play nicely

Much of my relationship with gender critical feminism also involves my relationship with a teenage version of myself that I subconsciously keep locked away in her bedroom and have done for years. I’ve driven past the street I grew up on for years; since this debate there’s the ghost of a teenage me that part of me wonders if I managed to successfully run away from for years. My old high school was demolished. I remember driving past the ruins and feeling an odd relief before my eyes darted momentarily to a street that still looked as dark as it did at 14 years old. It was ridiculously easy to keep her locked in that bedroom. She was antisocial and liked books more than people anyway. My childhood home still stands in the same street that always existed. I’m banned from the family home, but they don’t know my car and I still pull my hood up if I drive past in case anyone recognises me. In a bizarre, isn’t it a small world twist of fate, I had to park near my childhood home a few years ago for work reasons and walked through streets I used to wheelie my bike down with a zip up hoodie on and the hood fully thrown up over my head. If I looked up from that walk, I’d probably see the ghost of a small kid being dragged home by a woman I grew to feel nothing for whilst she was being lectured that ‘girls don’t play down the burn with the boys. You don’t want a reputation, do you?’ whilst having absolutely no idea what she was talking about. If I walked down my street, there would probably be the ghost of the same kid waiting until that woman went back into the house to pull her Alice band back down around her forehead like some biker she saw on TV.

“That’s not how you wear your hairband.”

“Its not a hairband, I’m wearing it with my motorbike.”

“Stop being so stupid. Be a girl.”

If I went into that house, there would be that same kid screaming whilst, being pinned down, told ‘we are going to see nice people and you need to wear a dress’ whilst she kicks, screams and begs just to wear trousers. And that memory kicks like a mule, because that was when people with money showed off their video cameras. There she was, in a mottled blue dress, stood in the corner away from the other kids. What they never got on video was you trying to do cartwheels to be grabbed by the woman, led off and have a finger jabbed in your face whilst you’re told for the first time in your life you are acting like a slut and this is why girls get in trouble, just play nicely. There’s never any definition of ‘nice’ given. Just fucking be it.

They do capture your misery on camera though. They laugh about you being a real life Wednesday Addams for years. Well, until they kick you out.

And if I go into that house, I could pick out memory after memory, stained into these walls like the nicotine tinged artex; it was almost worth the ensuing screaming match to see a proud kid swagger downstairs having hacked at this long ‘beautiful’ hair because it would force her hand to get the haircut she was begging for.

“You look like a boy.”

“I don’t care.”

Yet I’d stand at the bottom of the stairs of that house gazing up at the second room on the right feeling sick. If I sat in a room with my teenage self, I know we would both hate each other — and I don’t know how I feel about that. It was easy to know that whilst I kept her trapped in a room and saw her almost in the third person, rather than a part of myself or my history and someone who formed part of the paths I walked. I know why teenage me would hate me now; loud, feminine, confident, sure. Teenage me would also look at openly gay me with disgust whilst becoming enraged at anyone suggesting she was gay. Me now would roll my eyes at her and dismiss her as a sarcastic, mouthy teenager — but I don’t think that dislike of her is quite as simplistic as that. She reminds me of the outsider I was, even in the midst of my own denial (although we call that internalised homophobia now). My life now is all gay everything; I have very, very few heterosexual friends in real life. Most of my social circle is lesbian, gay, or trans with the odd bisexual for good measure. In my real life, heterosexuals are the outsiders. It isn’t deliberate — this just tends to happen when you form your own family. I could keep that teenager, with all her feelings of despair and loneliness, locked in that fucking bedroom. Sometimes I think that would be the best thing.

Then gender critical feminism hits you like a truck, and whether or not you realise it — that teenager is throwing a teentrum in your front room whilst you’re sitting there thinking ‘where the fuck did you show up from?’ The problem is she doesn’t look or sound like you. You hear yourself in other women, usually much younger than you. It’s the same pain, like some kind of malignant death cry.

No one tells you that you’ll feel like an outsider for your entire life. I grew up in a major UK city and have spent most of my life in major cities; I know gay people (men and women) who came to the cities because it felt safe and they could live openly. People seem to think that means practically having sex in public, but in reality ‘living openly’ can be not having to pretend to your neighbours that you’re ‘housemates’ when you’ve been married for three years and together for ten. I dated a woman from a rural area years ago and visiting her home felt surreal; I felt like everywhere we went people were staring and whispering. I had to get a hotel room and she couldn’t stay long in my room because “people will talk”. I’m just as guilty of making assumptions, but I’ve spoken to straight women about dream honeymoons who don’t seem to grasp why some countries could see me and a wife thrown in prison. Enjoy your fucking nuptials. I’ve walked down well known streets in the city centre at home with a partner to have someone say “fucking dykes” loud enough for us to hear. I can feel when someone is looking a little too long and know its time to drop her hand. I have stood in bars with partners to have men openly ask for threesomes. You snipe back once and you’re the ‘LGBT mafia’ but no-one stops to think you’ve been putting up with this bullshit since you were eleven. For some reason people seem to think homophobia only begins when you are capable of articulating or understanding who you are, but whether you like it or not, you do push this on kids because you can’t stomach the idea your genderfuck of a kid might grow up to be one of them queers. The feeling of being an outsider might fade in the safety of the city, but it still beats there. And if you’ve ever lived in an area where you feel like the only gay person in existence, the loneliness kicks in harder.

What most people don’t tell you is how much a person will dilute their speech for certain audiences. I just don’t talk to straight people the way I talk to other gay people about relationships or other aspects of life. I don’t feel particularly comfortable opening up about certain things to straight people because you are implicitly told throughout most of your life ‘you are the odd one out’. Well meaning straight people tend to address this by being ‘cool’ but realistically it just isn’t how human psychology works. You might have the most noble of intentions and be a genuinely wonderful person but all it takes is one drunk guy in a bar slurring “I’d love to watch” and everything in you reminds you that there’s utterly no fucking point actually being yourself in this world and the best thing that can happen at this point is an asteroid. This is why people get angry when they have people basically demanding some kind of validation from them when they bring up these topics, validation that you aren’t like that; it isn’t about you and you are making it about you.

Homophobia is an odd beast. I used to be able to easily pinpoint homophobia. You could go to Pride and the religious folk would be there to helpfully tell you that you were sinners bound for the firey pits of hell. They used to keep it simple. They’d just call us slurs openly in the newspapers; a celebrity would get outed (and they were usually forced into coming out) and the media would have a field day screaming about ‘queers’ for days, with lots of terrible puns on gay sex usually thrown in for good measure. The media were pretty obsessed with gay sex when I was a teenager. They never shut the fuck up printing GAY SEX to the point I’m not sure if they were writing a headline or making a request. GAY SEX everywhere, apparently, even in schools. I was just getting beaten up in my school but there was no GAY SEX. It is almost like bigots can read and these kinds of thoughts have consequences. I do not remember much as they were mostly jumping on me but there was a lot of talk of my being a ‘queer’, a ‘lezzer’ and a ‘homo’; I am quite sure in today’s speech there are words like ‘fetishist’ which may carry more than a verbal punch to some. But who am I to judge? Words cannot hurt you. Unless they’re followed with a backhander, one supposes. In the bad old days, I could pinpoint who was a Bad Person very easily and avoid them as necessary. Think of this statement what you will, but I’ve got far more respect for the homophobe who just wears it on their sleeve. None of this pretending to be open minded or an ‘ally’ nonsense; lets just mutually agree to stay out of each other’s way and go about our lives. The world is a big place and I am sure we can easily avoid each other. Who I truly detest, on the other hand, is the ‘ally’ who sees you as just another collectible. You are devoid of the complexities of a personality, stripped of individual traits; you are whichever letter of the alphabet they needed. You are not a human being, you are a Pokemon. In some ways I feel sorry for them as I think this must be an exhausting way to live your life, but for some reason the LGBT has became their food of choice at present and we all must accommodate them. And yes, I am including the T, because trans people have to tolerate these people too. If you are a gender critical reader, you might be surprised to read that. Which makes for the segue most lesbians (and most likely many trans people) probably saw coming.

Most people have a very bizarre concept of the left; left wing politics seems to make you a good person and right wing politics makes you a bad person. It is unbelievable to them that the left can be bad. You see this quite a lot, even in gender critical circles (the defence of “I was a Labour member” as though either of the two parties haven’t been anything but a garbage fire for years now). For the record, I am a (left leaning) centrist, which makes the worst possible human being alive as I believe in nothing. It does, however, make me quite objective in terms of how I see many of the political parties (I hate them all). This sense of ‘left means good’ means that very real, hateful behaviour coming from left wing circles is often ignored. Before the gencrits get excited, I am talking quite generally; I don’t think the left is particularly coherent or focused on a lot of pressing issues within some of the most impoverished parts of the country. Outside of this, yes — there are a lot of issues with ‘allies’ who claim to be progressive then turn out to be ridiculously homophobic/biphobic/transphobic (as we say on Twitter, its not a good look if you’re not trans and screaming that someone like Contrapoints should be cancelled because she said something you don’t like). People shouldn’t feel afraid to speak on issues to do with their community to be screamed down by others. And when you’re a lesbian, you have a lifetime of that.

