Read on Twitter
What's funny about these tweets is that before he jumped feet-first into being a 24/7 transphobe, Matt spent most of his waking hours and oxygen supply passionately defending sex offenders to anyone who would listen.
He talked about having befriended rapists and child molesters while he was behind bars, and more than once he asserted that he preferred their company to that of your "average woke Portlander" because they were more tolerant and compassionate.
He spent most of the Me Too movement ranting about the impotence of hashtag activism but also complaining that Me Too had "gone too far" and "should be replaced with something more loving."
He dug his heels in something fierce about the need for restorative justice and opportunities for criminals to redeem themselves, and how it was wrong to punish people indefinitely for their worst decisions. And actually, broadly speaking, I agree with that.
Trouble is, Matt's vision of restorative justice didn't just mean that criminals should be allowed to reintegrate into society. It also meant that the people they violated shouldn't get to feel upset about it or discuss it publicly.
Matt took it upon himself to harass a local comedian who spoke candidly about her rape. He insisted her story was a fabrication. Why? Because her rapist told Matt it was. He filled my inbox with vitriol after I publicly voiced my support for a local actor who
shared that he'd been sexually harassed by a colleague backstage. The actor never named the colleague. He simply stated that he'd been harassed, that the production team handled it admirably, and that everyone in a similar position deserved the same support.
Matt felt this was unacceptable. Why? I dunno. Because someone talking about his experience of sexual harassment could hypothetically make a sexual harasser feel bad? It's hard to say because the guy's moral compass is calibrated by nothing more than Who Pissed Off Matt Today.
A few years back, he identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns. It did not escape my notice that he adopted this identity after a conversation in which he expressed anger about having his opinions dismissed on the grounds that he was a cis white man.
When identifying as nonbinary didn't make others more amenable to his mansplaining, he went back to being cis and concluded that being nonbinary was "a fad." If he could put on and take off a gender like a costume, presumably everyone else was doing likewise.
Funnily enough, at the time one of his chief arguments against nonbinary identities was that they made a mockery of the struggles of trans people, who had to fight that much harder to be taken seriously on account of the "fad."
Now he's pivoted from defending trans people to denouncing them as perverts and child molesters, who are suddenly bad, evil people who must be stopped, not his lovable prison poker buddies. The guy has no consistent ethical code whatsoever.
I realize this thread is unlikely to reach anyone to whom this shit would matter, but I'd love to be a fly on the wall when his new radfem friends learn that until recently his "feminism" consisted mainly of Facebook posts that were like, "Rape isn't that big a deal, actually
and survivors need to get over it eventually." And no, I do not for a second believe the shift is the result of introspection or growth, given that he's made no effort whatsoever to make amends with the dozens of people he's alienated over the years.
