Janice Turner interviews Jess Philips in the Times

And having an actual feminist with a background in DV work as an MP, is worth the sacrifice of her having to pay lip service to TWAW. In my opinion.

That sacrifice is not worth it in my view, and I'll tell you why DecayedStrumpet

Jess has an interest in DV and does genuinely want to help the women who suffer DV. She is thought of as someone who knows what she's talking about, because of her background in the VAWG sector. So when she stated in the Mumsnet webchat during the leadership campaign in 2020:

I ran a women's domestic and sexual violence service and am confident in specialist services being able to risk assess for safety. In that service, we had a small number of transwomen in my time there and they did not pose a risk. Everyone in service was risk assessed on their relative risk.

You can see she claims with great confidence that she worked for a refuge and they never had any issues with accepting adult transgender males into women's refuges. But there's three problems with that.

1. Now Jess didn't actually run a domestic violence refuge providing frontline services, she was the business development manager for a number of refuges for Women's Aid in Sandwell from 2010 to 2015. Here is her role described in 2015, just before she stopped:

Jess Phillips leads the organisation’s growth, development and partnerships. She leads on all aspects of service development, funding and contracts. Jess works closely with the Executive Director to drive forward the strategic aims of the organisation and to develop new and meaningful partnerships and projects in order to ensure services are available for a growing range of victims of interpersonal violence.

Business manager. Not running a specific refuge, not involved in delivering frontline services. Undoubtedly, even as a business manager for the regional organisation she would have learned a lot about the service and a lot about the women it was supporting.

Nonetheless, her positioning is misleading because it will be easily assumed by her audience that she had direct involvement and witnessed first hand that the inclusion of adult transgender males in the women's refuge was fine, because they were properly risk assessed. (I do not believe this is intentional and I do believe she genuinely thinks that what she states is the truth.)

1. But here lies the other problem - Karen Ingala Smith elaborated on the impossibility of such a risk assessment and the burden it places on refuge staff in a speech to the Scottish Parliament just a few days before Jess gave that answer here on Mumsnet.

kareningalasmith.com/2020/01/20/the-importance-of-women-only-spaces-and-services-for-women-and-girls-whove-been-subjected-to-mens-violence/

And as Karen and a number of other frontline workers also explained at that meeting (as did many others before and after), the problem isn't just about assessing risk in terms of whether this adult male might commit violence against the women already in the refuge.

These are traumatised women who cannot heal in the presence of adult males. If you include an adult male amongst women traumatised by male violence, you harm them. But that's not the risk Jess is considering.

Experience - my own and that of others - has shown that where VAWG sector organisations and staff claim that the inclusion of adult males in what should be a female-only therapeutic environment has never caused any problems, they do so without ever having asked the women in their care.

One DV victim, who tweets as Leonora Christina under the handle jammersminde demonstrates this problem in a thread about a talk with one frontline worker who thought male staff in a refuge was fine here:

mobile.twitter.com/JammersMinde/status/1050124033558233095

So to recap Jess assures us that there are no problems without 1) having been in a position to know and 2) without understanding the real issue which is that including adult males (and sometimes older male children) in the female-only therapeutic environment is always an issue, regardless of whether such a male is actually violent.

Which brings me to problem 3 and why I don't believe this is worth the sacrifice:

Jess is someone who will be believed when she says including male transgender people in women's refuges is no problem.

But she is wrong about that.

So when she then also says TWAW it's even more damaging for female survivors of male violence who depend on a female-only therapeutic environment being available to them for their recovery.

Because her statements and TWAW-ing bolster the arguments of those who campaign against single-sex provisions, who have been able to point to her and say Jess knows, she worked in a refuge, and it was fine. And so she's cheerleading the loss of female-only provisions that the women she truly, deeply cares about desperately depend on to function.

I won't speculate why she is doing it. But I wish she would stop before it's too late.

I welcome this interview and I hope she is waking up to what trans-inclusive policies actually mean in current practice for female survivors. But she will need to publicly reverse her previous position to undo the damage she has already done and I don't know that she will be able or willing to do so.

