Well, sort of. I was invited to host the @Netherlanders Twitter account, which is like the @Sweden account once was, an account that has a new host every week. The host is tied to the Netherlands in some way and will discuss all things Dutch or anything on their mind. So I decided to chat about creativity, naturally!
But this all went quickly pear-shaped and that's how I ended up in the Feminist publication 4W with the headline: Feminist Accused of 'Wrongthink' Prevented from Posting Art to Collaborative Twitter Project
You see, no sooner than I had been announced people protested the choice of me as a host.
I hadn't even made a single tweet, but my personal account was inundated with bot-like harassment of tweets all saying the same exact thing.
Coincidentally it was the same thing that the previous host tweeted out in his last tweet before leaving: "trans rights are human rights." It looked like this:
Archive of my tweet: https://archive.is/z07HL
I carried on with my tweets about Dutch creative culture, every single one that I tweeted out is in this gallery here. All of these tweets have now been deleted.
I replied to previous hosts' tweets, and even got a little slap-happy and silly with the Dutch language. I was determined to not stray from the path of tweeting about creativity, despite the group of activists scouring my personal Twitter account for wrongthink. My tweets from the Netherlands account were quite tame, as you can see, but this hasn't stopped people from saying that I tweeted "hate speech" from the Dutch account. Without a digital record, people will believe what they're told.
Soon enough, one of the moderators and Dutch MP politician upped and quit stating that was "the drop" (that the cup filled over with).
archive: https://archive.is/mTJqJ
original tweet: https://twitter.com/msteeman/status/1427388688678457345
Anna Slatz does a much better job than I in summarising the whole ordeal, so go read her article. This, in particular, amuses me:
Wäppling, who advised 4W she does not identify as a radical feminist, says she describes her politics as “a mom who doesn’t want the world to go backwards … I’m just a woman who doesn’t want women’s rights eroded.”
Why did I say "feminist", instead of "radical feminist" when Anna Slatz asked me? I figure I'm "just" a feminist. The word "feminist" stems from Latin femina, meaning female/woman. Simply put it's about women. The French suffragette activist Hubertine Auclert may have been the first woman to use the term, but the political idea of having equal rights to men was argued much earlier than 1840. Modern liberal "feminism" variants that center around men are simply not feminism to me at all as it betrays the root of the term. This wasn't an attempt by me to reclaim the word, this was me calling a spade a spade. While I am fully aware that 'feminism' has since the mid-2000s been something people call any action performed by a woman, so-called 'choice' feminism, I figured a 4th wave feminist publication would know what the word originally meant.
Choice feminism? Yes, you know when women claim that plastic surgery and lip enlargement is a feministic choice because it makes them feel better about themselves. Individuals can make the choices they want, it just isn't a feminist act. While women around the world suffer in menstruation huts, from FGM, as forced child brides, used as surrogates or baby machines in baby factories for profit, your average Instagram influencer pouts a selfie and calls herself a feminist, which doesn't make it so.
I just don't want women's rights eroded. That's it. Her rights to her bodily autonomy, her right to privacy, her right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Pretty simple, really. But in this twisted new world, that has been rebranded as "hate speech" and will get you canceled from hosting a Twitter account for a week. Go figure.
