Thread by @Mocha_Soul

"I even booked in an emergency session with my therapist to work out a coping strategy for my mental health."
Well, well, well!
I couldn't even have known I'd need one in my social groups or my political ones as I got into this debate, Ayesha. But here's the rub:

https://twitter.com/standardnews/status/1405155644118908929

I could not afford therapy, if I did know, before I got into this discussion. While you remained silent about the abuse that comes with the word TERF or the gaslighting and unbelievable levels of coercive pressure I encountered as I defended that women are female and that's a...

...difference of major importance between women and trans women because the very way males are automatically believed about their identities versus the way women are dismissed when they speak of their #maleviolence related problems reflects the misogyny that permeates society.

Tell you more. Some of us know what it is to ill afford **transport** for attending the meagre counselling we are offered when the violence, the subsequent stalking and the isolation that comes from living in hiding from our own bloody family overwhelms us in various forms of...

... extreme mental distress which we endure alone while raising children and while governments decide to majorly strip us of income and we end up with living on £65/week thus putting paid to getting there it even if the org helping us is willing to reach into its underfunded...

... coffers (yes, we feel guilty even for needing help which is why these memories don't go away) because first we'll need to present a travel receipt but for that we need the money upfront. I know because I've been right there.

Those of us who are routinely fetishised by men for racial reasons know they don't have the words "I fantasize about raping black women" tattooed in their foreheads so we'd be weary of entering such an open space as you describe or, if added to it without permission (as often...

happens on FB), being candid about certain of our experiences even if we found it easy to write or talk about them. It's much more likely that we'd silently leave the group if whatever physical problem we had meant lost our libido and our partner demonstrated his displeasure...

... in the ways we know men can do and we didn't feel able to disclose before *any* male at all.
Which reminds me that in this debate I have been called a bigot, a fascist, a white supremacist, as well as a transphobe for fully agreeing with...

... Chimamanda's words on the subject, arguing the subject from different aspects and supporting @Womans_Place_UK, @ForwomenScot, @fairplaywomen, @ALLIANCELGB and @SexMattersOrg among other major campaigns regarding...

... what I view as a major assault on women's right to consent that has been going on here for the last decade and which has manifested in the much denied attempts at removal of sex based exemptions from the EA womansplaceuk.org/references-to-…; attempts to replace sex with the gender...

identity you feel within your right to apply to women (despite our repeated objections to it) thepoliticalerasureofsex.org/wp-content/upl…); attacks on our freedom of thought and speech (Maya Forstater has my full support not just because I broadly agree with her on these questions but because...

... I think no employer should have a say on workers political views).
Other stuff I get in return, apart from the rape threats and other delights of online genderborg activism is the kind of gem I'm trigger warning you in advance (next tweet):

Alas, as #BLM rages on, it seems to me that you and @fawcettsociety have yet to even bother to confront the ways the new, (and yet so very old) misogyny does impact on the right to full humanity that racialised women strive still for; or the ways Sojourner's "Ain't I a woman"...

shout has been recast as a plead that mandatory femininity (the liberal and fully western kind, mind) rather than our personhood be recognised; or how our ancestral history is constantly rewritten to pretend that the patriarchy arrived in Africa with white people (which...

... has the potential to impact on the women fighting age old other patriarchal traditions); or the way #FGM campaigners are hounded to pretend the issue they deal with is sex neutral.

We too need need groups such as your menopause one on Facebook. And we need them for more than the fashion tips you prize so much more than the impact of it on women in the sexist world we inhabit (and, for heaven sake, it's as if there weren't enough male minds offering...

... women their titbits on what to wear. *sigh*). I'm very happy that you have the support network you can *choose* and *afford*.
I note that Fawcett has yet to pronounce itself about the mass closing of female only related problems of various kinds not to mention GC...

... groups throughout social media including some dealing with endometriosis as well as plenty of gender critical ones.
This is a major problem I have with you and Fawcett. It's choice for those who can afford support and have safety nets, and to hell with the rest of us.

The feelings of the women (or should I say, the women who don't have and can't afford the extra support) who carry #maleviolence related trauma in your proudly male inclusive menopause Facebook group are of no importance.

This is where those of us who know what it is to feel wary in the extreme of males understand that, at any point in time, other women may be going through the same and tell no one including their friends and family (or in my case, not even the women at the refuge - at the time...

...fearing sounding paranoid and the consequences that may come with it if I breathed a word - it would not be the first time a woman would have her child snatched from her while trying to protect that child as well as herself after all).

You cannot know that, not viscerally, because you are stuck in the mindset that we're hateful for wanting to keep the measure of separatism which women have created and know works for all women.
Furthermore, you speak of what works for you, as if women had plenty of choices:

That is the "I'm alright Jack" attitude that makes me think @Fawcett is among the cruellest jokes played on working class women in this country; that and your forgoing of women's liberation in the name of a brand of "equality" that leaves me and awful lot of women behind.