Inside the Infighting
Examining the recent infighting and the historical homophobia within the radical feminist and gender critical movement
The infighting has reached a crescendo. It’s time to air out some drama, run through a few history lessons, and fail everyone’s purity test at once.
Ever since I desisted, I feel as if I’ve become better at recognizing things that I didn’t always spot right away. Things such as coercion, ideological approaches and bigotry. I’ve become hyper aware to it, sometimes unwillingly. There is so much, since peaking, that I wish I could unsee. Unfortunately, I can’t.
Once opened, there is no closing Pandora’s box.
When I desisted earlier this year, I did so publicly on TikTok. Actually, my entire “gender journey” was very public. I spoke candidly about how I was confused by the misinformation and pressure that’s so prevalent in todays culture. It started to go viral and many joined me on my journey. I received messages from hundreds of people, so often homosexual, with similar experiences, similar confusion, and similar underlying mental health concerns.
I began to watch detransitioners on YouTube and eventually made my way to Twitter. After spending years in a hyper woke, leftist trans bubble, joining Twitter was almost like a form of culture shock. I was exposed to every ideology in the world at once. Through the rabble, what made the most sense was radical feminism. It taught me what I understand now about gender. And at first, very much unlike gender ideology, it told me that it was okay to be gay.
That new hyper awareness didn’t take long to kick in, however. It started first when I noticed the underlying resistance to gender nonconformity in men from within the radical feminist and gender critical movement. It was a cycle of hearing perfectly reasonable things like “men should be allowed to wear dresses and whatever they want but you can’t identify your way into womanhood”…but then sometimes seeing accusations of AGP and predation thrown at men who were even slightly GNC. I wrote about one such situation here, and how it led to even further homophobia directed at myself when a radfem told me to catch HIV and get hate crimed.
Challenging the Popular Narratives
This was a revealing turn of events. I discovered a segment of the movement I considered myself allying with that had as steep homophobia as radical trans activists. I absolutely was not allowed to question it, and when I did it was brushed aside.
While I at first attempted to accept I was wrong, somehow, to point out this thinly veiled bigotry, I found myself spotting more and more homophobia from radical feminists and their allies. I began to question some of the narratives I had been taught since desisting.
Narratives such as “gay men are more asleep to the harms of transgenderism than other demographics”. I had been told this over and over, and seen this notion repeated many times by those within the movement. It seemed to be a commonly accepted idea, yet it didn’t align with my experience. Upon observation, there are just as many gay men on Twitter every day speaking about their experiences and how gender ideology has impacted them as there are women and lesbians. While I was identifying as transgender myself, most of the “cis” people I knew were lesbians. Looking at the mechanics of the transgender movement, it’s funded by straight AGP men and enabled and promoted by women. Hell, a lesbian runs Stonewall. Gay men like Jim Fouratt have been speaking out against the invasion of T since the 60s and 70s, too…just as long as feminists have been.
The observable reality is that all demographics are asleep and gay men are not anymore “unaware” of these issues than other demographics.
Another narrative I’ve challenged is that “gay men have historical misogyny to make up for”. This was one of the first things I was taught and something discussed often. There is supposedly a historical pattern of misogyny hanging over all gay males heads and each gay man must apologize for this and work towards making up for it. A sort of “original sin” but for gay men. It was almost as if gay men were only allowed in the transgenderism conversation if they first accepted this and understood they must pay penance daily by apologizing for our demographic and bowing down at the church of feminism, accepting all narratives as absolutely true and without question—much like what must be done at the altar of gender. When I asked for examples of this historical misogyny, I was disparaged for daring to ask (it’s always a red flag when people get up in arms over being asked to provide evidence)…upon asking further, I received a few, flimsy answers.
I was told that women left the original GLF because gay men were so horribly misogynistic it simply could not be tolerated any longer. Upon investigating this, I found a small segment left because they didn’t feel women were centered enough—and looking into it, I discovered this was regarding the fact gay men were focused on overturning anti-sodomy laws instead of female specific parenting issues. This seemed strange to me to cast as an example of misogyny given that gay men have every right to center themselves too and the fact that women and lesbians felt that a female specific issue was important enough to advocate for really only highlighted the need for separate spaces and advocacy groups in addition to our shared allyship.
It seems as though some act as if gay men being concerned about laws that impacted them somehow also means that they’re entirely unconcerned with laws that impact women, despite the historical evidence to the contrary. After all, gay men allied with lesbians and women in GLF and studies show that most gay men vote Democrat, demonstrating support of women’s sex based rights. Gay men used to hold signs that said “cocksuckers for muff divers” and “go girls go” in support of lesbians. These men represent the majority of gay men; not the Milo’s.
