You know the ones. They pretend you hit them in your car by jumping on your hood while you are moving slow and pretend to have an injury so that they can claim on insurance. Pay them attention and they will have gotten their way. TERFs work in exactly the same way.
They will bait people or organizations into a reaction and then use that to play the victim and continue their baseless claims. So how do you solve a problem like TERFs? You ignore them. I know, I know, this whole site is here to call them out, but it’s also here to archive the things they say to pass on to future venues, to give them the full picture of the people they are booking. I myself am also guilty of playing into their hands. But it needs to stop.
What made me come to this realization? Two fairly recent organizations attacked by Cathy Brennan. DIVA magazine and Bar Wotever. DIVA is a UK magazine for lesbians and gender queer people, they are welcoming of trans people. Bar Wotever is a gender queer and LGBT+ friendly bar in London.
The editor of DIVA magazine, Jane Czyzselska, posted this piece about lesbophobia: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/09/lesbophobia-homophobia-side-order-sexism Of course Cathy Brennan commented on the piece. Was it a constructive comment? Probably not, all three of them were removed because they did not abide by the community standards. You’d think after the first one she would get that her hate isn’t welcome.
Not content with harassing the author on the Guardian site. Cathy posted a comment to the Everyday Lesbophobia page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Everyday-Lesbophobia/524763434244309?fref=ts
The comment was quickly removed but you can imagine it was filled with hate to warrant the deletion. Jane was nice enough to let Cathy know why it was deleted:
The cotton ceiling isn’t new to DIVA, they ran a great piece on it a while back: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/comment/the-cotton-ceiling-trans-sexual-politics.aspx#.UFrooO3upAg
This of course set Brennan off on her “Look at me! React to me!” ways, harassing various social media accounts.
Jane or any account associated with Jane/DIVA did not respond to Cathy except from what you see in the two images above.
Likewise, Bar Wotever used their legal right to throw Cathy and her friends out because of their history of harassing and abusing members of the community the bar hosts. A great summery of events can be found here: http://www.lesbilicious.co.uk/if-youre-going-to-trash-trans-people-online-dont-be-surprised-when-they-kick-you-out-of-their-club/
How did Cathy try to be the victim? She claimed the bar threw her out because she was a lesbian. Yes. A gay/gender queer bar throwing someone out because they are a lesbian. Like usual, there were calls from Cathy and her cronies to sue the bar, looking to get a reaction from people who support the bar since funnily enough nothing happened. Everyone laughed at Cathy for claiming a gay bar was being homophobic and talking about suing because of it.
Bar Wotever reacted with a simple statement on their facebook page stating what their policy is on allowing people in and removing them from the bar. That’s it. Throw her out, get on with things and let her behave like the child she is.
That is the general view everyone needs to take. Constant childish Twitter feuds are pointless. Deny them a platform and ignore them while they thrash around like babies looking for attention. They won’t get the hint and go, but we will be free to get on and work towards the big social changes that need to happen.
BTW. I was in Bar Wotever when she was ejected. There were loads of lesbians there in fact there were two lesbians I know up on stage making announcements straight away afterwards. So her claim she was thrown out for being a lesbian, demonstrates her lack of credibility