Thread by @DrJessTaylor

It’s appalling to watch @jk_rowling say something about female biology that several years ago would have been uncontroversial, a given, an obvious - and is now not only seen as hate-filled but has led to her receiving thousands of abusive, threatening & misogynistic tweets.

Those tweets were in actual fact, calm, basic and uncontroversial.

We should be able to discuss the reality of biological sex, female body issues, female experiences and so on without that being taken as an attack on gender and gender identity.

Sex and gender are different.

I refuse to align myself with anyone who is transphobic - in the sense that they hate, abuse, mock, exclude, discriminate against or harm trans and non-binary people. There are plenty of so called ‘gender critical’ people I reject and openly challenge

However, I do not see how stating clear and honest facts about biological sex and the experiences of females in the world could be reframed as hatred of trans people.

If we were using bio sex to mock, harm or abuse trans people then yes - but to simply talk about it? No.

We have to be able to talk about biological sex AND gender.
They both exist (for some people, obv others reject gender completely such as second wave abolitionists).

It is a logical fallacy to pretend that social constructed gender roles supersede, change or cancel our sex

A woman talking about biological sex is NOT a target for rape threats, death threats, unrelenting abuse, messages to tell her to go kill herself etc.

Like anyone else - if we support the rights of people to critique gender and sex, we have to support that BOTH WAYS.

There is nothing woke or progressive about tweeting a woman who holds a different opinion to you and calling her a bitch, telling her to kill herself, sending her memes of guns being pointed at her, rape threats & so on.

You can’t use misogyny and violence to back up ‘feminism’

The amount of people I watched yesterday with ‘feminist’ in their bio, write disgusting messages to a woman who just has a different opinion on sex and gender... mind blowing.

How have you twisted your feminism so badly as to attack a woman with misogyny for having an opinion?

Whether people like it or not, gender is a theory.

Actually, gender is a set of theories on which we have never reached scientific consensus.

We have reached scientific consensus on sex. But we have been debating the theorising gender, gender roles and stereotypes for decades

We are currently in a very intense period of debate, shift and opinion around gender, gender identity, gender theory and roles.

We need to talk through it all, and we need to discuss the opposing views on gender.

At the moment, there’s very little discussion at all.

I do talk to trans people and NB people privately and discuss and debate. So do lots of RadFems I know. We tend to have better and more productive conversations in private

Twitter is performative as fuck. Everyone knows it.

We can’t have these seismic convos on here.

But look what happens when women try to talk about their opposing views: instead of them being discussed and debated, women are routinely abused, silenced, blocked, suspended, sacked, threatened etc.

How has a theory which is still heavily contested, become this powerful?

Sex is immutable. Gender roles are deeply embedded into the fabric of society. Radical feminism has long theorised that gender roles harm us all. They oppress women and girls globally. They harm men and boys too. Therefore, radfems have no interest in upholding gender norms.

Lots of people ask me my opinion on this and mine is clear:

I agree with second wave radfem theory, sociological theory and social psychological theory that gender roles are a set of constructs used to control us. The feminine and masculine gender role pushes us into boxes.

Therefore, the ideal world would be one where we completely deconstructed gender so that essentially everyone could live in a non binary way, present however they like, live however they like and there would be no need to claim they were ‘born in the wrong body’.

The complete theoretical and social deconstruction of gender roles and gender stereotypes would lead us to be able to say, and believe - that you are never born in the wrong body.

That there is nothing wrong with your body, but there is something seriously wrong with our society

Humans have created a binary gendered society in which if a man or boy acts or looks or feels ‘feminine’ (which is a set of stereotypes that most women don’t even conform to) then he must be a girl or woman.

This only upholds the binary further.

These discussions and debates are vital.

Anyone responding with hatred, slurs, insults, abuse, name calling and threats are simply not in a place where they can engage with any of this evidence, theory or philosophy.

OR they are using this debate as a disguise for misogyny.

Let’s not pretend that we don’t see the men parading as feminists and woke bros who come on here and tweet abuse and threats at women whilst they claim to uphold trans rights.

They couldn’t give a fuck about trans rights in reality, but they sure do like threatening women.

I saw so many accounts of people (whom I respected & listened to, even though we disagreed) using disgusting language & misogynistic terms towards J K Rowling yesterday and frankly was a bit disturbed how quickly the misogyny came out when a woman said something you didn’t like

Here Endeth the fucking TED talk.

I hope Jo is alright, but I suspect like any other woman on the internet, she’s now dealing with tens of thousands of threats, abuse and disgusting, violent messages for her opinion.