TWIBS: The Never Ending L’s of Jenny Watson
The self-identified TERF who brought you “crappy cis lesbian dating app” continues to be unable to bring you “crappy cis lesbian bar.”
by [author]
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
My lovely TWIBSies… I have such a wonderful dose of schadenfreude for you today.
Long-time readers may recall one Jenny Watson, an English transphobe who last year attempted to open a cis lesbian exclusive bar and then a cis lesbian exclusive dating app. Curiosity got the better of me recently and I decided I’d look in on Jenny’s progress in both arenas, and it turns out things aren’t going well.
Yay!
Right off the bat, let me make clear that some of this may be cannibalistic gossip. If you check out Jenny’s Twitter (but don’t check out anybody’s Twitter, least of all Jenny Watson’s), you’ll notice right away that she tends to delete a lot of the stuff she posts. She also regularly deletes posts made on her Substack and makes huge changes to her website, so it’s sort of difficult to cross reference claims made by other folks about things she’s said or done.
First, though, let’s start off with an update on the app. Last year, Jenny created (i.e., paid somebody smarter to create, we must assume) a dating app that would only permit cisgender lesbians. How could this possibly be accomplished, you ask? Why, it simply scanned your face and approved or denied you based on typical cisgender features that never vary significantly, such as “bone structure, the shape and positioning of an individual's eyes, eyebrows and nose shape or size.”
So, ladies, I hope you’ve got girl bones and lady nose, because if not… well, you won’t be able to access the transphobic UK dating app.
Unfortunately (I guess), Jenny’s gay little app turned out to be somewhat less than totally secure against infiltration. More than 60 days following its launch, a transgender man casually joined up (without even bothering to shave, apparently, which the “AI-powered” AGAB detector failed to flag) and discovered that the app had roughly 80 members and no actual dating services. It’s unclear whether or not the app has improved since then, and I’m certainly not going to attempt to infiltrate it, but as of April some of Jenny’s news makes it seem to me like it’s still not doing great. Which is fine by me. I’ll keep using Her, thanks!
Now let’s talk about Jenny’s bar… or, as you could surely guess, the lack thereof.
As best I can tell, no real progress was made on this supposed cis girls only venue since I last reported on it. Instead, Jenny’s been serving lemonade on the sidewalk for about a month and calling it “the world’s only female-only lesbian bar” despite having one table and six chairs. I assume serving people alcohol in public without some sort of permit or license would be against the law, so Jenny has had to make do with a sort of Peanuts style pop up stand. Based on the sort of attendance we can see in Jenny’s other posts, it’s a safe bet that six chairs was enough.
Further complicating matters, Jenny has been accused by other anti-trans activists on Twitter of squandering money raised for the bar to the tune of £23,000, and receiving a tremendous amount of backlash from her peers for failing to deliver on the space she promised. I didn’t turn up any public statements from Jenny responding to these claims, though people allege she’s blocking them for asking about the money, which is never a great sign. Jenny’s website has a breakdown on how donations to her cause are spent, but she doesn’t publish any explicit proof backing up these assertions, instead suggesting you simply email her directly if you have any questions about how she uses the money she receives.
I don’t respect Jenny Watson, and I’m certainly not suggesting you gotta give it to her under any circumstances, but I will tacitly acknowledge that this is a pretty solid grift. I mean, how much could some lemonade and folding chairs cost? Her ROI on this business venture must be absolutely phenomenal, and she only had to publicly embarrass herself repeatedly and ensure that any Googling of her name turns up a ton of reprehensible crap, probably for the rest of her life.
Time well spent, don’t you think?
Anyway, Jenny’s got a whole march planned this Saturday at Parliament Square. I doubt she’ll have more than a half dozen supporters turn up, as usual, but if you happen to be in the area at the time I highly recommend pointing and laughing before getting on with your day.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a trans woman journalist who reports on news relevant to the queer community and occasionally posts on BlueSky.
