Thread by @HighwaterEllen

A thread in response to Jordan Gray's piece in @Independent for #IWD2023. Let's just unpick some of Jordan's philosophical musings on what a woman is
1/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

'A woman doesn't define herself by what she is not.'
Hard agree. It's why many women left the Green party after being referred to as 'non-men.' 2/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

'A woman endures. A woman takes a licking & keeps on kicking.'
Violent imagery aside, this is just trite. Some women are broken by male violence & oppression, some don't survive at all. They're still women. 3/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

'In 2023 a woman is angry & has the power to channel that anger with incredible effect. A good woman looks before she aims.'
Assuming this isn't a reference to Jordan aiming at the porcelain, he's right, women are bloody angry. 4/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

We're angry because men are colonising our language, our spaces & our rights. However, not all women have power or can channel their anger e.g. the sportswomen who lose out to mediocre males, not just their medals but their college places, affecting their whole careers. 5/19

We're angry that lesbians have to meet in secret because govts have ruled that women only gatherings are illegal, angry because girls are forced to share toilets & showers at school & angry because there is not one single remaining space we're allowed to call our own 6/19
#IWD23

We're angry because we know that women in Afghanistan, Iran & elsewhere would love to identify out of their oppression & because we know the awful truth that women's anger can never be a match for taliban overlords armed with guns 7/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

So yes we're angry. We're fucking furious that men have appropriated womanhood & reduced it to some kind of pornified clownface in heels & glitter. And we're even angrier that national newspapers & global corporations applaud them for it. 8/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

'A woman is strong. Infinitely more so than a man.' Again, trite nonsense, you may as well tell us to Live, Laugh, Love. Women are physically weaker than men but win hands down at growing & birthing babies. It's why we have separate sports categories. 9/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

Psychologically some women are stronger than men, others are broken by male violence or by living in a society that gaslights them by asking them to refer to their rapist as she/her in court or by saying men make better women because they like anal. We didn't laugh, Jordan. 10/19

'Every woman has the electromagnetic quantum power of Captain Marvel coursing through her being.'
Really? A woman with dementia in a care home, a woman locked up on a psych ward with abusive men, girls subject to CSE, homeless women, trafficked women? 11/19
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#IWD23

Do these women have Captain Marvel coursing through their veins, Jordan? Also interesting you chose a male superhero, almost like it's your default setting 12/19
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#IWD23

'A woman thrives independent of the criticism she faces.'
Well some do (like J K Rowling) & some don't. Many lose their livelihoods for speaking up for child safeguarding or women's entitlement to single sex spaces... 13/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

...and many women are silenced by economic fear or legal threats. Some women are destroyed by the criticism, their reputations shredded. Some manage to come back from that but we don't hear much about the ones who don't. 14/19
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#IWD23

'A woman's rights can never be taken away.'
I'm sure those words will be such a massive comfort to the women of Afghanistan & those US women who can no longer access safe abortion/contraception. 15/19
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#IWD23

'A woman has the very powerful choice to reflect the very best or the very worst of the world.'
Not all women have choices, Jordan, but your choice to commit indecent exposure on live TV whilst singing misogynist lyrics definitely doesn't reflect the very best of the world. 16/19

What it does reflect is your male entitlement and lack of respect for women. You don't know how it feels to be a woman, Jordan, but you get there in the end when you say...
17/19
#IWD2023
#IWD23

'Or it might just mean 'an adult human female with a vagina.' Yes, Jordan, that's exactly what woman means. Strong, weak, good, bad, clever, stupid, right, left, centre, all ages, all colours, all sizes, all abilities. All women & girls, all human females, none with a penis 18/19

All of them adult human females who deserve far better than some dick waving narcissist trying to tell them how to be a woman on the one day of the year we were supposed to have to ourselves.
End
#IWD2023
#IWD23