Woman's Hour Jo Swinson Now - 6th Dec

Jo Swinson is my MP. The SNP chickened out in this seat and put up an inexperienced contender.

That's such a shame. Can you imagine if someone like Joan McAlpine or Joanna Cherry had stood against her? I would pay to go to those hustings despite living in the south of England.

The inexperienced contender will be getting my vote 7to25, not least because her FB feed at least shows she has been to local meetings about the schools consultation and out and about in the area talking to people. I will not be voting for Swinson. I also think Amy Callaghan might engage young people which would be a good thing.

I never understand£ how women can do that sigh thing and the wee voices when they talk about transgender ppl

Just like Swinson did in that interview

It was like a fog came over her brain

So patronising towards trans people

I hope she keeps her seat. Anything is better than the SNP. I'm in a Lib Dem seat where the SNP came second. I'll be voting Lib Dem. "Gender critical" doesn't feature at all for me.

Jo Swinson is my MP. The SNP chickened out in this seat and put up an inexperienced contender. I think a meatier opposition could have beaten her. She knifed Charles Kennedy in the back to further her ambition. I feel her strong local support is draining away.
As she puts so much mental energy into sounding English, she sounds more and more like a schoolgirl debater.

Lols Lang. Yes exactly.

Just an afterthought. I wonder whether Emma Barnett has learned a thing or two from the way Julia Hartley Brewer has tackled this issue. Hartley Brewer hasn't pussy-footed around and I've been forced to respect her for the way she's taken TRAs on. While the usual WH presenters have been required to come at the subject from a neutral, trying to be fair to all, approach Barnett seemed to be further down the 'this is nonsense, isn't it?' path that JHB's been taking for a while. It's made me think yet again how dangerous the BBC's supposed neutrality and balance is. I thought they'd learned the lesson after the ridiculous climate change situation but they haven't.

Karen white was risk assessed and put into a a women’s prison and went on to sexually assault female prisoners.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-prisoner-who-sexually-assaulted-inmates-jailed-for-life

Jo Swinson is well aware of this but because she is a misogynist she thinks that’s a price worth paying. Go and fuck yourself Jo.

begin your reply

Sigh @ me.

It's amazing that the LibDem line on women is: "Never admit they exist and if an interviewer suggests they do, always being your reply with 'transwomen....'"

On the Prison note, a man in a women's prison in Argentina has impregnated one of the female prisoners. He attacked her when he found out she was pregnant and has now been released (it sounds like they didn't know what to do with him).
Abortion is illegal in Argentina but it seems self-id is legal.
Not sure if there has been a thread on this:
www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-detainee-who-impregnated-fellow-inmate-is-released-from-prison-to-prevent-further-incident/

Sorry if somebody has already posted this
womansplaceuk.org/2019/11/25/why-do-we-keep-banging-on-about-the-importance-of-single-sex-spaces-for-women-who-have-been-subjected-to-mens-violence/

Karen Ingala Smith on the reality of risk assessment.

FlyingOink and how much would their insurance premiums rise
And when the organisation is a state-funded one, like the NHS or the Prison Service, and a woman locked in a cell or a psychiatric ward with a man who then attacks her sues, will taxpayers end up paying for the folly?
When the organisation is a smaller, charitably funded one will they even be able to get cover after a claim?

We need a Dentons type leak from a major insurer to find out.
I suspect even the insurers are uninterested because women thus far haven't been litigious enough.

Yy FlyingOink and how much would their insurance premiums rise?

Jo Swinson's notions of what she reckons the EA says are a good example of a wider problem.

Lots of people seem to think that the EA just says we should be kind and nice to everyone and never exclude anybody from anything. If that's what it said it would be a much shorter document:

1. Be excellent to each other.

2. Party on, dudes!

Lovely sentiments.

Meanwhile the EA has 218 sections and a further 28 schedules, each of which contains up to 107 further paragraphs. It's a huge, complex, messy piece of legislation, vast chunks of which are dedicated to explaining situations where it's lawful to treat different people differently because to do otherwise would be batshit and/or harmful. You don't have to read it all (I haven't) but it's worth a quick look at the contents page, just to get an idea of the sheer size of this piece of legislation.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents

The obvious follow-up question to all this rubbish about risk assessments always being necessary anyway, is 'In that case why don't we just have mixed sex refuges and risk assess all the men, just as we do the women?'
This.
And a question around cost. How much will it cost a refuge to take legal advice, draft a risk assessment programme and defend themselves against men appealing the outcomes? Or defend themselves against men who think being risk assessed is discriminatory? Or having to risk assess everyone because Jo Swinson thinks lesbians are a threat to other women?

Thanks for the transcript btw.

Great work Pencils!

The Libs always have to fish in a small pond. Charlie Kennedy was a good man, if a little pickled. It's been downhill all the way since him.

Just catching up on this interview now. Agree Emma Barnett was brilliant, and I’m hugely relieved to hear this policy being robustly challenged. But I’m devastated by what a car crash Jo Swinson is turning out to be. I desperately want the Lib Dems to do well in this election, in order to do as much damage to Brexit as possible and to destroy the Tory figures. I’m probably going to have to vote for them, because they stand a much better chance than Labour in my constituency. But I find their stance on gender deeply deeply disturbing and I’m really not sure I can hold my nose sufficiently to endorse it.

It could get expensive if you have to pay them.

They could get quite useful though - you could do away with jury trials and save a fortune in the courts. The county courts would love one or two to sort out garden boundary disputes.

Can we clone her so there's one for each refuge? I reckon there might be some ESRC funding in this if we pitch it right. Call it a queer transhumanist Action Research project.

• certainly not without a Layla Moran posted at the door of every refuge

She has so much potential, and is definitely wasted as a mere politician.

I'm pleased that Emma Barnett consistently pushed the point that sex is a protected characteristic. She'd also done her homework on the legal disagreements about how the GRA and the EA interact.

EB: ... the 2010 Equality Act sets out sex as a protected characteristic. How will you guarantee women's sex based protections when you've reformed the Gender Recognition Act?

JS: Look, I think that - you know, trans - trans women are women. And women, whether they are cis or whether they are trans, whether they are gay, whether they are straight, whether they are bi, whether they are black, whether they are white, whether they are asian, whatever their mix of characteristics are, you know - you know, nobody is just one thing on its own, and equality law does not work if it either tries to elevate - you know, one protected characteristic above others, or doesn't recognise that people have these multiple characteristics. Because we all do, and we all face different ...

Equality law does not work if you cannot identify which protected characteristic is the reason for the discrimination (sometimes two or more) and in most cases it also doesn't work if you cannot identify an appropriate comparator - i.e. someone in the same situation but who does not share the relevant PC.

Clearly the law is not Swinson's area of expertise. That's fine, right up to the point where she advocates changing the law.

Pencils Yet again I am on awe of your transcription skills, thank you so much for taking the time to type these things up

With all due respect to Emma (excellent interview), many of the questions were predictable, but still JS floundered. If your flagship policy is funding childcare, you are going to get questions about fairness to people who don't have young children. And the answer is not to say, "er well I know it's important because I'm a mother of 2 children" (so fucking what?), but "child-care benefits the whole of society by allowing parents to participate in activities that benefit us all, whether through paid work, which increases tax revenue, or by undertaking other important activities like caring for elderly parents". By making this her first question, EB was actually giving JS an easy intro, but still JS fluffed it.