all 7 comments

[–]BEB[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This site, which welcomes experiences from every country, could be a very important tool to collect data on men violating women's spaces once governments stop recording violators as "men."

Thanks, Ovarit!

Edited to add: thanks to the creators and moderators of the site too! Wonderful work!

[–]persistentlywoman 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

submitted my story:

last year a male trans identfified person started attending social events I was organising. he claimed he was a trans butch lesbian. he attempted to latch onto me and through our conversations (I wanted to be kind and inclusive) I learned more about his identity that troubled me: he didn't identify as a woman but insisted he wasn't a man. he had no genital dysphoria and ensured he was still sexually active. he lied to doctors to get estrogen, but just enough to grow breasts. he prefers he/him pronouns and a male name and presenting entirely masculine as he gets 'dysphoric' otherwise. despite all of this he insists his experience is that of a butch lesbian and that our community is where he belongs, without question. and he was very quick to frame any confusion about all of this as transphobic.

I noticed he was quite misogynistic and I reacted against this a couple of times - a reaction which he framed as abusive to him. of particular note is him standing over me in my own home, after I had cooked and fed him dinner, yelling at me about what a terrible, harmful person I am for the way I reacted to misogyny in the community. a terf. I sat there and cowered because I was too afraid of further escalation to name the gaslighting (not to mention profound disrespect and cruelty) that was going on.

finally, in the lead up that confrontation, he had presented himself as having been the victim of false accusations of rape and the victim of a witch hunt in his former city's community. but as he revealed the details of this story that same night I realised with horror that he absolutely HAD committed rape (of a trans woman no less!) and was trying to pass it off as something more 'nuanced', as he claimed. something I have experienced many rapists doing in trying to absolve themselves of responsibility. after I asked him to leave subsequent to his attacking me, I investigated further into his past as the communities between these cities are linked, and found out his predatory behaviour was serial.

I expressed my confusion and distress anonymously on a reddit sub, which he found. we had a charged exchange in which I named him as a rapist and detailed his manipulation and distortions about it.

I later found out he had gone on to commit rape here as well since relocating from his former city. in this instance it was a gnc woman, and he repeatedly forced her to say she was 'really a boy' throughout the experience.

relatedly, he was also in the butchlesbian subreddit pontificating about how gnc women should all identify as trans and it was denying reality to claim otherwise. the agenda was so obvious it made my stomach turn.

I was to be on the guest list of a recent event celebrating butch identity where I live. I had assisted the organisers with contacts. he was to be walking the runway of this event. the week before the event the organisers contacted me saying the reddit post (again - anonymous) had made them aware I held views which could be damaging to their brand as a safe, inclusive event and they could not have me on the guest list. I asked them if having a rapist on their stage would damage their brand. these two women replied they would not get involved in a personal conflict. when I pointed out that they already had and were excluding a lesbian from a lesbian event in favour of a rapist, they claimed the call was not productive and ended it - though I did tell them to go to hell before hanging up.

I am now left facing the sordid reality that a lesbian - a participating member of my local community for close to 20 years - was blocked from a lesbian event because an abusive male weaponised identity politics against her, whilst leveraging bogus claims of shared identity to coerce women into sex with him, either through intoxication or intimidation. or both. all the while telling everyone around him that they're transphobic for objecting to any of this. that he recruited other women into discriminating against a woman who knew too much about his true nature and intentions amongst us. that he is protecting himself behind crocodile tears about his own feelings and pain, like he hasn't devastated the lives of several women through sheer hate and a sense of entitlement towards us.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I feel rather saddened about this one I read:

Since shaving my head I keep being harassed by people calling me a man and telling me to leave. I blame the rise of transgenderism for these attitudes and demand that something be done.

I've always wondered if transgenderism has contributed to an air of mistrust that's hurt butch/masculine women, where people are always on the defensive and wondering if they're actually female or not, and if the growing backlash against TRAs catches these women in the crossfire. It's a constant lie that trans activism does not cause any harm.

[–]DR373737 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Do you have to be a member of Ovarit for information to this website? If so can someone provide an invite code? I would appreciate it

[–]BEB[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

No, just click on the main post in the Ovarit link.

Or, here's a direct link to the site - this will take you straight to the site.

https://www.noconflicttheysaid.org/

[–]DR373737 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you.

[–]aloris342 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is good, but if we really want to gather usable evidence that eliminating women-only spaces causes harm, then these reports need to be verifiable. Obviously, we cannot have a situation where victims are asked to post their stories with their names attached, because that could be very risky for them. But maybe we could discuss whether there is a way for the victims to gather evidence without putting themselves at risk. For example, we need to help victims to know what kind of evidence they should be keeping in their private records: name of the establishment, date of the incident, names of any witnesses or other people present (if known), etc. Maybe they could take a photo of the outside of the establishment so they can document where they were and when they were there (obviously, for legal reasons, they would not be able to photograph the relevant areas). That way, if they wanted their experience to become part of the body of evidence later, they would have some written documentation. I doubt anything will be good enough for the people who are in charge of regulating all of this (of course the problem with eliminating the sex-specific nature of restrooms is that there is no way for a woman to prove what happened to her). But I think we have to prepare to gather evidence where we can, and work with the situation we have.