Twitter takes out another woman

(including guest post by Sarah Stuart)

(UPDATE: Sarah is back! You can follow her here!)

Saddened but not surprised to find out that Twitter, the Jack The Ripper of social media platforms, has taken out another woman. This time it’s Sarah Stuart, who did invaluable work investigating the crazier corners of gender ideology and exposing its witchdoctors. As is traditional with Twitter, they gave her no explanation. My theory is that Kate Minshall has a close relationship with Ruth Hunt and didn’t like Sarah’s characteristically hilarious thread from last night.

(There’s a great video of Minshall doing her best to dodge Joanna Cherry and Joan McAlpine’s questioning on Twitter’s systematic silencing of uppity women although for the moment I can’t find it. Please post if you have it!)

Anyway, Twitter’s loss is my gain, and Sarah has very kindly allowed me to add her as a contributor. We’re going to begin with that same Ruth Hunt thread. Enjoy, and welcome aboard, Sarah!

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Well it was a wheels-cha-cha of a ‘conversation’ with Ruthie-baby constantly treading water and not really saying anything.

To boil it down in one tweet would be easy, but I’m not going to because that would be too easy.

Ruth was asked what had gone wrong, why had the Govt. reversed gear on the GRA reforms?

This Govt., rued Ruth, didn’t want to advance inclusivity issues in general. It had simply been a horrendous time, when trans people had had to listen to a significant vocal minority [AKA women] critique the entire legal basis of trans identities [stuff like ‘women don’t have penises’]. Still, Ruth reflected, the Govt. also hadn’t pandered to *that group*. 

The host wanted to know if Ruth was still petitioning on trans rights with MPs and senior civil servants*?
(*Is this allowed?)

No, Ruth, was leaving that all to Nancy now. Ruth had significant concern about how the debate had been held - there had been ‘lies’ and ‘hate mongering’ by a significant vocal minority [aka women].

On the plus side the Govt. was going to increase trans people access to healthcare [damaging cross sex hormones]. Another positive was the non-binary employment tribunal win. 

Ruth said there was a big appetite in Westminster for the UK to be seen to be a leader on LGBT matters but that CV19 and Brexit were too big an issue currently to occupy much headspace. There had been so much toxicity recently, esp. with regards to BLM. Ruth felt that trans people were the ‘canary in the mine’ on these issues - an interesting appropriation of anti-semitism being the usual barometer.

The Q&A was opened up but the host hid all the questions (later we learned that many from the significant vocal minority [aka women] had joined the webinar and were asking questions). Also hidden were the number of people on the call. There’s nothing like transparency, and indeed this was nothing like it.

Did Ruth know it would be hard for Stonewall to take on the issue of trans rights?

Ruth responded that Stonewall had been under significant pressure from individual donors, stakeholders, campaigners, the organisations and the companies they worked with, who were all baffled why Stonewall would not consider trans issues. 

Ruth said she had been ‘thinking about, working on and investigating trans issues’ since 1998, saying that Germaine Greer left Newnham College because a man was appointed.

In fact, the word on the street is strong that prior to Ruth’s Stonewall appointment she had exactly the same doubts that most people have about trans activism. So what changed?

Ruth claims that trans people and LGB experience hate crime and discrimination in much the same way. 

There was talk that Stonewall could be trans inclusive but ultimately the decision was made to take on the fight for trans rights fully on board.

The host wanted to know how Ruth persuaded people to the Stonewall way of thinking, which got us onto her main plank of ‘thinking’ (two short ones as it turned out), that she repeated over and over and over again in a dreary monotone voice, that I suspect she mainly puts people to sleep with).

Her truth was that social media, and in particular, Twitter were a big waste of time. 

People who use social media make the mistake of thinking that they are engaging in discourse when all they are doing is something very unproductive. Twitter can’t be used for influencing (which begs the question why the Russians, Trump, Stonewall and even Ruth herself, bother). 

Ruth has had a lot of conversations about prisons and sports, but the main thing was people have to come to the conversation with ‘good faith’.

It’s fair to say Ruth then went full Aunt Lydia.

There has to be an ability to speak with mutual respect and listen to the other side [which explains all those conferences Ruth held with women’s groups when she was at Stonewall] - it simply can’t be done on twitter, girls!

But where does this divisiveness come from, asked the host, not wanting to mention the dreaded W-word.
Ruth said ‘lack of understandable boundaries about what’s acceptable to say and what isn’t and some of what people say is borderline libel’.

Ruth then blethered on about having half a bottle of wine in her and managing to understand boundaries whilst looking at twitter half-cut whilst slouching on her sofa. 

Ruthie-babe, not tweeting whilst drunk is just basic. Even Eric Joyce knows that.

