Beth Rigby interviews Iain Anderson

"This is a joke. Plenty cis women taller than Lia Thomas, who’s stood on a staggered podium. Lia won a college race".

India Willoughby desperately pretending that there are any number of 6ft4 tall women.
Desperation much!

Some unions are trying to change the wording. Instead of equality, equalities or even moving to using the word ‘equity’. This enables a pyramid of rights. Overrides concerns about conflicting rights. Making it clear some rights are more worthy than others.

TRA supporters taking it one step further and advocating using ‘liberation’ instead of equality. So no equality act or an equality committee but a liberation act/committee. They really don’t want women to be equal. They want the language to signal women’s subordinate position ie less than. It was ever thus, but coming at it from an entirely different direction this time.

I see this as opposing tensions.

On the one hand, the PR/culture grab from TRAs amongst the wider public failing (Adam Bryson, Lia Thomas, Mika Minio, SJB debacles hardening the "man/woman on the Clapham Omnibus" attitudes, indeed poll after poll showing Stonewall have comprehensively lost the public)...hence this uneasy mix of crazy talk from the left elites to support males breastfeeding etc, ramped up language of apocalypses, holocausts, fascists, Nazis etc...and this "new" sitting right on the dividing line from Stonewall Iain..."sooooo", "trans folk" etc.

Otoh, institutions, woke capitalism, Labour, LDs, Greens, SNP, all pushing down the trans road as if it's still 2015-2022. Robotic talking Self ID, hate laws, trans conversion bans, 99.9% of women having penises, both sides need to be courteous etc.

These battlelines coalescing right now in the schools issue, the natural tension between traditional child safeguarding and the weight of legal policy drift from 2004, that means the Stonewall message in schools is unbelievably hard to shift.

It's happened with prisons. It's happening with sports. It now must happen with schools. Then the NHS.

'He did look very odd, gripping onto his chair and swaying backwards and forwards. And that's before listening to his answers!'

He did come across as rather odd, and had a strange halting delivery style

It is all so transparent. They think we're stupid.

Stonewall's 'Free To Be' Strategy for (2021 - 2025). It keeps referencing people " living their life to the full" - which Anderson kept repeating in the interview. They are trying to get everyone on board through the use of unifying statements which are assumed to be appealing to all people.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/stonewall-strategy-free-to-be

Like Staremer he keeps using the term 'safe spaces' instead of single sex spaces. 'Sex' is a word to be avoided.

He also talked about transitioning from male to female. This use of this inaccuracy/impossibiliity also seems to be on the increase, and needs to be confronted head on every time it is used.

Anybody else get the feeling that Iain thought the interview was going to be the usual 'walk in the park' style meeting he has with politicians and therefore did zero prep?

He did look very odd, gripping onto his chair and swaying backwards and forwards. And that's before listening to his answers!

Oh to be a fly on the wall of the Stonewall offices today.

I don't think he is " softening" so much as detecting a very obvious PR failure. I imagine he sees himself as a strategist, for the Labour party, in how to communicate this issue to the public.

Oh, I don't think the softening is genuine, I think he is just trying out different strategies to make him and stonewall appear more reasonable. He is a weathervane whose opinion (when voiced in public) will depend on the direction public opinion is blowing.

I also suspect she has a lot of gay friends, and is very au fait with LGB Alliance's arguments.

Absolutely. As Sharron Davies pointed out on the excellent Triggernometry interview, a transman was competing in the same NCAA competition as Lia Thomas and chose to do so in the women's category. Nothing to have stopped Lia competing in the men's one.

Think Beth is a big ol' terf! And good for her.

What I found really surprising is that she's happy to let that show – I don't think she would have done even just a few months ago. It really proves that things are changing, and the trans insanity might finally have peaked.

I noticed he used the american term "trans folk" which seems to have been gathering pace recently. I think it is part of the new communcation strategy to make trans ideology kind of harmless and cuddly.

I think a third category is the way to go. It would immediately become blindingly obvious that NO transmen (women) were winning anything and that the category was almost exclusively made up of mediocre males.

Said males wouldn’t bother competing because they’d know they had no advantage, so the category would end up with no entrants, it would peter out and the world would be deafened by the sound of pennies dropping as the few remaining supporters of men competing in women’s sports would finally go “Oooohhhhhhh…”

He was utterly awful.

sweating, grimacing (I think he imagined it was a smile), repeating himself and gibbering absolute nonsense.

It was BEAUTIFUL 😂

Maybe, but this is the obvious solution to protecting womens categories as things stand.

Yes which was also annoying (and wouldn’t work). It was as if it was so unthinkable that a man could not compete in a man’s race (because of his feelings of not wanting to be a man) that they would have to restructure the whole system.

I don't think he is " softening" so much as detecting a very obvious PR failure. I imagine he sees himself as a strategist, for the Labour party, in how to communicate this issue to the public.

Remember Kier Starmer was talking about " building consensus" around the GRA/Self Id - by which he basically means trying to find a way to " reassure" those hysterical, nervous women about his intentions to allow any random male into women's single sex spaces, services and categories.

Once women have been thus " reassured" they can rest their little heads in peace. He wants to talk about how best to talk about this issue -whilst simulataneously avoiding it.

Yes, I'd love a transcript - his non-answers and self-contradictions would be even more self-evident in writing.

She did mention, or imply, the possibility of a third category, though.

The answer is that Lia is not quite elite level in the male category, but can easily smash all the records set by once-in-a-lifetime athletes like Katie Ledecky, in the female category. Lia likes to win. Lia chooses glory over basic fairness.

India What'sisface on Twittsville - Has Stonewall been infiltrated?
Yes. Yes it has. By you you weapons grade bullshitting gaslighting toxic piece of nonsense.
Oh what a glorious interview it was. I've always loved Beth. Beth for Empress of the World!

The bit I was annoyed at was when Beth didn’t ask why Lia can’t compete in the men’s.

I’ve had a girl crush on Beth for several years. Her political interviews can be forensic, she knows her stuff and asks the questions the public want to ask.

She excelled herself yesterday, not letting him get away with his deliberate word salads. Thank you Beth!