Are you a rapist?

Guess we need some context in here huh.

A photo of Margaret Atwood. I’d never actually seen a picture of her before now because I’m the first one to admit I don’t really read too much literature and don’t really follow famous people at all but actually she looks kinda bad ass not gonna lie. I’m loving her hair which is all greyed and sticky-uppy, its such a vibe.

Recently Trans Twitter has been buzzing a little bit over what appears to be incredibly prominent feminist writer Margaret Atwood platforming transphobic rhetoric. At least twice now The Handmaid’s Tale writer has shared articles which defend talking points common to transphobia and subsequently faced criticism from the trans community for doing so. Atwood claims the people she’s platforming aren’t TERFs or rather, transphobic, but… well… they kind of are.

This includes Atwood’s most recent share, which is an article written by a transgender woman no less. Writing for CBC, a Canadian outlet, Jessica Triff’s opinion piece is headlined; “Trans rights? Yes. Toxic, in-your-face activism? No”. The piece defends transphobic voices such as JK Rowling and Meghan Murphy and altogether condemns trans people while not being particularly robust on talking about the toxicity inherent to the anti-trans movements the above women belong to.

So its that context that I want to bring to the discussion table today and its for that reason I’ve titled this piece as I have, a question which I direct at all LGBTQIA+ people reading this right now; Are you a rapist? Are you more likely to be a paedophile? Are you a fetishist just trying to get off on controlling people? Are you an opportunistic predator just trying to sneak a look at people in…