Eddie Flipping Izzard

So your argument plural is that he has to be better than the existing xenophobes in the Labour party

It's not much of a ringing endorsement, that

Why didn't he go home to change?

Isn't it obvious plural ?

I was responding to the insinuation by some that being self conscious about inserting tampons when there is a strange bloke using his cock to piss out of a couple of feet away might make them delicate little flowers or something

If, as a teenage girl, I'd have seen a man in the ladies' toilets, I'd have been terrified. I'd have assumed he was intent on committing sexual assault.

If I'd been with a couple of friends, I think it's possible that together we'd have plucked up the courage to follow him, to see what he was up to and, if necessary, report him to the police.

The fact that Izzard has no understanding at all of the light in which this story casts him shows he is vastly unsuited to representing the electorate.

Teacuphiccup - I didn't use the disabled loos because the women's were occupied either. Sometimes it's easier, I used to use them all the time with prams etc. He has a valid reason for using the women's loos - that he doesn't want the shit kicked out of him in the men's loos.

I don't think that makes him misogynistic. He didn't write 'Mmm, I was so excited at being near those teenage girls in the toilets' - that would have been gross and invasive. He stresses that "I’d expected to go in, quickly change my clothes, wipe off my makeup, then slip back out in boy mode so I could go home with no one the wiser.
What I wasn’t expecting in the ladies’ loos at about three o’clock in the afternoon were three teenage girls" - he then describes being desperate to avoid all contact with the girls or them seeing him at all.

I think there is a huge amount of real misogyny in Labour (and also, for the record, real anti-Semitism).

And I welcome Izzard onto the NEC precisely because he's NOT one of Corbyn's yes men, and hence more likely to question those attitudes than the current lot.

Now he may let me down on that, I don't know. But I have more faith in him than I do in Corbyn's inner circle.

he only doesn’t persue her because he’s feeling insecure otherwise it would be all systems go.

Have you even read the article?

He sees a lesbian he fancies and asks himself if he could go out with her and the reasons he comes up with are ‘But at that point of my sexuality-and-confidence-advancement mission, I wasn’t quite up for pursuing a relationship.‘
He didn’t question if maybe she wouldn’t want to go out with him because you know, he’s a man and she’s a lesbian.

Is he still going to women's toilets?

plural
No using the disabled loos doesn’t mean you hate disabled people, but telling a story twenty years later about how you once put a cast on your arm and used the disabled toilets and when someone in a wheelchair questioned you and how awful and prejudiced they were.
Then maybe that would be a bit more like what happened.

Teacuphiccup - where?

I see no evidence for this.

Yes, he fancies a lesbian, but he doesn't make a move on her, let alone force her to do anything against her will. He can't help fancying her whatever her feelings on the subject might be. I have a thing for certain male actors who are definitely gay. I don't see this as disrespectful of their sexuality. He is friends with a lesbian. He hangs out with her. How is this a problem?

As long as he keeps his feelings to himself, which there is no evidence that he doesn't, then there is nothing misogynistic about this.

But he’s not popping into the women’s loos because the men’s are occupied is he? Otherwise when it became clear that some females were uncomfortable with his presence he’d say ‘oh I’m sorry’ and leave.

AnyFucker - you think the story is made up.

So why are you arguing about whether him being in a cubicle would upset a putative woman inserting a tampon in the next cubicle?

When you've just said he was never there anyway?

It’s not the using of the loos that’s misogyny it’s his incredibly entitled attitude that women are just props in his dressing up box.

It’s his massive, massive sense of male entitlement that gets me in this story.
He chooses the women’s loos so that’s where he goes. No consideration of the impact of that on others. Plus the way he talks about the lesbian who he is not yet ready to have sex with, so she gets to assist him meanwhile.
And then the self-congratulation, again without any awareness of the impact of his behaviour on others.
If it is true, I can imagine the teens might have been genuinely curious, freaked out and angry at finding a man in their loos.

There are levels of perfection I expect from my MPs and a bloke nipping into a woman's loo on a single occasion when he thinks it's unoccupied (and being quite put out when he finds it is occupied) is about as serious in my book as an able-bodied person nipping into a disabled loo on a single occasion (which I confess I have occasionally done - with apologies to any disabled people outraged at my behaviour).

