Shelagh Fogarty on LBC discussing Scottish rapist case

Quite simply, if you don't believe that this person should be in a woman jail then you don't believe TWAW

Yup. And some are getting themselves into a right old pickle insisting they never said TWAW. Peter Tatchell for one insisted on LBC he never said that... but there are recordings of him saying precisely that!

The Scottish rapist’s crimes are to be recorded as having been carried out by a woman.
Time to make clear that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex.
⬇️

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4668426-petition-update-the-equality-act-to-make-clear-the-characteristic-sex-is-biological-sex?page=1

This is so very important - it's reached almost 75,000 signatures now, please keep sharing.

I loved it this afternoon when some woke bro rung up and told Shelagh she had a penis obsession. She was more polite than I would have been. They can't help themselves.

Thanks for sharing the petition. Signed!

Shelagh talking about it again now.

Precisely. Everybody knows what a woman is really. Some people pretend not to and try to gaslight the majority into thinking that the meaning of the word has changed - or was always what they claim it is now, even more bizarrely. No need for qualifiers like biological or natal - everybody knows what you mean.

It'll be interesting to see if he gets Rape threats, accusations of bigotry and transphobia, or if that's reserved for women.

Blunkett made me cry. Sickening though that it takes a man to say what women have been trying to say for years.

David Blunkett actually said

in the end, women’s equality trumps it all.

That is a wonderful thing.

He was also so very clear that sex and gender are entirely different things, but without being dismissive or rude about those who feel they want to be a different gender.

@Cuppasoupmonster I understand that feeling.

Yes, I think so.

Even more relevant to me was learning yesterday (I think on Tom Swarbrick's show) that trans men are housed in women's prisons. Which is an implicit recognition that 1. they are women and 2. that men are a threat to women.

Quite simply, if you don't believe that this person should be in a woman jail then you don't believe TWAW .

Good responses from David Blunkett and (perhaps more significantly) Yvette Cooper.

twitter.com/treesey/status/1618219994499919877

twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1618532781595795458

I don’t even want to kow-tow with anyone over the meaning of the word ‘woman’ anymore, trying to prove I’m right, when it’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying to even those hard of comprehension skills. My 3 year old knows if somebody is a woman or a man regardless of fashion choices and hair length.

I’m not even going to try any more because I feel like it indulges the madness and gives the TRAs imagine ‘cracks’ in which they try to slip through. ‘it’s someone who can get pregnant is it?? What what about women who CANT get pregnant?? See, not that simple’ and so on.

We all know what a woman is and what a man is, I’m not going to explain myself any further or indulge in their semantics. I don’t need to ‘win’ it because it’s already won.

@scratchedbymycat
I would say you are gender critical because you oppose changing the meaning of the word "woman" to a gender instead of a word for a sex - the female half of the human race. And you understand that having a female-sexed body has implications which are different to those of having a male-sexed body.

@Cuppasoupmonster

"I no longer tune in because this proves to me he’s fundamentally a coward who if push comes to shove would rather appease the Male Rights Activists than show the same critical thinking he applies to everyone and everything else."

I think, irrespective of what JOB might say about being learning to be wrong or learning from his listeners, being 'right' matters to him. I don't think he'll engage with a topic unless he's confident he has the argument and thinking lined up and ready to win it. And this argument is complicated - there are a lot of threads to unravel. It's much easier to get a grip of this if you are a women because you tap into a lifetime of thinking and experience. So for Shelagh, this is more accessible than it is for James. I just don't think he's got there yet, and also, he has teens. My own husband doesn't fully get it either, and he has me talking about it endlessly.

@ArabellaScott

Coincidentally, it was the dawning realisation that some transgender women could / would commit rape that got me started on this journey a few years ago. Prior to that, I think I thought that living as a female, dysphoria, by definition included being psychologically incapable of committing a male crime against a female. I certainly thought excluding TW from female toilets, prisons seemed cruel.

When I think though of the arguments that gain traction in the public sphere, it's pithy questions like 'What is a woman?' Or 'Can a man have a cervix?' For a lot of people the answers to these are philosophical thought exercises. But a politician answers these questions doesn't tell me anything about what matters most to me and I think derails the main issues.

Whereas, if the opening question is 'Do you believe rapists should be in women's prisons', it gets more real fast . It also means you can go on: "What if the rapist identifies as a woman ...?" To "how do you legislate to stop this?" Etc.

I'm with you on this, I think J'o'B is very expensively educated and has all the right opinions. I'm not sure he's a particularly intelligent or deep thinker tho.

Oh, gosh, no that's not the opening argument.

The opening argument is 'why is there a rapist in Cornton Vale?'

I'm going to be late but ...,

*To have women's rights, you have to define women, and women can only be defined by differentiating them from men.

We can either categories by sex, or by gender.*

My thought is, is this the 'opening argument' though? Because I think people unaware of all the bigger stuff that really matters tense up instantly and think unkind / exclusion / transwoman exist / etc the moment this is stated. It might instead be the endpoint, that once you understand exactly what is at stake, you appreciate why sex-classes are so important in law.

If JOB was ‘properly’ debating TWAW JOB, he would rip him to shreds. He plays faux naive and uses logic holes that he criticises other people for all the time. It’s very deliberate - I don’t agree with him on everything but I used to respect him and listen to him regardless. I no longer tune in because this proves to me he’s fundamentally a coward who if push comes to shove would rather appease the Male Rights Activists than show the same critical thinking he applies to everyone and everything else.

Sorry - my reply was to @nilsmousehammer ... just to be clear.

You've missed my point completely, but I can't follow up properly because I have to head out. It's not about 'me doing me'; it's about public perception and being able to get people to listen, really listen, when this issue is being discussed.