Writing from Twitter prison!

[Glinner]

I've received a twelve-hour ban from Twitter so I thought I'd take the chance to say hello lovely mumsnetters! Thank you for all the support and kind words and very proud to be on your side.

I'm not deleting the tweets because I stand by them and there's nothing offensive about them. See for thyself, fellow witches!

MsJeminaPuddleduck I think I have something in my eye. Thank you.

11million yep. Voted for by the students. It suddenly opened my eyes.

You'll never guess which uni?

Lauren Jeska

Tara Hudson

Cailtin Jenner

Riley Dennis

And then, the bit that really scared me, was seeing how it was deemed apparently OK to talk about brutalising witches women who dared question men the orthodoxy about "a woman is anyone who says they are", such as the "fuck up terfs with a baseball bat covered in barbed wire" tweet

And Maria McLoughlin being assaulted by a young man, and the judge reprimanding her for not using female pronouns about her assailant in court

Mine was this photo. Just pedal faster ladies, pedal faster ......

And Maria McLoughlin being assaulted by a young man, and the judge reprimanding her for not using female pronouns about her assailant in court

And also saying that h* actions were somehow mitigated by her comments about h* after the attack.

Peak for me was the fucking WEP. I was SO excited - a political party for women. Wow.

Or not, as it turned out.

(I'd heard TERF beforehand, aimed at the fabulous Jean Hatchet during the Ched Evans trial. I had no idea what it meant and couldn't understand why Jean was getting so riled up about it. Didn't take me long to get my first "Die in a fire" ....and the rest is history)

I've also done a 180 fairly recently. I was hugely excited about Corbyn & following Labour stuff, so it was Labour allowing a young person who had benefitted from male privilege to be a Women's officer which rang alarm bells for me. I was dismayed at Labour's stance on allowing self id to access all women shortlists. Regardless of who a person might have become, I thought, surely the only point of an all women shortlist is to help mitigate the structural inequalities experienced from female socialisation, and possession of a female sexed body under a patriarchy. That this all happened around the same time as I was dealing with the practical, mental and physical realities of giving birth to and breastfeeding my baby was almost too much to bear.

After that there has seemed to be a rapid descent into a parallel universe. It has been peppered with loss after loss of organisations I had previously supported and/or trusted. The Guardian, BBC, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Stonewall, NSPCC, BACP, Humanist Society, Quakers etc.

I am quite frankly terrified to live in a world where such an unscientific way of thinking is promoted and with such openly tolerated bullying of an oppressed class. It makes me wonder who/what is next?

And I question myself often about WHY I'm so bloody angry about this, when I suspect most TW are just trying to live their lives. But as one poster put it so beautifully on another thread today - I want you at the table, but in your own seat. Not taking the seat women worked so hard for.

That's it, really. The very clear message, again and again - ah, it's only women. Shove up, girls. Be nice.

And another thing.....

Those investigative friends I'm hoping you have, can they check how certain people who sprout dangerous ideology and appear to have terrifying amounts of influence were not prosecuted for taking their child abroad at 16 for genital surgery (and if they really have always been a girl this would surely by FGM!)? If she wasn't having such an impact then I'd say let it lie but she is still promoting how to get round UK rules in order to medicate your child at the earliest possible moment.

And another thing from me too!

“Women/non-men who are Young Greens can find and join our Facebook group”

I had been feeling uncomfortable for a while - pussy hats and Jenner made me quirk an eyebrow. I was taken aback by a stage full of bright young female authors parroting TWAW. Then I pointed out that "women" was a better way of targeting cancer screening ads than "people with cervixes" because not everyone has English as their first language, or has reading difficulties etc, and I got screamed at (in text) by someone I knew was a long-term raging bandwaggoning MRA who had always claimed to be the queerest of the queer. His sheer arseholery peaked me hard; I found MN and I've been on a constant merry-go-round of WTF ever since.

Obligatory best Father Ted moment is surely Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse.

My journey was similar to others mentioned upthread - India Willoughby on Woman's Hour saying that women who didn't shave their legs were 'dirty', via Lily Madigan becoming a CLP women's officer. But it was realising that my teenage daughters were totally on board with the ideology that really scared me. I have been a MNer since 2003 and it's seen me through some tricky times, but it has never felt like more of a lifeline to sanity than this year - when my children are on the cusp of adulthood.

