Hell hath no fury like a leftist man defied

Change my mind.

I am no stranger to incurring the wrath of strangers on the internet. While I can’t say it doesn’t affect me, I have got used to it somewhat and accept that it is part and parcel of being outspoken about things I care about. For more than a decade I have received threats of violence, rape, and death. I have had my employers contacted many times in attempts to destroy my ability to earn a living. I am insulted every day about my appearance, my supposed lack of intellect, and various personality traits. I am often described and spoken to in terms of disgust. I am dehumanised as vermin, a “flesh sack”, scum, gross, disgusting, revolting, shit, and so many more words that evoke strong visceral reactions.

What I find strangest are the number of people who disparage and complain about me online without tagging me in. I get sent screenshots regularly of conversations about what an awful person I am between people I have never met and whose names I don’t even know.

I receive plenty of this abuse and harassment from women and I am well aware that the white, liberal, university-educated women are the drivers of a lot of cancel culture. However, for around a third of my life now I have had an up close and personal experience of the very specific aggressive rage of leftist men. They, more than anyone else, are infuriated by my politics, feminism, and refusal to bend the knee.

An alleged woman unhappy that I expressed astonishment at the amount of abuse I get from men.

Last week, I became a lightning rod for the unleashed fury of these particular men because I called out the inappropriate sexual content on MP Benjamin Doyle’s alternative Instagram account.

I was appalled by the inappropriate sexual terms being used to caption photos of a child - to read more about Doyle and his Instagram account click here. But, I am a huge believer in the principles of justice and was conscious of the need to criticise Doyle for what he has observably done without leaping to further conclusions. I criticised the content on his Instagram and raised the matter of child safeguarding. Others did take their accusations further and that is for them to answer to.

Interestingly, without me having gone down that darker route, supporters of Doyle quickly flocked to my tweets to attack me. One common angle they used was to accuse me of not speaking out about former-Act President Tim Jago. This is false, for a start. After two years or so of name suppression was finally lifted, I spoke out about what a scumbag Jago is and how he belongs in prison (I believe that is where he is still). I made a TikTok video too. But that is beside the point because in my eyes the cases of Jago and Doyle are vastly different and I find it strange that Doyle’s allies are so eager to attach him to a convicted sex offender.

A few days into the saga, David Fisher wrote a long summary of the situation for the New Zealand Herald. I disagree with some of his framing, but was relieved to see that he had represented my role in it pretty fairly. He is unlikely to be a fan of mine as I understand that he has a trans child and so my criticisms of gender ideology probably aren’t his cup of tea. His piece was held up by those on the left as a true analysis and evidence that this was all a storm in a tea cup. But these same people either chose to ignore his section on me or decided it was the one section that was not analysed correctly. They continued to accuse me of calling Doyle a pedophile. I did not. They assigned responsibility to me for creating a “conspiracy” when my part was merely sharing screenshots and observing that the content was wildly inappropriate for an MP (or anyone).

From David Fisher’s Herald article

Someone who clearly didn’t read the whole Fisher article.

After a few days of back and forth negotiating on pronouns,¹ and what I could and couldn’t say, the New Zealand Herald published an opinion piece I wrote about the situation and the Greens’ handling of it. I received some wonderful feedback from other gays and lesbians and from those who appreciated me speaking up. Each kind word offset the nastiness that ramped up from the other side. So thank you to those who reached out.

Despite my attempts to keep my own statements directed to what behaviour could be observed rather than speculated, the anger from the left and, in particular, leftist men, had been ignited. They raged at me and about me; their accusations of what I had said and done being characterised as worse than anything done by Doyle.

A selection of some of New Zealand’s beardiest bros who have been outspoken about “TERFs”.

These men who just can’t seem to leave me alone, hate me. No matter the topic, they attack. I block or mute them, but often they filter through interactions with others who I haven’t blocked.

I don’t screenshot every nasty comment or reply. I would run out of storage in my phone. But a simple search of my name - and slight misspellings as they sometimes deliberately do that so their tweets won’t be easily found - will show you the kind of things they say. Alternatively, a peek at the replies to any of my tweets about any topic will also unearth my haters. But I have saved a few screenshots that were either sent to me or came from people yet to be blocked. I share these in this article as a taste of the derangement and hate that is focused on me daily.

These men are usually outspoken “allies” of the “rainbow community” but that flies out the window when they don’t like the “rainbow person”. They are overwhelmingly straight men, but they accuse me of bringing homophobic hate onto my “community”. That is victim blaming. Isn’t it?

One particularly nasty individual wrote a lengthy diatribe about me that I will not link to. In it he aggressively purports to defend the “queer community” but he can’t help but reveal his true misogyny and homophobia when talking about me. He sneers at my lesbianism and makes jokes that he would condemn if they were made by a right winger. At one point he says “Ani’s telling us pussy wouldn’t melt in her mouth” adding that it’s a joke “made more funny because Ani is the butt of it.”