Jesus, PandorasMailbox. Are you ok now?

The full list of members of that select committee is:

Current membership
Mrs Maria Miller (Conservative, Basingstoke) (Chair)
Ruth Cadbury (Labour, Brentford and Isleworth)
Maria Caulfield (Conservative, Lewes)
Jo Churchill (Conservative, Bury St Edmunds)
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party, Lanark and Hamilton East)
Mims Davies (Conservative, Eastleigh)
Mrs Flick Drummond (Conservative, Portsmouth South)
Ben Howlett (Conservative, Bath)
Siobhain McDonagh (Labour, Mitcham and Morden)
Jess Phillips (Labour, Birmingham, Yardley)
Mr Gavin Shuker (Labour (Co-op), Luton South)

As Kathleen Stock's speech demonstrates it was deeply flawed with very serious consequences particularly for women and children. I would strongly encourage anyone concerned to read both the report and Stock's analysis and to ask questions of those responsible.

Rowan. As ever awesome 😎

In July 2017 Janice Turner interviewed Maria Miller MP, who was the chair of the committee, about the implications particuarly for girls and women,

(extract)
"The heart of the controversy is the view, espoused by Ms Miller’s report, that switching gender should instead merely be a matter of “self-definition”. A man need only “declare” that he is a woman. Your gender is what you feel it to be: there would be no requirement even to take female hormones or have surgery — about 70 per cent of trans women still have intact male genitals — or even “present” as a woman to be legally female. (Some older trans people are troubled by this, believing that it trivialises and delegitimises their struggles to live in their non-birth gender.)

Furthermore, if the law changes, “gender identity” is likely to become a protected characteristic under equalities legislation: ie if you deny a person is a woman or a man when they claim to be, you are guilty of discrimination or hate crime.

When Ms Miller, 53, released her report in January last year she was surprised that criticism came not from conservatives but, as she put it, “women who purport to be feminists”. This may be because feminists, well versed in sexual politics and long-time supporters of gay rights, are among the few people who can penetrate the arcane, confusing terminology.

Many see potential loopholes and conflicts of rights that put women at risk, giving men access to rare female-only spaces such as single-sex wards, changing rooms and domestic violence refuges, designed to keep them safe and private. It is these concerns I put to Ms Miller in her Basingstoke constituency. (continues)

Yet this very idea of “non-binary” or “gender fluidity” is challenged by feminists. Because it assumes that being female is a narrow category: involving pink, make-up, girlie pursuits as opposed to the male world of noise, fun and muddy sports. Isn’t the epidemic of girls wanting to transition — they make up 1,000 out of the Tavistock clinic’s 1,400 referrals — a rebellion against society’s rigid gender strictures rather than a sign that they were “born in the wrong body” and require hormones? This is around the point at which Ms Miller threatens to leave. She relents and we talk a little longer. Although Ms Miller as equalities minister guided gay marriage through parliament, she is at heart a home counties conservative who in 2007 voted against regulations to stop discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. She voted to lower the abortion limit to 20 weeks and for a Nadine Dorries amendment to stop abortion providers such as Marie Stopes giving counselling. (continues)

thread with full article:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2993425-Maria-Miller-interviewed-by-Janice-Turner-full-text

I think it was the Transgender Equality report that did it for me - the standard of it, and researching who had actually contributed. It is hard to believe this was supposed to be the basis for legislation, and the lack of curiosity as to who might be affected by it.

Shonagh Dillon's PhD is interesting about the disconnect between some people's evidence as reported and what they recollect that they had reported as part of the Stonewall research:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4287881-Congratulations-Shonagh-Dillon-for-Defending-Your-PhD-TERF-Bigot-Transphobe-We-found-the-witch-burn-her?msgid=108769551

Dillon has made her PhD available for download.

