Saturday I was writing a piece on why ‘TERF’ is a slur, in response to another piece by Queen Thingy, and I came across this strawman attack on women “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism: What Exactly Is It, And Why Does It Hurt?” on the Huffington Post website.

The feature itself is a work of propaganda, including:

“Transgender” was never listed in DSM-IV; and

which is just one of many myths propagated about Janice Raymond’s work 'The Transsexual Empire’: in fact Raymond’s work was “quoted neutrally in one sentence of the 15 page final report.”

I left a comment, as you can see at the top of this piece, however it appears to have been depreciated by a moderator (so is visible only to me), generally leaving only positive quotes visible on the page. Just so you know, this is what I wrote:



“This piece is absolutely shocking. It contains so many factual errors and incorrect statements it reads as if it was written to be intentionally misleading. As it stands, this polemic does nothing to further the cause of transwomen: we should be aligning ourselves with women, not alienating ourselves further. We cannot win our battles based on propaganda, lies and abuse. It really is about time the current of debate in our community became more self-reflective and more honest.”

I contacted the author of the piece Kelsie Btynn Jones on Twitter (@kelsiedarko) who wasn’t having any of it. You can find much of the conversation here, and it should be very plain that Jones has swallowed hook, line and sinker much of the transmythology that makes discussions around sex and gender in the trans community such an intellectually bankrupt and dishonest mess.

Some choice cuts include:

So, they 'strongly disagree’ with my comment. Whereas they are perfectly at liberty to disagree with my first two sentences which tell them their feature is rubbish, it would seem that they have a problem with the following statements:

polemic does nothing to further the cause of transwomen;

we should be aligning ourselves with women, not alienating ourselves further;

we cannot win our battles based on propaganda, lies and abuse; and

it really is about time the current of debate in our community became more self-reflective and more honest.

Who in their right mind would disagree with these statements? I’ll tell you who: someone who believes bullshit like this:

I guess the following sums up their attitude to reality:





Does this really matter? Well, on the face of it, no: if delusional individuals like Kelsie want to believe in the Trans Tooth Fairy, who am I to stop them? There are however more sinister sides to this, not least the colonisation of women’s spaces and identities by transgender activists, and also that the voices of those of us who speak out against this are silenced.

The depreciation of comments on HuffPo appears to be selective. If you look at this piece America Has a Rape Problem there is a comment by Sarah Noble (@sarahlicity on Twitter) which is unsubstantiated and libellous.

That this disgusting comment is allowed to remain is indicative of HuffPo’s double standards:

Again, I am left frustrated at the absence of any meaningful debate around trans issues by trans people, which seems unable to get beyond ’ew, TERF!’, ’I AM A WOMAN!!!111’ and ’my penis is a female sex organ’. Women and feminists are attacked on the internet, social media, and in real life. Factually sparse propaganda is distributed liberally and the rot continues to spread.



We need to get beyond the self-deception, the hyperbole and the violent words and be honest about gender, and ourselves. Will this ever happen?