I only recently joined twitter, as part of the process of tentatively becoming more openly gender critical, and today got my first block – so I guess that’s another milestone reached.
The person who blocked me is someone I knew vaguely about 25 years ago (though she won’t have any idea who I am) – I was a PhD student, she an established academic, and we sometimes attended the same seminars. Her research is in gender, and I remember her making a comment along the lines that however people present themselves, bodies were important and biology can’t be ignored (I paraphrase – I don’t remember exactly what she said – but it made an impression).
So yesterday, when she popped up on my twitter feed, I went and had a look at her profile, noted the pronouns in the bio, saw that she had recently published an article about transgender young people and followed her, partly as a way of bookmarking the link to the article, which I didn’t have time to read at the time. Needless to say, when I returned to it this evening I found I had been blocked. My only interaction had been to follow her on twitter.
I really am genuinely interested in understanding perspectives such as hers – someone for whom I had respect and who might offer an articulate argument allowing me to interrogate my own views. But apparently I’m not welcome.
So much for ‘educate yourself’.