The impact of ‘pile-ons’ and trolling by gender critical Twitter accounts
Amid the ongoing ‘culture wars,’ it has become commonplace for those who are publicly gender critical to talk of the impact of being ‘cancelled’ and claim that they have been attacked online for their beliefs. In a recent interview, Graham Lineham blames these online attacks for the end of his marriage; JK Rowling claimed the address of her home — which is a tourist destination with its own Wikipedia page — was posted online in a purported ‘doxxing’ attack; while former Sussex University lecturer Kathleen Stock claimed she was ‘forced out’ of her position at the university due to tweets.
But as concerns continue to grow about the level of transphobia in online spaces — with TikTok recently overhauling its community guidelines to tackle transphobic abuse on the app — a number of people have spoken to Metro.co.uk about their experiences of harassment at the hands of self-professed ‘gender critical’ Twitter accounts.In June 2020, journalist Rachel Charlton-Dailey criticised Rowling on Twitter for her open letter, where she spoke about her view on single-sex bathrooms and experience of domestic abuse. ‘I tweeted that I thought it was disgusting that she was weaponising domestic violence victims, and that she doesn’t speak for me as a survivor of domestic abuse,’ she said. ‘But then these accounts all jumped on me.’They continued: ‘I had people calling me an abuse apologist, a handmaiden, saying she absolutely did speak for me. ‘Some people doubted I was really an abuse victim if I still supported trans people. ‘A few even suggested what happened to me was my fault.’Rachel describes the harassment as ‘awful’ and said ‘it went on for days’. ‘To have my past abuse thrown in my face was really quite galling and triggering.’ they.
