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So Debbie Hayton wrote a dishonest hit piece full of lies about trans people for the National Review, and I saw several people describe what she's doing as "internalized transphobia." To me, this isn't something that can be explained away as self-hatred or internalized bigotry.
This is a far larger issue than Debbie's feelings about whether or not she's really trans. Virtually everything she says about trans people and especially trans women is a blatant lie. She says this stuff to pander to GCs, because it confirms their own biases.
Her attempts to wreck trans people's lives are not "internalized transphobia" or "internalized transmisogyny." Her attempts to wreck trans people's lives are her building a career on our lives and bodies for money and clout. Whether or not she even believes what she says is
almost immaterial, as they're stated for effect, not to inform. She helped Russia Today translate one of her transmisogynist articles for Russia Today at the same time that Russia is cracking down on LGBTQ+ people hard. She's helping incite the destruction of the LGBTQ+ rights
movement in Russia. This makes her no better than the right wing evangelical leaders who pushed Uganda to punish *being gay* with the death penalty. This is what she's doing. She has more in common with the unabomber than she does with any trans woman, and it shows.
It is simply the fact that her weapons are words and op-eds and lies instead of actual explosives. That doesn't exonerate her, however, because what she's doing is called "stochastic terrorism." She's inciting violence and hatred against trans people especially. Not by any one
person at any one time in any one place, but that among those who read her incendiary and disingenuous lies about trans people, someone may very well decide to take matters into her own hands and commit an act of terrorism against the trans community. Don't make excuses for her.
I want everyone to understand that Debbie is not an innocent victim, she's not a dupe, she's not confused, and she's not misguided. She knows what she's doing and has all along. Her malicious actions exceed even those of Miranda Yardley, who doxxed trans children to GCs.
I know we joke about her having a humiliation fetish, but I think the reality is that she enjoys hurting people and it just so happens that the people she can hurt the most are members of the same demographic she is.
Muting this thread because tbh I'm not really a fan of trying to elide the fact that she's chosen to do harm.
Like, I get it, people have the impulse to give the benefit of the doubt. "Well maybe they're doing this for some more benign reason" but how long has it been? How much has Debbie escalated? She literally wrote propaganda for a government that's stripping LGTBQ+ rights away?
At what point are we allowed to say that someone is a malicious actor doing deliberate harm if it isn't after months or even years of declarations on social media or overwrought op-eds filled with outright lies and falsely painting a marginalized group as dangerous?
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but when I see someone enacting abuse on a community-wide scale for this long, they've long since forfeited any right to the benefit of the doubt.
