I didn’t know we had arseholes like this “on our side”.

[MothQuandary]

I saw that a transwoman called Kristina Jayne Harrison is speaking at the Manchester meeting “A woman’s place is under threat”

I’d never heard of her, so I looked her up on Twitter. I thought I was a TERF but, my god, she has had a hell of a lot of really unnecessary abuse from people who describe themselves as feminists. Maybe I was naive in expecting her to only get abuse from TRAs and right wing bigots. Look at the response she got to this perfectly reasonable tweet. (You have to scroll up to the top there, I couldn’t find a way that made Kristina’s post appear at the top, without it hiding the worst of the abuse).

Aside from anything else, have these people got no thought for how this looks? People will think the TERF slur is justified if they see stuff like this. Kristina doesn’t pretend she’s really a woman. She supports women keeping their safe spaces. Why the hell have such a go at her? It’s not helping.

I can’t imagine how hard it must be for her and other feminist trans allies, like Miranda Yardley, to continue putting their case despite getting shit from all directions. Props to them.

I think, though I'm not sure, that it's run by a TA, Moth. They have coopted virtually all feminist sites and vaguely women oriented Facebook groups. And even the "brand name" as it were.

While woman centring feminists are forced to create secret groups because they're under threat of exposure to friends and family. It's erasure. Practically the only public gender critical page is Meghan Murphy's excellent Feminist Current.

Alliances necessarily require compromise to some degree and making at least some effort to get along.

I agree with this, but am aware also of how a history of 'give and inch they take a mile', means you are forced to be more vigilant and uncompromising when it comes to defending boundaries or else you lose more ground.

So I think the onus is on Kristina to brush up on the knowledge of male violence against women and girls.

And yes of course, ladies are always more listened to when they are pleasing and dainty in a patriarchy so it is worth considering when it is of strategic importance to be so, in order to further the cause.

So I think the onus is on Kristina to brush up on the knowledge of male violence against women and girls.

YY. It's not always for women to be the ones to compromise. Kristina has had a lot of shit from TAs, I know that. I think that's part of why Kristina reacted like that rather than think about how the tweet could have been perceived by women who don't entirely trust Kristina and I can understand it.

ladies are always more listened to when they are pleasing and dainty in a patriarchy

'Less silenced' doesn't necessarily equal 'more listened to'

I'm concerned that worrying too much about how we come across just imbues everything we say with a sort of 'I'm subordinate' marker which is what gives everyone permission to dismiss it

Good point Ghengis

It is.

On a side note, I can't wait for this meeting, Meeting up with other women who really get it is so refreshing.

Context is everything.

If I say 'rape is abhorrent' that conveys a message.
If I say 'rape is abhorrent. Look at these false rape allegations', my message has changed.

If I say 'the man hit the woman.' That conveys one message.
But if I say 'the man hit the woman. The woman was having an affair' the juxtaposition of those two statements implies a relationship between the two, even an implicit justification or causal relationship.'

Sandwiching two statements together changes the message, even if both are true. It implies some kind of equity which should not be implied.

It was crass and inappropriate to pair a statement about a woman's rights in an intimate examination with an appeal for empathy with the male nurse in that scenario.

It isn't that anyone disagrees with the appeal for dignity for TIMS. It's that the TIM in that particular scenario wasn't 'put into it' against his will. He wasn't an innocent pawn who should have been treated better. He was a callous dick who should have recused himself from attending a cervical smear of a woman who had asked for a woman. She should never have been in the vulnerable position of having to challenge him in the first place. And when she bravely did, he shouldn't have doubled down on the offence by insisting she validate him by letting him literally penetrate her vagina.

So i think to pair a statement about the woman's dignity with one about his betrayed the thought process that he had his dignity breached (he didn't) and that breach was comparable to hers.

That deserved a strongly worded takedown. Not a free pass because we should be grateful for any crumbs of sympathy any transwoman offers us as an ally.

Kristina may be generally great, but that was an insensitive whataboutery blunder.

Sandwiching two statements together changes the message, even if both are true. It implies some kind of equity which should not be implied.

Perfectly articulated.

This is a great thread - in spite of the provocative title.

It's really important to talk these things through, I think.

It's so helpful to think it all through, especially in the company of so many clear thinkers. The (external) gaslighting is confusing enough and for many of us there's an inner voice reminding us of the terrible shame of defying our femininity training to boot.

A few years ago a well funded MRA organization encouraged its members to create faux feminist blogs, pages on Facebook, twitter accounts, to promote the MRA agenda under the guise of Feminism. They also organize mass reporting and sock puppeting. Many of the trans advocates are MRAs, as are many trans identified males. As a result much of what we now see on the internet from self declared feminists are false flag operations designed and executed by abusive males. Most of them are obvious but some will fool you for a while.