"Resisting TERF’s and Transforming Their Organizations"

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

medium.com/@laura.izaguirre/resisting-terfs-and-transforming-their-organizations-95cd21714fc8

(Excerpts)

TERF’s — Trans Exclusive Regressive Fascists — are tools of the far right/alt-right establishment of America and the UK. They are bigots who promote transphobia as a political stance. They exist as agent provocateurs tasked with preventing the LGBTQ community from gelling into a cohesive political force that can oppose fascism. They claim to be “lesbians” and “feminists” while functioning as proxies for the white male oligarchs that seek to bury any and all queerness and to trap women in servitude.
...
You make a group that does everything the TERF group does, but without the unnecessary hate. Yet the TERF group finds a way to persist. Now what?
A gradual strategy that can succeed is infiltration and replacement. Entryism is a century old non-violent tactic that works in any group that uses voting to determine leadership. Gather a group of like-minded allies, join the group, and then vote one another into key positions. Attract more via outreach and over time the group will be geared toward promoting social justice and human rights.
...
So what’s next after that? Direct action.
Direct action is where you go from targeting an institutional or organization to singling out the key leaders and propellants of hate. History shows that when singled out, many bigots will renege on their hateful ideas and begin to reform. And if they don’t, then their communities can expel them.
TERF’s, like all Nazis, have no right to a peaceful existence or steady employment. They have declared their support of fascism and have therefore declared their intent to directly harm the trans community wherever they’re found. They threaten the safety and dignity of others and therefore deserve none themselves until they choose to be human once more.
The usual caveats to the direct action approach apply. Be careful of misidentifying people. Attacking bystanders just makes TERF’s look sympathetic. Don’t do anything you can’t handle the consequences of.
...
Control access to safe spaces
...
Doxxing is another effective tool
...
Property damage is another escalation up the chain of direct action
...
What about bodily harm against bigots? Is that a valid tactic? Yes, but with important considerations.
...
It’s important to avoid killing

Tyro so sorry you went through that.

The WordpressDotcom site has gone now, thank goodness. That was reassuringly quick off the mark!

"queeratxlaura.wordpress.com is no longer available.

This blog has been archived or suspended in accordance with our Terms of Service."

Unhinged and dangerous.

Not RTFT.

leave the article, it is sherpa-tastic.

I like the bit where they say

They are keyboard warriors who hide behind aliases

Then

Find out who they are, get them sacked, violence is ok but stop short of killing them...

!!!

On the Christian organised infiltration thing. In reality this is just individual women (and men) who think this is a. Nonsense and b. Dangerous. In essence. Good luck trying to infiltrate a load of people from different walks of life who are not members of any kind of radfem orgs! And i mentioned men... Bar glinner and a few more, they never go after men. That's revealing.

They also have a problem in that when told what it all actually means, the vast majority of the general public say no. Especially men.

The WordpressDotcom site has gone now, thank goodness.

Nah, still there.

Every this idiot threatens women who it disagrees with, I dig my heels in more because I know that "people" like this just take over more and more and no one is safe from them, not even their handmaids. I remember seeing a short video from one of those London woke brigade protests where a long-haired ginger rent-a-mob turned on a young woman from his own side and she was backing away with her hands in the classic appeasement gesture whilst he advanced on her like a predator. A feminine-presenting male person intervened and oh look Ginger Whinger paid attention to the male person.

Silence will not protect you. Neither will appeasement.

Bloody hell!! Wordpress let that back?? You are right! Is this "Son of Yaniv" or what??

I remember seeing a short video from one of those London woke brigade protests where a long-haired ginger rent-a-mob turned on a young woman from his own side and she was backing away with her hands in the classic appeasement gesture whilst he advanced on her like a predator. A feminine-presenting male person intervened and oh look Ginger Whinger paid attention to the male person.

Yes, it was at Speakers Corner, when Maria McLachlan was assaulted by TRAs.

