One of the greatest moments of my life was when I stood up to Susan Cuthbert. She ran our school playground and, yes, that is her actual name. (So sue me, Susan.) Every lunchtime, Susan assigned us a role to play. I was way down in the hierarchy, so I would spend that time pretending to be a tree in The Sound of Music or, when I crossed her, an actual rail track. I would have to lie down on the tarmac for an hour: “Please walk on me.”
By the age of ten, though, I had the measure of her and spent a lot of time persuading my classmates not to be bit parts in Susan Cuthbert’s mundane re-enactments, but to be stars in my special fantasy games. You could be in Dr Who, Star Trek, or T Rex. You can be heroes. Just for one lunchtime. We froze her out.
But guess what? It turns out there are lots of Susans out there. And there is one Susan in particular who frequently uses his platform to demean women. Social media bullying is still something that no one knows quite how to deal with. It’s virtual until it isn’t, and all I can say is this man’s tweets bring violence and hatred to my door, including rape and death threats. It’s all especially horrible because he’s been to my house more than once for lunches and parties, only to later reveal himself to be a misogynist pest.
Owen Jones has long been very angry with me, and it’s not really to do with trans people at all. (There were trans people at many of those parties he attended — that’s how Terfy I am.) Trans people are merely pawns in his proxy war, and they deserve far better representatives. His real problem with me was that I did not support Corbyn or those who surrounded him. I didn’t feel it was my duty to get this deluded old fool elected. But Owen, with his zillions of Twitter followers, thought otherwise and became increasingly hostile to me.
I may have been rude in my responses, but my animus against that part of the media isn’t personal: it’s about class. Owen went to Oxford and was a bag carrier in Westminster before being handed a national newspaper column. So many of these hard-Left types have no life experience and it shows.
I was reminded of that recently when Jones went on some mad rant, posting 33 tweets about me. Way to go, mate, if you don’t want to look obsessive and harassing. He wanted to rebut the idea that he had anything to do with me leaving the Guardian. The boring details are this: I chose to leave. I was not fired, but I found it intolerable to be censored for relatively mild views. I have never claimed to be cancelled or silenced. Do I think Owen was responsible for getting my “colleagues” to gang up and write a letter denouncing me? I can’t say. I certainly think he was responsible for creating the toxic atmosphere in which it happened. But he denies it and claims the letter was never about me, even though it was leaked to his mate Patrick Strudwick at Buzzfeed, who strangely seemed to think it was.
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