Hi, I think I am the writer referred to above. Last night someone alerted me to the existence of these two Tweets. One saying that the author would ‘hammer’ TERFs and ‘hammer’ those that had ties to said TERFs. The other saying that TERFs needed to be ‘smashed out of existence’. In a week that saw the National Women’s Council of Ireland hold a conference highlighting domestic and sexual abuse against women while remaining silent about the horrific abuse that a well known female writer was receiving and the final blow to that writer of her abusive ex-husband holding forth on the front page of national newspaper, these two Tweets, I felt, had to be shown to my friends and associates. They were already in the public domain as the two authors of the clearly violent and threatening Tweets had published them themselves. I shared the Tweets on Twitter and Facebook with a simple question asking whether people thought that this was ok and stating that I felt this was never ok. That was it. That was all I said. I find abuse and violence towards anyone abhorrent. I protest against violence or mistreatment of anyone, that includes trans people. I do not wish to erase or threaten the existence of trans people, in fact, I would be a natural ally of any group that faces prejudice or mistreatment based simply on how they present themselves in the world. I support women’s (and everyone’s) right to discuss, in a respectful manner, important issues that affect their bodies and their rights. The two Tweets in question are completely unambiguous. They are calling for violence against women. Last night I was told by several people that I was wrong to have shared these Tweets because they did not call for violence. In fact, that I had got it wrong. These were metaphorical calls for smashing people out of existence and hammering people. There is no metaphorical meaning to be gleaned here. Hammering means to either literally use a hammer, to beat someone or to be ‘hammered’ i.e. to be drunk. There is no different, gentle meaning for it. The other Tweet in which the author says that she wishes to make people ‘terrified’ and make ‘the rest of their lives a misery’ cannot have a different floaty meaning. I found these Tweets abhorrent and chilling and I still do. I would find them abhorrent and chilling if they had been sent by anyone and were referring, for instance, to trans people needing to be ‘hammered’ or ‘smashed out of existence’ and I would have shared them publicly in the same way.
Today, a woman here in Ireland has called on people to impersonate me and donate in my name to a GoFundMe account. I’d have no qualms about supporting a charity. I do have qualms about people impersonating me online and calling others to do so. My publisher has been tagged in posts where I’m being called a transphobe. I am a yoga teacher. My yoga page has been highlighted online. I have been linked to an horrific murder of a trans woman in the US. My name is being bandied about on Twitter and on Facebook, as a TERF and a transphobe. I am a writer, yoga teacher and mother of four. Politically, I’m strongly left-leaning. I believe firmly in free speech but with limits where real harm could come from that speech and certainly where violence and murder are threatened and incited.
My sharing of freely available Tweets has led to me having to leave Twitter and Facebook as I do indeed feel threatened by my denouncers. The authors of the two original violent Tweets have joined in the pile on. So, yes of course I am scared.
I have never threatened trans people in any way and I never would. I believe that trans people and all gender non-conforming people should be free to live as they wish within the law. I do not believe that trans people have the right to threaten the safety and lives of others, publicly and unambiguously on social media or anywhere else. I don’t believe that anyone has that right. While women and girls are only a few short years away from being institutionalised, locked away, for being pregnant, for being too sexually attractive, for having the right to an inheritance and for a multitude of other perceived sins; while women and girls have only recently been given the right to limited autonomy over their own bodies; while women and girls are still not believed when they say they’ve been raped or abused, with a huge attrition rate in rape cases before getting to court; while women and girls face FGM; while women are paid less for the same work; while women are murdered so regularly that often cases are shelved because ‘she probably committed suicide’, in Ireland, I won’t be being quiet about very public, very frightening violent threats against women. I have been driven off social media for the moment. I don’t know whether I will ever go back.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, if you’ve got this far. I hope you all have a peaceful week.