As I'm sure many of you know, for International Women's Day, Jess Phillips MP read all the names of the women killed by a man in the UK since the last IWD. One hundred and eighteen names. Usually she gets accused on social media of not caring about male murder victims afterwards. This year, I thought no-one would dare do that.
However, this afternoon, just a couple of days after Sarah Everard was found, a writer criticised the list on twitter, and claimed it was incomplete. She said, "Incorrect. Jess Phillips has never read out a complete list. Phillips and the author of Counting Dead Women deliberately exclude the names of murdered trans women (or as the founder of CDW calls them: 'males')."
That attack has been shared across twitter and across social media in general.
Just one big issue though. As Karen clarified, no names of murdered transwomen in the UK could have been read out, because none were murdered this year.
Karen said: if anyone wants to know why Jess Phillips didn’t read any names of men who identify as transwomen in the list of women killed by men since IWD last year, it’s largely because there were none.
There were 118 women though. One hundred and eighteen. Why do you overlook them?
She went on to add that if a transwoman is murdered, it would be Jess Phillips' decision, as she's the one to read the names in Parliament, whether to add her name to the list. (Which seems perfectly reasonable to me.)
This lie that names were left out has gone round all over the place. I don't expect it'll ever fully die.
Why was it so easy for people to believe the worst of Jess Phillips and Karen Ingala Smith? Thousands of people believed the worst of these two women who have done SO MUCH for women, on the basis of a twitter thread from a writer.
How much must a woman do to help and support others, before people give her the benefit of the doubt and do a fact-check, when someone smears her?
This has just broken me, more than any other amount of foolishness on SM ever has. That anyone could spread these lies, this week of all weeks. Someone will always find some excuse to get the public to dismiss projects like Counting Dead Women, instead of focusing on over one hundred dead women.