Dr Jessica Taylor

[maytoseptember]

I was surprised that VF were targeting women on benefits, but now it transpires it was just an excuse to get people to work for free, it makes sense.

I mean, without making too many assumptions about the demographics and education levels of women out of work and on benefits, you’re surely targeting a very small group of women? Those interested in a niche sector, educated to bachelors level at least, on benefits and unable to earn much without losing them? Can’t imagine many people wanting to do that kind of work for absolutely nothing?

What kind of work did you do (if you’re happy to talk about it) @Jessterday?

 

[Jessterday]

My work is quite public, actually. It's difficult to weigh in about this topic, because my name is openly attached to VF, but I don't reference it in my day-to-day anymore; luckily I've managed to move into a role that is professional and skilled, and in a really supportive organisation.

I was vulnerable when I joined VF, with a low level of self confidence. We moved in the same radical feminist circles, and back then at least, working for VF felt like being paid to be an activist. It almost felt like the small wage was a bonus to being out there, changing the world, and being able to be openly gender critical without any pushback from my employer. It came at a cost, of course.

 

[rosemarina]

Oh has this thread been mentioned off site?

I saw somebody link to it on Twitter earlier.

 

[Whatevesmate]

I saw somebody link to it on Twitter earlier.

I just searched and couldn't find it! Well it's good that more stuff is coming out about her.

 

[skronkywildcat]

My work is quite public, actually. It's difficult to weigh in about this topic, because my name is openly attached to VF, but I don't reference it in my day-to-day anymore; luckily I've managed to move into a role that is professional and skilled, and in a really supportive organisation.

I was vulnerable when I joined VF, with a low level of self confidence. We moved in the same radical feminist circles, and back then at least, working for VF felt like being paid to be an activist. It almost felt like the small wage was a bonus to being out there, changing the world, and being able to be openly gender critical without any pushback from my employer. It came at a cost, of course.

We have a gender thread here - most of us are GC but occasionally someone bursts in and calls us all bigots and TERFS.

 

[rosemarina]

I just searched and couldn't find it! Well it's good that more stuff is coming out about her.

We’re not supposed to link outside, but if you follow Kim B****t-S*i*** it’s there about 23 hours ago.

I hope she’s one of us.

 

[Jessterday]

We have a gender thread here - most of us are GC but occasionally someone bursts in and calls us all bigots and TERFS.

Same old, same old.

 

[Whatevesmate]

We’re not supposed to link outside, but if you follow Kim B****t-S*i*** it’s there about 23 hours ago.

I hope she’s one of us.

Thanks so much

 

[SagaNoren]

I can’t believe there’s finally a thread on her! I always thought I was the only one who saw through her!

I followed her ages ago back when I followed loads of GC accounts. I thought it was great that she was advocating for victims and thought that her story of success against the odds as a teenage mother was really inspiring.

I can’t remember when alarm bells started to ring but it was way back when she was starting to gain a lot of traction and it seemed like I was the only person who was sceptical.

Stuff that bothered me included :

_The boasting about her success and chat about her “haters” - it all seemed so juvenile.
_ The stuff about how much money she’s making, her house in the country, the numerous fancy holidays (including at least one which broke lockdown rules IIRC) - while all the time claiming to champion working-class women. It seemed pretty tone-deaf.
_As mentioned before, the fact that her partner with zero qualifications in this field was co-authoring these supposedly important studies and resources.
_The performative lesbianism - even if they are genuinely doing it for “lesbian visibility” surely they can’t be so naive as not to realise that these photos are more likely to attract the male gaze?
_ The fact that all her selfies and photos of her and JS in bed together etc are all on the same social media account as her Victim Focus stuff; it came across as so unprofessional
_ All the tall tales - taken separately I would take most of them at face value but taken all together it’s like the boy who cried wolf.

For a long time I’ve felt that she’s a complete charlatan and couldn’t understand why nobody else could see through her. I’m relieved they finally are, as with her anti-psychiatry message I think she’s crossed a line to the extent where she could cause genuine harm. I’m sorry that it took what seems like the exploitation of of at least 2 vulnerable women to open more people’s eyes.

I’m glad I got that off my chest!

 

[gisellejoly]

Jaimi’s deep and moving tracing of Jess’s bottom

 

[maytoseptember]

OMG! I’ve just remembered another completely bizarre tale!

Remember when she said a man had been stealing photos from her Instagram to sell to other men? He’d maybe been pretending to be her too, as part of the con?

Tell me I’m not the only one who remembers this.

I can’t believe there’s finally a thread on her! I always thought I was the only one who saw through her!

Isn’t it funny when you think: is this person for bleeping real? And you think it’s just you. It never is.

 

[Whatevesmate]

OMG! I’ve just remembered another completely bizarre tale!

Remember when she said a man had been stealing photos from her Instagram to sell to other men? He’d maybe been pretending to be her too, as part of the con?

Tell me I’m not the only one who remembers this.



Isn’t it funny when you think: is this person for bleeping real? And you think it’s just you. It never is.

It NEVER is just you (me/us). We MUST trust our gut instincts!

 

[SagaNoren]

Oh my, how could I have forgotten the arse picture!! That might actually have been when I started to have my doubts about her! By I didn’t mean to infer I was the only one who was sceptical even way back, but it’s nice to find out I wasn’t alone!

 

[exposegrifters]

Hi everyone. Have joined tattle bcos I love this thread. I'm a long term twitter terf and my alarm bells started ringing about Dr Jess shortly before she published her first book, I ended up muting her due to her ego, size of a bloody planet, and way of dealing with any dissent, or even queries, in a bullying manner that often involves threats of police/solicitors.