I came out to realise there actually wasn’t much in the way of a dedicated social scene for me as a lesbian. We had a lesbian bar for a while, but it was cliquey and I’m pretty sure some girl went in there that I fell out with so we mutually avoided each other. However, even from the age of 18, I realised there wasn’t much. There was the internet and there was the gay scene. Had I been more cultured I suppose I could have found other more refined activities but I was in my twenties and horny which you’re not meant to admit to. The internet is a garbage fire. The internet is full of those who type ‘hi asl I am lez’ and sending you photos of very obvious models because apparently it requires two hands to crop out watermarks. In case you’re wondering why that sentence runs so strangely, it’s because it had to be proof read five times. Ironically, not because of the ‘woke mob’ but because of ‘free speech gender critical feminists’ who have managed to force people to change how they speak to avoid their spin of hatred on an innocent comment. Returning to more interesting points: by comparison, gay men had so much more in the way of events. Even media around gay men was often better. Lesbian orientated media often seemed centred around love or loss in some way. There are two ways to exist as a lesbian in society to many people and its of either extreme: desexualised or fetishised. I’m not sure who needs to read this but lesbians fuck. And if that word makes you wince, well — good. I’m quite bored of this whole concept of grasping your head around gay men having sexual desire for each other whilst I probably just like to stroke her arm. You might want to sit and gaze at the fucking moonlight whilst cuddling but pretty much every lesbian I’ve ever known fucks and if your first instinct is to associate that with something ‘male’ rather than carnal lust, then that’s a fucking you problem.

But on that note: one thing people really love to talk to lesbians about are penises. I have no interest in them nor do I care to hear about them. I do not wish to be in the same sentence as them. Once again, we encounter the drunk guy in the pub hanging off you, assuring you that “you’ve just not had my dick”. Similarly, you then encounter the ‘ally’ who cheerfully informs you that if you are a ‘genital fetishist’ you are a bigot. Nope, I just know what I like and what I would rather be dead than consider waking up to every day. What no one wants to talk about are those who like to shout “lesbians don’t like dick” every five minutes. We all know this. No one is shocked by this. If aliens visited, aliens would know this. Do you know how much I dislike it? I don’t even want to acknowledge its fucking existence. You are all weird and creepy to me, with an obsession with reminding me something exists that I have zero interest in. I don’t have to be cruel to people with it (unless you’re one of the three aforementioned, and that’s because you will insist on talking to me about something I don’t fucking like and evidently have boundary issues). It is much more difficult when you are younger to mentally grasp how to push off the slimebag who thinks a strap is a gotcha. But homophobia is pervasive. It’s that moment in a throwaway comment where you remember that yes, you are The Other. You can go about your life treating people like regular people, thinking they do the same of you and in that split second there is the throwaway line that brings you back to earth to remind you that no, you are not just like them. For a moment you will pause and if you are (in old money) ‘straight passing’ you will perhaps find yourself using gender neutral pronouns around this person. That term is problematic now on the internet but in the cold hard light of day the way of thinking that means people think you may like the opposite sex at a passing glance could be the difference between being dragged up an alley or not.

You will get incredibly, indescribably enraged at straight people referring to anything ‘queer’. Queer was the word that you heard whilst you were lying on the ground. Straight people will tell you that you are the bad person for being upset by their using this word. It has nothing to do with the politicised nature of ‘queer’ (in any instance, I can roll with that in many ways and given I know most homophobes say it out of earshot, I am very much queer as in fuck you). It comes down to giving a word that has your blood on it to straight people to kick about like a fucking toy until they get bored. You are expected to smile at this. If you say otherwise, you will make these allies and often corporations very upset. I could not give a single shiny shit. Go mass produce some t-shirts in a garbage factory and make yourself feel better or something. I do not exist to make you feel better.

There is a theory in criminological writing called ‘double deviancy’. It focuses primarily on women, making the argument that a woman will be treated more harshly than a male counterpart if she commits the same crime. This does not relate to petty crime such as theft or common assault; it relates to serious crime such as murder. Murder is a most unfeminine crime. If I asked you to describe the scene that probably came to mind upon reading the word, depending on the geographical factors of where you grew up and life experiences, it would probably conjure an image of frenzy and blood. Never fear chauvinists — a lot of murders do take place in the kitchen. In any instance, murder, or the taking of another human life (along with sexual assaults) are some of the most unfeminine things a woman can do. As a result, she will now become an Unwoman and usually given two trials — one by a jury of her peers, and the other by the media. If she is lucky, the media will depict her as a victim of some kind (possibly a victim of domestic abuse who couldn’t take any more). Usually these women are portrayed as mums (the media often focuses heavily on her role as a mother, because after all, she could not possibly be a fully formed human being), but in any instance they are still killers who usually have the nature of their crime replayed in vivid detail. They are soft women who have been broken. They have won their trial by media, even if the jury has to work within the limits of a law that ultimately works against victims of domestic abuse. If they are unlucky, they are seductresses, sluts, sex crazed harpies with a cold hard stare and an even colder heart. They are unfit mothers, drug users, estranged from their parents and the most UnWoman of woman. There is no justice in a trial by media — there is only the shell of a person left. Amanda Knox is quite possibly the most recent and infamous case of the UnWoman who was the deranged sex crazed slut. No one cared about the men in the trials (nor the one that ultimately has not won any appeal). They wanted Knox’s blood. What is a woman? Well, arguably it has always hung on a shaky nail anyway. Maybe my mother was right and I should just play nicely. Playing nicely as an adult means doing what is expected of you and being all things to all people.

I was 17 when my mother told me that I was a ‘deviant’. The teenage me, struggling with self loathing and internalised homophobia, had some kind of mental breakthrough when George Michael got outed after being caught with an undercover cop in a LA toilet. Despite the tabloids calling him a ‘poof’ and a ‘pervert’ numerous times throughout his life, there he was — dancing flamboyantly around in a police uniform, mocking them. If you ask me to define what ‘queer as in fuck you’ meant, it was probably that. Casually saying “I couldn’t really give a fuck”. Shortly after that we had the Section 28 furor in Scotland and I had to tolerate Brian Soutar’s smug little face on the television. We got his leaflets through the letterbox all the time; one time I noticed my dad had already binned his. When I was asked to pick up dog waste in the garden, I used one of the leaflets and chucked it in the garden bin. My only regret is that I didn’t feed the dog some good bougie food first as a reward for being a very good boy. I don’t think people realise what it was like being a gay kid in those days; you would get the religious folk openly knocking your door to give you pamphlets telling you that gay people go to hell. In any instance, I was probably becoming too visibly gay for a Catholic family who were terrified of what the neighbours thought to tolerate me. There was a lot of suggestions that I needed to wear make up, or why didn’t I have a boyfriend, why I needed to grow my hair or why couldn’t I just wear a dress for once. Like most gay kids in these kinds of situations — at least of my era — university was my one way ticket out of here. When people talk of lesbophobia being homophobia and misogyny combined, you don’t really understand it until you pick it apart. Getting kicked out of home was a kiss goodbye to university at least until my twenties. I don’t think I was just kicked out for being gay, although that factored heavily into it; I was not the right kind of woman for a woman for my mother. Girls who would grow into women like me — who dreamed of degrees, careers and seeing the world — made traditional women like my mother feel inferior. I was meant to get married to a nice man and have children. It seems bizarre that I should have to explain this or add in a clause that there’s nothing wrong with wanting that for yourself; men do not have to explain the desire to pursue a career, desire children, wish for both. Only women do. Only women will have to pick between the two: a career or children, at least socially speaking. Again, a casual reader who does not know me will assume ‘well, she doesn’t like children, then’. I adore kids. Why would you assume I couldn’t want or have both?

In any instance, kicking me out as a kid had the desired impact as it put my life on hold for several years. It reminded me that on some level I was an Other; if you are not wanted in the family home, why would you be wanted anywhere? Once again, there are two theories: one originally written by Durkheim on deviance. He argues that deviance is normal in society: functional, normal and effective as it creates boundary control whilst inspiring social change. A little discomfort is a good thing, in other words. Pushback on something is inevitable, whilst challenging social perception. However, Merton developed this further with strain theory; access to a socially acceptable goal is dependent on how able you are to achieve it through legitimate means. How does a kid who sleeps on a mattress eating Koka noodles get to university? You may believe in the American dream of working hard and the rewards will come, but in reality, it usually ends up with that kid being put in terrifying situations no young adult should see. It is quite surprising now how I can look at the windows in my house now and remember quite clearly when curtains were a luxury item. We wear poverty like a fucking cloak, something that you can show off as and when necessary, but you wouldn’t really have them in your nice house admitting they used to hide behind the sofa if there was a knock on the door in case it’s someone wanting money off you. You don’t really want those types in your house who know the Provey agent on first name terms. You don’t want the people in your house who knew to play daft seeing the court officers turning up at your neighbours because she can’t afford her council tax. Looking back, I’m surprised at how much I’ve always worn hoodies and just walked down the street with my hood up staring straight ahead. You want the people who string a nice sentence together with letters after their name, who like to wheel people like this out like performers in a cage, as pet projects. Don’t let them speak though because they might swear and swearing does not go well with a Zinfandel. It seems bizarre to me as I go to work and I sound, look and act like the middle class sell out part of me sees myself as being. But poverty has a taste; it tastes like the food you ate morning noon and night just to keep the electricity running. I didn’t eat rice for years. Do you know how many meals you can make out of rice? If you’re really flat out you can just eat plain rice. Fuck rice. I have bad facial leakage and I somehow manage to control it when someone tells me about social housing ignoring a person complaining there is dampness crawling up the walls of the bedrooms when there is a kid with asthma. I’m not surprised, no, but I’ll pretend I am. Your housing officer just doesn’t like your face? Wow, I’m surprised. Just got out of the jail and you think it would be easier to just go back inside? No, don’t feel like that. It is ironic that the people most likely to be offended by my casual attitude to this are the ones who don’t know what it’s like, who mistake knowingness for aloofness. Again, I’m meant to make you feel comfortable and I’ve no desire to do so. Its shit living like this, it is shit feeling like this, it is shit to know you’re playing a lottery talking to any authority figure knowing they might have already made their mind up about you looking at your clothes or hearing your dialect. And even if you play that game well, your educational/vocational history or even your postcode isn’t good enough for them. Back in your box. All of this shit is temporary to me; that’s another lesson poverty teaches you, what you have can be taken away at one bad roll of the dice.

