Thread by @epistemophagy

So, there's a thing called virtual offices. Virtual offices aren't real offices; they're addresses that the property owner allows to be used as registered addresses for companies. They will often also have a mail forwarding ("virtual business address") service

These businesses do particularly well in the United Kingdom, partly because the Register of Companies, which is their version of the ABR, shows the full registered address, and an address in the City of London looks much more schmick than Bumfuck, Shropshire

These services are often used by little companies that want to look bigger and more prestigious than they are. More sinisterly, though, they're used by subentities of shadowy bigger entities who want to obfuscate their connections to each other and the mothership

A great example of this is the UK regime anti-trans astroturf group LGB Alliance. LGBA had its registered address at 124 City Road, London, a virtual office owned by Your Virtual Office London, to hide the fact that it was actually at well-known fascist hive 55 Tufton Street

Anyway it's absurd how many British TERF groups are registered at virtual offices

For Women Scotland is registered at 5 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, a virtual office

Fair Play For Women is registered at 12 Constance Street, London

The Lesbian Project is registered at 5th Floor, 167–169 Great Portland Street, London

Our Duty is registered at 27 Old Gloucester Street, London

Sex Matters is registered at Suite 23, 5th Floor, 63/66 Hatton Garden, London

I'll give you one guess what all of these addresses have in common, and the first half a guess doesn't count

I'd believe it was a coincidence if it happened once. Five times? Way past enemy action

Let's face it: these organisations are not grassroots. They're identical and completely intangible. Whoever's spinning out these clones doesn't want you to know that's what they're doing, because it would prevent them from doing what they want to do, which is lie to you

You can also do this with United States-based organisations to an extent. Company registration is state-based, but many US anti-trans orgs are 501(c)(3)s, which is administered by the IRS. According to its IRS Letter 947, SEGM is in this picture

I do not unfortunately know how to do this in Australia

Ok so LGB Alliance Australia is at 81-83 Campbell Street, Surry Hills, New South Wales, which is confirmed by another tenant there to be a virtual office

Interested to know the registered address of Gender Awareness Australia Ltd (t/a Binary Australia) but have $1

It's very odd because if I wanted to go to like, QUAC (Queensland's version of ACON) I could go there. It has a specific permanent physical address in Teneriffe. But if I wanted to go to any given TERF org registered under the Corporations Act 2001 ... there's no "there" there

The National Association of Practising Psychiatrists is an interesting one because its phone number is literally the phone number of its president and its office address is literally the address of his rooms on the Gold Coast. I feel that this is somewhat irregular!

The address of seemingly Catholic-linked anti-trans and anti-abortion org Women's Forum Australia is Level 1, 486 Lower Heidelberg Road, Heidelberg, Victoria, and I bet you'll never guess what's there

Sort of tangential to this but it's interesting to see how many TERF orgs claiming to be operating in Australia have a common gTLD but do not have the AU ccTLD. It's interesting because domains not in the AU ccTLD are free from auDA's transparency requirements

Like Binary Australia and LGB Alliance Australia are in the AU ccTLD, so I can look them up and see that the domains are in fact owned by Gender Awareness Australia Ltd and LGB Alliance Australia Inc respectively, but LGB Tasmania and WFA are both .org rather than .org.au

LGB Tasmania and WFA clearly do have at least one member each in Australia (Jess Hoyle and Rachael Wong), but other than that it reads a little bit ... "the webmaster is an overseas entity, in Rome maybe, who wanted to astroturf but couldn't be bothered doing it properly"