5/31/2019 How to be a Woman on Twitter – Alessandra Asteriti – Medium

Alessandra Asteriti Follow
May 31 · 5 min read

On 28 May 2019, I saw on my TL on Twitter an article about how

Imperial College, with funding provided by the NHS, is planning to trial
womb transplants on transgender women. The wombs would be
sourced either from dead women donors, or from transmen wanting a
hysterectomy. Amongst the proponents of the procedure, a plastic
surgeon from London, who runs a clinic where surgical procedures are
offered to transgender people wanting to undergo a complete sex
change (which for transmen includes a complete mastectomy and
hysterectomy; the trans community likes to refer to these as top and
bottom operations, partially to obfuscate, partially to make them sound
harmless by adopting an infantile language. But they are operations
that render these females sterile and deprive them of their breasts and
uterus. Any woman who has wished to be sterilised will know how
difficult it is to get this operation done, as doctors will tell them that
they might change their mind. Trans rights groups advocate for minors
to be able to undergo these operations). The article further suggested
the wombs could come from transmen, in my opinion evidencing a
clear conflict of interests for these doctors, who have a financial
incentive to convince transmen to undergo an hysterectomy in order to
have a supply of wombs to implant into transwomen.

I had already been critical of gender theory on Twitter, which I consider

a regressive and misogynist approach to rights, both of women and of
trans people. Additionally, I have been particularly vocal about the
gaslighting of women on social media, forced to accept that the penis
can be a female organ and accused of being transphobic if they refuse
to accept this piece of anti-scientific, obscurantist misogynist
propaganda (I am not mincing words). This has included putting
pressure on lesbians to accept male-bodied ‘lesbians’ and giving them
advice on how to have sex with these transwomen. Many lesbians have
complained that this practice is particularly damaging for younger
lesbians who might be struggling with their sexuality and might be
bullied into accepting sex with males.

I believe that women have the right of self-determination, and this right
includes the absolute right to exclude males from our sex group.

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I believe the definition of woman (adult female) is crucial to guarantee

rights to women that are inextricably linked to our embodied
experience as females. This is not biological essentialism, as faux-
progressives and faux-feminists will say: the oppression of women as a
class is intimately grounded in our biology, and to deny biology is to
deny and erase our oppression, and allow males to colonise the very
idea of female.

I believe gender is a collection of stereotypes, and I refuse to be reduced

to my ‘gender’ (this yes a form of essentialism).

I believe sex is a biological fact and gender a social construct, and not
the other way around.

I believe the penis is a male organ and the claim that transwomen are
born in the wrong body and at the same time that the penis is female is
the height of absurdity, and that this sort of illogical gibberish would
get you kicked out of any university department, were it not that it has
to do with gender theory.

I believe gender theory is the rancid by-product of neo-liberal academia

and unsurprisingly it is funded by big Pharma.

I believe that the millions donated to academics and NGOs by right

wing Republican Jennifer Pritzker, a man until the age of 63, have
corrupted academic and public discourse.

I believe that women are women, and do not need a prefix to define
themselves. I believe the people who ask us not to call ourselves
women, lest we offend trans people, are engaging in a form of cultural
genocide.

I believe asking women to refer to sex offenders as women is a form of

group libel and to force victims to do so a further, extreme violence.
Women do not rape. Women engage in sexual offences, especially
against children, in extremely small numbers. Sexual violence is male
violence, and 35% of women around the world are victims of it (and
this is probably a conservative number) and have the absolute right to
call it out for what it is.

I believe women have an absolute right to female-only spaces, and

males have no right to try to invade those spaces on the basis of

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feelings. Woman is something you are, not something you feel. More
girls died of female infanticide than people died in World War II (UN
data) and they died because being female is something you do not
choose.

For my beliefs, and for the tweet you can see in the image with this text,
I was suspended from Twitter indefinitely. It is clear that I am
concerned here with ideology, not the community of transgender
individuals. The doctors to whom the criticism is directed are probably
not transgender, or not necessarily transgender.

I know many academics, especially females, agree with me but are

afraid to say so. I know many women decide to be anonymous on
Twitter because they are afraid of losing their jobs, or of the threats of
violence and rape that accompany expressing feminist opinions (I have
received them. The people who wished me dead or raped are still on
Twitter, because apparently wishing a woman dead or raped is not
hateful. Twitter does not protect sex as a category, only gender, but it
seems that if you reject gender stereotypes, you also forfeit any
protection as a woman).

I also know academics and students that believe in gender theory and I
would like to engage with them, but many either ignored me, or
blocked me, or accused me of being transphobic, or ignorant or
incapable of understanding nuance (because obviously the cultish
mantra that trans women are women is imbued with nuance).

To the ones who think I am wrong, I would like to ask if this is the
model of academia and society they want, where a socialist feminist
woman scholar is silenced for defending the rights of women.

. . .

How to be a Woman on Twitter

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