You know, if I hadn't joined this website 11 years ago, suffered death threats from Al-Qaeda & ISIS operatives, been slandered as a terrorist and received torrents of abuse from the far right and the far left, yesterday would have broken me. I would never have tweeted again.
There is an atmosphere on Twitter where it is quite literally an unbearable experience to exist as a trans person. The dehumanisation and targeted abuse is extreme. The toxicity is so intense that I spent nearly 16 (YES SIXTEEN) hours blocking the abuse I received.
Some of these abusive accounts go as far as accusing me of being a rapist, a pedophile, or someone that wants to commit genocide against Lesbians. The discourse is actually fully insane, deranged and disgusting. The people driving this campaign are totally radicalised.
It's no wonder the *silent majority* stay silent on trans issues, precisely because the extremity of the backlash for expressing moderate support for gender recognition is so terrifying that I can't believe that any normal person would ever want to use this website again.
I won't be shutting up, going away or being intimidated by slander, lies and outright hysteria accusing me of hating 50% of the world's population simply because I believe trans women are women. These people have zero ability to intimidate me.
But if anyone else experienced that level of pile on, especially some of the extreme racism and bigotry I was subjected to in the space of a short few hours, I could understand why they would never want to tweet, & therefore struggle to promote their own careers on this platform
There is a campaign to drive trans people out of public life. There is a campaign to silence any potential trans allies with extreme accusations of misogyny and homophobia. This campaign is not strictly online, it's endemic in the British press, trans people are vilified daily.
The aim of this campaign isn't one borne out of simple bigotry and ignorance though - it is entirely political. It is about attacking the very concept of trans rights, and they want the general public to be terrified of trans people in order to achieve this legislative change.
This is why I've had enough. I sat through enough morning news meetings where editors have discussed how to spin "the trans issue" today, just for clicks, just for outrage, just for entertainment. It's reprehensible and it's happening out in the open. This is what is taking place
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