Professor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
So here's how my week has gone so far (thread)
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022

At 2:45pm on Friday, a friend tips me off that prominent Australian anti-trans activist #SallGrover is about to be interviewed on #ABCBrisbane Radio's #DriveWithSteveAustin

Sall is best known for creating Giggle, a dating app/social networking platform(???) which claims to be for cis women only and to exclude trans women through essentially AI-powered phrenology

Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
I immediately write a note of objection to the ABC, pointing out that this violates a number of provisions of their binding and enforceable editorial standards. I post about it on Twitter while I'm doing this
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
At 4:04pm, Sall posts angrily that ABC management has just decided to spike the interview for undisclosed reasons. I publicly repost this to let my own people know that the interview has been cancelled, but otherwise I do nothing
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Slightly earlier, at about 3:30pm, my friend Avery discovers that #SteveAustin, not Stone Cold, who was due to host the show, has Likes of transfem porn stretching back years. He doesn't appear to be aware that Twitter Likes are public. This becomes the A plot of the weekend.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022

Steve starts frantically deleting his Likes while he's still on air. Shortly after coming off air, he stops deleting likes, and, having seemingly decided to post through it, posts a message essentially claiming he was hacked ("interference with my account").

He hasn't deleted enough of his Likes, literally his first visible surviving Like is transfem porn, so this gets him a further round of mockery.

Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
I and a couple of other Brisbane-based activists like #AmySargeant are harping on it at this point not because Steve is consuming transfem porn, which is great — or would be great if he were paying for it instead of getting it from content-stealing aggregators like "Shemale Kingdom" — but because he's doing the typical dickhead move of watching our porn while colluding with people like Sall to eliminate us
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022

On Saturday, the story reaches the local News Corp daily, #TheCourierMail, which obviously covers it as mainly a "hahaha normal guy watching tranny freak porn!" story and reports that the ABC has opened an investigation. This has clearly spiralled out of control at this point and I'm starting to feel a bit of regret.

Amy is Sall's bete noire, so Sall initially blames her. However, at some point, Sall realises it was mostly me.

Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Sall unblocks me (I don't even remember why she had me blocked) and charges into my mentions with what I interpret as belligerence, insistently inviting me to debate her. I dismiss her with the level of respect her politics deserve, which is to say none. She reblocks me in what appears to be a towering rage.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Sometime late on Saturday, @katymontgomerie posts a video talking to Amy about the whole sordid affair. They very kindly mention me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWPS9PTLrzI
"Gender Critical" radio host caught liking trans porn on Twitter... for YEARS

YouTube
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
On Sunday, in an apparent desperate attempt to retain control of the narrative, Sall and another prominent Australian TERF, #AngieJones, release a video of their own as part of their #TERFTalkDownUnder vodcast, still mostly focusing on Amy out of habit, but making assertions about what kinks I'm into in order to drag me through the mud. At least one person reports that Sall comes off weirdly afraid of me; I'm not going to believe it but it's very funny.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
On Monday, I have coffee with my friend Liz, ironically at Champ Bar and Kitchen on the frontage of ABC Brisbane where Steve works (this was planned like a month in advance and because I know the area, so it definitely wasn't to dab on him, although I did make a joke to that effect). Turns out we missed a TERF protest with all of six people and their blatantly astroturfed signs by a margin of a couple of hours.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Either Sunday or Monday, I don't remember which, some TERF finds a picture of my breasts with which I'd replied to a joke by a friend a few months earlier, copies it, and tags the ABC in it, slightly surreally demanding to know why the ABC is listening to "drug-addicted young males" like me. At first I feel unsettled, but my tits are moderately nice — enjoyable depending on individual taste — and all that happens is I get a few compliments from my friends.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Note that under the #CriminalCodeAct1899Qld s 223, what that TERF did actually legally constitutes image-based abuse (i.e., the criminal offence covering revenge porn). I was surprised to find this out because I and apparently the TERF assumed that the image would have had to not be public beforehand, but I guess that's not the case after all.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endings
Today, Tuesday, the #AustralianSenate's Community Affairs References Committee, chaired by Senator Janet Rice (Greens–Victoria), holds the Brisbane public hearing for its Inquiry into the nature and extent of poverty in Australia, at the Hotel Grand Chancellor on Leichhardt St. I am one of four witnesses, as is one of my Twitter mutuals, David Wakeham. The event is audio livestreamed, will be transcribed in the Senate Hansard, and was livetweeted by the #AntipovertyCentre.
Dec 6, 2022 at 6:52amWeb
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Senator Rice's office also quotes part of my statement. I don't know why they picked me, or if they only picked me. Rice is absolutely hated among TERFs because she's a bisexual cis woman whose late wife was trans, and because she's been absolutely unstinting and unflinching in her support of trans rights and opposition to transphobia both inside the Victorian Greens and in Parliament.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
The TERFs make a very clever decision, consistent with their reputation for being the smartest beings alive: they arrive in Senator Rice's replies, demanding to know why a "predator" like me, who posts "vile unsolicited porn shows," is being allowed to testify in the Senate. To substantiate the "predator" allegation, they ... post the titty pic. Again. Committing a criminal offence. Again.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Now, in the first place, the titty pic was very much solicited by my friend: they literally said something to the effect of "I wish girls would post pics of their boobs to cheer me up ... haha ... unless?", and they're a sufficiently comfortable and chill person that I would totally let them get away with that shit, so I did. All they're managing to do is make me look like an incredibly cool bitch with cooler friends. Which I am.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
Anyway I have no idea where things are going from here but they're going absolutely mad over the fact that if there's a thing that's gonna make me curl up and die they still haven't managed to find it, and they've made themselves look like fucking gigantic freaks, in public, into the bargain. Which I fully intend to capitalise on.
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022

