Shelagh Fogarty on LBC discussing Scottish rapist case

For me, it's about preventing the erasure of everything that defines and is important to biological women. The language, privacy, dignity, safety, sex based rights, fairness and equality. These things are also about identity, and should be respected too. Also about preventing irreversible damage to damage in the form of medicalisation, chest binders, hormones surgery.

Yes, this is the bit that gets me.

Very very often these issues are presented as being about trans people, when actually they're about women, and women's rights.

The trouble is that the idea that we can change sex is blurring the issue.

It's two fundamentally different positions that are utterly incompatible.

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.

It is absolutely and categorically impossible to have both systems running at the same time.

They contradict each other completely.

Anyone can be any 'gender', because it's an inner feeling.

We are either one or the other sex; there are only two, and sex is immutable.

But there isn't a GC movement. It isn't a political party, there's no manifesto, and the whole 'x is coloured by looking sideways at y's aunt's hamster' is a lot of purity spiralling nonsense.

Vote for who you want. Do you.

That's all fine, and I agree with it. But unfortunately, 'GC' is treated as an umbrella term by TRAs. And if KJK stands for election and becomes known for primarily that sort of argument, then the stuff that matters profoundly to me and my daughters gets lost in that sort of smoke. I'm honestly just trying to think this through, on the hoof...

For example, Tories are coloured now by the words and beliefs of people like Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Truss, ERG crowd etc etc. It's lost the defining 'feel' that more moderate old-school Tories gave to the party.

Someone like Rory Stewart retains respectability and integrity among a a section of the electorate because he stood as an Independent. That distance from the party means something. I am more likely to listen to HIM than I am to someone still loyal to the current Tory brand.

Substitute Tory for GC. How the movement is defined and what it stands for matters. I think ... 🤔

People who don't agree with gender ideology aren't a hive mind or a 'side' or a 'gang' with group think and rules, and you're either in or out. There's just a lot of people with doubts and varying priorities. Do you, what concerns you is entirely down to you and other women here concerned will have bits in common and bits not.

For me, I'm not interested in how a male wishes to identify or define: just that women's access and services and language are not used as a male therapeutic resource, and single sex provisions are unaffected. Anything that does not work for male people or those who identify out of being women are a job for new and additional resources. Not the hijack and theft of women's needed resources at the price of female exclusion and harm.

Not read the rest of the thread yet, but I've never seen this. I'm afraid to say I don't think Kellie did very well there on some critical points, and I agree with James O'Brien on most of what he said.

Makes me wonder if maybe I'm not actually 'Gender Critical' if being GC is this argument? I'm trying to think this through...

I don't care how people live their lives, dress etc and I don't judge them. It's not my mission to prevent people from calling themselves women if they want to, even if I privately might think 'well, you're not really, you're a transwoman'.

For me, it's about preventing the erasure of everything that defines and is important to biological women. The language, privacy, dignity, safety, sex based rights, fairness and equality. These things are also about identity, and should be respected too. Also about preventing irreversible damage to damage in the form of medicalisation, chest binders, hormones surgery.

There have always been transwoman in society, and they have never felt like a threat to me, as a biological women, until now. And even so, I try very hard to distinguish between those TW, and the activists. I haven't changed; they haven't changed; but something else has. It's that something else that's the threat.

The big challenge with this debate now - especially now - is communicating the key points properly. I found that exchange enormously disappointing. Yes, if the big fight is to persuade girls they can never call themselves boys if they want to them maybe round of applause to Kellie, and boo to James, but is that really the battle? If we succeed in that word-fight, will it address all of the things that I am concerned about automatically? I don't think so.

That doesn't surprise me @WarriorN

I read a stat that 70% of women in prison have had head injuries in their lives (presumably mostly through abuse). Which are more serious in women than men in terms of brain damage.

Yeah that was painful but that's exactly what I mean - he is an intelligent man but on this subject he uses a lot of words, he talks at great speed and jumps and diverts all over the place, because he knows he's talking shite. He barely let Posie speak because she'd ask uncomfortable questions which would expose all the holes in his argument. Like this bit,

JOB: 'when inside they feel absolutely, absolutely inside female'

Posie: 'what does absolutely inside female mean?'