But who am I, really? If I fell onto the scene at a young age and somehow carved out a mish mash of family made up of friends rather than blood, where is my family tree? There is my dad’s side, who I love dearly; but then there are these collection of people that I can not speak to for a year, pick up the phone and speak to like no time has ever passed. There are the friends who I laughed that hard I cried with sliding down the wall at John Street, mates who ‘hadn’t seen’ me when I was hiding in a toilet, mates who agreed with me that actually she was a boot and I could do much better, also they never liked her (they did) and never knew what I saw in her (they did). Do I particularly think of times where I looked way more tomboyish than I do now, where people were more ready to mutter ‘dyke’ as I walked past? Maybe I should go back further; back to long demolished buildings. It is ridiculously easy to live in the closet if you are a religious teenager with a miserable home life — I could just tell myself that I was broken in some way. The rest of the world seemed interested in things I simply held no interest for. If you are a teenager struggling to meet other gay people at school, I would advise you to go to your school library because that is where I spent all of my free time. If I was reading I wasn’t stuck thinking why I was clearly some kind of freak. Needless to say, the librarian knew me by name which gives you an indication of how much I hated myself as a teenager. I was what you used to call a screamer; I had Justin Bieber hair before he was probably born and spent my entire life in baggy hoodies and oversized jeans. People mistook me for a boy quite often at a casual glance until I opened my mouth. Everyone else knew I was gay except me, who was quite merrily fixated on the idea I was broken in some way and would probably grow into this liking boys thing at some stage. This changed when I changed history class and got sat next to a girl called Nikki where I instantly realised I was not broken. Most of the time I ignored her because I couldn’t make eye contact with her. It is not easy to realise you are a lesbian when you show up expecting to learn about Ancient Rome. Periodically Nikki would try and talk to me if she saw me in the corridors around school, which only made me more uncomfortable so I would usually pretend I didn’t hear her and keep walking. There are two exchanges I remember most with her; one involved her getting me on a stairwell saying “there’s nothing wrong with being gay, you know” to finally have my acknowledge her and go into a rant about how I didn’t know why everyone kept saying I was gay. The second was Nikki saying “you’d be really cute as a boy, like you were in a boy band”. I think that was probably the first time a girl made me cry.

When I grew my hair out and learned how to put on make up properly, I became one of the pretty ones. The ones people happily unload all their stereotypes onto, because you are a higher echelon. You are not like those lesbians. Looking at me doesn’t force you to challenge your preconceptions on any instant level; instead, looking at me reduces me to a fetish for plenty. I’m not really a higher echelon, I just changed the way society shits on me. Men will tell me instead how much they’d like to have sex with me, and if I point this out women will shit on me further by dressing up nothing more than the way I look encourages that and it is my fault. It didn’t matter how I chose to dress or look. There is no bolt hole to escape to. All shit rolls downhill.

Much of this is crushed within society. Merely point out you’d like to be treated as a person, you’re the LGBT Mafia. Say you don’t want to be called queer, talk about long running frustrations of lesbian existence, you’re exclusionary. It doesn’t matter that you may have had precious little to claw from and you’re one of the subgroups within the acronym who often get the most nonsense thrown at you. Ironically, you might actually be able to see where trans women also get their own share of cruelty and exclusion that manifests differently. If you are a lesbian who says “I want to talk about this, because this is an issue that affects me”, it will almost certainly be pulled apart, twisted and distorted in a way that is disgusting. Straight women think nothing of taking lesbian in jokes and serving them up for their boyfriends. If you complain, you are the bad person. In this world, there is only total inclusion. Saying otherwise makes you a SJW to some camps and a TERF in others. Not even because you have even mentioned trans people; it is simply thrown at lesbians who are difficult. In reality, there are plenty of transphobic bigots that no one normal, who is being quite rational and objective, is going to complain about if you call them a TERF. Lesbians saying ‘bisexual lesbians don’t exist’ or criticising straight people telling you what to say or do aren’t TERFs.

If you’re asking me why you can end up associated with gender critical feminism/radical feminism — well, I’ve already told you why. Get called a TERF to boot and you’ll end up with someone really quite furious.

I wrote a thread that was only meant for me, really. I am quite sure there are some GC accounts that keyword search certain words, because I woke up the next day to this thread gaining immense traction. In all honesty, I don’t look at that thread much; parts of it were taken entirely out of context and used for ways I would, even then, have found utterly disgusting. There’s parts in it where I make reference to sleeping with a partner after her sexual assault. Let me just clear up now: that was her ex girlfriend. The woman in the thread knows it exists. She was traumatised by years by her ex to the point we sat once running keyword filters on her email inboxes to send words containing certain words to trash. During the course of that relationship I encouraged her to go to therapy in order to process what happened to her. If you wonder why I’m so angry and protective of that thread, I just didn’t want people who wouldn’t even acknowledge what happened to her as real using my work for hatred. It was almost just another day in the office for me but she deserved better than that. Despite that, this thread blew up and somehow I became this semi-popular character. Part of me also just feels sad looking at this thread because I realise how differently it could have went for me; perfectly normal people who could relate to it tinged with those who saw it as a means to belittle, bully and attack others. I wish I had just ran and carried on with my life.

People wonder when the spell started to break for me. It seems ironic that it was homophobia that brought me in — and homophobia that drove me away. It felt like if you challenged this, you were the nuisance child who needed to sit down and shut up. More than once I was told I was ‘divisive’ (as if I’m meant to be upset let alone shocked by this) and to ‘think about women’. In what sense? Like a reward for being a good pet, or this whole eyes on the prize thing? I don’t hate trans people. It’s really difficult to stomach your notifications pinging calling whoever they’re dogpiling now a fetishist when you’re sat across from one of your friends who happens to be trans and she’s never hurt anyone. It makes me sick to my core that I’d have strangers on the internet demand I refer to a real life friend as a ‘TIM’ or deliberately say ‘he’ just to cause pain to someone. Once again — who are you, really? Can you really say you can tell the difference? You see, when you call her dyke and think you’re so smart with it — I’m waiting on the day I upset you and you call me a dyke. Am I the person who is fine with that, because I just don’t think I am. How do I look you in the eye when I’m expected to be fine with that? I could sit and easily have this conversation with you face to face and we would even laugh about it. But how do I sit in a bar with a friend, knowing what she has went through in parts of her life, demand she uses the men’s, call her him and anytime she has any bit of joy in her life, remind her of her chromosomes? How do you weigh up the look of hurt flash across someone’s face and go to bed easy with that?

The same is said of me, when you deal with all flavour of homophobes; how do you weigh up looking someone in the face and telling someone they are a bigot, akin to a literal Nazi, solely because they are so emotionally broken down by you and your incessant badgering that they might snap what genitals they don’t like? This is the nature of this. Do either of you think you’re a good person in these scenarios, or actually helping anyone? You aren’t. It is far easier for me to treat these homophobes with the gift they deserve most in the world; silence. Equally, I feel the same of those who feel the need to scream incessantly at trans people about biology. Once again, this makes me think of ‘queer as in fuck you’; if you push me, I will show you a deviant. Why care what they think? They will only judge you anyway. You do not want it rubbed in your face? Cool, don’t look. Why would I play nicely in a world that doesn’t play nice to me anyway? This is where you cannot understand; I have had lifelong experiences of those who slam doors on me. What you see as ‘being nice’ is realising there are plenty of people who simply cannot tell the difference between me and a trans person. You can delude yourself that you are not the same in their eyes, but you are. Some of the most homophobic people I’ve ever known would smile to my face because again, I wasn’t like those gays, whilst telling me in great detail how they hated those ‘butch, man hating ones’. ‘Flamboyant little sissy boys’. But gays like me are fine, because gays like me don’t remind you of actual homosexuality. You can look at me and imagine me with a nice man called Bob and three kids in a sensible car on the school run. Sometimes I think about getting a butch girlfriend again just because that’s always good for a laugh at these people’s expense. I could fill an entire pillow out of the feathers they spit.

I find it utterly ridiculous that you have individuals who harp on about sexual orientation being immutable then have this batshit concept of political lesbianism. There is no context in which I do not find the concept utterly fucking offensive to me. None. I refuse point blank to entertain the delusions of heterosexual/bisexual women; if you decided to take up cunnilingus to own patriarchy then I think you’re a fucking idiot, but more importantly you also are not gay. Men laugh at you for this. I hope you realise this. By default, men then laugh at women like me because you perpetuate this stereotype that women like me hate men; I simply couldn’t care less about most men, but I don’t hate them. There are many men I quite like and even, dare I say it, care about. I do not hate men nor do I think we live in a world that automatically favours men as an entire sex class. We likely do not have accurate statistics on male victims of sexual abuse due to men not willing to even admit this happened to them. Admitting this does not detract from me as a woman, nor does it detract from the horrors that female victims face when dealing with various systems including the criminal justice system. You are perfectly entitled to focus solely on female victims if you so wish however I personally would rather deal with said topic where all victims can be heard. Neither approach is wrong; if anything, we need those who tackle the horror of sexual violence from all avenues. Further to the point of PL, I am not entertaining the delusions of heterosexual/bisexual women to give the religious right a foothold to destroy the work we have done to achieve the little rights we have in the world. Most normal people tend to agree that you are simply born this way. This has not only helped legitimise same sex relationships to many, but it has also helped others see that conversion therapy is barbaric and inhumane. Conversion therapy has driven gay people to suicide; it has seen gay youth made homeless, increased mental health issues and been nothing more than a torture device with which to beat LGBT people with. At no point am I going to entertain the delusions of women who believe they magically changed their sexual orientation; people express such revulsion toward you because you open the portal to those who will come after the rest of us all so you can have a little validation from a minority of people. I do not accept the sales pitch that it is a political statement either. You are not a higher echelon of gay to me, who somehow has made more of a struggle simply to exist. We have been doing this for centuries before you dreamed up this concept and being beaten into dirt for it, so why — pray tell — are you more special and more of a political statement than the literal teenager who decides to crop her hair short and wear men’s clothing because that is where she feels more comfortable? If I hold my partner’s hand in public, I am making a political statement. When I have to come out a thousand times over, I am making a political statement. If I buy a card for a partner that is gender specific and announce to the sales clerk I am expressing romantic love for another woman, that is a political statement. This entire fucking blog is a political statement. Everything I do, existing as a lesbian, is a political statement whether or not I wish it to be. This is because I exist in a world alongside homophobia and no matter what I may think or feel, I simply have to get up and walk through this world and be proud of who I am. I find it all tirelessly offensive and whether you like this or not, I find the concept of political lesbianism far more offensive to me than some trans woman who has been quietly transitioning for years who simply dates women. It makes me feel physically sick to imagine being approached, let alone intimate with, a woman that sees me as a solution to her hatred of men.

