If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.
My heart is heavy 🖤 I talked about Sara Sharif’s case in my masterclass today. The review is out today.
An inexperienced social worker and a Judge missed key facts and there were a catalogue of missed opportunities to save her life 🖤
Those key facts? For 16 years he’d abused, burned and tortured at least three women and two children.
He was a manipulative and dangerous serial abuser. Social workers beloved his BS narratives and his history was not joined up with catastrophic consequence.
A reminder:
During the “campaign of torture”, Sara was hooded, burned, bitten and beaten and her body was found by police to have 96 injuries, including 11 fractures to her spine and signs of a traumatic brain injury.
Sara Sharif’s broken and battered body was found under bed covers in her family home on August 10 2023.
I’m sick of all the excuses and lack of join up regarding dangerous serial abusers. Get your sh1t together.
Make sure you are trained by an expert at the very least.
✅ I’ll be talking about Sara in training on coercive control Dec 10/11: Join:
https://t.co/RlcuZVrm6t
Women and children’s lives hang in the balance. Violent men’s history must be joined up and risk assessed 🤬
#SaraSharif #ChildAbuse #ChildProtection #FamilyCourt #CrimeAnalyst #Risk #RiskAssessment #DASH #DomesticAbuseAwareness #CoerciveControl @laurarichards99@dashchecklist
I'd like to bring something that it's crucial about Gisele Pelicot's case: she is the so called "perfect victim" that men can't dismiss anymore. I'll explain: men can't say "she was wearing this/that", "she provoked them", "she put herself in this situation," "she wanted it." 1/
Misogyny in medicine is focusing more on what a man might WANT than what a woman NEEDS.
I NEEDED a hysterectomy and was told I wouldn’t survive pregnancy.
“Informed consent” for surgery looked like this:
“Don’t you want to be a Mom?”
“You may want BIOLOGICAL children”
/1 🧵
The thing that bugs women about the postpartum post is that women are asked to put aside their desires for 10+ months. During pregnancy you can't drink, smoke or eat certain foods. Your body hurts you might throw up for months. Childbirth is excruciating. It's a huge sacrifice.
Men sacrificing pleasure for a few weeks shouldn't be too big of an ask.
Guys are in my mentions complaining that a woman with an eight week old infant wouldn't take time away from the baby to make sure he has a hot dinner on the table when he comes home.
This is the point I am making : You, as father, should want that mother to spend as much time as possible bonding with that baby or caring for herself.
Putting your desire for a hot meal above these two shows a kind of whacked out thinking that has twisted your priorities.
You are a grown man, you don't need her to make you dinner, especially in this situation.
If you are old enough to make a baby, you're old enough to make a sandwich.
“It didn’t start on October 7th.”
No.
You’re right.
No it didn’t.
Here is a list of Arab attacks and massacres on the Jews since 622 AD
Educate people.
Bookmark this.
Do you know these people? Police appeal for help identifying people at pro-Palestinian march on Saturday who are wanted for suspected offences. https://t.co/tNrk19RmQy
I cannot imagine what the last year has been like for Jewish people round the world. And I don’t profess to. But witnessing the blatant, purposefully hateful, disgusting antisemitism on our streets week in, week out has been a truly depressing & horrific spectacle, made worse by the institutional apathy to seriously tackle it.
I’m so sorry your country has let you down so abysmally. I don’t think I’ve ever been so ashamed to call the UK my home.
The bottom line is, women do not want nor are we asking for men to protect us, we’re asking for men to stop being the thing we need protection from. I can’t make it any clearer.
Unless you’ve followed or paid close attention to what @jk_rowling has been saying, extremely courteously & politely for 10 long years now, & witnessed the decade-long, non-stop onslaught of the worst possible abuse, threats, lies & slander…
UNLESS you’re 100% aware of how civilly & calmly she has conducted herself in the face of such vitriol, hatred & aggression & actively involving family members…
UNLESS you’ve watched, time & time again, men telling her to “sit down & shut up”, “control yourself, woman” or “I don’t think that’s very nice. Why can’t you just be kind & accept what we are telling you?”,
I’m really NOT convinced that it’s your f***ing place to pop up NOW & instruct her to exercise ‘basic common decency’…
SHE’S BEEN DOING THAT FOR 10 YEARS.
So, I’m sure all you bleating, barking men, out there, who’ve suddenly decided she’s “crossed a line”, you, embarrassingly, HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION, have you?
She’s done the whole “being kind” schtick. (For many more years than most of us would, to be honest).
Where has that got her?
TRA’s don’t CARE about that. They are going to hate her regardless. They want the hate. They crave it. Nevertheless, she continued to debate with grace & courtesy, whilst others raged at her from basements etc, worldwide.
But, to you, watching from the sidelines, now popping up like f***ing whack-a-moles, you might have failed to notice that she is out of fucks to give & has said so. Clearly.
And believe it or not, she has the unwavering gratitude & support of a HUGE (& ever-growing) number of women, girls, gay people, transsexuals, detransitioners, parents & children.
Why?
Because she took the fall for those who felt they had no voices nor a chance to say “No”.
Well, they do now. And if that bugs the heck out of you, you’ll have to find a better coping strategy. Because our voices, loudly & given strength because of her, will NEVER deny the truth & always speak up for those who are TRULY vulnerable & marginalised.
And shame on all the Q+ organisations for turning your backs on her, after all the help & financial support she gave to those with HIV. Shame on you.
Thank you again @jk_rowling for standing tall & for NOT “staying in your goddamn’d place!” ❤️
(Please RT. Account restricted. As per.)
You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes.
I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs. She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others.
I don’t believe a woman is more or less of a woman for having sex with men, women, both or not wanting sex at all. I don’t think a woman is more or less of a woman for having a buzz cut and liking suits and ties, or wearing stilettos and mini dresses, for being black, white or brown, for being six feet tall or a little person, for being kind or cruel, angry or sad, loud or retiring. She isn't more of a woman for featuring in Playboy or being a surrendered wife, nor less of a woman for designing space rockets or taking up boxing. What makes her a woman is the fact of being born in a body that, assuming nothing has gone wrong in her physical development (which, as stated above, still doesn't stop her being a woman), is geared towards producing eggs as opposed to sperm, towards bearing as opposed to begetting children, and irrespective of whether she's done either of those things, or ever wants to.
Womanhood isn't a mystical state of being, nor is it measured by how well one apes sex stereotypes. We are not the creatures either porn or the Bible tell you we are. Femaleness is not, as trans woman Andrea Chu Long wrote, ‘an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes,’ nor are we God’s afterthought, sprung from Adam’s rib.
Women are provably subject to certain experiences because of our female bodies, including different forms of oppression, depending on the cultures in which we live. When trans activists say 'I thought you didn't want to be defined by your biology,' it’s a feeble and transparent attempt at linguistic sleight of hand. Women don't want to be limited, exploited, punished, or subject to other unjust treatment because of their biology, but our being female is indeed defined by our biology. It's one material fact about us, like having freckles or disliking beetroot, neither of which are representative of our entire beings, either. Women have billions of different personalities and life stories, which have nothing to do with our bodies, although we are likely to have had experiences men don't and can't, because we belong to our sex class.
Some people feel strongly that they should have been, or wish to be seen as, the sex class into which they weren't born. Gender dysphoria is a real and very painful condition and I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it. I want them to be free to dress and present themselves however they like and I want them to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen regarding housing, employment and personal safety. I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. I believe the ideology that preaches those tenets has caused, and continues to cause, very real harm to vulnerable people.
I am strongly against women's and girls' rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate trans-identified men, for the very simple reason that no study has ever demonstrated that trans-identified men don't have exactly the same pattern of criminality as other men, and because, however they identify, men retain their advantages of speed and strength. In other words, I think the safety and rights of girls and women are more important than those men's desire for validation.
I sincerely hope that answers your questions. You may still disagree, but as I hope this shows, I’m more than happy to have this debate.
Today the Hate Crime & Public Order Act (Scotland) 2021 came into force @MaryHowden from @WRNScotland said "It is an Act that will have a chilling effect on free speech & women's rights.
Women won't be silenced! Facts are not hate. Truth should not be suppressed"
#FactIsNotHate
🎉🌼🌸April Fools! 🌸🌼🎉
Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.
In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.
For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable. The re-definition of 'woman' to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women's and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.
It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.
I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.
If you agree with the views set out in this tweet, please retweet it.
#ArrestMe #AprilFools #HateCrimeActScotland
11/X
Once upon a time, for what was far too short a time, little boys & little girls could play with whatever toys they liked, have short hair or long, be princesses or pirates, love reading for hours or climbing trees & scraping knees, & not one adult suggested they were born faulty.