Being Gender Critical: a Story
by Alessandra Asteriti
In April 2019, I wrote a fact-filled, reasonable thread on the importance of maintaining the legal definition of ‘woman’ in international law. Within two hours, I received my first reply with ‘shut the fuck up TERF’ and an anime character pointing a gun at me.
In a little more than a year, the following things happened to me.
I was suspended permanently from Twitter twice, the first time in June 2019 (reinstated in September 2019 after appealing to the Better Business Bureau) and the second time in December 2020, again permanently. This time appealing to the Better Business Bureau is not available anymore, so the ban will probably stand, and I will join the thousands of feminists already banned.
I was targeted several times by trans activists, with death threats, by tweet and by DM, and emails to my university.
Apparently, Mermaids sent a complaint to my university. Mermaids denied they did so and the university is refusing to confirm this, or release the communication, citing data protection legislation.
I have had to withdraw a chapter I was asked to submit to an edited collection. Every new edit I submitted came back with further requests of edits, some of them obviously irrelevant. The editor of the collection blocked me on Twitter because of my views.
I published an article in the Modern Law Review blog, together with solicitor Rebecca Bull. Most academics studiously ignored it, even if it is the first published rebuttal of the gender ideologists’ position on the GRA reform.
I published a letter on the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. As a consequence, I became more visible to the Italian trans activists, who targeted me on Twitter eventually resulting in the permanent suspension. Italian philosophy professor Michela Marzano wrote a reply on Facebook, heavily criticising my letter, but without alerting me of the response. I signed up to FB to reply. I was shortly thereafter also suspended from FB without an explanation.
Students at my university complained to the President about my ideas and asked that a statement be made against me (in German). The students claim they do not feel safe with me on campus. Reminder that I am the one who received death threats.
In a little more than a year I went from fewer than 3000 followers on Twitter to more than 11,000. Many many of them women, a lot of them anonymous. Many of them contacted me with their stories. Stories of silencing, fear, loss of rights.
I know that there are a lot of women who have had to suffer much more than I have. Some of them are now well known, some of them not. All of us share a trait: the unwillingness to comply with an ideology we do not believe in and that we know results in actual harms for women and girls.
I browse twitter occasionally, but honestly, I think it's an horrendous place. Tonight the What's the Trans bloke is having a meltdown because women are telling him they don't want him around single sex female facilities. The rage fest proves the point, he's really scary when he gets going. How he ever convinced himself people would just pretend he's not a bloke I don't know. He's posting an enormous rant about Jon Snow! Jon Snow! Apparently this nerdy sexist incel pervy fiction is a morality play about why children must be disguised as the opposite sex as soon as possible. Surely the madness must peak soon? It's painful to watch.
This ideology is a lightening rod but we have to remember it is just another face of misogyny. Women have been silenced, disregarded, no access to rights, raped, robbed and killed along with their children, by men and without consequence for a very long time. It is part of the structural control mechanism and built in to enslave women to serve mens needs so they never see whose really oppressing them and they don’t rebel, by the patriarchy and at the cost of women and children’s bodies and lives. It’s extreme and obvious but it’s not new. Patriarchy cannot tolerate women being equal and sexualises in order to denigrate and disrespect us accordingly.