Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson is a transgender-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF),[1] a self-proclaimed "skeptic" (but she probably isn't), and the editor of Butterflies and Wheels, a blog about pseudoscience.

This might be
Skepticism
But we're not sure
Who's asking?
v - t - e

The good

Ms. Benson was a self-professed "skeptic" despite denying important feminist principles. She coauthored several books criticizing and satirizing anti-rationalism, misogyny,[note 1] and pseudoscience.[2][better source needed] All of these are in partnership with Jeremy StangroomFile:Wikipedia's W.svg, a British sociologist and the cofounder of Butterflies and Wheels.[3] She's also a notable female atheist, which is nice, given the inequality in the atheist community.[citation needed]

The bad

She left Freethought Blogs because she was rightfully[1] called a transphobe for "having her own ideas about gender".[4] These ideas put her at odds with many other Freethought Blogs writers, since it's mostly populated with people who support social justice. Which she actually dislikes, given the fact that she thanked Cathy Brennan for her Twitter post defending Benson and denouncing so-called "SJWs."

The ugly

Ms. Benson wrote:[5]

Trans women are the women who really matter. Cis women are too privileged to matter, plus frankly they’re kind of bitches, don’t you think?

Notes
  1. Notably not transmisogyny. Wonder why that is...
gollark: Okay, do `/dev/mem` and not `/dev/kmem`.
gollark: Wait a few thousand years?
gollark: `dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem`
gollark: Just work it out™.
gollark: Just make it immediately trigger a kernel panic in case of an allocation failure.

References
  1. Some of her comments on Facebook and Twitter. She compares transgender people to Rachel Dolezal's transracialism, dances around saying trans women are women and thanks Cathy Brennan for her support.
  2. See the Wikipedia article for a list with references.
  3. http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/books/why-truth-matters/
  4. https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/
  5. http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2019/all-women/ /
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