If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.
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I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya.
However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.Īll the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.įor people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. To go back to the children’s page, please click here. Please check with an adult before you read this page. Warning: The below content is not appropriate for children.
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