Who remembers the completely respectful letter that Simon Fanshawe and lots of other significant players co-signed urging Stonewall to listen to concerns? 

The truth is Ruth Hunt is a liar. She isn’t compassionate. She isn’t polite. She has deliberately completely disregarded the very many polite and respectful challenges to Stonewall policy. She has disregarded every single polite request because she’s a zealot. 

Ruth could only talk in slogans. Only nuanced and complex conversations, which didn’t happen on twitter, and weren’t voiced by Piers Morgan, were really worth hearing. Ruth claimed that ‘demonstrating compassion was controversial’, but compassion for Ruth doesn’t extend to the women currently housed with men in prisons and having to shower naked in front of them.

Ruth boasted that she has difficult conversations with people she disagrees with *all the time*, she just doesn’t live tweet them. 

It was at this point the host asked about how Ruth deals with all the hateful abuse she gets on social media. What keeps her going?

Ruth said that social media was really a toxic place, and that battles were rarely won or lost. She now has additional support and someone else manages her notifications to filter out the illegal threats [really Ruth?] and she threatens to sue anyone who says anything libellous. Her reason for keeping a twitter account running, is - listen to this - she reckons that young lesbians contact her to ask her about her suits [unlikely].

Ruth says she no problem with talking with people about the issues - unfortunately for her this simply isn’t borne out by her track record and was on abundant display during the webinar.

The host wanted to discuss the recent response to JK Rowling’s recent online drubbing from trans activists, which he described as a ‘back and forth’. This was a perfect opportunity for Ruth to live up to her principles and roundly condemn the #RIPJKRowling hashtag.

Ruth: ‘JK Rowling has the right to say whatever she wants and think whatever she wants, I’m surprised to see her use the platform of twitter to do it’ [Ruth recently used twitter to promote her new book].

Ruth thought that the hour long youtube film of two people dissecting what she had said was really positive [it’s very important that people don’t actually read what JKR has said obviously].

Ruth repeated that JKR had the right to say ‘whatever she wants and people should be able to respond with measured arguments’. However, she didn’t think there was ‘space for the kind of vitriol and hatred towards any woman on social media, but I think that goes all ways and I think there kind of needs to be a ceasefire in the personal abuse and I know that there are people who are very unhappy about the personal abuse that JK Rowling received who happily like and retweet personal abuse that I receive, so you know, you’ve got to play it both ways’ and questioned whether ‘JK Rowling wading into the debate has improved peoples’ understanding of trans rights’.

She claimed once more that SM was not that useful in shaping opinion, but the fact is, it’s where most people get their news nowadays. 

Ruth was concerned about the Govt’s response to CV19. Not the awful impact lockdown has had on business owners and peoples’ jobs, but the fact that the daily press briefings still weren’t being signed for the deaf, and leaflets in Bengali being printed. 

At the 36th minute, Ruth got the opportunity to demonstrate her openness, compassion and her absolute passion for having difficult conversations, as she noted that ‘those strongly against my position on trans rights have followed me onto this platform in order to try and ask questions of me and I’m sorry that you’re navigating that, it speaks to the kind of way in which this kind of work is done at the moment that that is considered to be an appropriate adult response to a blog, so you’re very welcome guys [NB misgendering] to keep putting in your questions, Matt is navigating them with professionalism and ease and I’m very sorry that you feel it necessary to take your evening up by bombarding this webinar’.

Matt thanked her and said that in amongst those questions ‘we’re still getting some brilliant ones, so please do keep sending the good ones’ but went on to relay this question instead ‘how do we encourage our politicians to stand up for their compassionate values?’

Ruth says that compassion requires significant bravery. ‘It takes courage to consistently stand up and say I disagree with you and I disagree with the methods you’re employing to disagree with me and I disagree with the way in which you’re conducting yourselves in order to have these conversations. That requires principle, a strong sense of values and courage. Politicians are understandably anxious about that level of exposure at the moment because of the way in which those moments of compassion are hijacked by those who have a different agenda’.

But whatever happened to having difficult conversations Ruth? We thought you liked them. 

The host pointed out that the Rainbow Laces campaign in football had not succeeded insofar that not one single gay or bi male had come out.

Ruth said that the Premier League had had their own difficult conversations about accepting the Rainbow Laces and had been on a journey. 

Ruth said that anti-trans campaigners were funded by the religious right and talked in a dreary way for quite a bit about her Roman Catholic faith.

She gets to talk to more bishops now she’s in the House of Lords. She's had supposedly ‘difficult conversations’ about what Paul and Leviticus might have meant. Sounds electrifying.

We're supposed to believe that she's at the cutting edge of all this discourse and yet she couldn't even bear to say half a sentence about the other side of the trans debate.

This politician is a true coward.