JOB: 'you can't answer my question with another question?'

🤣

What she asked was very pertinent to the question he posed, it was impossible to answer his Q without knowing his definition of 'absolutely female' - but he didn't have an answer so he swerved. It's not a lack of intelligence that made him do that, it was cowardice and arrogance.

I'd love to hear Shelagh discuss this on air with him - I suspect he wouldn't fare so well with somebody who had an equal mic and couldn't be talked over quite so easily.

J'O is a very intelligent man.

Is he?

I can't stand Iain Dale but I will say I've heard him do shows in the past about VAWG and he came across as thoughtful and very aware of how dangerous society can be for females. Same with James O'Brien. Which is why I find their thoughts on trans issues so bewildering. How can you accept that as a group men pose a danger to women but in the next breath say those that wear a dress don't and women shouldn't feel threatened sharing their safe spaces? It makes zero sense 🤯

J'O is a very intelligent man. I know he knows it makes zero sense, which makes me believe the PP was right, he swerves the issue because he's worried about the repercussions from his 'fan-base'. Not that he should be - TRAs are generally fine with men voicing biological facts, I mean, how many rape threats do you think Piers Morgan/Ricky Gervais has received compared with JKR? 🤔

Iain Dale's so fucking clueless. I want to lock him in a room with Mumsnetters for a day.

I'm now listening to Iain Dale.

Now I like Iain but he's always been dismissive of women over this issue (influenced in part probably by Jacqui Smith who's equally dismissive)

I'm quite enjoying the cognitive dissonance of him still trying to 'be kind' while realising the whole thing is a shit show.

The day we peak Ian Dale is the day we'll win and he's halfway up that mountain. I just want someone to ring up and tell him this isn't the first time this has happened. You can only keep your head in the sand for so long it seems ..

Pick a side.

It’s also 🤢 to me that every Male trans rights activist that has phoned in has been all ‘ooooh I’m just so worried about the effect this will have on trans people’. No human concern for, y’know, the women that are tonight locked up with a serial rapist 🤷🏼‍♀️ they’re my primary concern, even beyond ‘women as a whole’ because they’re in direct danger at the moment.

He’s a little coward who has avoided the topic at all costs because he knows the TWAW types are the ones who follow him on Twitter.

It’s being discussed on Ian Dale now, he’s referring to the prisoner as a man! No ‘transwomen’ shit, just ‘this man, and he is a man’ 👏🏻 👏🏻 Debbie Hayton just came on too.

Shelagh has tweeted a couple of things tonight.

I have always thought she is very good and I am happy that she always keeps it respectful.

People are finally talking now. In a way they have not before.

It gives me hope that we may be reversing the decline into rabid misogyny.

Yeah I've always got that impression from Shelagh.

James O'Brien is very disappointing on this subject though.

I've been waiting for Shelagh to finally get her teeth into this. I could tell by the tone of her voice whenever it briefly came up in the past that she was 'exercised' by it.

Lottapianos · Today 15:32
Good discussion going on at the moment. Shelagh referring to 'biological men' in women's prisons

What a relief that she referred to biological sex.

If anyone hasn’t seen it yet, this petition started by Sex Matters is to update the Equality Act to make clear that the protected characteristic ‘sex’ means biological sex. It is a Parliamentary petition and anyone signing it will be anonymous.
⬇️
www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4668426-petition-update-the-equality-act-to-make-clear-the-characteristic-sex-is-biological-sex?page=1

The wonderful Tom Conti was on World at One (radio 4) yesterday…they’d asked his opinion Ona stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar with females in the role of Jesus & Judas…
They obviously seemed to think he’d be in favour of this but instead said ‘men are men and women are women, I’m sure you’ve noticed’ (to words to that effect) He was very much against this ridiculous notion. He was immediately cut off…I can imagine the producer banging on the studio window shouting’thats not what we wanted him to say’… Long live Tom Conti!
sorry if someone has already said this….haven’t had time to read through all this thread.

Yes Tom is very good on this. We need more men to speak up about it. Women are ignored. It's our voices. They can't hear them.

Tom Swarbrick has been talking openly about his GC views for a couple of years, bravely I think.