Thread by @AidanCTweets

Coming in to 2022, gender criticism is riven with hypocrisy, because gender critical leaders are stuck in the impossible conundrum of wanting to appear extreme enough to appease their increasingly extreme followers, while also being moderate enough for the general public. 1/

They've spent years cultivating the idea that most trans women transition for sexual reasons, and associating trans people with pedophilia. So, now, when they say they "have nothing against trans people," some followers ask: "you have nothing against perverts and pedophiles?" 2/

There have been a few gender critical trans people supporting this movement. Debbie Hayton, Fionne Orlander, Kristina Harrison, and latterly a trans guy called Aaron Terrell. A growing amount of GC extremists are asking: "Why are we associating with pedophile apologists?" 3/

If you spend years implying that trans people and advocates are perverts and pedophiles, you simply cannot be shocked and appalled when a growing number of your followers don't distinguish at all between your very few trans allies and trans people in general. 4/

Now, there is a growing push to get these trans people out of the gender critical movement, which was *always* going to happen. You cannot create a transphobic hate cult and then expect to control it so that it won't attack your "trans friends who agree with me." 5/

And gender critical leaders are in the impossible position of trying to stay allies with prominent people who want to push gender critical trans people out of their movement while also staying allies with gender critical trans people, and it's leading to increasing infighting. 6/

As ever, Graham Linehan is a useful tool to demonstrate this. Only last month he gave a speech to a very small number of people outside Irish government buildings where he demanded anger from gender critical women, and to make people afraid of that anger. 7/

However, some women have turned their anger on him for supporting GC trans people, so his final 2021 blog post is a plea to elevate "quieter voices," like Debbie Hayton, where GL calls for solidarity, while hypocritically decrying his critics as worse than trans activists. 8/

(This, by the way, comes at the end of a year when he called his general critical allies @docstockk "the Chamberlain of the gender wars" @helenlewis "a dishonest, unethical careerist hack" & he wrote "f*ck you" to @kittypurrzog all because they criticised him.) 9/

Other leaders are now experiencing similar backlashes, learning just how vicious their online mob can be, because, ironically, pumped up on GC rhetoric, the mob don't want to keep pretending to tolerate their very few trans allies, and the "leaders" who still support them. 10/

I don't think these disagreements can be resolved. There are fundamental differences of opinion, huge egos, narcissism, and a group of people who have grown incredibly used to abusing anyone who disagrees with them. (See previous tweet about GL criticising Stock et al.) 11/

I am hopeful that this is the start of the gender critical movement eating itself.

Clearly, if Graham Linehan is using his end-of-year blog post to call for solidarity and calm, GC leaders are worried that the movement will eat itself too.

Good. 12/12