Victoria Smith

Author of Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women and Unkind: How Kindness Culture Punishes Women
Agent: Caroline Hardman (npub1r0r…qryz) Email: glosswatch @ gmail.com
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Location: Cheltenham
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Last Notes

2026-04-09 17:29:12 UTC

I wrote about this a while ago. It is really damaging to anorexia sufferers to be told "you must gain weight or you'll die" if no one ever seems to comment on the models and actresses who look just like them https://open.substack.com/pub/glosswitch/p/how-should-we-talk-about-ultra-thin?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7y1g1

2025-11-14 13:29:29 UTC

The reasons why women want single-sex spaces should make men ashamed. Instead, women are shamed for wanting single-sex spaces.
https://bird.makeup/users/mforstater/statuses/1989001943193428202
#note1t6j…w3nu

2025-10-16 16:35:21 UTC

Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
https://bird.makeup/users/ripx4nutmeg/statuses/1978787317176242404
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G3ZG0t3WEAE_p6p.jpg
#note1aps…pf85

2025-09-29 12:35:08 UTC

I wrote about the age-old "better feminists (who make no demands) will replace the old hags/terfs/shrews" narrative that benefits - only temporarily - the likes of Emma Watson https://thecritic.co.uk/watsons-elementary-mistakes/

2025-09-22 15:55:44 UTC

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I have been banging on about this for years, tbf. But it is absolutely infuriating
https://thecritic.co.uk/sex-denialism-helps-nobody/

2025-09-22 15:44:45 UTC

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And it's such a tiny thing. Give up a teeny tiny bit of your 'progressive' misogyny in order to stop the other side in their tracks on this issue. But no.

2025-09-22 15:41:41 UTC

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Arguing for the integrity of women's spaces and sports has always been there for the taking for the left. If you couldn't be arsed to argue for it - and mean it, unlike those who've taken the argument from you - it's not other people who've helped the right here.

2025-09-22 15:36:35 UTC

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I mean, honestly. You don't think the threat of Trump is serious enough not to gift him the open goal of sex denialism, but women who want their own spaces and sports - which should be a progressive principle - are the "enthusiastic foot soldiers"?

2025-09-22 15:29:35 UTC

Alternately, one might argue that anyone who gifted the right "women having their own sports" as a principle can't have cared very much about fighting fascism
https://bird.makeup/users/erikmbaker/statuses/1969223898110599603
#note1e0e…9e34

2025-09-03 17:59:42 UTC

If you were scared to speak the truth, then you already knew the price being paid by those who were doing so - and still chose to add to it. Why does Gladwell think the pressure needs explaining? We've all felt it.
https://bird.makeup/users/benryanwriter/statuses/1963015126573056209
#note1grq…k4ny

2025-09-03 17:05:48 UTC

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Terfs - middle-aged women - have been treated as cannon fodder in the gender wars. Let them take it till it's safe for everyone else, then later we can imply it was a great moral challenge for us, whereas they were just stopped clock bigots

2025-09-03 17:03:19 UTC

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I really struggle to feel generous towards this. I've had years of people telling me they're scared, as if the women I've seen having their reputations trashed aren't. It always starts to sound like "you don't get it, I'm important. I have something to lose, unlike you lot!"

2025-08-22 18:57:55 UTC

Every abusive man belongs to at least one group - a family, a religion, a class, a claimed identity - that his victim will be accused of unfairly smearing / shaming / singling out by pointing out he's an abusive man, same as all the others
https://bird.makeup/users/lbc/statuses/1958639155795095880
#note1kph…x83q

2025-08-05 16:51:18 UTC

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The bullies don't make you feel bad or uncomfortable because they haven't actually been wronged. They're powerful people who let you win their approval (for now).

2025-08-05 16:44:51 UTC

When people refer to bullies as "joyful" and their victims as "divisive" it reminds me of Judith Herman's observation about bystanders siding with perpetrators because they ask nothing of you.
https://bird.makeup/users/msjlindsay/statuses/1952663019021832572
#note1vz2…ys6u

2025-08-05 15:46:38 UTC

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The divisive, complaining women, making everything so polarised, even risking making you feel bad! The joyful, charming bullies who ask for nothing but your adoration!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GxmW1FTWEAAGs8O.jpg

2025-08-04 18:44:35 UTC

Trans activists are never accused of creating toxic divisions just for saying what they want. They have to make death threat placards, and even then it's considered a "both sides" issue. All feminists have to do is sign a letter saying "I want to speak without being threatened".