Jess Phillips MP was part of the Women's and Equalities Committee which produced the Transgender Equality Report (2015–16)
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwomeq/390/390.pdf

There were many very serious issues with this, some of which are identified by Professor Kathleen Stock in her speech at the House of Lords WPUK meeting hosted by Baroness Emma Nicholson (October 2018)

(extract)
"I want to talk about how, in attempting to answer that question, public organisations are being misleadingly advised, sometimes with harmful results.
I take it that the selection of advisors on a particular issue should follow four basic and commonsensical principles:
· All groups affected should be represented
· Advisors should have relevant expertise, and should advise only on areas where they have expertise.
· Advisors shouldn’t have backgrounds which undermine their credibility.
· Advisors should, where possible, appeal to independently verified evidence to back up their views.

For an example where these four principles were not put into practice, I’d like to look at the select committee report from the Transgender Equality inquiry, which came out in January 2016.

Just to remind you all: this inquiry recommends removing any substantive constraints on who may legally change sex, for whatever reason. It also recommends a host of other policies: for instance
· Lowering the age at which one can legally change sex, to 16.
· Rescinding current provision in the Equality Act, to allow trans women to work and receive support in occupational settings like rape crisis centres and domestic violence refuges. (continues)

medium.com/@kathleenstock/womens-place-talk-full-text-house-of-lords-oct-10th-2018-b1f3d70c4559

January 2020 (see screenshot)
twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1213887262414581761

He’s very cross & so is Dawn Butler. Eresh, he’s blocked me too but you’ll be able to see his tweets if you log out.

judging by his Tweeting today, has got right under his skin.

What did he say?

"As the philosophers Van Halen observed, might as well jump."
That is one of the best things I have read in yonks.

The OJ dart has turned out to be enjoyable though.

True, Floisme. If she pisses off LOJ I'm prepared to award a few points.

Seriously though, at this stage Jess is still going to be condemned as a TERF by the purity spiral for ever and ever, however much she tries to stay on the fence.

As the philosophers Van Halen observed, might as well jump.

Yes I'm sure she could have just had a cosy chat with, let's say Zoe Williams if she'd wanted, but she chose Janice Turner and what's more, threw a dart in Owen Jones' direction which, judging by his Tweeting today, has got right under his skin. Call me childish but I can forgive her a lot for that.

I agree LizzieSiddal

I also think Phillips will have realised that simply agreeing to be interviewed by Janice Turner would be seen in some quarters as a signal. My guess is that it was a considered and deliberate choice - she must surely have known Janice would raise the issue. I'm taking it as a sign of progress.

Agree with you. It is progress for a Labour MP to be saying she doesn’t believe trans woman are female. She will get a lot of flack, she’s being called transphobic and a TERF. However I hope more Labour MPs will start being braver and speak about this. There’s no way they all think TWAW.

Perhaps Starmer coming off the fence encouraged her to jump back on it. She is hoping her force of personality will protect her .
She was dreadful on here before the election, as I recall.
Maybe she can sense which way this is going.
Rosie Duffield MP is, on the other hand, not a coward like Jess.

She doesn't grasp the fetishisation of womanhood that's going on there.

Generally I would agree, but I can also see why a ‘ha, ha, you’re lucky you don’t get periods’ would generate this response in somebody suffering from dysphoria.

Splinters in your bum there Jess?

Tactical interview. I wouldn't trust any Labour politician to be honest on women's rights any further than I can spit. Which unfortunately means continuing to be politically homeless while forced to tactically vote for whoever is currently blocking an actively anti-woman party from getting into power.

I suspect she entirely took at face value what she was told by trans groups about it. Which doesn't say a lot for her critical thinking skills or curiosity.

I have heard other people try to remain on the fence but pick out ‘spousal veto’ as something that they can easily condemn, while also discussing the issue in a way that reveals that they have no understanding of what they are talking about.

It’s odd that somebody who should have a good understanding of coercive control would talk like this.

Only possibilities can be lack of knowledge or cynical exploitation of an issue in a way that undermines everything she claims to stand for.

I'm wondering if she's had a change of heart.

I'll need to see evidence that she now supports trans widows rights rather than optimistic speculation.