In the trenches of homophobia they see us all as queer, so I’m not sure where you think they can tell the difference between me, as a lesbian, and a trans woman. And I specifically mean queer in the sense that you can feel their spit on your face whilst their shoulders hunch forward. Most recently to some was the poem on BBC Social where a young person who identifies as non binary spoke about the struggles of getting a haircut. Why would it strike you as peculiar that so many lesbians could see themselves in the words of Gray? Yet the women who said “no, we also know what it feels like to be dismissed, laughed at or put in awkward situations going for something as trivial as a haircut” were dismissed as attention seeking. It is not about the haircut. It is about how you are treated moving through society. It is about the looks you receive when you are simply in a store buying everyday items, or how you see the second glance before they realise it is rude to stare. It isn’t about ‘non binary’ — it is about how you are treated in society when you do not play nicely. How easily it can be to have your own womanhood quietly stripped of you, because you do not play the game, and therefore you are less of a woman. Perhaps more like a man. And as we all know, lesbians just want to be men — and if you don’t want to admit that is how you really see us, you will treat us as men with tits when we do not play nicely. Predatory, aggressive, replicating patriarchal roles: but ultimately, UnWomen. What is a woman, you ask? Well, I am one and for the benefit of a gender critical audience, was even born female — but to the right audience, if I do not play nicely, I will be treated just like a man. Why wouldn’t a girl or young woman want to reject that?

There is a common theme among these circles: performing femininity, as it is also known. The general attitude held is that women who look like me ‘perform’ this; in reality, I look and dress in ways that make me feel comfortable. Today I have been wearing a red check shirt over a grey t-shirt and ripped jeans with a beanie because I do not wish to wash my hair. Tomorrow I may wear a dress because I feel like it (also I may wash my hair). This is how most women dress - for their own comfort - and it is how it should be. Only within the realms of GC/RF worlds did I ever feel like my appearance was something that merited discussion or women quite openly felt was their god given right to tell me what to do. I did not change how I looked or dressed for my mother and I am certainly not about to change to make you feel better about your own insecurities. Which is precisely what it comes down to. There is critique of industries and then there is telling women how to present because it makes you feel better. I have an hourglass shaped figure, dark hair and dark eyes. Throughout my teens I was bombarded with images of Paris Hilton and told how women like her were beautiful, sexy, desirable, and women who looked like me were fat. It was not until I was older and long past caring that I saw women who had body shapes even remotely like mine in the media. Somehow I had to survive that and the insecurities that came with it — wishing my breasts were smaller, my hips were more narrow, and why couldn’t even suit the blonde hair that I could dye my hair to — and I could do it without demanding other women change to make me feel better. It is of no concern to you how other women live their lives. What I can assure of are two things with this kind of behaviour; firstly, you will only pass on your own insecurities to other women who are simply living their lives, who may — if you asked them — believe that women should be able to express themselves however they want. They may even understand where you are coming from but if you choose to project your own insecurity onto them and demand they change to make you feel better about yourself and your appearance, then it is entirely of your own making if those women simply choose to not engage with you. Secondly, the men you believe give these women an easier pass only shit on them in a different way to how they shit on you. You would know that if you actually spoke to these women as individuals rather than judging them on their appearance. For those so obsessed with history, it does not quite occur to them that it does not matter how you play the game as a woman, you will still be judged. Your obsession with how you are perceived by the world is very much a you problem, but it does not matter how you convince yourself you are not part of it. I simply chose to stop caring. It makes no difference to me, nor does it have any impact on me, what another woman does. However I dress I will be judged within seconds — usually most harshly by other women — and I couldn’t give a fuck to play the game. Either the one the world sets out for the one, or the one you demand of me.

Would you like me to be absolutely blunt with you? I mean, blunter than I already am. No wonder some of these kids are pissed off — they are turned into social pariahs by proxy of being painted as TERFs (once again, many of them are merely just pissed off lesbians once you pick away all the bravado), so they are kept in a bubble. Within that bubble, they are fed this concept that being a lesbian is this miserable thing. It is either writing weird poetry instead of, you know, hooking up with women; if they seem a little too sexually excited by an attractive female celebrity they’d better keep that one quiet or else they will be the predatory lesbian, objectifying women; they can’t go anywhere on the internet without experiencing abuse of some kind because everywhere is a conspiracy that doesn’t acknowledge the reality of who you are. They are told the ‘lesbian scene is dying’ — it has been in decline for years and it was nothing to do with what you think. They are sold this lie that they can be gay openly, there is this allyship everywhere they look because Pride Month is treated like Christmas. It doesn’t matter that it is rainbow capitalism and we are simply a marketing tactic for corporation that don’t actually care about us. It doesn’t matter that we are still as much some source of fascination for straight people as we ever were, but now they think aspects of gay culture are cool or quirky so they want to take it for themselves. Do you think I care if some straight girl watches Pose? Not really. It changes somehow when you tell me how this or that should be, or how you feel left out. Well, welcome to my fucking existence I guess — I feel like the odd one out in most bars because I’m surrounded by heterosexuals but I don’t demand it changes for me. These kids are sold a lie that somehow life is great now, and it just… isn’t. It is the same it has always been, but you can get married now so stop complaining. If anything, it overwhelmingly feels worse at points because there is no utopia. You are always told “it gets better” — and in many ways, it does. In the sense that you start to accept who you are and that your own feelings of inferiority begin to lessen — yes, it does get better. I was just sitting with my partner in a coffee house last week and was very aware of a man staring at us. The old kind of stare, the kind that makes the hairs on the back of your neck still stand up because a person who is so disgusted by your very existence in what they perceive as their space is unpredictable. You see, most bigots don’t go for you when you whilst you cry but whilst you laugh; joy is a trigger to them. When you are happy, you make them aware of their own perceived sense of inferiority. They see you as lesser than them so how dare you have positive experiences like love, or joy, or pride? This excludes them in some way. When you are sold this lie, of course it comes as a surprise to you when people try and chip away at who you are. But they are simply wishing you to carry their insecurity. I absolutely refuse to. But where are young people told that it is not them who feels as tired and frustrated by how society sees them as lesbians? It is more common than they think. This is a societal problem where your perception as a woman collides with good old fashioned homophobia. The GC packages this simply: it is trans people. Trans people are the reason for all your problems. Everything was great before this trans lobby nonsense.

That’s fine except it wasn’t. It is all well and good saying that you are sick of the behaviour of the LGBT community except this backfires in two ways; one, you just inadvertently give people who don’t like you licence to say “look, even a gay is sick of the LGBT Mafia!” and two, what community? My community are my friends, and maybe my followers (am I an influencer now? Oh God. I’m going to have to download Facetune). If you don’t like straights calling you queer then wait for the next chapter of I Can’t Believe Even This Homo Is Sick of the Alphabet Soup! That isn’t said out of any ridiculous notion that we have any sense of loyalty to each other; its simply the logical conclusion. I personally am of the opinion that you should tell your own if they’re booting the ball into their own goal, which is precisely why I repeat many ‘TERF lesbians’ are simply pissed off lesbians who were sold one shit sales deal and now they’re stuck with another crap sale in the form of gender critical feminism. It’s like being sold a sweet Audi on a PCP deal whilst being told it works just like hire purchase to turn up 2 years into your deal to be told you’re thousands in negative equity and you’ve been mis-sold the fucking car. What did we learn from this? If it looks too good to be true, it probably is and don’t buy cars on PCP deals. Again, its a myth sold, this sense of ‘community’; your community is what you build. My community are the dykes, gays and trans people who show up at my house and bring food. They’re sold a myth that you come out of the closet and it is all good; I came out of the closet and I met some seriously weird people. I remember being around 19 and hanging out with a group of girls with one who casually told me that she was ‘dominant’ whilst describing in explicit detail what she enjoyed doing. I don’t have a problem with this as whatever tickles your pickle, but I was eating a egg cress sandwich whilst sitting at the table and didn’t know what her name was so it felt quite over-familiar. I just nodded along whilst eating my egg cress sandwich not really knowing how to respond. I’m still not sure how I would respond even now but in hindsight I feel like I used said egg cress sandwich as a shield from the entire conversation. I didn’t find my community for years; I moved from group to group. I am still friendly with potentially one woman from when we were both around 18 but most of my friends are from my twenties. You seem surprised that there are some awful people within the LGBT community when there’s been some pretty nasty, spiteful people running through it for years. I saw a lesbian online having a bisexual woman kick off at her because she said she didn’t like non-lesbians writing lesbian characters. When lesbians talk about being trampled over and thrown to the side, it is so much deeper than what the gender critical argument is about. The GC came up with this ‘Get The L Out’ which is ridiculous. I have zero desire to be removed from the acronym in order to be kept with women who have very little interest in other topics beyond trans people, who clearly do not know other issues going on in the lesbian communities. I want my own space to talk about lesbian issues and to not be told I have to play nicely all the time. This is the lesbophobia you don’t see; I have spent most of my life as a lesbian being told to be nice or I will be too aggressive, too masculine, or the eye roll and ‘lesbians’ muttered under their breath. This is a universal experience. You seem to think wanting my space doesn’t mean I can’t see where the other letters get shit over for their own stereotypes. It is a constant repeat loop of having to explain yourself over and over again and God forbid you finally lose your temper and just tell someone to fuck off. That’s not playing nicely. And we all know what awaits the lesbians who do not play nicely.

