Jack Monroe, the ‘Bootstrap cook’ | Photo: Jack Monroe Instagram
Non-binary food writer Jack Monroe has revealed they are quitting Twitter.
The Guardian columnist and austerity campaigner posted a letter on her social media moments ago.
They spoke how they considered the social media platform to be ‘abusive’.
Jack Monroe calls Twitter ‘abusive’
‘I get viciously pilloried on a daily basis,’ they wrote.
‘[I’m] inundated with people who scream in their dozens about free speech while freely speaking at me that I am an atrocious person for daring to want to push outside of my “little woman” box.’
Monroe, who recently came out as once being part of a domestic abusive relationship, compared it to previous suffering they felt.
‘I have been in enough abusive relationships to recognize gaslighting, coercion and bullying, and my personal relationships are suffering as a result of what I experience on here every day,’ they said.
But ultimately, Monroe said they would focus on why they do what they do.
Read the full letter below:
I’m really quite sad to be writing this but I have thought about it long and hard and it seems to be the best thing for my mental and physical health, so with a heavy heart and a weighty self-loathing…
I first came into the public eye in 2012 as a struggling single mum on the dole. I wrote about politics, poverty and austerity, and recipes from tins and scraped up change. I have worked with the Trussell Trust, Food Chain, Magic Breakfast, Oxfam, CPAG, MPs, Parliament, several political parties, in London, Manchester, Scotland, Tanzania and more. The very heart of my work is in alleviating food poverty, teaching people to cook, living wages, cheap recipes, and survival in austerity.
I was warned early on not to come out as gay because it would be ‘distracting and damaging’. I did it anyway. When I came out as non-binary (genderfluid/queer) it was quite unheard of in mainstream media and there was an inevitable circus around it. I gave interviews hoping it would broaden understanding and give other genderqueer people a voice. In return I lost a £30k book deal, had to crowdfund that book (a process which has completely done me in) and invited a whole world of abuse from across the political and feminist spectrum.
Twitter is a ‘great personal and emotional cost’
I have spent the last two years attempting to gently (and sometimes, less gently) defend women’s rights AND trans rights (caveat – trans women are women, this is not an either/or sitaution), to educate, inform, support, explain, but at great personal and emotional cost.
I get things wrong, I do my best, I can only speak for myself. And I get viciously pilloried on a daily basis, piled on, inundated with people who scream in their dozens about free speech while freely speaking at me that I am an atrocious person for daring to want to push outside of my ‘little woman’ box.
I feel the core of of my work has been buried under the endless and exhausting bollocks of flamethrowing on social media. Most of the people who genuinely need my work don’t have the luxury of concerning themselves with my tits or chromosomes – they need fed and housed and hope and wages, not to see me tiresomely drawn into fight after fight after fight. Every minute I spend on justifying my clothing choices or crying because 50 people are dogpiling me with personal insults is a minute I am not spending doing my most important work.
‘I am and always will be a genderqueer androgynous little dyke’
I am and always will be a genderqueer androgynous little dyke, but I’m coming off Twitter for the good of my mental health. I have been in enough abusive relationships to recognize gaslighting, coercion and bullying, and my personal relationships are suffering as a result of what I experience on here every day.
I am getting back in the kitchen. I will continue to fight for women’s rights, and for trans rights, and for human rights (again trans women are women), but this is not the best place for me to do it.
Thanks for the last few years, and goodbye.