2025-08-02 13:50:01 UTC

"We decided to make 'caring about women's rights' mean 'not caring about other rights' because we can't literally write 'we just don't like that she cares about women's rights'"
https://bird.makeup/users/tomgordonld/statuses/1951001687617052767
#note1hs4…e3fq

2025-07-01 15:00:15 UTC

Amazing how often "let people be who they want to be" translates as "let men do whatever they like"

2025-06-02 10:18:40 UTC

When the Khelif row erupted last year, I wrote about the way in which it revealed an utter trivialisation of male physical advantage and how it relates. in much broader terms, to female experiences of violence and threat > https://thecritic.co.uk/the-olympic-boxing-row-isnt-just-about-sports/

2025-05-26 09:25:21 UTC

Men who feel the category woman is in some way degraded or reduced by applying to only female humans reveal so much about their views on female humans
https://bird.makeup/@forwomenscot/1926930086218887240

2025-05-21 17:09:50 UTC

"Men do not get to use sex as an axis of our subordination for millennia & then turn around when it suits them & tell us it's just an abstraction & we're pervy weirdos for not complying with male demands for access to the spaces where we go to undress or talk about being raped."
https://bird.makeup/@janeclarejones/1925092225693684080

2025-05-20 15:57:12 UTC

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I feel so angry that a man - a man in a profession that once excluded female people due to their 'inferior' brains and *still* neglects the specificities of female bodies - will ask, all false belilderment, why we should value "genitals" over "brains" >

2025-05-20 15:55:45 UTC

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E.g. Augustin Fuentes (quoted in Unkind), and the Lancet piece published in response to the supreme court ruling. Noughties neurosexism was meant to make you feel too stupid to argue back; today's version is meant to make you feel stupid *and* a bigot if you do >
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GrZ2gFtWwAAuFXJ.png

2025-05-20 15:53:06 UTC

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Only silly GCSE-science people, or feminists who distinguish between sex as a biological reality & gender as a social hierarchy (so passé). And it is still being done now, under the guise of showing not 'why women can't read maps' (v. 2000s) but 'why terfs [feminists] are wrong'>

2025-05-20 15:50:50 UTC

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It's as if you won't notice, or will feel so intimidated by the complexity of 'the science' that you won't dare say "obsessing over football results or dressing up in pink isn't the same thing as having a penis or a vagina" - because only silly GCSE-science people think that! >

2025-05-20 15:48:23 UTC

One thing I looked at in Unkind was the way those trying to give 'scientific' justifications for gender stereotypes throw in the stereotypes in the midst of lists of biological markers related to reproductive difference e.g. Baron-Cohen in The Essential Difference >
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GrZ09UeW8AAlrzW.png

2025-05-18 11:00:21 UTC

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It's so frustrating to see women undermining their own arguments and shying away from stating the principles that you can still see lurking somewhere in the background >

2025-05-18 10:57:28 UTC

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I've not read Girl on Girl, but the review suggests it's caught in the same trap as Kate Manne's Unshrinking re body modification and plastic surgery ie terrible, unless it's framed as gender affirmation, then totally fine. >

2025-05-18 10:54:41 UTC

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There are many feminist books right now where you know there's another book trying to get out - one which doesn't pause to qualify and apologise and backtrack in case an idea offends lovers of porn or deniers of biological sex >

2025-05-18 10:52:31 UTC

"Gilbert stresses that she is not anti-porn, or “interested in kink shaming.” She can’t even completely condemn child publicity or plastic surgery"
https://bird.makeup/@thecriticmag/1923981879809638584

2025-05-12 11:36:37 UTC

I am so sick of women's past traumatic experiences being used to suggest they have 'issues' which mean they're not capable of judging what reasonable boundaries are in the present >

2025-04-26 22:13:17 UTC

It's funny how women don't get credited for their contributions to, say, the moon landings or discovering DNA, but it's widely accepted that we invented biological sex five minutes ago, just to be mean