Why I "Feed the Trolls"

I'm frequently asked by friends both male and female, (who generally don't rock the boat or get involved in any kind of on or offline activism), why I don't just ignore trolls, why I "feed them" as it were.

I don't engage trolls to have any effect on the TROLLS. Unlike the trolls, I'm not an idiot. Whether it's an MRA being a sexist asshole, a TERF being an abusive transphobic twunt, a hyper conservative religious fundamentalist shitting on the chessboard, (500 points if you get the joke there), or just some juvenile loser being a douchebag for his own amusement, I KNOW that nothing I say or do will EVER, (barring one or two very rare exceptions), change the mind of the one trolling. I'm fully aware that nothing I say, no matter how rational, logical, factual and reasonable, will change what the trolls believe or make them stop being a dick.

I challenge them for the ones watching. The observers who aren't commenting but just reading. The ones who are sitting on the fence, who aren't well-versed or informed on the subject. When I see a troll spreading hateful lies and bullshit an uninformed fence sitter might mistake as fact, I call the troll out and rebuke their bullshit with facts. I tell the factual truth to counter their lies. I explain what feminism actually is, what misogyny means, who trans people actually are and the medical science behind it, and why a religious belief has no business dictating secular laws.

And I do it for the ones reading the exchange, who will see one person being a jerkass and see me calmly dissecting their claims, and hopefully learn both the truth from me, and how to spot a troll spreading hateful dishonesty.

And I know it works because I honestly cannot even COUNT how many times over the past nigh two decades someone has told me how informative I was and how much they learned that they didn't know before from reading my replies to trolls.

I engage the trolls so I can teach the audience. And it works. And if by responding trolls with facts and truth I can educate some good if naive people away from the hate and ignorance, then it's worth the abuse I have to wade through from the trolls to do it.

Why Cathy Brennan and her TERFs are, in fact, TERRORISTS

Terrorist.
ter·ror·ist [TEAR-er-ist] noun
1. a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.
2. a person who terrorizes or frightens others.

Terrorism.
ter·ror·ism [TEAR-uh-riz-uhm] noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.

Terrorize.
ter·ror·ize [TEAR-er-rise] verb (used with object, ter·ror·ized, ter·ror·iz·ing.)
1. to fill or overcome with terror.
2. to dominate or coerce by intimidation.

Read these definitions. And then read these quotes.  (Source; TERF Quotes)

TERF Activist and blooger Bev Jo: "They expect we’ll be shocked to see statistics about them being killed, and don’t realize, some of us wish they would ALL be dead."

TERF Blogger Luckynkl: "The male-born are biologically incomplete mutants, useless and obsolete; walking viruses on two legs and a cancer, spreading disease, death and destruction wherever they go. They are the walking-dead and the antithesis to life. Gyn-energy sucking vampires who have to plug into women and feed on them in order to survive. No different than a parasite who sucks the life and energy out of its host."

TERF Blogger Bonobabe: "Personally, I think we should do away with circumcision and replace it with castration."

TERF Blogger WhiteTiger: "If we’re going that road, why not just cull boy babies for awhile? Re-establish a sane balance. Then we can start selective breeding programs for donor males…" [To cull means to reduce the population of by selective slaughter.]

TERF Blogger JourneyMistress: "It might be well and good to “educate” them [males] but that seems to take decades. Only if you are dedicated to educating the Terminally Stupid should you embark on this…Detachment is the key to emotional survival in a world plagued by males. Otherwise you really do just want to shoot them on sight."

I'd paste more from TERFQuotes but I'm already nauseous just from those. If you have the stomach, click the link for more.

Other examples of TERF terrorism include fallout from having a conference cancelled in London once the venue owners realized the message the TERFs were promoting.

On that page you'll see TERF leader Cathy "Bug" Brennan engage in blatant terrorist tactics by trying to incite fear against trans women, ally men and women, and generally ANYONE contradicting her, including calling trans women "all men", and calling an enlightened young man a "rapist" for "violating her boundaries" by simply replying to her PUBLICLY POSTED HATE TWEETS.

Here, from Rational Wiki, is a collection of examples of Cathy Brennan's terrorist campaigns against Trans Women.

One example from that page; "The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization that stirred up the right wing world by claiming that a trans kid (whom we will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of privacy) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story without conducting any fact-checking, prompting members of the right wing community to call for the death of the trans kid. Cathy Brennan's Gender Identity Watch site jumped in to help the PJI attack the trans teen. The Pacific Justice Institute claims that "a male student, NAME CENSORED, who claims to be transgender, has allegedly harassed female students in the girls room at Florence High School." Even after Brennan learned that the teen was on suicide watch, she has left the teen's real name on her blog as well as updating it recently."

Here, Bitch Media examines the harm and hypocrisy of Brennan's tactics.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

One doesn't need to Strap on a bomb vest or fly a plane into a building to be a terrorist. One only needs to actively engage in campaigns of fearmongering to knowingly and intentionally incite a higher risk of violence against your chosen target. Like a KKK Grand Wizard never had to dirty his own hands with the blood of black folks because he incited other more gullible people into such fear and rage that they'd go do it for him, Brennan and her TERFs, however few they are, are doing that exact very thing; Appealing to the fears of gullible people with the intentional and malicious goal of getting trans women hurt or even murdered, while smugly believing their own hands are clean.

Now go back up to the top of the page, and reread those definitions.

And then tell me Brennan and her TERFs are not Terrorists in the purist definition of the word.

Click here to sign a petition to have Brennan's group Gender Identity Watch classified officially as a hate group.