Thread by @AidanCTweets

Helen has listened to trans people, for years. She doesn't "believe" that people are born trans anymore than people who listen to gay people "believe" they are born gay.

She *knows* it.

It's an inevitable conclusion from listening to the facts.

https://twitter.com/CarilynJohnson/status/1987888442705907911

And the thing is, people like Carilyn actually do know this. That's why, for example, when Graham Norton merely said "l think we should listen to trans people", the "gender critical" movement immediately set out of bully him off social media. They need to squash that message.

It's why they lose their damn minds when a trans person so much as shows up on a TV quiz show, because they know that people will develop empathy, and therefore there is more chance they will listen to trans people.

I often hear a story from "gender critical" activists that goes like this. "I spent years researching this subject." So I always ask them the same question: "which trans biographies did you read?"

Because I know the answer is ZERO.

What they generally mean by "research" is spending time on social media listening to people who hate trans people. Believing all the crap you read about "gender critical" people being "women's rights activists" (laughable, on the facts.)

Even JK Rowling, go back and actually read her 2020 essay, and what she details in one paragraph is how she became so enamoured with the social media account of Magdalen Berns - a transphobic Youtuber - that she followed her AND contacted her privately.

I guarantee you she didn't crack a single trans biography (she might claim otherwise, but she also claimed she would march with trans people if they were discriminated against, while she discriminates against trans people, so her word means nothing.)

Helen, on the other hand, has spent years actually knowing and listening to trans people. She isn't "lying", she's merely reporting on an inevitable conclusion. Ignorant people will disagree, obviously.

I would recommend starting with Nicole Maines' story, written by Amy Ellis Nutt. If you're not a reader, there are documentaries about trans people's lives you can watch. Once you've listened to 5 trans people tell their stories I guarantee you'll notice a pattern...

...that they are reporting an innate experience. That they just knew. That's how, for example, Nicole was able to tell her parents she was trans at 3 years old and is still trans today at 28 years old. Because of course she is.

Listen to 5 gay people and it's obvious that people are born gay. That the homophobes' explanations for how people "become gay" (grooming, mental illness etc) are obvious hateful horseshit. The same is true of listening to trans people.

If you spend years, instead, on social media, listening to people who hate trans or gay people, you are going to end up with a biased view, the sort of view that leads you to calling people who listen to trans people "liars."

What do you think happened to Graham Linehan? He spent years using Twitter to bully celebrities who criticised his sitcoms. (He admits this in multiple podcasts.) He was criticised by trans people for an episode of transphobic TV...

...and he initially seemed to accept the criticism, but, clearly, privately, he began go listen to transphobes who would have told him that there was nothing transphobic about what he'd written, and that actually all the trans people criticising him were evil incarnate.

And for an egotist like him, to hear that his TV show was actually
great, and anyone who criticised him was evil, would have led him down a rabbit hole where he would eventually use his social media to bully trans people. (His is a personal vendetta to be "proved right.")

And because he's a particularly nasty man, he would eventually find himself in a court room, accusing a trans girl whose property he had damaged, and whom he had harassed on social media of lying about her age, and spitting about how much he hates everyone who disagrees with him.

If you are a "gender critical" activist, or you are circling that drain, get off social media and listen to trans people talk about their lives, and note how the people on social media who call trans women "men" don't want you to do that. They don't want you to develop empathy.

That's why they're currently losing their damn minds because the transphobic BBC is not transphobic enough for them. They want trans people off the TV (not they are even on TV much) and misgendered while they are not represented.

That's what hate movement's do.

It's why they want books about trans lives removed from libraries.

Information about trans people, written by trans people, telling their personal stories, is anathema to them. It's why they spit "liars" at people who show empathy for trans people, and their stories. /End