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Daniel M. Lavery

16 Jan, 10 tweets, 3 min read

this will surprise no one who remembers Masha Gessen's fawning interview with Martina Navratilova at the height of her "I Hate Trans Women" world tour in 2019 without ever once mentioning her pivot to professional transmisogny... newyorker.com/news/our-colum…

@mckenziewark

but within a few days of Gessen's attempts to position themselves as an authority on trans youth, a polite intervention from @mckenziewark resulted in Gessen saying the quiet part loud:

https://twitter.com/mckenziewark/status/1349741374464208900

here's (most of) the thread for reference, Mckenzie was polite, friendly, reasonable, and that was all it took for Gessen to snap:

https://twitter.com/mckenziewark/status/1349741374464208900

The transmisogyny has been obvious for a while now, and the mission statement appears to be something like "Transition is cool and interesting if you're transmasculine and you take years to contemplate it. Trans women can fuck off lmao"

The lesson, for editors at least, is that if someone who has been conspicuously silent about transmisogyny and has a showy bromance with professional TERFs suddenly wants to write about trans kids? Don't publish it!

no one who was doing buddy comedy shit with Navratilova in 2019 and then suddenly had something important to say about trans youth in 2021 without a single intervening acknowledgement has done the work, or used a single brain cell. tremendously dumb, transmisogynist nonsense

and anyone who was part of signing off on Gessen's recent Deep Thoughts With Jack Handey has made a fool of themselves! "You're a credulous git, Mr Pepperdyne" etc

@mashagessen

And @mashagessen went to that well immediately because Mckenzie had the gall to suggest they could have interviewed more & different people. When trans women didn't respond with immediate gratitude and praise, there it was. Disgusting. Entitled. Cruel. Transphobic.

It was a bush league, piece of shit, disgusting move, and Masha should be absolutely mortified to have made such an ass of themselves in public. I'm embarrassed for them. At your age, too.

the idea that Mckenzie should...sit in sackcloth and ashes??? to atone for being a trans woman with a basic, polite criticism like “you could have interviewed people with direct experience in this subject” is so grossly entitled!!! go sit in a damn corner!

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