Oh SHIT I totally forgot to mention, Sall and co. are coming up with this wild conspiracy theory about how well-connected I must be to have been allowed to speak in the Senate.

It was an open public signup process I found out about from a Tweet from the Senate's Twitter account. It was under-attended; we could have fit 8–12 people in the available time but there were only 4 of us. No connections required.

Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 11, 2022

Update on this one:

1. TERFs publicly and loudly outed me as having a stigmatised kink but I'm fine

2. Steve Austin's reactivated his Twitter account and *guess what, there's still porn in his Likes*

Show threadAnathemaJaneDec 11, 2022
@epistemophagy the wrestler?
Show threadHelen_Barton_auDec 11, 2022
@AnathemaJane @epistemophagy No, the radio announcer from Brisbane, Australia. He was going to platform a high ranking GC on his show until someone found that his timeline had huge amounts of trans porn on it.
Show threadAnathemaJaneDec 11, 2022
@Helen_Barton_au @epistemophagy that's terverts for you
Show threadOzwobblyDec 11, 2022
@epistemophagy this is objectively the dumbest timeline.
Show threadCayla HardwickeDec 13, 2022
@epistemophagy 🤔 who would have guessed they are always trash
Show threadjust adrienneDec 6, 2022
@epistemophagy this sounds like it's been rough, i hope you are okay <3 i have to go to bed but i'd love to talk tomorrow?
Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
@adrienne I'm coasting on the dopamine, I'm doing fine. I hope you sleep well!
Show threadOzwobblyDec 6, 2022

@epistemophagy

Holy shit. You've made them so fucking mad and they keep embarrassing themselves in the most public way possible.

Just amazing work.

Also don't regret very publicly embarrassing someone who was platforming someone who wants to eliminate you. They deserve to deal with the consequences of their hypocrisy and none of that is on you.

Show threadClaudia Caesaris 🏳️‍⚧️🥚Dec 6, 2022
@epistemophagy There's streets in the hills of San Francisco with fewer twists and turns than this.
Show threadPARAsocial_work🏳️‍⚧️Dec 6, 2022
@epistemophagy you're goddamn fucking right you are.
Show threadJamieGCDec 6, 2022

@epistemophagy congrats, and keep up the good work.

Is Australia as terf heavy as UK?

Show threadProfessor Fig dies all endingsDec 6, 2022
@jamiegc definitely not in the same kind of pervasive the-cis-people-in-this-country-willingly-read-THE-TELEGRAPH sort of way. They're trying but they're not having much luck. They're definitely able to easily get government institutions of either major party to do what they want though, the current Labor prime minister has even less backbone on trans issues than Starmer, and his predecessor as Leader (who is a minister) is openly colluding