On Christmas Eve, Thistle received a message to her personal inbox from Wisconsin based environmental activist Cailie Kafura. Cailie’s message to Thistle included calling her “transphobic” and scolding her for celebrating J.K. Rowling’s recent tweet.
Thistle posted Rowling’s tweet to her Facebook page soon after it came out with the innocuous “I’m excited to wake up to this today!” The original tweet is pictured below.
Thistle regularly posts feminist content to her Facebook page so what was it about this particular post that inspired Kafura to send a harassing message to Thistle on the night before Christmas when it is known that many people are visiting with friends and family?
We don’t know, but you can view Kafura’s Christmas cheer including the cheer she sent to the WLRN inbox that same night below.
We here at DFC demand an end to this kind of personal harassment aimed at an individual woman who is exercising her right to free speech and to live a life in public that is harassment free.
I feel sorry for the misogyny Cailie Kafura. These people are filled with hate and stupidity and take out their own self-loathing on women, whom they have been targeting for 5,000 years. Stand strong Thistle. There are legions of us behind you. Have the best new year ever and thanks for all your good work for women.
Hey Thistle, I know the kind of feedback you received from Cailie can be hard to hear, but it’s super important. Here’s some more info on how JK Rowling’s tweet is transphobic. I invite you to consider the harm the tweet caused to trans women (an especially marginalized group of women) and how your feminism could benefit from becoming more trans inclusive. If we take time to reflect and consider perspectives from marginalized people that differ from our own, our activism grows stronger.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2550276788627617&id=2046235422365092&sfnsn=mo
I looked at the link. There is nothing of substance there to support the idea that Rowling’s statement was “bigoted.”
What she was saying was that people should be able to express their personalities as they like without discrimination. For what is “gender” but a set of stereotypes and dictates about how males and females are supposed to behave respectively i.e. “masculinity” and “femininity”? No one should be forced into a box based on these stereotypes. People should be able to be themselves. However, that does not mean we should deny the existence of biological sex as a material fact of how our species and all other mammals reproduce nor the particular experience of people born with a female reproductive system in a society that continues to discriminate against us based on this very characteristic, that of sex. It’s hard to imagine a feminism not grounded on these facts – why would you need it? ~ Ann Menasche