You seem to forget that existing as a lesbian seems to automatically strip you of your womanhood to some people already. This isn’t about how you present to the world; this is literally being just a dyke. Most lesbians I know or have spoken to about this have had men more willing to square up to them in a pub or on the street, because you are practically a man in a social context but they know you’re a woman if they try and rape you to ‘teach you a fucking lesson’. Men sometimes do that weird thing of punching you on the arm or shaking your hand in that really hard way like okay mate it’s my hand not your dick, you don’t need to choke the thing. Women don’t really know where to place you either; any lesbian who has never had the straight girl trying to feed on her for attention or validation probably just needs to chat to more people because it is practically a rite of passage. I worked with a female manager when I was much, much younger who once cheerfully told me that she ‘had never met a lesbian before’ to which I could only respond, “aren’t you from London?” to have her completely bemused. In that same job I also worked with one female colleague who used to creep up behind me in the mailroom or overtly touch me. I sat staring ahead whilst she tried to rub my shoulders once having absolutely no fucking idea how to respond because she would do this whilst talking about her boyfriend. It sometimes takes you a long time to realise you are merely something exotic to women like this — what could be more validating or illicit in an otherwise humdrum life than having a lesbian pay them attention? In any instance there are only two reasons I would give a woman a back rub; one being a friend with an actual back problem and the other is what it is. But you are not really a woman, until you need to be. If I were entirely jaded, I’d theorise that if a woman cannot be compared alongside her availability to men, then is she even a woman to some? Relationships, even for straight people, come down to the role of men — the subtle emasculation of ‘you can tell who wears the trousers’ to a woman who seems a little bossy (or more often than not, just a man who isn’t going out on the piss and/or prioritising his family, which is unmanly and thus it can be argued that it is probably gay as fuck for a man to consider the needs of his wife and children). In the entire absence of men — such as lesbian relationships — how can you define who wears the trousers? Well, that’s easy. You ask them who the man is — or, if you’re a GC/RF, you talk of replicating heterosexual norms, which is a fancy dancy way of asking me which one is the man. Bringing up weird takes on lesbian sex, such as penetration, is just another way of asking me who the man is. Progressives do this too; a lesbian says she doesn’t like dick, she will be hit with another form of lesbophobia. I simply point blank refuse to play this game. Arguing with homophobes is like shouting at a wall and expecting it to talk back, with the only difference being the wall enjoys seeing you get upset.

Do you think these gencrits care about lesbians and gay men living in areas where they can be persecuted or even murdered by their government? There are literal ‘LGBT no-go zones’ in Poland; Poland is an EU country for fuck’s sake. Do you think this only affects people far away, or when they can use the pain of Iranian LGB people as a means to punch down at the trans community? Do you see them out petitioning the Home Office at how gay asylum seekers are treated in this country (spoiler: if I had to seek asylum in the UK, I would likely not pass the test as it relies heavily on stereotypes) or raising awareness of how Prides are even tear gassed by the police in Turkey? No. They will openly ask why you even need a Pride these days (because there is nowhere else in the world except the UK, unless it can be used as a weapon), telling you the rainbow flag is effectively a symbol of fascism or that you’re going to let paedophiles in the alphabet next. Ask someone chased by the police in Istanbul or trying to attend Pride in parts of Poland if they think the rainbow flag is a symbol of intolerance or a symbol of safety. Do you think this whole paedophile talk just came about in the last five years? They were saying this when I was 20; they were saying this long before I was born when they were taking lesbians’ kids off them because you can’t trust them queers around children. Have you ever considered once — just once — some of those ‘shocking’ images you see online are taken to feed a narrative? There is no greater weapon against your rights than a self loathing gay; if you are so broken down that you truly begin to believe what you are being told about those around you, what will you fight for? Why would you defend anything you believe you don’t deserve because you are surrounded by degenerates?

When I first started questioning gender critical beliefs to other people, it was whispered behind closed doors. Which may come as a surprise to some people because I have no issue saying quite directly what I think about anyone or anything — I still can’t quite fathom why you think your free speech is under attack. The issue with many free speechers is that they do not like consequences. If I tweet ‘radical feminism is a garbage fire that I long to see consigned to history’ (which I have, albeit not verbatim), the natural consequence is that some radical feminists will not like that. This does not bother me. The natural consequence of criticising things leads to pushback or people in those group not wishing to spend time with me. If I tweeted about things such as ‘Stonewall law’, which is poorly crafted metaphorical hyperbole, the natural consequence of that is that there will be some LGBT people who simply want nothing to do with me. I have no right to demand a person give me a conversation that they do not wish to give me ordinarily, but if my behaviour has contributed to it, then no, I am not entitled to a discussion. They have the freedom to simply choose to walk away from me. The same is true of businesses or in an employment context; whether you like this or not, there are some people who simply just do not want to associate with you on the basis of your words and behaviour. This is simply how humans interact with each other — simply put, piss a person off and they will sever their connection with you. You are not being held hostage by your UK government on the topic of free speech, you are an adult. Even three year olds can loosely grasp that if they punch another kid in the sandpit, the other kid might punch them back or avoid them entirely in future. You are the equivalent of an adult standing over a three year old with a sore eye and no toy being told “both sides have a point here, have you considered listening to why you got punched in the face”. This is entirely separate of cancel culture which is simply trial by social media and usually turns into a mass bullying exercise with no consideration for the individual on the receiving end. No one actually likes cancel culture. The difference between an actual trial and cancel culture is that at least in the former you have representation who might secure your liberty, whereas in cancel culture you are guilty with no presumption of innocence and the entire charade is orchestrated to see if you can get most likes on your most to the bone putdown. You don’t even care about what the person is being cancelled over. Besides, cancel culture doesn’t work; most reasonable people see it as playground bullying at best and it often only elevates the status of the cancelee on some level. Usually by those who hate the group who was ‘insulted’ over what may simply be a social faux pas. Depending on the vulnerability of the cancelee, this in turn leads to how susceptible they are to this influence — some people simply just carry on, other people become involved.

This was much of my early experience of the GC — I wasn’t cancelled, but I wasn’t in a particularly happy place in my life. I posted a thread and the rest is history. Like I said, I presume they search words, because I posted on a tiny old account with hardly any followers. Believe it or not I thoroughly despise social media, I don’t like being easily located and I am incredibly private. This whole living your entire life on social media makes me uncomfortable, but I had a Twitter account for lurking as I found Twitter possibly more educating out of the main three. Twitter had less selfies and more threads on political or professional discourse. This thread gained traction and suddenly I didn’t quite know what to do; the thing with these kinds of events is that you often have no idea how to manage them. In the space of a few days I went from perhaps having a few notifications to wake up to across my social media platform to that shitting awful 99+ icon where even Twitter gives up. When you are associated with the GC for a while, you see the tactic play out the same, often with women much younger than you. It feels very much like a recruitment drive. I would speak to women who openly would solicit detransitioners to come to radical feminist meetings which made my stomach sink. If you have young people who have been treated poorly — whoever you perceive the poor treatment to have originated from — throwing feminist grand theory at them is not going to take the pain away. I have, dare I say it — safeguarding concerns over young people being ideologically indoctrinated. When I said this, I was surprised that several women were in agreement with me. As a result I was told that I was making an environment hostile to radical feminists (again, not verbatim but however you beat the eggs, butter and flour you still end up with a cake at the end) and the implicit message was that I should shut up, whilst being reminded the person in question was off to spread the good word about the garden of eternal paradise to some young detransitioners. Play nicely. Shut up and know your place.

The thing with challenging a belief is that you are not the only one who feels like this — so quite suddenly I had other women who wanted to talk to me about their concerns. It is ironic that you are a group of women talking in secret from women who claim they cannot talk about their concerns without being silenced. For all they talk about protecting lesbians and lesbian interests, they often engage in some postmodern phrenology and lesbians are usually the test subject. The worst story I encountered was from a woman I will refer to as A. A was not the right kind of lesbian for them; direct, sarcastic, not afraid to post about women she found about attractive and quite happily told them where she disagreed with them. Needless to say I thoroughly took to A as A simply didn’t give a fuck. However, A quickly made an enemy of them and was told that she was a man, lesbians don’t behave the way she does, she is clearly not a woman. When A tried to leave, A had her social media postings dragged across to remind her that she is a MAN, NOT A WOMAN (because again, as a lesbian your womanhood is the first thing that society will strip you of). I believe A finally broke down and filmed some kind of video to prove she was a woman only to still be ripped apart. Why are you not furious by this? Because it is your side doing it and it makes you feel awkward? This is lesbophobia; the attacks on a gender non conforming kid, calling her a man, calling her a predator for simply expressing a normal attraction to women. I see no difference between you and the progressive types who bombard other lesbians screaming they objectify women because they post about attractive female celebrities. The difference between them and the GC is that there are women so embittered by their hatred of ‘the trans lobby’ that when lesbians are actually hurt by this ideology, they are merely collateral damage. One of the statements I saw made about A was that she ‘expected radical feminism to somehow be nice to her and not challenging’. No, she expected to be treated like a human being. As did all of us who were mistreated by the GC/RF and you… simply looked the other way. The mistreatment of women at the hands of the GC/RF would make this even longer than it already is.

