3rd February 2025
Have you ever been a character in someone else’s delusions? I have. It’s pretty weird. The character in Aaron Kimberly’s delusions seems to have been romantically interested in him but then abruptly changed her mind, offering neither explanation nor apology; seems to have failed to take the necessary actions to repair an incredibly valuable and important friendship; and has apparently been orchestrating an international political plot whereby gender-critical feminists pretend that trans men are welcome in feminism but are actually just laughing at them (evidenced by the fact that she won’t even sleep with the first one to make a pass at her!) This character has my name, but otherwise, we don’t have much in common.
A summary for the lazy
Since April 2024 or so, I have been dealing with inappropriate and unwanted behaviour by Aaron Kimberly. This includes him repeatedly sending emails to my work address (after I had blocked him on Twitter); contacting my friends and colleagues about me; attempting to organize an in-person event to take place on my campus, at which I would be a speaker, without my permission or input; mischaracterizing our brief interaction to mutual acquaintances; publishing a full podcast episode mischaracterizing our interaction; posting three separate Substack articles about me (one sharing personal information about me and embedding deleted video content that I own the copyright to); sending huge volumes of messages to other people about me; and, most recently, contacting my employer. This has all been the aftermath of Aaron making several romantic advances toward me, which I rejected. To say he’s taken rejection badly would appear to be an understatement.
The longer version, with receipts
On the 17th of April 2024, Alex Byrne & I took part in a debate at MIT. Our opponents were Aaron Kimberly and Alice Dreger. Alex and Alice took opposite sides on the question of whether sex is biological and binary, and Aaron and I took opposite sides on the question of whether gender identity should replace sex in social policy. Aaron & I had some friendly communications in the lead-up to the debate, much of which were me making suggestions as to a topic that we could disagree about productively. We met up for a couple of hours on the afternoon of the debate. At the time, Aaron was associated with the LGBT Courage Coalition, and I was occasionally doing freelance interviews for the LGB Alliance Australia. I figured it would be good to establish some kind of link between the two organizations. I would characterise this couple of hours as a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon in a new city. It didn’t have any particular significance to me, and I didn’t find it particularly enjoyable or noteworthy.
[Just after the MIT debate. From left: Alice Dreger, Aaron Kimberly, Nadine Strossen (moderator), Holly Lawford-Smith, Alex Byrne].
After the MIT event, Aaron made a pass at me (by direct message on Twitter). Out of politeness (a mistake) I deflected. Aaron took this as encouragement. When he made another pass a short time later, I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in him. He claimed to be fine with that, and I thought we had resolved the issue amicably. (I also apologized for not being clear at the first opportunity). But he continued to message me at a volume and with a kind of over-familiarity that I found annoying, and inappropriate to the fact that we hardly knew each other. I stopped replying. After several days (or maybe weeks?—I blocked him and deleted the thread, so I can’t check) of messages that I hadn’t responded to, Aaron wrote to say that he realized he had overstepped, that he wanted to leave things on good terms, and that I wouldn’t hear from him again. I took him at his word on this point. If he had not contacted me again, we would have no problem. But of course, this is not how things turned out.
Somewhere in a one-sided stream of messages, Aaron then wrote again to say that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Perhaps I should have ignored this, but it was antagonizing to be told by someone who I had expressed clearly that I had no interest in, and who I had not responded to for days/weeks, that he would not like to have a relationship with me (as though I would like to have one with him). We got into an argument in which Aaron refused to believe that I hadn’t been interested in him. He asserted that I had been flirting with him, and offered as evidence that his colleagues agreed; in presenting this ‘evidence’ he revealed that he had been sharing screenshots of my direct messages with other people. (Apparently ‘Derek’ is the better authority than I am on who I am interested in romantically.) I became irritated and blocked Aaron on Twitter. I expected that to be the end of any contact between us.
After being blocked on Twitter, Aaron began emailing me at my work address. He wrote from different email addresses, which I presume is because he realized I would block each address after the first email. He seemed to be trying out different strategies in an attempt to re-establish contact—for example declaring that he had read my book. To reiterate: this is someone that I met in person for a couple of hours, and did a professional event with. I never expressed any interest in him, and I was never more than friendly with him in the way that I would be with any new person who presents themselves as being a part of the gender-critical feminist movement. Aaron sent me emails on the 21st of May, 3rd of July, 18th of September, and 27th of September (and also 11th December, see below). I did not reply to any of these.
At some point in this period, I was contacted by members of the LGBT Courage Coalition, who had become alarmed by the obsessive and repetitive way that Aaron had been talking about me, to various members of their group, since April. They asked me for my account of our interactions, which I gave them (and which, needless to say, did not fit with Aaron’s account). I also began to hear from friends and acquaintances over this same period that Aaron had been contacting them to talk about me, to try to have them contact me on his behalf, and in an attempt to organize an event involving me at my university, allegedly for my “protection”. (This was more than a year after I had briefly needed some security on a course, and without me ever having indicated that I was in need of protection, or that any form of collaboration with Aaron or his contacts would be welcome).
In November of 2024, Aaron published an episode of a Stone Butch Disco podcast, a project he was at the time a collaborator in, in which he mischaracterized our interactions and his behaviour (he did not name me, but other details made it possible for someone listening to work out who he was referring to). Someone from the LGBT Courage Coalition contacted the Stone Butch Disco woman who had participated in the episode, who was temporarily successful in having Aaron take the episode down. (He subsequently reposted the episode to his Substack). The women from Stone Butch Disco were the first people to speak publicly about Aaron’s behaviour, announcing a split from him (and I really appreciate their solidarity on this point). Aaron subsequently threatened them with legal action, and they took the post down.
Soon after the podcast episode, Aaron posted two Substack posts talking about me by name (here’s the first, on 4th December, and the second, on 18th December, courtesy of Wayback Machine). In the second, he shared screenshots of our direct messages from Twitter. He also embedded a video interview that we had recorded after the MIT debate to clarify his contribution there. I own the copyright to that video, and Aaron had earlier contacted the LGB Alliance Australia requesting for it to be taken down. When I submitted a copyright request to YouTube and they took it down, he reposted it directly to Substack; and when I submitted a copyright notice to Substack, he posted a still from the video. After some time, he took both Substack posts down. He posted a third Substack post mentioning me on the 27th of January.
On the 11th of December, he sent an email to me, some board members for the LGBT Courage Coalition, and the women from Stone Butch Disco.
I interpret Aaron’s escalation in bizarre behaviour since November as a kind of threat: something like, ‘if you don’t resume contact with me I will continue to post your private information, and I will subject you to unwanted contact in new ways by talking about you publicly with whoever will platform me’. Aaron has sometimes replied to comments on his Substack as though the author were me (which it has never been), and has spoken obsessively in those comments about the “repair” of our “relationship” (we don’t have one). He also appears to believe that there is some kind of political conspiracy against him involving me and several other women—and he sometimes speaks as though those women’s actions are mine.
On Friday 31st of January (Australia time), Aaron sent a lengthy email to my employer.
Aaron’s behaviour to date has been unacceptable, and it needs to stop today. (It needed to have stopped ten months ago). Feminism requires working in the political interests of female people. It doesn’t require tolerating harassment merely because the person doing it claims to be female (or trans; or intersex; or a detransitioner—whatever Aaron is this week).
I do not know Aaron Kimberly. I do not want to be contacted by him. I am at a loss as to what to do in order for him to stop. I post this statement in the hope that some recognition of reality is achieved, and that other women do not end up being subjected to the same behaviour that I have been subjected to. I see Aaron’s actions as a failure to cope with rejection in the way that every normal adult simply has to be able to.