Yes. That confrontation and the body language visible in the parties involved was very clearly gendered, and not in the way the people involved would like everyone else to believe.

Shocking that WordPress has let that back up. I believe that this person is going to escalate, like the person who tried to assault Julie Bindel did.

Twitter users archived it, just in case.

archive.is/XNiIU

Is the person in the US? I'm assuming the freedom of speech there might have an influence on WordPress's decision to reinstate it. Depends on whether WordPress have released a statement about their decision or not. I'm just speculating here.

I guess it comes down again to freedom of speech vs hate speech etc. It's been on my mind a lot since I started looking at the Hate Crime consultation in Scotland.

@NonnyMouse1337

Is the person in the US? I'm assuming the freedom of speech there might have an influence on WordPress's decision to reinstate it. Depends on whether WordPress have released a statement about their decision or not. I'm just speculating here.

I guess it comes down again to freedom of speech vs hate speech etc. It's been on my mind a lot since I started looking at the Hate Crime consultation in Scotland.

I don't think "freedom of speech" applies to "private spaces" like word press etc. They are free to set their own terms and conditions (which appear to be "abusive men threatening actual real-world violence against women? Fine, carry right on. Women wanting to talk about women's rights? Ban the bitches.")

Of course it gets more complicated where the lines get blurred - there was a course case which I think established Trump couldn't block people from his twitter feed because what with him being president and all, his twitter feed functioned as a form of town hall meeting, and was in fact a public place protected by free speech, which over-rode it being hosted on a private platform.

The de facto rule of thumb though is "Men - say what you like, your free speech matters. Women, shut the fuck up if we don't like what you're saying."

NonnyMouse1337 - "Is the person in the US? I'm assuming the freedom of speech there might have an influence on WordPress's decision to reinstate it. Depends on whether WordPress have released a statement about their decision or not."

I don't think geographical location of the author has anything to do with it. Wordpress / Automattic has closed down numerous Gender Critical sites "based" in the USA.

I have never seen Wordpress/Automattic make any sort of statement about a site that has been deleted or reinstated. Do they ever do that?

Found this:

"Tackling Extremist Content on WordPress.com"

(Extracts)

"We evaluate reports of content that goes against our User Guidelines or Terms of Service, and take some measures to proactively search out spam or other abusive content that’s posted to our services. We try to make the process for reporting illegal or abusive sites as transparent and simple as possible. If you see a site that you think violates our rules, please report it to us here.

One category of content that has been a focus for law enforcement and all internet companies—including Automattic—is terrorist or extremist propaganda."

"Policies Against Extremism"

"We have worked in conjunction with experts in online extremism, as well as law enforcement, to develop policies to specifically address extremist and terrorist propaganda. You can read our policies here. In short, we suspend websites that call for violence or that are connected to officially banned terrorist groups (per the US Treasury’s OFAC list), regardless of content.

We also have other measures that we implement for sites, short of removal—for example, we may flag content and remove the site from the WordPress.com Reader, making the site’s content more difficult to find. Flagging a site also removes it from all advertising programs that we run."

(My bolding on this extract)

"We do not automatically remove websites from WordPress.com — a (human) member of our Risk & Safety team reviews each report, and makes a decision on whether it violates our policies."

From:
transparency.automattic.com/2017/12/06/tackling-extremist-content-on-wordpress-com/

This is the form for reporting content:

"Report content to WordPress.com staff"

wordpress.com/abuse/

You have to enter the website address and tick one (only one) of these boxes to start the form:

Why are you reporting this?

• This content is spam
• This content should be marked as mature
• This content is abusive
• This content is violent
• This content suggests the author might be at risk of hurting themselves.
• This content infringes upon my copyright
• This content contains my private information

I don't think "freedom of speech" applies to "private spaces" like word press etc. They are free to set their own terms and conditions (which appear to be "abusive men threatening actual real-world violence against women? Fine, carry right on. Women wanting to talk about women's rights? Ban the bitches.")

