Conservative candidate resigns after trans comments

I'm as GC as anyone but I think his comments were totally unacceptable in front of students. If no students were present, I still think his views were expressed in a rather extreme and divisive way, the invasion comment in particular. I don't agree that he was "censored", he's been deselected because the Conservative party presumably didn't want a candidate who would put off centre-ground voters.

This is awful. His comments regarding transwomen intruding into single sex spaces echo what the vast majority of our country think, and what our current Prime Minister and his predecessor have said. Keeping biological men out of women’s prisons and toilets is basic safeguarding.

Schools are teaching anti-science, anti-women, anti-safeguarding and anti-gay fanaticism, a Conservative candidate contradicts that and he’s the one who gets fired? Just awful.

As for his other comment about an immigrant ‘invasion’, well obviously that was an undiplomatic choice of word, but he was echoing the exact word used by the last Home Secretary and it is not a sackable word to use. Also we have to be able to discuss the fact that so far this year over 50,000 illegal immigrants have landed on Kent beaches in illegal boats, and that’s just those who were caught, the actual number of arrivals will be far higher. By contrast the Norman invasion was only 7,000 and the Roman invasion was 40,000 so the word invasion while undiplomatic and unwise isn’t exactly inaccurate.

We have to be able to have a free-speaking debate on these issues without destroying the careers of those who some
see as controversial. Free speech is the basis of Western culture - or it was, until entitled white male misogynists put on lipstick and claimed to a vulnerable minority.

The school says it’s “inclusive”?! Ha. It isn’t inclusive of teenage girls who don’t want to get changed in front of boys, or parents who care about safeguarding, or lesbians who want to reject sex with penis without being harassed as ‘transphobic’.

How do you suggest we change it then?

Which party can we vote for?

It’s enraging

Tell it to the GRA creators and all the men who have pushed into our spaces since

"How on earth, all of you ladies here, can allow a bloke in a dress to come into your loos? It's disgusting."

The onus is on YOU, women! Stop being so disgusting as to allow this to happen to yourselves!

Fuck off mate and address your valid concerns to the blokes who invade women's spaces.

It's "she was asking for it" by any other name.

Nobody in Iraq elected Saddam Hussain either but millions and millions still suffered for the policies of their leader. It’s like a child complaining that the world is unfair. The child’s not necessarily wrong but it doesn’t matter because they still have to deal with the world as it is.

Men effectively said can we use women’s spaces if we identify as women and liberal feminists said sure come on in we are tolerant and inclusive. Now you have to accept it or seek to change it. But I don’t think anyone else is going to change it for you.

How on earth have you leapt to that conclusion?

Just emphasizing that everything is women's fault of course?

Nobody elected liberal feminists though. They're not our leaders.

So it's totally unfair to blame women for "letting" men in our single sex spaces when there was no letting. It was imposed on us without our consent.

Oh that’s just the way of the world isn’t it? Populations always pay for the policies of their leaders. Always have always will I guess.

But liberal feminists are a tiny minority of women.

Why are ordinary women who just want to use the toilet in safety and dignity to blame for what liberal feminists have done?

Well yes it sort of is. Liberal feminism lead to this and if they don’t like now that they have it then it is for them to come up with a solution and compromise acceptable in a liberal democracy I think. However I would also qualify that by saying that I don’t think all feminism is liberal feminism and that I don’t think feminism at its core is liberal. But the dominant form of feminism in the west is and absolutely did lead to where we are now.

In a video posted online, uploaded by the Eastern Daily Press
, external, he appeared to say: "A bloke wearing a dress who identifies as a woman should be in a male prison [and] should not be allowed in women's toilets. For goodness sake

He had to go, he views are in direct conflict with Govt policy which is that trans women can go to a female only prison, so long as they have not committed a violent offence.

Yes, anti-semitism, and in particular denying Israel's right to exist would trigger a prevent referral in an educational setting.

How would they express such views about immigrants?

We don't have separate spaces and sports for immigrants so it's not a comparable issue.

When I see idiots like this one dismiss such a complex issue to ‘blokes in loos’ - never mind the nasty ‘immigrant invasion’ part - I feel more certain I’m on the right side of the debate.

lol, what a way to weigh an issue! So when you see the idiots/misogynists/ literal murderers on your current side of the debate spewing out their moronic bile, do you change your mind back again? It must make you quite dizzy.

The Tory Party aren't clamping down on everyone who expresses those views.

They have just decided he is not the right candidate

Yes, it very much is blokes in loos.
But - it’s women’s fault for letting them in?! Our problem to solve?
Ffs…

You can express any view you like in this country, provided it’s one of the many shades of liberal progressivism. Not even the Tories will tolerate anything else.

Putting the trans comments to one side (we are still waiting for schools to actually receive that guidance and I disagree with most of you on here) for a moment. If any of the students he was speaking to had expressed such comments about immigrants in my class I would be referring up for consideration for reporting to the Prevent scheme. It's actually my legal responsibility to do so.
A candidate for any party should have been aware of this.

This

I'm very gender critical and think the school was within its rights to complain. Plus this isn't just about the trans comments, it's also his comments on immigration.

It's not acceptable to go into a school (or anywhere imo) and use the rhetoric of an 'invasion' of immigrants'. Suella may have shifted the dial on what's deemed 'acceptable' language around immigration - and brought the language of the far right into mainstream politics - but the school presumably has students who are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and has a duty to protect them from hate speech. I would be furious if a politician came into my DC's school and said that. As for repressing free speech, the school is actually quoted in the article as saying 'We do not feel those comments were appropriate to be aired in a school environment in the manner he chose to do so...' So yep, say you're 'concerned' about immigration if you must, but don't waltz into a school spouting off about 'invasions' of immigrants.

As for the 'disgusting' comment, I totally agree it is 'disgusting' that women and girls have to put up with men in women's spaces. But there are more nuanced ways of having that conversation without bringing in the word 'disgusting' (and in the context of his other comments, reads as a short hop, skip and a jump to 'they're disgusting'). Plus the victim-blaming of women for 'allowing' this is totally out of order. So I agree that the school was right to complain. I'm more surprised that he and/or the local party agreed he should fall on his own sword over this!

I agree with this.
Even if it wasn't a school environment (I haven't read the source, sorry) but a hustings, I still don't think there's any need to use language like that.
Having said that, I am concerned about the school having concerns about his views per se, rather than the way he expressed them.

I agree with a Bloke in a dress shouldn't be housed in female prisons or be using the female loo.
The immigrant comment, not as simple as it's an invasion. It's a much more complicated issue for me.

"How on earth, all of you ladies here, can allow a bloke in a dress to come into your loos? It's disgusting."

Interesting use of the word "allow" - like we have a choice. I agree it's disgusting that we don't.