“There’s a reason she’s called the ‘queen of the terfs’” he says, “the Right Wing Culture Act Troll she is.” He says I “cried pedophile,” but I never once made that accusation nor used that word. But then his commitment to the truth is famously non-existent. Almost as famous as his apathetic approach to understanding a topic before he mouths off about it. He does not even appear to know that the Centrist news website is an aggregate site and I do not write for them. Nor have I ever been interviewed by them or given comment on a matter. They just reshare my Substacks from time to time.

But then this is a middle-aged straight man ‘gay-splaining’ “queer culture” to a lesbian and citing Lil Nas X as his authority. Cool cool cool cool.

He is the bogeyman he pretends to rail against. He is the heterosexual, “cisnormative”, white man lecturing women and other minorities for not being as ‘enlightened’ as him in the right-on elite dogma. He is the stale, male, pale creep enacting social punishment on women who reject his domineering and chauvinistic bullying. He is very lucky that, just as I did not make accusations about Benjamin Doyle I couldn’t substantiate, I will not share the allegations that have appeared in my inbox following his vile blogpost about me.

I read the piece aloud to my partner as she dropped me off at the 10km fun run/walk that I was entered in on the weekend. My partner was horrified. She couldn’t believe that a man pretending to be an ally would be so vile about lesbians and take such delight in being cruel to me. She wanted to take me home as I was so all over the place after reading it. I didn’t want him to ruin my day though so, as I waited for the start time, I sat by myself on the beach and indulged in a little cry. I am human and no matter how much I tell myself to ignore it all, sometimes it just hurts. Then I got with it.

He might be right about one thing though: “this really is as ugly as it gets”.

His use of me being homosexual as a stick to whack me with is a common attack angle leftist straight men take with me. They cannot resist telling me I am the wrong kind of lesbian, I have the wrong politics for a lesbian, and of course that men can be lesbians. The “cotton ceiling” (Google it) infuriates them. How dare lesbians exclude men from their dating pool, when these men wear dresses and announce that they are gals.

They often discredit me as a lesbian like my opinions and politics disqualify me somehow. Or they go on about how they don’t care that I am a lesbian and that it doesn’t mean they can’t have a crack at me about my politics. They talk about it an awful lot though.

It is all about the men. This is what people seem to struggle to understand until they get really stuck in to gender politics. Gender ideology is a men’s rights movement. Sure, there are females ‘identifying as’ men and plenty of handmaidens sacrificing their own interests at the high-heeled boat-sized feet of autogynophiles (men who are sexually aroused at the idea of themselves as a woman), but they are useful idiots or vulnerable pawns. The entire movement is about the demands of entitled horny men who want access to women’s spaces and opportunities. Think about how little you hear about the needs or wants of transmen (women who say they are men). They make the news usually when they get pregnant - funny that. The matter of children transitioning is of vital importance to autogynophiles as this cause gives their cause legitimacy. Won’t somebody think of the children! It suits men to use kids with rainbow facepaint to hitch their social justice wagon to.

When you understand this dynamic, it is much easier to understand the rage of leftist men. They have found a new way to set the rules for women. The movement allows them to perform virtue while diminishing the rights of women. They have carved out an escape clause in the hierarchy of oppression. Straight, white men are at the bottom of the heap until they pop on some lippy, call themselves Tallulah, and announce they are a lesbian. Or make themselves into the defenders of such men.

In this context, women like me represent an unacceptable resistance to the will of men. We are defiant. We do not fall in line. And hell hath no fury like a leftist man defied.

These self-professed male feminists know exactly the right pronouncements to make about sexism, race, and the rest of the intersectionality chart, and in the right-on-totally-correct lingo. They are first in line to condemn the misogyny of their political opponents and wax lyrical about rape culture or the pay gap or consent. But that all flies out the window when the red flag of a woman’s defiance flutters in the wind.

When a woman does not comply with the dogma of (il)liberal elites, she becomes fair game to the fakest and sneakiest of men. These are the men Dr Gad Saad refers to as “sneaky fuckers”. Once it is established that a woman is (shock horror) a TERF or defies one or other of the left’s other established positions, these previously “concerned” and “caring” men unleash their pent up rage at her.

A trio of identical, bearded troglodytes (including Mr “pussy wouldn’t melt”), for example, see nothing wrong with sitting around on their podcast trashing me. They can say whatever they like, in their view, because I have defied them by rejecting that men are entitled to call themselves women. They are doing the “Lord’s work”, smoking out an heretic.

Their misogyny oozes out of their pores as they spit out scripted rants constructed of vague tidbits of outdated knowledge held together with toothpicks, BluTack, and sheer audacity.

At least not all of my attackers have the obsessive derangement to go with their misogynistic rage that some do. There are some leftist men who tweet about me almost everyday. Years of consistent hatred and vitriol. I have long ago blocked them but their rage has morphed into an obsession they appear to have little control over.

