The other day a friend shard her repsonse a tweet that was something about cis women being so different from trans women that sometimes "we" (cis women) "need a space just for us."

So I replied "I, a cis woman, can't think of ANY time I've EVER "needed a space just for us."

I want to share women's spaces with trans women, not transphobes. Transphobes make the world less safe; trans women don't."

Now that tweet has a ton more likes and RTs than mine usually do (especially because I'm hardly on birdsite any more), and even better a ton of nice replies: other cis women vehemently agreeing, trans woman saying thank you, I even got a DM from a stranger thanking me, jokes (at transphobes' expense), kindness, minor misunderstandings being cleared up and apologized for. All so civil and supportive. It's been great.

And, perhaps best of all, it took 24 hours for transphobes to turn up (that I can see anyway, I guess twitter is shadowbanning more of them now, which is awesome). Both of course predictable and boring and easily shooed away. Even the few tweets I made to them have likes and good replies now! Weird!

What becomes (relatively) popular on social media is sort of random but I think I stumbled on a good theme here too.

It always drives me crazy that the transphobes who think they're feminists try to claim to speak for all cis women.

I as a cis woman have the power to say not just "you don't" but "you're more threatening to my safety than any amount of trans people."

That latter seemed to resonate with people.

It's true. And it's not just true because, as another tweet I saw said, "I know of over a dozen cis women who, in the last year, have been challenged in toilets, all of them were either butch, not white, or had disabilities, and as such did not fit the idea of what a woman "should" look like."

Transphobes make me less safe in this way: I am two of those three things. I haven't been confronted but I do have to consider this in loos.

But it's not just about them being a threat to groups I personally fall into.

Transphobes are rarely just transphobes. Bigotries are herd animals, you rarely find one alone. Many prominent TERFs and similar are also racist af, they're xenophobic, my autistic husband is aware of them as Autism Speaks types who want a "cure." There's a lot of overlap with them and men's rights activists.

They are not safe for anyone.

It should be bad enough that they're transphobic, but for a lot of people it's not. Not yet, anyway.

I hate that cis women's feelings, white women's feelings, are given priority over more marginalized people's safety and lives but if that's the world I'm stuck living in, I'm gonna tell everyone that I feel safe about trans women and I don't feel safe around transphobes.

I'm still not sure about this as a tactic, don't know if I've got the right balance of de-centering myself in favor of more marginalized people, vs using my privilege for good.

I want to be a microphone rather than to talk over the people whose voices aren't allowed to be as strong. And part of that is learning not to be defensive if I get it wrong, not to take things personally or think it's enough that I have good intentions.