Gay panic!

Is GC feminism riddled with homophobes?

I seem to have got myself in trouble for being part of an extremist arm of the gender critical movement… again.

The drama this week started with blokes weighing in on the issue of the inability of everyone to agree on everything to do with the definition of women and how women are defined in law. I don’t know why men are allowed to have rigorous debate but when women divide on political issues, groups of women have to be labelled with derogatory names, but that does seem to be the way it is.

Again people took their positions on the true trans debate and GC feminists came in saying that “trans” isn’t a real thing.

Helen Pluckrose piped up again, saying that we definitely need a word for the phenomenon we now call “trans” that is distinct from normative sex terms, so that people who pretend to be the opposite sex, can be identified, even though we all know changing sex is impossible.

The thread Pluckrose posted was more of her typical postmodernism nonsense, wrapped in faux liberal philosophy, because nobody can define trans as a stable class without postmodernism. I responded with my continuous take that Pluckrose is neither a serious thinker nor a smart person, and that the language we use for “trans” is “trans-identifying” because “trans” is a belief system, it’s not a different kind of human reproductive category, or a way to change reproductive category.”

Viking Dane responded to my tweet to defend Helen Pluckrose on the basis that she had written a piece to defend Dane and the gay men of gender critical twitter when he was under a homophobic attack, but I was accused of remaining silent. Pluckrose’s position on the homophobic nature of GC feminists had, of course, nothing to do with Pluckrose having an ongoing fight with gender critical feminists, going back many years. It isn’t that the accusation that GC feminists are all rampant homophobes is a convenient narrative for Pluckrose because GC feminists continuously and vigorously critique her vague political philosophies. It isn’t there there are more and more women joining the GC movement and drifting toward the more stable GC feminist informed position.

The last contact I had with Dane was an inbox discussion about the possibility of meeting up in London, when I was preparing to fly and getting my itinerary sorted. By the time I got to London Dane had deactivated his account and I couldn’t contact him, but I was on a tight schedule so there were many people I talked about catching up with and didn’t.

At the time I was going overseas I was more busy than usual and since returning I have also been sick and jetlagged and have been a little distracted. I am trying to write a book and I am also going to be mother of the bride, so I have a real life.

Dane and I had a special connection because we were both good friends with Brett, who passed away tragically far too young. Although that was a real connection, on GC Twitter we are often dealing with people who’s face we have never seen, who’s name we don’t know and who’s real life we know little about. The reason for that is that many people on gender critical Twitter will lose their employment if the company they work for find out they believe sex is real and important.

My political doctrine, as I have said many times, is based in a classic liberal framework, with a class-based argument for sex protections both for women and homosexuals. It is not a complicated argument, but it is not based on “feels” and philosophy, but in proven political principles and rights that have been won by collective action. Rights I’d quite like to keep.

Dane responded to my critique of Pluckrose by saying “She did stick up for me when I was targeted with homophobic abuse and GC women ignored it. Including you”. I had been trying to stay out of the latest spat Dane had got himself into because we were friendly, and some GC women are quite aggressive. I parted ways with a few women, not because I disagree with their base position, but with the aggression with which they have come at me, and I can be aggressive.

I reminded Dane that when I was targeted by his gay friends, I did not expect him to come out publicly and defend me, he reminded me that he sent me private messages, I reminded him that was because he didn’t want to come out publicly, and I was OK with that.

I highlighted to Dane that he had just called a woman a “rancid twat”, and I wouldn’t be defending that. For those who are unaware “twat” is British slang for vagina. The British are rather more liberal with such vile language, but from a gay man to a woman “rancid twat” for my money, is gross misogyny.

Emboldened by his new centrist friends, who cheered him on when he left and returned to Twitter, Dane seemed to be going around like a wounded animal joining the chorus against the “ultras”. Any gay men who accuse GC feminists of being homophobic will have a ready made cheer squad among a group of centrists, who are desperate to make themselves look moderate in comparison to GC feminists, who they call “extreme”. I’ve done the rounds with a bunch of them, and documented it well enough.

The conversation with Dane descended and he called me “vile” for historical Twitter acts of omission and I blocked him. I suggested that he stay off the sauce, deducing that alcohol may have played a factor in the equation.

