Maya Forstater

Until @Martina, @Glinner has been one of the few people with a public profile to stand up to the bullying and silencing of women on this. At considerable personal cost. He is not playing this for laughs.

Take a look at people such as Alison Moyet, Rose McGowan & Jenni Murray who have tried to publicly disagree or challenge the ideology of gender identity have been bullied off the internet or into capitulation. And within organisations, privately, this is happening all the time.

Take a look at the Anthony Watson trying to bully Graham Linehan and then turning his sights on The Economists' @HJJoyceEcon after publicly complaining about her views to her employer last week https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1107031217952776192 …

Calling people names, saying "you can't align with them, they are evil" or it might make you unemployable, is a strategy used to isolate and silence people, and to make it too costly for others to even take the time to think about the issue.

This is a serious policy and legal issue, and we should be able to talk about it openly, carefully and compassionately. It shouldn't be being battled out in twitter spats and personal insults (although there is always a place for comedy and disrespect in keeping democracies open)

The problem is that the organisations that should be holding open the space for polite, careful, patient debate & evidence: the established women's rights orgs, NSPCC, human rights orgs, @EHRC @WomenEqualities, think tanks, academia, the media, MPs etc are not doing their job.

People are scared to talk because "people gonna think you're aligning with a baddie". But the erosion of women's spaces, child safeguarding & women's right to organise autonomously is too important not to. The only way to face it is for more people to stand up for open debate