Paul Thistoll’s grip on reality is tenuous at best, as evidenced by his pretend Countering Hate Speech Aotearoa organisation, and he is utterly mental when it comes to me. I have a folder of screenshots of his abuse, obsessing, and ramblings about me. I stopped collecting them some time ago though as there were just too many. He is also obsessed with the Free Speech Union of which I am a council member and tries to get each and every event we hold shut down. He calls up and emails organisations threatening protests and making up a load of crap about how evil and dangerous we are. Thistoll dubbed me the “High Priestess of Hate” in New Zealand which is kind of a cool moniker to be honest. His obsession does worry me though and I have publicly made it clear that I think he is unhealthily fixated on me. He is aware that I feel threatened by him and yet continues. Here are a selection of some screenshots I had saved (I haven’t searched for the ones in the last week because I don’t have the energy for it):

It is strange what upsets him and strange how aware he seems to be about his obsession at times.

I have made it very clear that I consider Paul to be harassing me.

UPDATE: Paul Thistoll has now published a piece in the NZ Herald in which he mentions me THREE times. Here is the link, but think twice before giving the click.

Samuel Hudson is another leftist man who loses his head with alarming regularity. He has decided that I must be punished for sharing screenshots of Benjamin Doyle’s “bussy” Instagram account and has tweeted long rants in which he describes himself as a lion stalking people like me and characterises me as perhaps the worst human on earth. He has decided I am ripe for defamation proceedings even though the things he accuses me of saying are not things I have said. I do wonder should he continue to tell people that I called Doyle a pedophile (I didn’t) if he himself could be sued by the Green MP. He has even taken to posting bad photos of me from years ago to mock my appearance.

Delusions of grandeur? Mr Hudson is less of a lion and more of slobbering, deranged hyena

He lives in fantasy land where he has far more importance than he does in reality.

This is far from the only lengthy rant he has posted about me.

The account was public when the screenshots were taken.

These tweets are all from the last week.

When all else fails they share this old photo awful photo. Nevermind I have lost 54kg in the last year and look completely different.

Samuel has been joined by unionist Joe Trinder who is also furious at me. In spectacular irony, the pair of them are apoplectic that I deleted the tweets that contained images of Doyle’s (blurred out) child as now that I have drawn attention to the account I no longer want to platform the photos of someone else’s child. They believe I did this to avoid defamation, but it would not be difficult for Doyle to access the deleted tweets should he want to. This is ironic because neither man has any issue with the fact that Doyle himself deleted approximately 52 posts from his “BibleBeltBussy” account. It is okay for him to do this, and not indicative of any attempt to hide inappropriate content, but when I delete a few tweets because they have photos of a child in them I am evil beyond words.

It is beyond belief that so many of these people are defending Doyle and yet accusing me of sexualising his child by sharing (after blurring out the child’s face) the content he posted. It is madness.

X and Facebook are cesspools and you take the bad with the good. Reddit I stay away from because I am not sure there is any good. Apparently I have been a hot topic over there this week. But Linkedin is usually safe. It is cringeworthy and fake but people tend to have their professional hats on so don’t abuse you. Not this week! I posted my opinion piece on Linkedin and a raging leftist man stomped right in to tell me what he thinks about me.

Not only does he think I am “worthless”, he accuses me of being in cahoots with the “far right” and then goes on to express that I deserved to be “abused” by a previous employer. The details of that case have been reported on in the media. This guy thinks he is the good guy. He is the ‘righteous’ man condemning the defiant woman. And because I am defiant, he has the right to celebrate my abuse.

I have received some ‘fan mail’ on Substack also. I don’t, by the way, get paid by any shadowy nefarious networks. I have a 9-5 job and get a little bit from Substack. It is extraordinary how many of my most dedicated critics hide behind anon accounts:

The fact that I was published in the New Zealand Herald at all has enraged many of the usual suspects. The bearded blogger I mentioned before condemned the Herald for destroying their “mana” by publishing me. This is the same newspaper that gives column space to gang members. He also pondered if the decision to publish was as a result of billionaire and NZME shareholder Jim Grenon putting pressure on NZME. A funny idea as it seems to suggest an acknowledgment that the status quo at the Herald has been blocking perspectives from people like me. He wasn’t the only one with this point of view:

There is a plethora of even worse examples floating around the internet of Ani Derangement Syndrome. I have been told Reddit has been attacking me for a week now and New Zealand BlueSky is also frothing at the mouth. It really raises some questions when the rage is directed at the woman sharing the information and not the man being inappropriate.

I wrote this wanting to make the point that on the left there are men who put on an elaborate show of virtue to mask hideously misogynistic and bigoted behaviour. I worked for National in 2021 in the Leader of the Opposition’s office and I can hand on heart say I cannot imagine any of the male MPs I worked with ever talking about left wing women in the way that these left wing men talk about women they perceive to be right wing. I cannot imagine them degrading my sexual orientation and calling me an “Uncle Tom”. They are not perfect by any stretch, no humans are, but they have treated me with far more decency than men on the left.

1. I refused to use they/them pronouns for Benjamin Doyle as it would be a betrayal of my feminism and politics. The New Zealand Herald maintained their policy was to use preferred pronouns. We ended up going with no pronouns and just awkwardly referred to Doyle by name or as “the MP”.