 

[petitspois]

This is all really fascinating. Now I'm wondering what can be done about it. I guess nothing really as she self publishes and is self-employed. As long as the work she does do with organisations such as the police and the NHS is decent then I guess she's just a massive self-publicist/narcissist.

The tall tales are/should be embarrassing but using women's private conversations as anecdotes for a book is way out of order.

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

Hi everyone. Have joined tattle bcos I love this thread. I'm a long term twitter terf and my alarm bells started ringing about Dr Jess shortly before she published her first book, I ended up muting her due to her ego, size of a bloody planet, and way of dealing with any dissent, or even queries, in a bullying manner that often involves threats of police/solicitors.

This was the point when I started to become concerned. I'm an academic in an adjacent area, and when Jess shared a link to her PhD thesis, I read a couple of chapters. It was interesting and I looked forward to reading the book based on the research, which I expected to be a livelier, more accessible presentation of the data, rewritten for a wider audience than her examiners. I was unimpressed to find that it was literally her unedited thesis with a few of her blog posts added, which meant that stylistically it was a really awkward read and hardly worth the price given it was all available free online! There's a reason why academic publishers explicitly state they won't accept unrevised dissertations. I made one very polite comment online to this effect, and lo and behold, within literal minutes I had someone accusing me of orchestrating a smear campaign against Jess and being the author of every negative review the book had received. Meanwhile she was declaring that other academics just hated her for writing in a radically accessible new style, and her Twitter audience was lapping this up. It was incredibly disingenuous.

 

[nothanksbabes]

How long till she finds this thread and posts something about how society can't cope with assertive, successful and confident women who make it against all the odds and have to paint them as narcissists?

Anyone who questions her professional integrity or lack thereof must of course be a jealous hater .

 

[DisgruntledGoat]

This was the point when I started to become concerned. I'm an academic in an adjacent area, and when Jess shared a link to her PhD thesis, I read a couple of chapters. It was interesting and I looked forward to reading the book based on the research, which I expected to be a livelier, more accessible presentation of the data, rewritten for a wider audience than her examiners. I was unimpressed to find that it was literally her unedited thesis with a few of her blog posts added, which meant that stylistically it was a really awkward read and hardly worth the price given it was all available free online! There's a reason why academic publishers explicitly state they won't accept unrevised dissertations. I made one very polite comment online to this effect, and lo and behold, within literal minutes I had someone accusing me of orchestrating a smear campaign against Jess and being the author of every negative review the book had received. Meanwhile she was declaring that other academics just hated her for writing in a radically accessible new style, and her Twitter audience was lapping this up. It was incredibly disingenuous.

God, absolutely this. I remember reading her rant about academic publishing and its accessibility just as I was starting my PhD and nodding along because I was feeling intimidated by the whole process. And there’s still some truth in it because the whole publishing process is obviously a racket and not accessible to people without institutional journal access or silly amounts of money. However since I read her report with the misrepresented figures I’m also just of the mind that her work wouldn’t pass peer review because it’s simply not very good? Like she’d immediately be shot down in a viva for that. As a first generation academic I do understand feeling cowed and wanting to overcome the bullshit which excludes working class people and especially women from academia, but it’s also extremely arrogant to refuse to take any form of critique and to take this forward with no reflection.

Was she self-funded?

 

[AccidentalAcademic]

God, absolutely this. I remember reading her rant about academic publishing and its accessibility just as I was starting my PhD and nodding along because I was feeling intimidated by the whole process. And there’s still some truth in it because the whole publishing process is obviously a racket and not accessible to people without institutional journal access or silly amounts of money. However since I read her report with the misrepresented figures I’m also just of the mind that her work wouldn’t pass peer review because it’s simply not very good? Like she’d immediately be shot down in a viva for that. As a first generation academic I do understand feeling cowed and wanting to overcome the bullshit which excludes working class people and especially women from academia, but it’s also extremely arrogant to refuse to take any form of critique and to take this forward with no reflection.

Was she self-funded?

This is what made me think it was disingenuous. It's true that academic publishing is a racket that requires academics to work for free, but it's not true that she chose to avoid that path just for that. Judging by the way she reacts to any kind of critique online, she wouldn't cope with peer review at all. How could she take constructive criticism from other academics when she dismisses anyone whose reaction isn't, "Yaas queen!" as a vicious hater? It's possible to write for a commercial market without compromising basic research standards, but she hasn't done that either. There's no way that books as they stand would have been picked up by any kind of publisher. She got a commercial book detail with JKR's help only after she'd hyped the first book up as this massively groundbreaking new thing that was causing her to be persecuted. She acknowledged herself that prior to this commercial publishers just weren't interested. She's all spin, no substance. Academics in psychology and related fields will know this, but she will continue to dismiss us as envious middle-class gatekeepers who can't stand her success, and so long as she's got money coming in and an adoring crowd of social media followers, she won't care about research integrity.

I don't know if she was self-funded, but I have a funny feeling that if she'd won a studentship or any kind of funding award she wouldn't have been shy about letting the Internet know.

 

[DisgruntledGoat]

I don't know if she was self-funded, but I have a funny feeling that if she'd won a studentship or any kind of funding award she wouldn't have been shy about letting the Internet know.

Ah, yeah, good point. The Single Mother to ESRC funded pipeline would have been explained at every moment, opportune or not.

I only ask because my funder insisted on yearly examination throughout the process which was both humbling and picked up on any methodological fuckups. It strikes me that she might have learnt how to take critique if she’d gone through this process.