Tweets ‘effort to shut women’s voices down’

Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland (WRN NI) said the tweets were part of a “concerted effort to shut women’s voices down”.

On Monday it emerged that one of the WRN NI billboards erected between the M2 and M3 motorways in Belfast had been vandalised with graffiti saying that a woman is “whatever she says she is.”

The messages defacing the billboard also referred to “F****** TERFS (a term for those feminists who reject transgender ideology).

The graffiti was preceded with tweets levelled against the WRN NI questions to would-be MLAs including one which stated: “TERFT S****. £20 to the charity of choice for anyone who sprays ‘a miserable pile of secrets’” on the billboards.

On the vandalism of the billboard, a PSNI spokesperson said: “Inquiries are ongoing into this incident, which police are treating as a hate crime.”

A WRN NI spokesperson called on the police to include tweets they claimed goaded the vandals to act.

“Tweets that encouraged the defacement of our billboard only prove our point that there has been a concerted effort to shut down women’s voices. It is reassuring and encouraging however, that so many people from across Northern Ireland have offered support and encouragement to our campaign. We will never stop fighting to keep women and children safe.

“More and more people are waking up to the harm that is being caused, and more and more women are raising their voices to assert their boundaries and protect the female sex class,” the WRN NI spokesperson said.

The WRN NI believes women are defined by biology and oppose moves to allow men who identify as women using female-only spaces such as toilets and changing rooms.

The group erected the billboards to challenge local politicians if they supported the protection of women-only spaces in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Parties in England, Scotland and Wales faced similar questions by WRN nationally.