Anya Palmer Profile picture
Half victim, half accomplice, like everyone

May 15, 20 tweets

1. Hard agree. Time for some background on a man called Joe who claims to be a woman, and who changed his name to that of an American feminist to troll her. Londoners pay attention, Joe was in Edinburgh for a long time but seems to be living in London now.

2. Joe has a long and ugly history of calling for women he disagrees with to be made to feel afraid. The “incident” he refers to here is a group of women meeting at Speakers Corner in September 2017 to discuss their concerns about self ID.

3. One of them, Maria MacLachlan, was assaulted by a trans activist, Tara Wolf. Full details of that incident and the successful prosecution of Tara Wolf here: feministcurrent.com/2018/04/27/tra…

4. Joe’s reaction to the conviction was to call for more violence against women who disagree with him.

5. More the next day. By “not being able to live in peace” to the point that he considers punching women to be justified, Joe means women meeting in public to discuss issues affecting their rights. How dare they!

6. A year later, Joe openly calls for violence against women who disagree with him and who staged a protest at Pride.

7. "give them hell"

8. "Make them afraid"

9. In February 2019 Joe was back to protesting about women having the audacity to meet in public to discuss matters of concern to them, in this case the first public meeting of For Women Scotland. Joe was not happy with this quote in the Guardian

10. His concern was this made it look like he was in favour of debate. Actually what he wants is to scare women off speaking about this at all. “Make them afraid”.

11. “You have to shout them down and shut them up”

12. Here he is a few months later hoping someone throws a milkshake over Canadian feminist Megan Murphy when she is invited to speak at Scottish Parliament.

13. A month later when Julie Bindel is invited to speak at Edinburgh University, Joe goes there and takes matters into his own hands. "Lost my shit at Julie Bindel"

14. Julie's account of what he did is here
thetimes.com/uk/society/art…
archive.is/lUZas

15. Joe was subsequently charged with threatening and abusive behaviour. Then he was offered a fiscal fine, which means you pay a fine to avoid prosecution. He took it.

16. Here he is in July 2023 commenting on the arrest of a man who had told a 30,000 crowd at Trans Pride London "if you see a TERF - punch them in the fucking face". Joe hopes lots of them will do just that.

17. And here he is last month, the day after the judgment in For Women Scotland, arguing yet again that women “need to face material consequences for their bigotry” – in other words, he still thinks we can be scared into submission. How’s that working out for him?

18. And here he is yesterday, claiming he “randomly spotted” Helen Joyce in St Christopher’s Place yesterday, posting a photo he took of her, comparing her to Goebbels. “Make sure they never know peace”.

19. I don’t believe for a minute this was random. Everyone knew Helen was on Woman's Hour yesterday. And then she posted a photo revealing her location. So he went to find her. “Make them afraid”. Sorry Joe I don't think Helen scares that easily.

20. However, I do agree with Julie Bindel. This man is angry and he’s escalating. It’s high time law enforcement, counter terrorism even, took men like this seriously and started keeping tabs on them.

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling