Jessica Masterson

Philosopher (Applied Ethics) | Gender Critical | Vegan/Animal Rights | Endurance Athlete

(Lost my previous account)

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

"A meaningful feminism seeks to disentangle femininity from femaleness in order to set women — female humans — free."

[Victoria Smith @glosswitch]

I wrote about the feminists who argued themselves out of identifying as women https://t.co/LWGulJUupM

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

Relaxing morning with Kermit 🐸

[JP 💰 @Awakenjp]

what baby elephant?

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@HJoyceGender Moronic.

When predators avoid brightly coloured prey, it's not because of some inexplicable phobia of bright colours. It's because they have learned that brightly coloured bodies can be dangerous.

A penis is a warning that "this person is more likely to pose a threat".

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@missmilliment @Docstockk It won't be easy, but she'll probably be surprised to find that many people, at least privately, agree with her. That includes people she might not expect.

There are many academics who are gender critical. They just value their careers too much to make that opinion known.

[Kathleen Stock @Docstockk]

In 2018 I self-published the first of a number of circumspect, polite essays suggesting we should question whether transwomen were really women, pointing to wider harms of a positive answer. There were a number of deranged responses from fellow philosophers in my field, but one sticks in my mind.

A trans-identified male philosophy grad student called Leon - who had not yet changed his name to Leona, even, though I think he did later – self-published an essay about me which contained the following paragraph:

"I haven’t witnessed it myself, but I am totally sure some trans women have in response to the Stock article talked about how precisely they would like to violently kill and dismember Stock. This is just something that happens in conversations about TERF’s. (And by the way, trans women: for the love of the Lord God almighty, cut that shit out! Not because it’ll give the TERF’s less justification to treat us like scum—you can’t get less than zero—but because that’s not an okay way to treat our fellow human beings.)"*

This essay was widely retweeted and posted on Facebook by professional academic colleagues across the discipline, including many more senior to me. I found the content highly disturbing - even though there was a kind of disclaimer involved, the fact was that a man I had never met or even heard of, had used a graphic image of me being violently killed and dismembered, in response to an extremely careful, even somewhat deferential essay. And colleagues were sharing the barely coherent rant, laced with violent imagery, approvingly. This is just not how the philosophical discipline is supposed to work.

I went onto Facebook, where I still had lots of philosophy mutuals at the time, and I made some mild protest and statement of concern about the imagery.

Of course my post didn't stop any of them sympathising with him over me, this graduate student they had never met over me who many of them knew personally. But I remember one philosopher in particular - a feminist philosopher, someone who specialises in "implicit bias", and someone with which I had recently co-examined a phd thesis in person, been for dinner after, etc. She chided me angrily, in full view of other colleagues, for my post expressing concern about this essay - something like "she (sic) told them NOT to discuss your violent death and dismemberment, didn't she??". In other words, she acted as if I had somehow unfairly maligned this poor person *even more* for criticising the essay on facebook.

Since then (and faced with many other such crazy-making cases) I have had to come to terms with the fact that there are many, many professional academics who will never back down from their basic quasi-religious belief that me and a few other philosophers must be the bad guys for criticising the presuppositions of transactivism- because they have to hang on to their own self-identification as the good guys, and they need the foil. It is not enough to disagree with us, - that is normal in academia - they have to conjure up poisonous caricatures of who we are.

Only this week a paper was published in a supposedly quality feminist journal (Hypatia) which accused Holly Lawford-Smith's work of propping up Neo-Nazi beliefs. An editor passed that for publication. Referees passed that. There is an astonishing casualness about the way that academics will excuse such inflammatory language, and turn the responsibilty back on the target, with an implied "well, if you didn't say such things...". Of course, they can never really point to what we did actually say, in any depth or with suitable context - for who has the time? They all just rely on the testimony of other earlier caricatures, and so the lie spreads.

When I heard about Charlie Kirk I was in Berlin, at a conference about non-medicalised approaches to gender dysphoria - you know, aimed not at stopping puberty or giving teenagers life-altering hormones, or cutting their body parts off, but trying to give them effective therapy instead - a good aim, right? Or at least a well-intentioned one, even if you disagree with it. Transactivists had vowed to find the conference and disrupt, and had put up a social media account called "know your enemy", and my face was the first on the list. They spent the weekend posting people outside every major hotel to find us. I had a security guard meet me at the airport and take me back there, I barely left the hotel. That is the real consequence of academics' stupid, unthinking, defensive attempts to portray themselves as heroes and make out we are evil villains. And if the story eventually ends with something very bad, god forbid, I know for a fact there will be philosophers who will imply it was deserved, and dig out mangled half-truths or lies to back it up; and there will be hundreds of others who will say nothing in disagreement.

(NB I am not linking to the essay, even though it is easy to find, because there is a recent addition at the top of the page that indicates the author does not endorse his sentiments now. I have also not named the other philosopher involved as I don't want a pile on for anyone. This is more courtesy and care than any of them ever afforded me.)

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

I don't know much about Charlie Kirk, but I know enough to be certain that a world where people kill each other for their opinions instead of engaging is civil discourse was the exact opposite of what he wanted.

[Jack Jewell @JackxJewell]

“You don’t have to like violence, but I’m confused at how you thought the revolution would be magically bloodless.”

Marxists end up seeing murder of their opponents as collateral damage for the “greater good.” Sickening individual.

And no, disagreeing with trans ideology doesn’t mean he wanted you dead, you moron.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

Charlie held different views to my own (and to Julie Bindel's), but that's irrelevant.

If you want to protect the rights of those you agree with to speak freely without risk of violence, you must do the same for those you disagree with.

None of us should have to live in fear.

[Julie Bindel @bindelj]

Some cowardly, snivelling trans activist just sent me this, anonymously - the account holder thinks I should be shot for opposing the decriminalisation of pimping and brothel owning:

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

"It's okay to kill bad people" just doesn't hold up as a position because pretty much everyone is a "bad person" to someone.

[The Critical Drinker @TheCriticalDri2]

Whether you agreed with him or not, Charlie Kirk is dead purely because some people didn't like what he had to say. That should outrage every single one of us.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@FFS_WhatNow Yes, it has a lid. I'm not quite sure of the logistics of the whole thing.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@FFS_WhatNow One of my cats has retained the "eating out of a bin" tendency of his ancestors, and he now eats out of our indoor bin when our backs are turned.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

First DNF at the weekend, 64km in to a (boggy!) 100km race.

Made some stupid mistakes. Terrible stomach pain for hours and energy went through the floor.

Lessons learned - on to the next!

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

Someone can only be "non-binary" if the rule is that people generally fit into stereotype of man or woman.

Actually, almost nobody on earth fits neatly into either gender stereotype. Almost everyone is a mish-mash of traits from each.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

There are also understandable reasons for some women, including hetero women, to feel some fear around male genitals.

Rape victims have experienced the penis as weapon. If someone experienced a knife attack and felt nervous around knives, would we think that was funny?

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

This is lesbophobia

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@JoEllisReally This is a very reasonable post and I'm glad you found a way to live without dysphoria. Transition does raise complex questions without easy answers, but certainly trans people deserve dignity and respect as much as anyone else.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

First 100k race tomorrow. Absolutely buzzing for the adventure.

Hope the rain eases off a bit!

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@faintlyfalling @johnboyne @jk_rowling Pretty cool that you were able to continue tweeting while on the run from the police. It shows real commitment.

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@johnboyne About 30% of the way through my first novel and totally lost in the world I made up. It's a pretty cool thing 😊

[Jessica Masterson @jlmasterson]

@preta_6 Yep, that's me. Been using my own name and speaking on this stuff for years. Why shouldn't we? Not doing anything wrong.