Today I went to my alt where we are still mutuals and had a look at the conversations he was having about me. Such a thing is ill advised, but it is what I did. Of course, Jane Clare Jones and Helen Pluckrose had weighed in on the issue. Jane Clare Jones responding to his initial complaint about “ultra’s” with the comment about ‘poodles’, suggesting they are annoying animals that need to be kicked if blocking doesn’t get rid of them. Dane responded with a link to our conversation saying “There is another evil poodle. I‘m sick of these women. Utterly detestable”. The implication of course is that I am a detestable dog that deserves to be kicked.

Someone more partial to my position commented defended me saying; “you blocked her for not condemning a woman? And when did you decide to become Witchfinder General?” My thanks to that person.

Helen Pluckrose responded to them, “Witchfinders tortured, hanged and burned people believe they believed [sic] they did magic things that weren’t doable. Cutting off communication with someone because they don’t acknowledge that killing gay men for being gay is wrong is quite a reasonable freedom of association choice “

The implication is that Dane cut off communication with me because I refused to acknowledge that the killing of gay men for being gay is wrong. To come to this conclusion, you have to ignore my entire body of work, my stated position on homosexuality, my humanity and instead… bear with me… interpret my beliefs based on my refusal to cancel a woman, who liked a tweet that had a picture of a person falling off a building, in a context that I don’t even now understand, but that has been interpreted as homophobic by a group of men who despise me because I have taken a “hard line” on the colloquial use of sex pronouns.

This person who I am accused of refusing to cancel, Let’s call her “Anna”, I don’t even follow on Twitter, I have never had a conversation with her, and I first had an interaction with her on Twitter where she insulted me by saying that I learned about intersectionalism from Tucker Carlson.

This is cancel culture in action, and I can’t help but wonder what it is about me, that people who once were close to me, now feel they need to feign disgust toward me. Just over a month ago Dane and I had been mutuals for a few years and grown close through the death of a mutual friend and I was talking about meeting him in London, and he was saying he was really excited about the prospect. Yesterday on Twitter he said I was a vile and disgusting woman.

The closest guess I have to the change in Dane’s view of me, is that I consistently side with the feminist base of the gender critical movement on issues they are correct about. Views about holding the line on language, about removing gender identity from law, about never saying that a man is a woman, about no child being born in the wrong body and about the very base beliefs of what defines our movement.

It is interesting that Pluckrose chose to acknowledge that the witch trials were about enacting violence against a subset of women and yet she fails to recognise the panic that surrounds “ultras” as the same kind of top down driven hysteria toward women who buck a narrative that elites find useful.

The hysteria about gender critical women who are a bit too enthusiastic on twitter being “homophobic”, started when Times journalist Janice Turner used gender pronouns for David Hayton in an interview, and defended the selective use of gender pronouns. She got ratioed by gender critical women, not badly, but convincingly. Such dissent from the base was not to be tolerated.

In my usual place as cultural and political commentator I said that the women had made pronouns a picket line and Turner had crossed it, essentially, they were calling her a scab, and I sided with the women. I don’t regret this, but it was definitely a turning point for me and many women. Since this time people have fallen on sides of the picket line and attempts have been made to isolate and demonise women as “ultras”, homophobes and now, bizarrely, dogs that need a good kicking.

Before I got deemed persona non grata by a certain set, it was made clear to me via private message that certain women were going to be marked as homophobes, and associations were going to be build around the lines of the GRA and I would be wise to moderate my position and side with the good and powerful ones. I’m just too working class and basically told that person and his associates to go fuck themselves, and I bore the consequences.

I also told them that they had to be careful to start a gay GC / feminist GC war as women had been on the receiving end of quite a lot of misogyny from certain GC gays and they may not come up trumps in a fight. Turns out people don’t really give a shit about misogyny. It’s disappointing but true that if you are on the right side of a narrative, and if the right people are willing to back you, you can get away with a lot more.

In conclusion, I’m disappointed but not devastated at my weekend of dipping my toes back into the gender wars. I will not recant. I’m sorry to lose a friend, but this is war, and friends are made and lost in war.