It quickly became clear that our demographic had no historical misogyny and that people were using individuals and their own personal experiences as means to cast our entire group in this woman-hating light. Other arguments for misogyny I heard included drag, which was coupled with the suggestion that women that do drag do it for empowerment and men do it because misogyny…and surrogacy, an industry primarily run by straight people and only accessed by rich upper class gay men, a demographic that hardly represents all gay men.
There’s no denying that misogynistic gay men exist, but to use those gay men to paint our entire demographic that way, and to charge our entire class with their social crimes, is homophobic ignorance that I reject.
Historical Homophobia Within Feminism
Unearthing this section of gay history unearthed something else. I read “Lesbian Feminism and the Gay Rights Movement: Another View of Male Supremacy, Another Separatism”, a feminist essay on male homosexuality by Marilyn Frye in her book “The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory”, at the recommendation of a friend, and in an attempt to look into feminists understanding of homosexuality in men.
It was a hive of homophobia, littered with disgusting misinterpretations of male homosexuality. At one point in this essay, the author made a list of things that constituted “male supremacy”. The #1 thing on that list was “cock worship”. By this authors own admission, if you are too attracted to cock, which is set to whatever internal threshold only she knows, you become a male supremacist. She also went on to state that feminine gay men are actually feminine because they are mocking women. Never mind that these males are feminine from toddler ages, before any concept of mocking can even be understood by a child. This essay led to others, and I began to spot homophobia left and right, thinly veiled as valid feminist criticism.
Eventually, I discovered the radical feminist group, the Redstockings, and opened a whole new wormhole of feminist homophobia. They were a group of radfems that were against male homosexuality because they believed it was inherently misogynistic. Some of these extremist segments of feminism were even homophobic towards lesbians, believing lesbianism to be wrong because women needed to have relationships with men to advance women’s rights. One group went as far as to attempt to censor lesbians who published a tasteful nude of a lesbian in a lesbian/gay publication.
Of course, it’s true that these are small segments of feminism and do not represent the mainstream feminist movement. However, this demonstrates a historical and foundational homophobic mood and theme within the feminist movement, however fringe and small it may be, and it’s one that still exists today.
Modern Homophobia Within Feminism
It was only a few years ago that Azelia Banks insisted she should be able to call gay men faggots “in a feminist way”. And it was only last week that a group of radfems hosted a public Twitter audio space to call me a faggot dozens of times and doxx me, going as far as to shove my rapists mugshot in my face and taunt me over it. Many people we all know in the GC movement in both the US and the UK witnessed this.
Quote tweets on multiple tweets of mine and DMs I’ve received show dozens of these anonymous radfem accounts calling me the F slur and other horrific homophobic things over and over:
I lost count and gave up screenshotting them all. I have pages and pages saved. All because I dared to question the feminist narratives I had been taught. And their bigotry was allowed, according to them, because I am male.
It was eerily similar to being back in radical trans activist circles. They have built an oppression hierarchy that places themselves in such a position that all bigotry on their side is justified.
Homophobia is becoming more prevalent as a group of radfems lead the charge against Arty Morty, a gay man on Graham Linehans The Mess We’re In show, demanding he step down from LGB Alliance CA for the crime of being friends with James Cantor and having an interest in Roman history. I heard them discussing their plans to make their demands and to lob patently false pedophilia-apologism accusations at him in a Twitter audio space the night before they began their campaign. The same group of women who attacked me are formulating this campaign against Arty, giving new context to his drunken tweet about bloodlust of radfems. I heard these radfems jovially speaking of castrating men in the space they disparaged me in…do I really find it hard to believe Arty saw something horrific from this fringe group hiding in radical feminism to inspire that tweet? No, I don’t.
Stella O’Malley from Genspect bravely stepped up to defend him in a very large Twitter audio space just 2 days ago, making it clear that if you’re going to make accusations like this, you had better have substantial evidence; something they simply do not have. Arty is a caring man who has done a lot for this movement. Historically, false accusations of pedophilia and a knee jerk reaction to believe them on little evidence has been a tool of oppression used against gay men. And to use this against a man that has done substantial work in condemning organizations like NAMBLA and to separate the predators from our community is an act so evil, it can only stem from homophobic hatred.
Refusal to Acknowledge or Condemn
Gay men have entire groups on both sides of this debate that are happy to use individual gay men and personal experiences with gay men as reason to put gay men into the same basket as straight men—but it’s only on the GC side of things that gay men are expected to apologize for their group as a whole.
Yet, this same expectation is not true for other groups. In the way that all gay men are responsible for the actions of a few, no one is expected to take responsibility for the homophobia from the radfems deeply interwoven into the online portion of this movement. It’s often written off because they have such small followers and often have younger ages (such as 19-21) in their bio. For this reason, these accounts are able to openly form harassment and hate campaigns that go without any genuine criticism or pushback. And they follow or are followed by and interact with many major accounts participating in and influencing these discussions. Of course, there’s also evidence that radfems are being influenced by TRAs, so who knows who is influencing who.
