>On Feb. 9, The Daily Mail in the U.K. published a story detailing the harrowing detainment of 38-year-old Kate Scottow. Scottow, a resident of Hertfordshire, England, was handcuffed in front of her autistic ten-year-old daughter and breastfeeding 20-month-old son, brought into custody and held for seven hours in a single jail cell.

>What heinous action warranted such drastic measures? The crime of “misgendering,” or calling a transgender individual by their biologically determined set of pronouns instead of their preferred pronouns, precipitated Scottow’s arrest. Stephanie Hayden, a biological male who recently transitioned to identifying as female on social media, reported Scottow to the police.

If you would have tried to tell people 10 years ago that this actually happened, people would have thought you were crazy, or accuse you of promoting the slippery slope fallacy.