Thread by @WomensLibFront

Incidents like this have been going on in the US and Canada for years, and we got almost no coverage of it until we started going to the conservative press.

https://twitter.com/GlasgowMake/status/1313152554436620294

Because of harassment here in the US, there may not be quite 20 liberal women in the country who would show up to a public event and speak under her own name, in opposition to gender identity, and they live all over.

So the cost of putting on any speaking event almost always involves flying speakers in from out of town, often from hundreds of miles away, maybe 3,000 miles away, and putting them up overnight in rented accommodations. You also have to pay for private security in most cases.

Either that, or we have to go to the middle of nowhere, not near an airport, hours of driving away from a large population center, to have a less costly gathering in peace.

The geographic expanse of the United States, alone, has made it phenomenally expensive to put on gender critical events in person in the US, prior to the pandemic.

Why haven’t we done things like they did in the UK yet? That’s part of why. It isn’t that no one’s thought of it.

When we held our Cancelled Women panel in NYC this January, we had to fly speakers in from the UK and Canada.

For the Fighting The New Misogyny event in Seattle, in February, speakers had to be flown in from Canada, DC, and California. And when it involves such a long trip, speakers with families, or other inflexible obligations, will be under-represented.

There have been other events, and other groups putting on events, but the barriers to participation and affordability have meant that they were generally one-off productions, rather than sustained efforts.

If there’s a small bright spot in having everyone stay home, it’s the increased necessity of, and interest in, online events. While in-person events are still going to be valuable, and we’d love to have more when it’s possible again, going virtual has made many things easier.