Any time I’ve brought the example of a radfem telling me to catch HIV and get hate crimed up as an example of homophobia from a segment of radical feminism, I’m told that it’s a fake TRA account and not a radfem—until the radfems that witnessed it unfold come along to clarify that this is very much a real woman, who is blackpilled and unhinged…yet very much a radical feminist. Once it’s been established this person is real and a radfem, the tune switches. At that point, instead of it being a TRA sock, it’s now a tiny sect of feminism and since they don’t have a lot of followers (and despite the fact they follow or are followed by major accounts) it doesn’t matter much and I should just block and move on. It’s the same argument they used when one of these radfem accounts put “This Is a James Dreyfus Hate Account” in their bio. No one wants to actually ADDRESS it or condemn it in a meaningful manner because it’s much easier to simply minimize, scoff at, and ultimately dismiss. The homophobia is forgiven because it’s men being targeted.
When I asked a 20k follower radfem account to speak on this matter, she simply denied it was a radfem account again and tried to redirect the blame to the general gender critical movement, and once again, the women who witnessed it had to come along and clarify that it was a real woman and radfem. Radio silence about the homophobia after that.
Drama as a Distraction
Instead, she and others have chosen to focus on the fact I didn’t believe an entirely anonymous account detailing strangely specific sexual abuse, eventually adding on such drastic and obviously made up things that ultimately most of radfem Twitter doesn’t even believe her anymore.
Her stories escalated until she was telling tales about memories reclaimed from therapy hypnosis that detailed eating babies with my name. Somehow, me not believing a person like this is more important than the homophobia I’ve been pointing out. This, to many people, is an example of my poor allyship to women. As much as I wish to be allies to women, I simply cannot bring myself to believe these ridiculous things, written by an anonymous account as if writing a fanfic, and reject the idea I’m a bad ally for refusing to buy into it.
I think others choose to focus on this because it’s better to DARVO instead of actually address the root of the problem.
Open Lack of Empathy
It’s well known in the GC movement that women do not have to have empathy for autogynephiles. As is right. However, the women and men who choose to have that empathy, whether it be a personal or clinical level of empathy, are demonized. We can see this in the way Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad faced such horrific backlash over their interview with Debbie Hayton. In the way Aaron Terrell and Aaron Kimberly are torn down for daring to care.
The problem isn’t that women don’t have empathy for AGPs, the problem is that same lack of empathy, the one that is justified by their proposed oppression hierarchy, extends to the demonization of other women, it extends to the homophobia and to the way that homophobia gets swept under the rug. It extends to the way it never gets meaningfully confronted or condemned by major contributors.
Reconciling Reality with Ideology
I still consider myself a feminist ally, when looking at feminism generally as a women’s rights movement; and while I even still align with most of radical feminism, I’ve heard quite a few radfem narratives recently that I reject. Ranging from “gay men inherently oppress women” to “gay men that jerk off to gay porn are complicit in sex crimes against women”. Mantras that echo similarly to “transwomen are women”. It takes a whole lotta reality denial to simply accept that.
Of course, I still believe that gay men have male privilege and that patriarchy rules the world but I wish to discuss the nuance around how that privilege is experienced differently by gay men. People see that statement as me saying “gay men should get a free pass” when in reality, I simply don’t believe that just because ANY ideology has assigned all males (or “cis” people, in the case of transgenderism) as their inherent oppressors, that it justifies the types of bigotry discussed here in this essay.
I appreciate what I learned from radical feminism because it does have good things to teach, especially about gender and women’s sex based rights. The homophobia hidden deep within is a stark reminder that any ideology is capable of hosting hate.
Inside the Infighting
Much like the ugly underbelly of transgenderism was exposed to me, the same is true for these segments of the gender critical movement. I can’t unsee the homophobia and the way it isn’t discussed or addressed in a meaningful manner is genuinely alarming. It concerns me for the gay men and teens that are desisting or peaking and joining the gender critical movement, only to find a new form of homophobia they must stay quiet about, and a new ideology they must accept as true or else be cast out.
It concerns me that gay men are having life ruining accusations thrown at them over such weak evidence. It concerns me that so many people think the invasion of gay male spaces and culture is a lesser problem, or that we aren’t allowed to center ourselves and our needs. It concerns me that so many false notions of gay men still exist to this day and that questioning those notions is wrongthink.
I hope our movement can get past the infighting. I firmly believe the first step towards that is openly addressing the underlying homophobia we aren’t willing to discuss. So…let’s discuss it.