Homophobia is very prevalent within the GC (as is a good old fashioned dose of racism with their womanface, for one example). Despite what they tell you, they will gleefully seize any opportunity to go on about someone they deem degenerate in some way. They are nearly always some letter in the acronym. There are some extremely weird LGBT people, yes — but I rarely saw their heterosexual counterpart being mentioned. It is normal to have those who express homophobic beliefs elsewhere elevated to some overnight stardom if they are as offensive as possible about trans people. The most infamous example of this was Zeze who proudly went off on one about trans people and not being able to change sex. As it would turn out, Zeze also had a video talking about the gay agenda and how we will probably be encouraging sex with bridges or something next, we are pretty much all zoophiles. Graham Linehan himself told me words to the effect of how she probably thought that because of the media and she was going to watch a Magdalene Berns video. Most notably, he admitted that he couldn’t ‘bear to watch the video’. I’m fucking sorry for you that you have the privilege to do so but I can’t opt out of the Zezes of this world. Threaten to pass it on to your lawyer if you want, I know you like that, Graham. Shortly after that several of us started hashtagging #ShutUpLesbian in response to the homophobia of the GC. In any instance, the GC mostly ignored this and said individual only found herself deserted for her views on abortion. Which is ironic given many of them think nothing of rubbing shoulders who would happily take a sledgehammer to female reproductive rights. At this point I am positive Marine Le Pen could put on an ‘adult human female’ t-shirt and they would call her a proud feminist defending the rights of women and biological reality.

I initially attempted to step away and made this very plain; I wished nothing to do with the GC, but I was happy to remain cordial. It didn’t matter. If I tweeted about anything, I would still get replies along the lines of how “they are all men”, my words would still be twisted to suit an agenda. I found them going into my pinned tweet to argue with people who replied from months earlier — straight men, thinking nothing of seizing every boundary of mine to punch down at others, even when I have explicitly said I do not wish you to use my work in this context. There’s two parts to this; firstly, the GC do not listen to the word ‘no’. I ended up placing my pinned tweet within a quote tweet which seemed to serve as some kind of barrier. Secondly, it becomes quite evident that there are those who watch your timeline for any kind of dissent. I do not react well to this. I have PTSD from an abusive relationship and I do not cope well with feeling watched. I am not repeating some of the absolute poison that was posted about my past but it is quite fair to say that I would never allow a gender critical woman to ever be around survivors of domestic abuse. This is, once again, consequence — if you use a woman’s domestic abuse history against her as a weapon, the chances are that woman is going to intensely dislike you. I am not interested in hearing that you are not like it; I suppose you were not like it toward A or other women I have spoken to either. This behaviour of making any and all attempt to psychologically destroy any woman who refuses to comply is at your core.

What I find remarkable is the power of the block. You would think I came after your children, which is quite ironic really in hindsight. I simply blocked you on a social media platform. If you were so upset by this, you could have simply messaged someone else you knew I was friends with. Some women did and I was fine with that. Instead it became another sport (‘look at this weak person, blocking me on social media’). I find it quite hilarious that you detest cancel culture so much when you were quite happy to engage in your own online blood sports against another woman who simply, at that point, just wanted out. Much like those who simply go along with why someone is offensive, you probably didn’t have — and still don’t — have any idea why I mass purged my followers. But you had a blocked screen to show off to your followers. Leaving the GC also makes you a TRA by default, which is again also hilarious as I simply do not hate trans people and think the GC is full of shit. If this is the bare minimum to be a TRA, I suppose half the world’s population is a TRA. I simply exist. I get on with quite a lot of people who are trans, and some of them you do not like, and that is fine. A lot of those people were quite kind to me when they had no reason to be, and I almost certainly didn’t deserve it from some of them. I am not allowed to be angry over this behaviour, and I was certainly not allowed to be extremely distressed by this behaviour. You see, there are two very different types of people in or associated with the GC: the ones who will read this and feel genuine horror, and the ones who will see me as a traitor (to what, I have absolutely no idea). I have no means of telling which one of you is which, and that is a consequence of the behaviour you either engaged in or looked away to. I almost prefer the genuinely ignorant, but periodically I get the latter swing by my mentions and I simply have nothing to say to you. So in the true survivalist nature of PTSD, one supposes, it is easier to see you all as one and the same. As I have said numerous times on Twitter, no one actually knows you. This blog is possibly the most I have shared of aspects of my life in one piece, but no one knows you when you show up in their mentions. They have no way of telling if you are the kind of GC who, bluntly, isn’t actually gender critical but simply a woman who got called a TERF because she said the wrong thing to someone, or someone who is only not screaming “you’re a man” because she doesn’t want her account suspended.

Gender critical feminism distorts how you speak and interact with others. For those who proclaim free speech, they are remarkably good at making you police yourself, or policing how you speak. I have lost count how many times I have been told I shouldn’t say ‘trans woman’ but ‘TIM’. I do not like the word; you are using it to cause pain to others, it is as horrible a term as ‘TIF’. I have been told how offensive it is that I refer to people as s/he as they present to me. Aren’t you the same people who claim words can’t hurt you? Why is it so offensive to you that I call someone she? I am not demanding that you do. Words do carry power, which is why some of you will be thinking how you can rebut everything I say rather than accepting it as simply a blog of my experiences. It will be why some of you will be thinking how you can anonymously leave abusive comments, or call me a liar; because words do carry power. Words can, after all, hurt. Throughout much of my time in the GC, it becomes very evident that you must conform. You must play nicely. Quite early on I noticed the word ‘womanface’ being thrown around, which made me wince; when I spoke to friends, they brought this up. Forgive me if I am speaking out of turn here, but it feels as though the stereotype of the ‘angry black woman’ carries through when black women challenge certain language used. I have lost count of the amount of times I have seen black women who do not play nicely piled on by white GC feminists and speaking as a white woman who has seen this play out a million times over in real life, you know the reply to her comes with an eye roll and the opinion that she is ‘just a little sassy’. I do not think you understand that many of these women are also lesbians and have to deal with the racism that runs through a lot of the LGBT community. If you are a white woman who has had black partners you will see yourself how some people simply treat you both differently; you introduce your partner as [Rebecca] and you see the quick blink when in walks your black girlfriend. You pick up on things you likely wouldn’t have otherwise because, well, you’re white. Even you notice the ways the world treats her differently. You can understand why black women get frustrated and angry having their own womanhood used as a comparison, in a debate that often is little more than point scoring; if you are automatically dehumanised because of the colour of your skin to some people on a daily basis, using your existence as a woman is just another extension of this dehumanisation. There is no rebuttal. The rebuttal makes her the angry black woman stereotype. She simply cannot win. Time after time I would see black women try and express frustration to be shut down or dismissed. One friend of mine became upset over a character from League of Gentlemen which, to her as an African American, was blackface. I can understand why. She was fine to have a conversation about it — she didn’t know what the show was. Again, I don’t think you get that when people express discontent: it isn’t about hair, or make up, or fucking 90s sitcom characters. They aren’t often that, as you like to say, triggered. It is how you dismiss them out of hand entirely. They are a nuisance, something to be sent away. For you, it is as simple as the haircut, or makeup, or characters. But it goes way beyond that and says: nothing you fucking say matters. After enough of this, people simply give up trying to communicate with you. They become the angry black woman, or aggressive lesbian (or why not both?) because that is the easiest way to dismiss and dehumanise. Yet you want me to listen to you on your views when it suits you. You want me to hear you out. You want me to loan you my sisterhood. I absolutely refuse to.

I don’t know what your version of ‘biological reality’ is, to be quite honest. I am quite aware of someone’s biological sex; I am also quite aware of not needing to bring up things to people every five minutes. You see this as weakness. I see it as taking people on personal merit. You remind me quite a lot of individuals who say I’m not having ‘real sex’ because it cannot naturally result in children, who are overtly preoccupied with my bedroom. I find it quite saddening to speak to trans people who have been left completely broken by involvement with the GC; who simply just do not live their lives but instead mutter gencrit talking points to almost rein any kind of personal joy. ‘Narcissism’ is the favourite word of the GC. If you are proud of yourself in any way, you are a narcissist who is attention seeking. If you dislike attention that much then I cannot understand why you are on social media, which rewards you with attention of some kind. If you dislike attention so much, why are you so obsessed with large accounts potentially becoming TERFs? If you dislike attention so much why do you make a point of dogpiling accounts to make sure they know their place? It is almost like you want attention, which by your definition also makes you a narcissist. In fairness, some of the most narcissistic people I have ever met were from GC Twitter, so it is possible that there is a kernel of truth there. It is of no concern to me if I am blocked, for example. I can lose interest very quickly and am not very good at replying to people. Being on blocklists just means people don’t want to talk to you. Everything is in a state of perpetual exaggeration. Linehan claims to be ‘the most hated man on Twitter’ when in reality accounts like PrisonPlanet and Dankula attract more blocks. Say what you want about the individual politics of both those men, they are capable of talking about things that aren’t trans people from the moment they wake up. People just don’t want to hear about trans people and how they are the rebirth of Satan 24/7. Pragmatically, I hate to admit that hatred sells even better than sex; I do not think the left wish to understand or face up to how sick people are of a certain type of mentality to the point it drives away many people, and much like the GC waiting on pissed off lesbians, there is the anti-SJW movement waiting on pissed off left wingers. We should be saving the left from itself, but you are deluded if you think it is the LGBTs (or rather those damn transes) that are bringing the left to its knees. The left seems more preoccupied with social media popularity than pounding pavements and listening to those who cannot survive another round of this Government. Despite being a centrist, there is no reason for me to leave my natural sympathies with the left. You may not like this statement but hatred sells better than sex in this economy. If car companies really had their finger on the pulse they wouldn’t have attractive women in Herb Ritts type filmography, they would have some guy berating a blue haired kid wearing a rainbow background pronoun badge from his Ford. Hatred — and I specifically mean raw, undiluted hatred — of a poor, bullying mentality that sprung up on the left can and will be profitable in the end. Once again, where social boundaries are pushed, some will break through — and others will suffer heavier pushback. There is nothing to be achieved by my running off to the right anymore than there is going on some ‘anti SJW’ crusade which is simply cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It is far better to simply challenge what needs to be challenged.

