I feel I have suffered a lot for the cause of advancing women's rights.

I have been fired. I have been doxxed. My family has been threatened. I get about 5-10 direct death threats per week. I have been threatened with expulsion from my degree. I currently cannot strike a committee for my thesis because no one wants to work with me. I have not been able to secure a paid student position at my university because they do not want to hire me, so I have no income.

I have tried to be a platform for any and all issues women have. I have used any platforms I have to fight against the erasure of women and our rights. Why? Because that is what I truly believe.

But this week has made me exhausted and I feel I need to vent. I want to note that these are not the first times things like this have happened, but these two incidents were back to back and so it got me thinking about things.

Earlier this week, I posted some selfies I took of myself in a bathing suit on my Twitter. My first bathing suit! I was so excited.

For context, I am a formerly morbidly obese person, I lost 155lbs and had to have 6 reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage my body had undergone during my eating disorder. I also have BDD, and it is very rare that I feel truly GOOD about myself and my body. On top of all of that, I recently found out I was the victim of revenge porn, and so feeling good about my body and putting myself out there was a way to sort of reclaim my own space.

But after posting it, some 'radfems' began chiming in, messaging me and replying telling me I was discrediting myself by showing my body. They said I was stupid for 'giving in' to the 'male gaze' and that I needed to stop posting pictures of myself as it was inappropriate. One radfem suggested that if a man saw the pictures and did something inappropriate with them, it would be my fault. My fault! As if men are not responsible for their own behaviour, and a woman is responsible for the male gaze.

It really hurt me. I don't know why, but I almost broke down over it. I felt totally throttled by my own community.

I get so much hate and so many death threats from TRAs, but it felt very different to be slammed by 'my own' if that makes sense.

I deleted the selfies. But after a few hours of talking to friends and getting support, I reposted them and said to myself "fuck it, I want to do what I want to do and I am not going to be told I am a bad feminist because I happen to look good in a bathing suit."

I tried to put it all behind me. But that was a day or so ago. And today, I was throttled yet again.

All day I have been working with a very prominent bluecheck journalist, doing free labour gathering research on a reddit-related issue regarding the damage done by trans mods to the Detrans circle and the former GC circles. I happily did it because I just want the info out there.

Afterwards, I put up a quick breakdown (wrote it on medium as it all would not fit on twitter, of course) on a misogynist fetish reddit run by a transwoman. In my Twitter post, I called the person running the reddit ("AutumnGoddess81") a 'transwoman,' as that is what they are. They are a trans identified male who has undergone full SRS. They are also a horrible misogynist who gets off on the abuse of women.

In response, a few feminists decided to slam me for using the term 'transwoman' to refer to this person. They effectively told me I was not a good activist/not supporting women's issues simply because I called a spade a spade.

Apparently, they would rather see me banned from twitter (again!) for calling Autumn a 'male' than use the term 'transwoman,' which I did not know was suddenly now an issue in the RadFem community. I had previously seen RadFems telling us to 'mind the gap' in 'transgender,' and I always have as I understand the logic. But I have never seen a RadFem saying that using the term, especially on high-ban platforms like twitter, was outright offensive.

I later made a post stating that I had no issue using anyone's pronouns (save the stupid ones) so long as we are in a mutually respectful exchange, I do not see any reason to overtly disrespect someone just to make a point. Again, I had radfems telling me I was wrong, that I was gaslighting women, and that I had 'lost the plot.'

So I will be honest -- I don't know what this plot is anymore!

I had THOUGHT the plot was "recognise women's unique sex based oppression. Fight to ensure women's rights and spaces are protected. Stop the transitioning of children and people who are mentally vulnerable."

If that isn't what the 'plot' is, I don't know what it is meant to be. And I am becoming exhausted with the constant policing. Especially because I see it seems to be exclusive to women-on-women.

After all of this happened, I had a few fellow feminists message me with tales of similar experiences. I will not share their names as I do not have their consent to do that, but one woman said she had been "reduced to tears" over the abuse she had received from her own community after calling a prominent trans journalist (one who supports women's rights to single sex spaces) a 'she.'

Chris Elston wasn't policed like this, now was he? RadFems on Twitter were praising him up and down, ignoring his history and his hatred of feminism to heap praise upon him.

But me, who has literally watched her entire life crumble between her fingers for this shit, is suddenly useless because she looks good in a bathing suit? Other women are being dismissed and devalued because they respected someone's pronouns as a courtesy to them? Please.

I am tired. I do not know what it will take for RadFems to stop attacking each other but something has got to give because it is unproductive and rooted in misogyny.