM, HIS.
Pronouns are sex based and HE is a MALE no matter what HE calls HIMSELF.
Lying to be PC is never a good look and it’s soft-propaganda to normalize this lunacy.
Perhaps there is an opening in the White House at some level, they seem to have very pronounced hiring guidelines.
Biden’s got hundred of kids in cages at the mexican border, those kids need guardians. Ashton and his family sound like the perfect progressive fit for that role.
Can we start policing the margin and mainstream again?
Somethings should not be made acceptable.