Thread by @JeanRhys____

#TenTweets about SEX (not the fun kind!). 1. Sex is real. Until six years ago everyone knew knew this. Now they still know it, but pretend they don't. (see alternative #tentweets on gaslighting). The question is Why? 1/11

2. If you pretend that sex isn't real and people have 'essences' that transcend material reality (just like in the olden days!) a funny thing happens. You become cooler, more popular and have access to more professional opportunities. 2/11

3. If you're a woman, you will find you receive approval where before there was probably just the dusty loneliness of real life, with its real sexism. Yawn. 3/11

4. If you're a man, it's even better. You get to co-opt women's spaces and sports and opportunities, and insult them for being bigots too. People will like you even more for doing this! 4/11

5. If you're privileged, you get to feel like you're not. And a lot of privileged people like to feel that they're not, (although they don't want actually to give up any of privileges to get the authentic non-privileged feeling). Big win for this group. 5/11

6. So perhaps the question is why are so many of us not going along with the sex denial? I mean we could, right now, have celebrities, institutions, unions, political parties all on our side! Twitter could be fun again! We could have friends and in-jokes and clear enemies! 6/11

7. We could put our names to things, and not be afraid for our opportunities, or our jobs, or indeed our lives. We could be honest with our friends (or jointly dishonest which is almost as good). We could enjoy the Guardian again! And the Labour Party! 7/11

8. I mean who wants to take the path that Graham Linehan has taken? Who wants to keep stating self evident truths, to point out the terrible dangers to women's rights and children's safety that this terrible extremist denial is causing, and watch your life explode? 8/11

9. Or JK Rowling, whose courage in the face of death threats for stating these truths seems beyond us. If we are artists we quake because the only good art is truthful art, but oh the consequences. Lie and get the approval, or tell the truth, and lose everything? 9/11

Let's end with poet Anna Akhmatova. It means 11 tweets, but it's worth it. From 'Requiem': "Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. 10/11

11. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
“Can you describe this?
And I said "I can."
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face. 11/11
@blablafishcakes