Thread by @hatpinwoman

I’m amazed at how apologetic I was when i joined this fight. How much I felt the need to soften the blow of every simple truth in order to protect the very people currently removing my rights and threatening me and my fellow women with outrageous harms for not accepting it.

That isn’t compassion,although it pretends to be&feels like it. When someone stamps on your foot hard,&you feel like you need to apologise for putting your foot in their path,that is part of their harm against you. It’s part of their power&it keeps you subordinated to that power

“Please let me justify why I don’t like someone stamping on my foot. Please understand Im not a hateful vindictive person for saying so.”

That’s where many of us start

Guilty for having human needs and monstered for expressing them.

Some male people are demanding women&girls give them what they want,when they want it,including total access to us,our spaces&language. It doesnt matter that theyre trans. That isn’t our problem with what’s happening. Our problem is they are male people dismantling women’s rights

It really is that simple. Some members of the male sex are taking women’s rights&telling us they will punch,rape&kill us if we say no.They’re socially shaming us for saying no. They’ve got names for us if we say no. They have help from other members of their sex&from women, too

All the “discourse” &concern trolling about how mean women are for objecting doesn’t change that. This is where we are

Transactivists have stacked the deck in such a way that the people committing harm are defended while those being harmed are made villains

Just today I was told my hatred is governing me because I think women&girls must have female only spaces. Valuing and respecting women doesn’t mean hating anyone else.

It’s some proper MRA rhetoric to pretend otherwise.Go sit with the other malcontents and let women speak

In fact, consider this: women *will* speak

You can shame and silence as many of us as you can get to and, yet, there will be more.

Women will speak.

We will tell you we are human beings, we have rights and what you are doing is selfish and wrong.

We will reach out to other women and we will comfort them and help them after you have denigrated and harmed them.

We do not accept a single person who disrespects women as any kind of moral authority over us because you are not.

You cannot mistreat half the human race and try to subjugate us to your every desire, and then seriously imagine you are on the side of right

Don’t be ridiculous

All I’m sorry for,now,is the long,painful process many women have to go through in order to say no to this without fear or shame.The amount of time it takes to understand we aren’t obligated to put our sex second,and,crucially that this is really what is being asked of us. Again

I feel sorry for women stuck in the hellish kind of spaces where their dissent is treated as heresy,their needs as cruelty&their “no” as a sign they must be punished

I’ve been there…

So I know that no one who tries to shame you back into silence on this is worth a bean

Women genuinely matter and a surprising amount of people have yet to grasp this.

They are very, very angry at those of us who do.

I’m no longer apologetic.

I’m appalled that women are this disregarded and the shame is on those who are trying to force women to accept that.