What’s Current: Meghan Murphy’s sold out talk draws hundreds of protesters outside Toronto Public Library

  • Hundreds of people gathered outside of the Toronto Public Library to protest Meghan Murphy’s talk on gender identity and women’s rights. Attendees were escorted by police out the back of the building after the talk due to safety concerns. Murphy stated:

“I want us to consider for a moment who in this debate is intolerant … who wishes to form their own opinion based on rational thought rather than mob mentality … who is it who has decided to vilify, hate, threaten, bully, ostracize, and silence.”

  • One-third of all rape cases reported this year in Malaysia involved underage perpetrators. Choo Lily, the principal assistant director of the Bukit Aman Sexual, Women and Child Investigations Division, told The Star underage rape is on the rise and fuelled by children accessing pornographic content.
  • The sex trafficking of young girls is increasing in Japan, Time reports. An estimated 170,000 junior high and high school girls are thought to be currently engaged in prostitution, abetted by abuse at home and a booming child pornography industry.
  • Hundreds of protesters in Malawi demanded justice for victims raped by police officers following post-election violence.
  • A Texas police officer was suspended after the discovery of text messages sent to a teenage victim of sexual assault. After the 15-year-old girl called the police to report the assault, the officer requested photos and encouraged her to run away from her family with him.
  • A Connecticut man convicted of home invasion and triple homicide revealed in a podcast that he is transgender and claimed to be undergoing hormone therapy in prison. In 2007, Stephen Hayes strangled and sexually assaulted Jennifer Hawke-Petit and burned the family’s home, killing Hawke-Petit and her two daughters.
  • A UK man who worked for the Royal Opera House murdered his fiancée following her decision to leave him due to his cross-dressing fetish.
Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve Gluck is a writer and advocate for women's sex-based rights and creator of Women's Voices, an audio library dedicated to bringing awareness to feminist texts and speeches.