FFS Friday: Danni Brener
December 20, 2024
FFS (Female Free Speech) Friday honors women and girls who are speaking out about the harms that “gender identity” poses to women and girls as a sex class. FFS Friday posts are free and shareable. If you would like access to content that delves deeper into the movement to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex, please consider a paid subscription.
Today’s FFS Friday honors Danni Brener, who has been TERFing on Twitter/X for years, and shows no signs of stopping. Give her a follow at @DanniBrener.
The term you seem so outraged by — man — was not created to demean men. Even men in dresses who desperately wish they weren’t men.
It’s not easy to be an in real life TERF, using your real name and image. Plenty of TERFs are anonymous on social media. I’m not criticizing that; we’re still at the point in society at which speaking openly and accurately about matters of sex and gender can get you fired from your job, ostracized by friends and family, or otherwise cancelled.
But Danni does it, day in and day out. And she manages to do it with a sense of humor and clever emojis, notwithstanding the gravity of the situation.
A recent example: Someone named “Nonnie” on X posted: “The terms you seem so outraged by—’birthing parent,’ ‘vagina haver,’ and the like—were not created to demean c!s women.” Nonnie here is defending the use of dehumanizing language to describe women. According to Nonnie’s X bio, Nonnie is “just a small page (for now?)” whose goal “is to advocate for and share support, awareness, and information for gender diverse individuals.” Danni’s response: “The term you seem so outraged by — man — was not created to demean men. Even men in dresses who desperately wish they weren’t men.”
Perfect response. Quick and to the point, with no use of gender jargon.
For some reason, the author Joyce Carol Oates recently decided that “trans” is a hill she is willing to die on, and spent several days defending people who lie about their sex on X.
A woman brought Oates’s attention to a social media post by a man who goes by Layla Le Fey, in which he had threatened UK women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen (a.k.a., Posie Parker):
This man has also threatened Helen Joyce, a co-founder of the group Sex Matters, and you can read her witness statement here. Oates called the woman who brought this to her attention “gullible” and referred to Le Fey’s statement as a “joke” (despite the fact that he was actually convicted in criminal court of making threats).
Danni’s response: “‘It’s just a joke’ is the mantra of bullies and abusers everywhere. Thank you, Ms Oates, for admitting that this is the group you belong to.”
Sometimes I use this space to honor well-known women like J.K. Rowling (cheers to JKR for celebrating the five-year anniversary of the tweet that changed the world yesterday!).
But it’s important to bring attention to the Danni Breners of the world, who do their best to speak out on behalf of women and girls, and on behalf of the TERFs who can’t use their real names. As we all know, not all heroes wear capes. Danni, today’s FFS Friday is for you.
The Joyce Carol Oates betrayal is a real knife in the heart. It’s hard to watch women you once admired and looked up to for their accomplishments turncoat on women and girls.
I hope the pandering, or should I say the ball-palming was worth all the respect she just lost.
I’ve been disowned by the Bernie crowd b/c I spoke out against men in women’s Olympics boxing—called a bigot for standing up for women. that’s a sure sign it’s time to speak louder and clearer b/c ppl have simply lost their way. this is obvious stuff: men can’t punch women, men can’t have women’s championships, men can’t steal our scholarships in school sports. this is a hard red line for me, and i believe that the fact ppl/women who proclaim it’s bigotry are showing the evidence of how susceptible they are to base-level propaganda.
i’m sick of it.