A universal ban on personalized license plates would put this inane case to bed.

But unfortunately for good taste, we live in a society that values freedom of expression.

Enter Lorne Grabher, the Nova Scotia man fighting in provincial Supreme Court for the right to drive around with a license plate on his car that bears his last name: GRABHER.

In 2016, Nova Scotia’s Registrar of Motor Vehicles revoked Grabher’s license plate after someone complained that it advocated hatred towards women.

The complainant didn’t know “GRABHER” was a family name but likely assumed it was a kind of misogynistic clarion call. If not a clear directive telling men to go out and grab women, then at the very least, a statement condoning violence against them.

But of course Grabher is a family name, perhaps a more common one than you might think.

I called up at least five “Grabhers” the other day whose information I found on 411 in the hopes of learning more about the broader Grabher experience. (Do they all have personalized license plates?) But alas, to no avail.

It seems some Grabhers are more comfortable in the spotlight than others.

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Lorne Grabher, for example, is so intent on keeping his name on his plate he’s not only gone to court, he’s exposed himself to national media scrutiny for nearly four years. The case seems to have really grabbed the public’s attention. (I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.)

Grabher’s lawyer argued this week that his client should be able to display his name on his license plate—an ode to the family’s Austrian-German heritage. That some may misinterpret the plate’s meaning, Grabher’s lawyer argues, isn’t Grabher’s fault nor his problem.

The Crown, however, disagrees. Carrie Rentschler, a communications professor at McGill University, wrote an expert report validating the province’s revocation of the license plate. She testified on behalf of the court Thursday.

In the report, she writes, “As an injunction, the phrase encourages its recipients to grab or grope female individuals with or without their consent. “Grab her,” then, is a command that targets a particular class of people: girls and women. Those who belong to and identify with the class of people targeted by the phrase could reasonably be assumed to find this phrase offensive, and potentially threatening.”

I’m not an academic but this seems like a pretty farfetched conclusion to arrive at about a vanity licence plate—an object that typically encourages one thing and one thing only: those who read it to remark about the person in the driver’s seat: “Wow, what a loser.”

I’m not blasé about the cultural forces that aid and abet sexual assault. I’m just not sure novelty plates are where the fight’s at, not to mention a novelty plate that apparently generated a single complaint in a period of almost thirty years.

Plus, it’s the guy’s name. He can’t help it if people mistake it for instructions from the Oval Office.

But chances are they won’t. The irony about this long-running story is that Grabher’s cause is widely known. It achieved viral fame years ago.

In other words, if Grabher does get a chance to chauffeur a car with his name on it again, it’s unlikely other drivers on the road—especially in his home province—will interpret the plate as obscene. Instead, they’ll point it out to their passengers as they would a local landmark: “Hey look, it’s Lorne Grabher! I guess he won his case.”

Meanwhile, we won’t have won ours against the threat of violent misogyny.

The notion that a vanity plate threatens to provoke violence against women seems quaint these days when arguably, the most dangerous violent misogynists aren’t out and proud, driving around town with sexist stickers pinned to their bumpers, but reserved, angry, and glued to a screen.

This week marked the one year anniversary of the Toronto van attack, when a man with ties to the incel (“involuntary celibate”) community, used a rental car as a weapon to murder 10 people on the streets of north Toronto and injure several others.

Read more:

How the Yonge St. van attack still haunts the ones who helped

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Nova Scotia man in GRABHER licence plate battle supported by billboard

This man was radicalized online, in a community dedicated to the dehumanization of women: a community whose deeply disturbed, profoundly lonely male members believe that society should be turned upside down to serve them and that women should be enslaved.

This is the threat our government officials would be wise to keep a close eye on: the sad twisted stuff unfolding online in the dark. Not a vanity plate on the open road.

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