I agree I probably shouldn't have done it but I certainly don't agree it's evidence of the fact that I hate disabled people. I don't, and I don't see any evidence (on this thread, anyway) that Izzard hates women either.

Maybe he does. But there is zero evidence here.

It’s the way he talks about the lesbian that makes me vomit in my mouth.
The way he questions it ‘can I go out with a lesbian?’ ‘I wasn’t ready for a relationship so I just asked her to join me while I pranced around in women’s clothes’
No thought about her boundaries or desires at all.

incorrigiblyplural
I agree that he shouldn't have been in women's loos, though he was dressed as a woman (when he went in)
He wasn't dressed as a woman, because up until a couple of years ago he said things like “They’re not women’s clothes. They’re my clothes. I bought them.”
twitter.com/eddieizzard/status/519196883215192066
That was before he decided that being a boring old transvestite was so last century, so he declared himself transgender instead. Agree with others who've said that the teenage girls story never happened.

Inserting a tampon is quite a noisy business actually

A cheap and flimsy wall that doesn't go to the ceiling or the floor is bad enough. When there's a bloke within a couple of feet, yes I can see the problem

Using a women's loo might be inappropriate but I don't think there is any evidence that it was deliberate 'misogyny'.

And you can't claim:

a) that him using a women's loo is evidence of his misogyny and

b) that the whole story is made up.

Either it's made up.

Or it's not made up.

But it can't be made up AND prove he behaved in a way that was 'misogynistic'.

My view is personally that a) it probably wasn't made up and b) it may show lack of thought but not deliberate misogyny, and I'm not in favour of those two being conflated.

And I repeat, I wonder at the timing of an attack here on Izzard on the same day he supplants a Holocaust-denier-enabling best mate of Jezza.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Maybe Izzard isn't as bad as shawcroft. Yeah, the teenage girls were mean. So what? People who stand for elected office put themselves above the parapet, and should expect to be held accountable for their behaviour.

Question - why would it be difficult for me to insert a tampon in a cubicle next to a bloke?

If you're asking that question, then it probably wouldn't be. Me neither. But I can easily imagine reasons why other women and girls would find this difficult.

Why would he make up the story?? It sounds perfectly plausible. I have no proof it is true, but then no-one seems to have any proof it isn't true either.

I don't really know what he's like as a person or whether or not he's misogynist - nothing in his comedy has ever come across as misogynist, and I've always got a vague sense he appears to like women in his shtick. Whatever, I don't think he's really deserving of the hate on this thread or, apparently, on another thread I've not seen.

I do know that if you have a problem with current Labour policies, you're aiming at the wrong man if you're aiming at Izzard.

And I repeat, I wonder at the timing of an attack here on Izzard on the same day he supplants a Holocaust-denier-enabling best mate of Jezza.

Happy to put my head above the parapet, MsBeauvoir and say that I'll take Izzard over the woman secretly conspiring to ensure Holocaust deniers become Labour candidates.

In the absence of any actual evidence that Izzard is a misogynist.

Question-why would it be difficult for me to insert a tampon in a cubicle next to a bloke? The cubicles are locked and he wouldn't be able to see me.

Well, that's up to you. I probably would have no issue either, but some women say that they do, so maybe believe them? Some women would also happily get changed next to a strange man or sunbathe topless on a beach with loads of men watching. While I would change a tampon, I wouldn't do the other two, so I guess one person's perception shouldn't determine what everyone else has to do.

. But why the fuck was he in the ladies' toilet in the first place?

Presumably because he was scared to go into the men's loos in a dress and makeup. Which may have been a reasonable fear at that time, but it didn't give him carte blanche to use the ladies loo instead. He should have planned his cross-dressing foray better. What he clearly didn't anticipate was that he'd be challenged by some truanting girls.

'You assume older people intimidate younger people, but those three thirteen-year-old girls had power over a twenty-three-year-old man.'

I think he's being disingenuous....I really doubt his assumption would have been the same if it had been three thirteen year old boys.

Hi Eddie