Find me on substack: https://t.co/JWgJ6kK3mq
Author of 3 books: Positive Birth Book, Give Birth like a Feminist, and My Period. Book 4 out 2024.
Sep 7, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Over the weekend it was my 3rd child's 10th birthday and I shared an image on instagram taken just after he was born, captioned with some of his birth story and a message about positive birth. A hypnobirthing and yoga teacher saw fit to turn up and comment. 🧵
She described me as 'openly transphobic' and said, "it breaks my heart that this wee boy is growing up with conditions on his love and hatred towards a group of vulnerable people."
Jun 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm quoted in this piece by @JamesSBeal. Quite a long quote. I'll do a thread 😁
Oxfam’s caricature of an ‘ugly hag’ wearing a Terf badge is so typical of the attitudes displayed to feminists who stand up for women’s rights...
archive.is/Dqb3c
We are evil old witches basically, and this is the same old misogyny we’ve been fighting for decades, repackaged as ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’. It is utterly shocking that an established global charity like Oxfam would portray women in this way...
Mar 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As it's Mother's Day, I thought I'd tell you about the phenomena of foetomaternal microchimerism. During pregnancy, foetal cells cross the placenta and have been found in the mother even decades later. It's thought this process also happens during breastfeeding.
And that it happens in reverse, meaning we may all have some of our mother's cells within us, as well as cells of any babies we have carried, regardless of whether they made it to term or not. This might be a comforting thought for those who are without mothers or babies today.
Dec 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Re: Hadley Freeman. Some people are spectacularly missing the point about censorship and 'cancellation' - and I speak from personal experience. Censorship doesn't mean someone is completely silent or that they cannot talk about their experience of censorship. 🧵
Likewise cancellation doesn't mean you're locked up & they throw away the key. What Hadley has highlighted so well is that this is about the bigger picture, it's a cultural phenomenon as Adichie said in Reith lecture, where people are prevented from speaking by fear of the mob.
Nov 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This argument that people who don't agree with you are simply old and out of touch is a powerful one because it's always been applied to women who don't comply. It plays on the threat that all women feel of becoming invisible and irrelevant as they age in a patriarchy.
Under this same system, Eddie can change shoes and be in 'girl mode' when it suits his political career and male when he doesn't want to lose acting work because he's not actually a 'girl' after all, he's a post menopausal woman and there aren't many good roles for them.
Apr 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The 'Family Sex Show' currently in the news was 'crafted in partnership with The School of Sexuality Education.' When I was writing My Period, they were put forward as 'sensitivity readers'. I went to their website, read this article, & firmly refused. schoolofsexed.org/blog-articles/…?
You'll have to read it to believe it, but it contains such choice quotes as: "Psychological and scientific academia has widely proved that gender, and sex, are socially constructed...Even the link we’ve made between penis and male sex (and vagina and female sex) is constructed"
Dec 11, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Such a typical pattern of behaviour. 🧵 1. Pick a successful woman 2. Accuse her of transphobia so that her entire career as she knew it is in jeopardy. 3. Watch her sinking with relish, knowing if she speaks about it she could further damage herself. bbc.co.uk/news/entertain…4. She decides to risk it and tell her story anyway. Life as she knew it is f***ed, so why not. 5. Her story does not get the reaction the bullies hoped - she is supported. 6. They then claim her telling her story has made them 'unsafe'.
Dec 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. If you are female you had all your eggs when you were in your mother's uterus. And she had all her eggs when inside her mother's uterus. Yes, this means the egg that went on to be you was once inside your gran.
The other interesting thing about eggs is that they are 'competitive'. We often hear the story about the 'winning' sperm, beating all the other sperm and arriving, victorious, at the oh-so-passive egg. But that's not quite how it works...
Oct 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Just had a post about the BBC article on the 'cotton ceiling' removed by Instagram for 'hate speech'. Here is the post duplicated on my FB. Judge for yourself if it's 'hateful' 🙄 facebook.com/10006358159338…
This is the post they removed.
Jul 21, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A lot of people want to support me, but feel like my books might not be for them because they are not pregnant? Well - Give Birth like a Feminist is absolutely for any person interested in feminism and women's rights, and it's 99p on kindle this month! amazon.co.uk/Give-Birth-Lik…
Here's the chapter headings...
Jul 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I've got lots to say, but I need some time to process the events of this week. For now though, I do want to make one point. My blog called for 'dialogue not division'. In particular, I wanted to raise the issue of what happens to 'dissenters' such as myself. Short thread...
Maybe it wasn't implicitly clear in my blog, but the people who piled on to me online were not (as far as I know) trans. They were largely doulas, hypnobirthing teachers and midwives. There's a massive problem in the birth world with all of this which is being swept under the rug