Good point about private organisations setting their own terms and conditions. I wonder if WordPress will reply to complaints they receive to explain why they felt it was ok to reinstate such material. Public awareness and negative publicity to their brand might make them reconsider their decision.

If private spaces are free to enact their own terms and conditions, and these turn out to be sexist, then probably a wider societal discussion is needed on the sexist bias of social media and publishing platforms in clamping down on women's freedom of expression, while protecting that of men, especially ones that glorify aggression and violence towards women. Campaigns on women's right to free speech might be useful.

Speaking of twitter (I’m sure someone was up thread).

Does anyone know why I can’t ‘like’ certain posts but can retweet them? There doesn’t seem to be a logic to it. Anyone else have this? Are they ‘up to’ something?

It’s like the JK Rowling tweet that has some of it’s likes and retweets disappear quite a lot.

Oops! Forgot to include screenshots of some of the sites previously deleted by Wordpress/Automattic as examples.

The second screenshot, about a subject that it proves difficult to discuss on Mumsnet without threads being reported and deleted, was I think the very comprehensive site set up by James / Jamie Shupe aka "Notable Desister":

James's article that was deleted by Medium:
archive.fo/Sgxy7

Amazingly, Medium has not deleted James altogether as it has so many other Detransitioners / Desisters:

James Shupe (Formerly Jamie Shupe)
Jamie Shupe was the first person in the United States to be legally declared as non-binary. Shupe has since desisted and reclaimed his male birth sex and name.

medium.com/@jamieshupe

Medium is as bad as Wordpress/Automattic, if not worse.

Thanks for that MoleSmokes.

On the one hand, it is good that the flagging up or banning of a page or site isn't based on some automatic bot or keywords, but it can also establish a clear link to deliberate bias if gender critical content is pulled, and aggressive and violent material towards gender critical people, predominantly women, is allowed to stay up.

Lordfrontpaw - Probably there is a padlock next to the Twitter profile, ie. the posts are by someone who has made their Tweets private but you follow the account so you can see and like the tweets. RTs are blocked automatically when an account is "locked down" ie. by making Tweets private - usually a temporary measure when someone is being attacked or routinely overnight.

Oh i see - that’s a lot of accounts though!

Lordfrontpaw - sounds like a lot of people must be under attack at the moment!

Nonnymouse1337 - it is worrying that that WordpressDOTcom site has been reviewed by someone who considered it perfectly OK to advocate such extreme violence that there was a warning not to accidentally kill - but only so as not to create martyrs.

Hoping further reports will get it deleted. Considering that NONE of the sites I screenshot above advocated any sort of violence to anyone.

The archived version should be Recommended Reading as it details all of the tactics that have been used against women, including the appalling dehumanisation characteristic of Nazi propaganda.

archive.is/K2IQ1

That global database of people to attack mentioned in the article sounds like something that Government anti-terrorism organisations should be taking a keen interest in!

Well it’s half term isn’t it?

No I think it’s me - I even tried to like a tweet by the orangutan foundation and it wouldn’t go. I don’t even tweet, ever!

So not it’s not letting me tweet everyone. The barrister who hangs around these ‘ere parts who just wrote a letter the princes trust - I can’t like not retweet her at all.

Lordfrontpaw are you accessing your account from a desktop computer / laptop or your phone or an app?
Maybe the app or browser needs to be upgraded to the latest version?

It's a bit time consuming, but you could set up another throwaway account with a different email and see if you are able to tweet, like etc. If yes, then it's an issue specifically with your twitter account as opposed to a general problem on your phone or laptop, browsers being out of date and so on.

My phone as usual. I can retweet and like on the work accounts. How odd... not getting paranoid now but... anyone else?

Hang on a mo...

(Sorry when I posted before I pinged back to the first page of the thread). I think my phone is possessed.