The GC will continuously cite about how the influence of the religious right is overplayed. You can, and do, use language and imagery on a daily basis fed to you from the religious right. Your ‘biology’ and ‘chromosome’ arguments were being used in 2015 to try and block same sex marriage in the US. The biology isn’t bigotry argument was originally used to… attack gay people. The ‘Biological Reality’ green logo was fed through — even to gay people — as a very cloak and dagger overnight exercise. No-one was aware were it came from. If you dig around the internet, besides the fact ‘biological reality’ has been used historically to argue against same sex marriage, that logo comes from Kaeley Triller and organisations she is linked to. WOLF and other radical feminists think nothing of associating with organisations like the Focus on the Family, Family Policy Alliance and AFA. Here is an example of the type of person who is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. As for your LGB Alliance, it is nothing more than another gencrit organisation associated with Women Make Glasgow, who is known to associate with the Scottish Family Party — an offshoot party formed by a former UKIP member. The SFP holds openly homophobic opinions, including being pro conversion therapy. They also don’t think much of ‘feminist dogma’ and seemingly were upset that Holyrood would not legalise incest. The GC think nothing of forming associations with these people. I am not sure what you find feminist about being supported by Christian Concern or LifeSiteNews. Quite why you are wasting your time with any kind of political activism is a source of entertainment to these people when behind closed doors, people like this believe you should be sat pumping out babies for Jesus. It is quite normal to see women be completely spiteful and full of hatred toward gay men, who they view as misogynistic. The disclosure of pain, for some, is salivated over, coveted, it generates clicks, it is artificial and there for the gaze of voyeurism rather than actually helping the party affected. It is weaponised, but there is no actual offer of help given. If anything the ableism and mental health stigma that runs throughout the GC/RF is repugnant. It is perfectly normal for women who are disliked to be called ‘mental’, told they are ‘psychologically damaged’ and ‘need therapy’. At its core, the GC/RF deeply despises women who do not comply with them and if they do not actively assist in trying to purge these women from sight, they turn a blind eye to the behaviour. There is no greater win to the GC/RF than forcing someone to lock or deactivate their social media accounts; there is no thought given for the mental distress they may cause the other party (who is often another woman). The women that they hate will be monitored for any wrong think and bombarded with messages. If she blocks them, it is because she is ‘weak’. A woman must be accessible to them at all times. You cannot say no to them. They do not consider the mental health impact this may have on others, but you must consider the impact it has not listening to them or the impact you have on them by blocking them or telling them to fuck off.

Since leaving I have lost count of the amount of times I have seen lesbians being treated poorly by the GC, or simply flat out homophobia. It is almost as though the mask as slipped entirely for you. Philip Schofield came out and it was a feeding frenzy to declare how he had simply given into his sexual desires, and should have simply stayed in a marriage he may have been unhappy in. A non binary person writes a poem about a haircut, when in reality it was about the difficulty of moving through the world as a visibly masculine person who is hard to place. Something many lesbians could relate to. When the homophobic notes of this were pointed out, said women were told they were attention seeking, to grow up, they were pathetic. Even today, in MakeUpGate pt 3536378, I am told I should play nicely to the feelings of a political lesbian who thought nothing of using cancel culture herself against me. I care nothing for this. You are the movement who coined ‘fuck kind’. I simply held a mirror up to you and you didn’t like what you saw in it. Is it fuck kind or play nicely? A woman can never win. I choose not to fucking play.

I have never regretted slamming the door on gender critical feminism. It is a gateway to radicalisation; around the time I was leaving I called it a cult (they didn’t like that very much). It is a cult, and much like anyone who leaves a cult — you realise that the only way to escape it is to cut all ties entirely. There was no cordial ending. I had friends who left around the same time I did, who tried to remain more civil than I did. In the end, they ended up having to block people too. It is impossible to simply post a tweet without it being ran through the gencrit filter in their replies. Friends would post tweets only to get out of context anti-trans replies; I do not think they even realise they are doing it now as it has became second nature to them. This is what I mean by it being a gateway to radicalisation. I simply wish to talk about women; there is no fucking need for you to interject with your ‘biological women’ nonsense. You see this as weakness, because you genuinely and truly believe the world is in the grip of trans madness. It is not, and most people are simply living the lives they always lived. It is you who lives in the radicalised cult, with talk of TRAs and the Terven, where cis is used every single sentence and women no longer exist. It is you who cannot see the mention of lesbian without freaking out to ensure how it is defined whilst ignoring everything else we bring up. It is you who has blinkers on, and I just… feel sorry for you. It is quite possible for me to sit in a group chat with a bunch of trans friends talking about women and we all know what I am talking about but I am not being a dick about it. Trans women friends can banter with me and it is just friends mucking around, and somewhere in all of this I do not think any of this will make any sense to you because of the grip of radicalisation. You have drawn a line in the sand, whether or not you realise it — anyone who is of X characteristic is of Y belief, and this is simply how it is. That is radicalisation. You are as bad as the people who scream at me that I am a TERF for who I am attracted to. Both of you fuel your own fires, and the rest of us are thrown in the fire. I am just not playing the game. I simply exist and I wish no part of your silly war. I have no desire to play nicely with any of you. When I spoke to other people who were desperate to leave, they described high stress levels and for some of them, were often emotionally traumatised by a lot of the behaviour they had been on the receiving end of. If they spoke out on this, the GC would usually respond by sending massive accounts to dogpile them. The GC like silence, and you must treat them with respect if they show up in your mentions because to do otherwise is a form of ‘misogyny’. As I have said, I do not play nicely, will not be told to play nicely, and it makes no difference to me. Treating them as they treat others who do not play nicely — with disdain, dislike or mockery — is deplatforming or shutting down free speech. You are not entitled to my time, my work nor a conversation with me. You are entitled to no part of me.

I spoke quite often about boundaries. I am still of the opinion that those who cannot respect your boundaries in a sexual context should be treated as such — you are not a bigot if you are not interested in certain genitals, this is a nonsense argument and as I have said, call me a dyke or a TERF, I could care less, all roads lead to Rome where homophobia is concerned. It is a precious minority of people online who actually believe this and if you are willing to turn yourself into a social pariah who hangs around with pro abortionists and conversion therapists because of trolls, then more fool you. Given the proliferation of bot accounts, if I were truly cynical, I could easily set up a few accounts pretending to be some pansexual trans with an anime profile picture and scream homophobic nonsense on the internet. It clearly works. If you speak to many university students, there is a growing right wing contingency because they are sick of the extremity of the left — and if I were a betting type, I would wonder how much of it was actually real in the first place. This is from speaking to students in various different universities in various parts of the country; many of these students are LGBT. Many feel they have no home in the left. In my personal opinion many of them are more left leaning than they realise but Labour offers them no home for the issues they care about at present (this has nothing to do with fucking trans issues, they are sick of the infighting and more complex matters — not everything is about trans). I spoke to two trans friends in Manchester who asked me where all these supposed trans people are running around the streets, as in her words, “I can spot a tran a mile off, and I don’t see any.” I live in a major city and I don’t see them wandering around. This isn’t a ‘I can always tell’ line, it is simply curiosity that I don’t see this invasion you do. I have butch friends who are happily butch, but if you tell women their life is shit then I suppose they will believe this, and believe other lies. The gender critical movement lies: it tells you that there is no safe place on the internet to be a lesbian. This is a lie. I move in and out of trans communities openly as a lesbian and no one gives a shit. I know other lesbians who move in and out of trans communities where no one gives a shit. This is probably because we aren’t harping on “you’re all men” and are just acting like normal people, but no one gives a shit that we are lesbians. But most importantly, it feeds you the lie there are no lesbian communities anywhere except the ones they can provide. It needs you to believe that you must throw yourself on the Temple of Woke to have any social life. Do I strike you as someone particularly woke or willing to tell you what you want to hear? It feeds you the lie that there is nowhere safe. Dating apps — invaded. Media — invaded. It is all burned on the pyre of woke culture and you have no future, no hope. You must only exist in their echo chamber because — for lesbians, especially — you can only be a TERF or a TRA. You can just be a dyke… like everyone else.

