1/ The outpouring of support has been staggering. It's incredible to see the cotton ceiling being covered in mainstream media. I am floored. 2/ I want to be clear that my personal story was not in the BBC article - instead, I spoke extensively with Caroline Lowbridge about my experiences in the community & with supporting women who had also faced sexual mistreatment & violence from TW.

The most efficient/effective way I know to measure if a friend/social group, organization, or subculture you are in functions as a cult is the BITE Model. Here it is:

freedomofmind.com/bite-model/ Cult-like structures are everywhere. You can be in a cult of 2 with an abusive partner. A friend group of 5 can function as a cult. Online spaces can be cult-like & this can leak over to your in-person behavior very easily.

1/ Quite honestly, I reject the pathologization/diagnosing of what I experienced as a lesbian little girl as “sex dysphoria”. The feelings I had were a totally understandable response to my upbringing & environment. I was brought up in a conservative southern Baptist home. 2/ Gender roles were very, very strict. There was physical, sexual & emotional abuse in the home. I understood from a very young age what I felt for other girls was a sin that would send me to hell. I fantasized endlessly about being a boy, bc that’s how a girl could love me.

I live in a town with a population 21,000 people. I am currently in the process of fighting to get a transwoman convicted of stalking & sexual crimes against a minor removed from the leadership of the only LGBTQ organization in town, a tiny thing with less than 30 members. The prevalence of trans male violence is not a coincidence. It is not just unhappy accidents. Trans ideology harbors & supports male predators like it was almost designed for it. Just got off the phone w/one of the victims’ mom. She doesn’t understand how this could happen.

1/ On this New Year’s Day I just wanna pay tribute to one of the OG detrans women who has been at this for more than 15 years: Redressalert. I’ve seen a lot of tweets about how 2019 was the year that detrans community got rolling, but that’s not true! 2/ Quick herstory lesson: three of the very first detrans bloggers were Redressalert, Crashchaoscats, & Twentythreetimes. Redress & Crash were who my gf and I reached when in gender crisis in 2015. Redress organized a detrans workshop at the last Michfest.

1/ In 2015, my gf & I openly spoke about our new gender critical beliefs on tumblr despite having a tumblr based business that was making the majority of our income. Why? Because we talked about it & it was the right thing to do. We took an immense hit to our finances, it sucked. 2/ People we’d been friends with for years said we deserved to “starve in the streets”. I was mocked for being open about my fear of having to return to the sex industry. The interpersonal fallout was intense, we struggled with money, it was painful. I would never take it back.

Horrifies me to see transgender activists gloating over a feminist’s terminal illness. To be deemed TERF is to be stripped of your humanity. Over & over I have watched this. Sadistic vitriol that is never applied to predators in the community doled out gleefully to wrongthinkers. When my gf & I published an essay openly owning & explaining our gender critical beliefs, friends we had for years told us we deserved to starve in the streets. Strangers posted about how incredible my suicide would be. I was surprised as I no longer am able to be.

1/ Trans ideology uses the double edged sword of female socialization’s compulsory sympathy & lifelong messages of subservience to males. When introduced to the idea that trans women are the most oppressed of all people and it was largely my fault as a cis lesbian, I bought it. 2/ I bought it with a 17 year old heart’s compassion’s & wide-open naiveté. The guilt I felt for not knowing, the horror I felt for these poor people’s plight, it was religious. I started looking on social media for more information. There were already guides of what to do.

I’m working on an essay on how I was groomed by an older transwoman as a lesbian teenager but it’s slow going. I want to explain so much - how lesbians have unique vulnerabilities to the techniques in the “politics of desire” but we aren’t alone in being in danger. When I say the politics of desire, that’s one of the official in-community labels used as an umbrella term to refer to the cotton ceiling and associated ideas. I prefer to call it a term I coined recently - queer rape culture.