Thread by @hatpinwoman

I’ve just finished reading a new memoir by Katy Tur, called Rough Draft.

It talks a lot about Zoey Tur, who is her father.

You likely remember this clip of Zoey telling Ben Shapiro if he doesn’t “cut it out” he’ll go home in an ambulance.

I want to tell you about the book🧵

The most striking thing is how much it reminds the reader of Susan Faludi’s (also excellent) book “In the Dark Room”.

Both are written by compassionate and successful women.

Both feature violent, abusive and misogynist fathers who go on to “identify as women”.

We are first introduced to Zoey as Bob Tur, a maverick journalist at the top of his game and married to Marika, a woman so intrepid she hangs out of a helicopter to get good footage for their work. They’re newly rich and up and coming

But his violence is already well-established

It spills out of the house and into their work life where, even up in the air, Bob lashes out at his wife,

“I don’t know how to communicate with you except through violence” he tells her.

Katy explains how this was happening round the clock for her mother. They’d be thrown out of restaurants because of his berating of her. If she made a mistake, while in the helicopter, he would fly in downward spirals to make her “scared&nauseous”

The abuse was an open secret

He was also violent to the children, putting both Katy &her brother over his knee, to hit them with his belt if he got angry

He once punched Katy full in the mouth

The family hung paintings over the holes he’d punched in the walls,with his rage

He was also unkind to the dog

The violence started early on in Marika& Bob’s relationship; while covering a story in a dangerous situation she got distressed and he simply hit her. He seemed to “run on animosity”,had problems with everyone&was called by one man “the most dangerous pilot in the air&on the air”

He had exhibitionist tendencies. Posting his nipple online post transition and setting up a tripod at a gas station to take photographs of himself naked pre transition.

Even turning those photos into prints.

The first time he felt what it “must be like to be a woman” was during sex with a man.

Apparently being kissed on the back of the neck is a womanly experience. News to those of us who have loved someone of either sex,everywhere.

Eventually Katy’s parents broke up. Katy writes

At one point Katy lived with her father after the divorce. He would turn sullen if she had plans for the weekend or wouldn’t get involved in his money-making ideas. Then he would cry, say life wasn’t worth living and tell her he wanted to kill himself.

When Bob said he was going to transition to Zoey, Katy was supportive,doing her best to switch pronouns quickly.

Zoey told her he was a worse driver as the hormones were “shrinking my brain down to the size of a woman’s”

Similarly,he said it was hurting his talents as a pilot

He insisted he had changed. He was calm now. And he clearly expected to bury the Bob of the past and all he had done. Katy, of course, needed to talk about it.

When she, very lovingly, tried to insist on discussing it he insulted and denigrated her and then stormed out.

Later, post-op, Zoey sent a smiling photo to Katy with the caption “I’m a bouncing baby girl”.

One day, out of the blue, he also sent her the trans suicide statistics but insisted he was fine when she wrote back, immediately, understandably distressed.

At some point Zoey gave a magazine interview saying Katy’s response to his transition had made him feel like a nonperson.

This would later be followed by other, also clearly untrue statements, like this one

Yet it’s clear Katy was incredibly supportive. She also holds the opinions on trans rights much of the left thinks are acceptable. Including that boys should be on girls sports teams.

She sees her father’s behaviour as consistent to him&as saying nothing about trans issues.

Her understanding is her own&it differs very much from mine

Not because all men who transition are like Tur’s father but because enough have proved to be. The thing about Faludi’s story, and Tur’s, is they aren’t isolated incidents although I imagine they are experienced as such

After years in this fight you don’t just sometimes encounter all these behaviours,or similar concerning signs. You learn of them over and over.

The story repeats, with minor variations, and keeps impacting woman after woman.

It is a clear, persistent pattern

We see these forms of abuse repeating.

No matter how much empathy one has for individuals who identify as trans the pressure for women to take on a further risk of male violence by welcoming men into women’s spaces has to stop

The other day I was going to tweet:

Think of the worst man you know
The most sexist or harmful.
If he said he was a women
Would you really believe it?
Would you want to share vulnerable spaces?
A lot of the men now claiming to be women happen to be the worst man another woman knows.

The "terfs" think she matters

And that is true.

We have seen males who are rapists, child rapists, baby rapists, abusive husbands, white supremacists, vicious homophobes, murderers, serial killers and more all identifying into the category of woman under self ID and even sometimes before it.

But it is more complicated than I allowed for because sometimes women love the worst man they know.
They empathise with him.
They worry for him.
They would say yes to him in order to stay safe, or to make him happy.
Which is often one and the same thing anyway.

They may also genuinely be ok with sharing vulnerable spaces with him.

None of us can make that call for other women though.

We should not consent to an increased risk of male violence on behalf of the rest.

This was a well written book by a likeable woman

I hope it does well