Thread by @AidanCTweets

For years I saw people who think they had "reasonable" objections to gay and trans rights activism cite a singular "gay/trans person who agrees with me," and I cannot believe a clearly intelligent person like Margaret Atwood has fallen into the same mode of thinking.

https://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/1452090256698773508

The media have been reporting that everyone who has "reasonable objections" to trans rights is subjected to death threats. I would encourage people to search terms like "kill homophobes" and explain how the hundreds of tweets you find there represent gay rights activism?

So, ask yourself, how have tweets tweeting about subjecting transphobes of violence become representative of those who support trans rights? If the media wanted, they could just as easily do the same thing with gay rights, except we have largely moved on from "gay panic."

It is absolutely no surprise that people like Atwood that there is a large element of violent trans rights supporters trying to silence "reasonable people" as the media have been spinning that for years.

Consider that Atwood possibly thinks that Rowling wrote a reasonable essay and the response was generally threats of violence and death, when, actually, Rowling recommended a violent transphobe to millions of people, while the response was generally people pointing that out.

But how could @MargaretAtwood know that, when in the @guardian's coverage of this issue, not once in discussing the gender critical movement has @KathViner asked one of her GC writers to grapple with the GC movement's utter devotion to an abhorrent transphobe like Berns.

The media does people like Margaret - whose heart is probably in the right place - a disservice by misinforming them, and then they go on Twitter making what they think are reasonable points and get bemused by strong objection from people who deal with the GC movement every day.

I have been using this account for a few years to try to highlight what this anti-trans movement is actually like, because the mainstream media don't, and I am incredibly wary of tone-policing trans people. It is simply not my place as a cis man to police trans people's anger.

They absolutely have a right to be angry. I also watched during Repeal while Irish male columnists tried to tone-police women who were angry about what had been done by the 8th amendment. They also made the argument that by being "too angry" women risked losing the referendum.

What Atwood is doing here, to trans people, is no different. Women who were for Repeal knew people like that weren't really on their side, because people whose support is conditional on oppressed people not being *too* angry about being oppressed don't really support those ppl.

Think: "If too many of you shout too loud you'll lose my support."

And I can't believe this needs to be said again: If you can list all the "trans people who agree with me" in a single tweet - if you know them all by name - then you started from a prejudiced or misinformed position and sought out a member of a minority to vouch for it.