The major issue with the chokehold of this is that you have two sides who have both drawn very distinct lines in the sand. You have women who genuinely believe the GC lie that they will be treated badly because they are lesbians, and there is this toxic world in which they simply cannot openly exist without being name called. This is often aided and abetted by the homophobic. Before you rush to say that you cannot be gay and homophobic, you simply only have to look at the type of culture the LGB Alliance have created in the name of ‘protecting gay rights’: it is wholly and entirely homophobic, and they are flanked by gay men and lesbians. You can absolutely be gay/bisexual and homophobic — it is time we faced up to this. Yes, there are likely gay/bisexual people who have helped throw you under the bus without consideration. Welcome to the LGBT community; now do you see my earlier point that my community is the people around me? I am no more responsible for the rest of them than they are me. I am homosexual, not homogenous. If you think we all think the same, we do not; there have been Log Cabin Republicans for years — gay people can and do things that to the rest of us make simply no sense and work against their own interests, but they are responsible for them. I wouldn’t care about the Alliance in ordinary circumstances because they’re simply another format of the LCR, but they sell this lie that you cannot just be gay. I am just gay. There are plenty of women out there who are just gay — and these progressive homophobes hate them for it. We are told we ‘objectify’ women, called misogynistic, called as good as men, and given the default of being told we are ‘aggressive’ if we tell them where to go. Again, the womanhood of a lesbian is easy to strip her of. It does not matter if it is a radical feminist or a progressive, the hatred is the same. You are not exposed to this in gender critical circles because there is no trans element with which to use as a scapegoat. This is simply the reality of existing as a lesbian; you will never escape these people, and they only use different buzzwords to continue to be homophobic to you.

On the other you have the radical feminists who will only feed you the ‘cotton ceiling’ digest to convince you that the world is a scary place because of these trans women, but it doesn’t matter what we do — we will still be treated badly. Gender critical feminists will feed you the narrative that trans women took over Reddits, but they will leave out the way some bisexual women and even straight women can and do demand access to lesbian only spaces (which makes sense, given their love of political lesbianism). They will tell you that it is overrun with ‘men pretending to be lesbians’; in reality, there are very few trans women who bother with aspects of lesbian twitter. I have had numerous conversations with countless trans women in DM (some of whom date women) who have no idea this goes on. They often tend to stick to trans twitter and are only aware of issues that break out there. I have spoken to genuinely bisexual women who use queer interchangeably, who have no idea of the context with which some lesbians criticise ‘queer’ — they simply think it is lesbians being biphobic and lash out. They have no idea that it is often a response to straight women demanding access to them. Most of you are actually saying the same thing as each other, you are just talking over each other at the same time and not listening to the points the other one is making. Or you move in different circles and the words mean different things to you depending on your own life experiences. This is the nature of what happens when you move often in different worlds, and the medium of platforms like Twitter often make for poor nuance. The GC is feeding you a lie; there is very real homophobia within the left, but it is fuelled by both camps just as aggressively. And by both camps, I absolutely mean the gender critical/radical feminist and progressives — not trans people simply living their lives. Point the finger where it deserves to be pointed. The nature of homophobia works twofold; shame, and expectation of poor treatment. I am not ashamed of who I am nor am I going to be responsible for your poor treatment of me.

From a young age, all young women have their sexuality held under an intense spotlight. From the moment I was doing cartwheels in the garden, you are aware of this. Gender critical feminists will read this and scream “this is biological sex”. Many trans women will actually agree with you that they could understand how young girls are treated poorly — you simply don’t hear them speaking. But this is not about them. You are told, intensely young, there is nothing worse than being a slut. You could probably eat babies, but do not be a slut. If you find out you fancy girls rather than boys — well, you know what it is like to have the horrible gaze on you from boys. Boys — and the more you develop, men — look at you like a piece of meat. Even when you are very visibly a child. You do not want to look at other girls like that. Plus, homophobia kicks in anyway — either internally or externally — you feel bad for objectifying other women and having sexual thoughts about them (which are… normal) or you maybe look a little too long at another girl and then you will be told you are lezzing on another girl. There is no happy medium. This is lesbophobia starting to come into play; the mix of misogyny and homophobia. It is also the first time you will likely start to experience the theme of being the predatory lesbian — you will probably get themes of it at various shades of your life. You are somehow exotic to straight women in a weird way; they want the excitement of a lesbian validating their attractiveness only to be disgusted by them. It is the straight women in gay bars who are disgusted seeing you with another woman. At various stages in your life, you will be reminded, subtly, that expressions of who you are is predatory, because ultimately in this world women are meant to be pursued by men. If you are a woman who is only attracted to women, the entire situation changes. Lesbians, as a result, when straight (and even bi) women seek to insult, generally go for these same old tropes of predatory: aggressive, masculine, manly… It is the subtle reminder that you are basically a man, but you are the worst kind of a man: you remind them of male sexuality. Your womanhood will be the first to be stripped of you. But the predatory lesbian stereotype sticks, to the point you can really do a number on a woman. Why would you try just talking to women? Why would women be interested in you? There is something dirty and shameful about who you are. It is endemic, it bleaches into everything. It drives much of the homophobia around who you are. I simply refuse to engage. I refuse to be apologetic.

I have hypothesised to women who have expressed concerns over Lupron being administered to children that I never saw one of these women caring about women who have been treated with Lupron for endometriosis for almost a decade before this. These same women have accused me of strawmanning. It is not a strawman. You simply do not care about women; you care about punching down at trans people. I have asked why you supposedly care about victims of domestic abuse when you have used womens’ histories of domestic abuse as a weapon against them and you look away. I have asked where you respect female boundaries where I know several women — including myself — where you quite clearly do not. Even this morning I had someone in my mentions on an account where I had blocked her on another account of hers telling me how I had to play nicely. Can you explain to me where you precisely respect female boundaries?

A gay nightclub in my city was hit with homophobic graffiti and when people pointed out that LGBT hate rhetoric — such as the type expressed within the gender critical movement — fuels this, as a movement you were more concerned with demanding what this had to do with feminists. Firstly, you aren’t feminists — secondly, if you routinely compare us to paedophiles and degenerates, you are being obtuse if you do not think it has an impact on a wider level. I watched for a condemnation of it from the LGB Alliance and never saw one come. I did see more of the usual anti-trans nonsense. There is no personal accountability; no self reflection; no consideration of how actions impact on others. Today they are denouncing the ‘crocodile and newt’ Morning Star image saying that it is ‘unacceptable’. It is unacceptable; it is dehumanising and disgusting. You are the same people who called trans people ‘foxes in henhouses’. What did you expect? These are the consequences of the world that you have created. You do not exist in a vacuum. Everything you do has an impact on others. The world must simply listen. Even when we do not wish to listen and want you to leave us alone, we must listen to you. We must tolerate you wanting a discussion.

Tell a young woman that she cannot achieve anything with her life and she will either give in to the world or resist. The world is often stacked against young women. Perhaps I could stand on that street now from so many years ago and see a much younger, teenage girl and recognise her as me; perhaps, after all of this, the only thing that came out of it is that I could show her the kindness that I spent so many years avoiding. If I put my hand on the handle of that bedroom door, walked inside and came face to face with her — likely sat on the bed, headphones on, book in hand, glaring up at me for interrupting her song before getting an eye roll and a surly “who are you?”, perhaps I would have more compassion. Once I might have rolled my eyes and replied “I’m you, dipshit”. Maybe now I would be able to look at her and at least see a hope in her that man, oh man, life sure as shit punches out of you. Maybe I would have been able to have a patience I never had. You aren’t fat. You aren’t ugly. You almost certainly are tougher than you ever give yourself credit for. They tell you toughness is as bad a trait in girls, too. Everything you hate about being a girl maybe is what makes you perfect in your own way. Those moments you shut out, of staring in a mirror at your stomach wishing your hips were more narrow or your backside didn’t stick out so much — well, maybe you might look at me now in skinny jeans and wonder how I’d leave the house like that. Pulling a sports bra on and rolling your eyes at the mention of a ‘nice’ bra? I know that sat in that room with me now, your eyes would flit momentarily to my shirt and wonder how I could ever feel comfortable in that. The way men look at you and make you feel is disgusting. And perhaps I don’t understand entirely how you feel anymore, because I made a point of forgetting you. It doesn’t matter what you do anyway, because it will never be enough; it was never enough for a mother and it will never be enough for the world. You simply just do nor have to play the game.

What is a woman? A ridiculous question at this point when womanhood is snatched from women for failure to comply. All women are told to play nicely. Gender critical feminism and radical feminism is no different, only you can blame patriarchy for your poor behaviour rather than take personal responsibility. You will still have your womanhood snatched by these women too. I repeatedly see women express frustration with the gender critical movement only to be encouraged to stay, because there are ‘good people’ and their ‘voices matter’. You can simply be yourself — there is no GC and TRA in the real world. You do not have to play nicely with anyone. There is no freedom within gender critical or radical feminism — it is just as much of a homophobic playground. You cannot outrun the homophobia of this world, nor can you hide from it. There will be people who despise you as a lesbian and that is their problem. Why would you lock yourself away with people who cannot even give you the basic level of respect to not see you as an attention seeker? Do you not believe you deserve the chance to go out and find a world outside of people like this? My pinned tweet quite literally has my saying how much I love performing cunnilingus in it — and no one cares. No one. Except homophobes. Homophobes get really pissed off at it. No one else — including trans people — care. Some of them even laugh at it, because… why wouldn’t you? If I ever showed my face, there is my pinned tweet talking about how much I like going down on women. I mean, you have to see the funny side to it. You do not have to ‘pick a side’; you can just be a dyke. They feed you the pieces of homophobia that suits a narrative they push but they have no interest in how it manifests otherwise, nor do they care for the part they play in creating it elsewhere. There is much made of this ‘Walk Away’ from the left. You can simply walk away from all of this — not to play in another form of identity politics by declaring yourself right wing. Not to declare yourself anti-SJW. You can simply be your-fucking-self.

You can just be a dyke.