I'm so very, very grateful for the stand you take, Glinner. And Jonny Best's first article about 'transphobia' is the one I always share with people just beginning to wake up to this Orwellian nightmare. Heartfelt thanks to you both.

Also wishing you good health for the forseeable! Was worried about you!

That would be an ecumenical question. (this is possibly the best line ever.) Welcome to Witches United Glinner!

For me it was a real life incident, having seen an LGBT group I ran blown apart by a trans member. Followed by (as I tried to educate myself on what they were calling me terrible names about) discovering Riley Denis (if you're a lesbian, you must learn to accept penis and hurry up please), and Terfisaslur.com, that well known cess pit of woman hating fury, rape threats, death threats and gleeful 'your time is over bitches, we own everything now' stuff.

Then seeing here the bullying, harassment, inundating with calls, emails and texts to force refuges and women's holiday groups to include men without the faintest interest in how it affected the service users they'd been set up for; and every other incident described here. It's a never ending mountain range of peaks.

For me it was San Francisco Public Library essentially endorsing the brutalising of women by men.

That and having my career jeopardised because I pondered if maybe 'women' would be a more useful term in an advert for smear tests than 'people who have a cervix'.

I'd forgotten I was a member of the Green Party for a short while, until I realised that they considered me a "non-man".

I quit shortly after that. I think it was in 2016...

Glinner-
For me, it was when I read my NHS transgender policy. It advised that men had the right to self identify into female psychiatric wards. It went on to state that if women (with psychotic illnesses, many of whom have a history of male violence) had the audacity to state they feel uncomfortable/unsafe they would be told ‘there are no men on this ward, only women’ (these are women with psychotic illnesses). The policy said that any questioning about people with male bodies of female wards is akin to racism/ homophobia. It went on to state that if a woman persists in complaining she will be removed from the ward.

To quote the Handmaid’s Tale: ‘better never means better for everyone’.

Thanks for speaking out. Can’t tell you how much it means.

Ha! I love you! You have been so brave with all this madness. You're funny as fuck too. Happy days.

bowlofbabelfish would be interested to discuss this more! I googled pure OCD and transgender and found a bit of interesting reading but suspect I have only skimmed the surface.
Not tonight though....!

My friend clued me I recently, after several months of subtly dropping hints I wasn't picking up.

Something she said made me ask a question and she shared the backlash blog. It's a bit old now, but I spent 3 days reading it and all the sources and I'm now a proud radfem, after years of being lazy and complacent. I just couldn't believe it, it seemed like serious tin foil hat time.

I peak transed a bunch of people during the consultation just by asking them to define what a woman is. I mean, pull at that thread and the whole trans philosophy falls spectacularly to pieces.

Cnat leave without saying how star struck I am to be hanging out with Glinner. Father Ted, Black Books and IT Crowd are firm favourites and bf and I regularly rewatch,we know all the words. Thanks for your support, we all know its not easy

My peak I think might have been the smear test R0wantrees mentioned. Women requests a women for a smear. Patient is greated by a nurse, patient explains there must have been a mistake. Nurse replies “no, I am a woman.” This was described as an admin error. Wtf.

Rabid that is terrifying. I have an older family member who is often sectioned and delusional. If staff were in effect telling her black is white that will both make her not trust staff and question herself.

She is also not overly safe in mixed wards as it is.... if she shared with a transwoman who tried it on with her.... I actually think we might not get her back from the damage it would do. Its like the rapes in prison. When theyre blinking sectioned for their own safety it ought to be bloody safe.

Erasure
pbs.twimg.com/media/DrfAUHsXQAAZpRJ?format=jpg&name=large

I think you should be banned every Friday night
After all we have 🍷 🍰
Thank you

Good to see you here, Glinner.

My first wtf moment was our very own self I'd here in Ireland. I was definitely in the "let the poor people born in the wrong body live a happy life" but self I'd felt wrong in my gut. Then I found here and keep peaking.

And Jen carrying the Internet in a box is the most ingenious TV ever.