AIBU to think Jo Swinson framing lesbians as DV abusers is playing into homophobic tropes?

[ArcheryAnnie]

In an interview with Andrew Marr, Jo Swinson answered a question about transwomen in domestic violence refuges by talking about the hypothetical case of an abusive lesbian partner.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000bqht/the-andrew-marr-show-24112019

Can women be perpetrators of domestic abusers? Yes, of course they can. Some are. Some of those are lesbians, even. But overwhelmingly violence against women is committed by males, by a huge, huge margin.

Here's what the Office for National Statistics says about victims: "In three-quarters of domestic abuse-related offences the victim was female (75%). This proportion was similar for the majority of offence categories, but for domestic abuse-related sexual offences the proportion of victims that were female was even higher, at 96%."

And here's what the Office for National Statistics says about perpetrators: "Reflecting the profile of victims and perpetrators shown in earlier sections, the vast majority of defendants in domestic abuse-related prosecutions were men in the year ending March 2018 (92%)."

This isn't, and can't be, a clinical discussion where you can discuss hypotheticals and it doesn't mean anything. Homophobia exists, and outdated homophobic tropes - such as the aggressive, predatory lesbian - fuel that homophobia. That Jo Swinson chose to focus entirely on a hypothetical lesbian abuser has consequences.

Either Jo Swinson does not realise that she is playing into outdated stereotypes of aggressive, predatory lesbians, in which case she really is not qualified to discuss these issues at all. or she is very aware of these outdated stereotypes, and is playing into them anyway in order to manipulate people into accepting the idea of mixed-sex DV refuges (thus removing the ability of many women to access refuge space at all), in which case we can judge her on who she is happy to throw under the bus.

Which is it, Jo?

Given her position as leader of a political party, Jo Swinson’s naivety and ignorance continue to astound me.

She is absolutely vile in my opinion

Arrogant too

They need to get her off TV. Every time she does an interview their poll ratings fall.

They need to keep her on TV so everyone knows not to vote LibDem.

While risk assessment is of course important, the issue with allowing tw into women's refuges is not about that (primarily). It's not good enough to just say 'we've done a risk assessment and this one is unlikely to actually rape or hit anyone'. The law demands more than that.

Service providers are prohibited from harassing service users. The equality act defines harassment as unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic that has the purpose or effect of violating someone's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.

The unwanted conduct in this case is opening the refuge to male people. The single sex exceptions are there for a reason. If refuges don't use them effectively then they risk harassing their service users. Which is prohibited conduct.

Yanbu.

Given her position as leader of a political party, Jo Swinson’s naivety and ignorance continue to astound me.

You're not the only one.

Karen Ingala Smith explains what's wrong with the 'risk assessment' idea -

She gave similar evidence to the Women & Equalities Committee for the inquiry into enforcing the Equality Act.

She doesn’t answer the question until the third time he asks but to be fair the points are really poorly worded

Eg Interviewer-Women’s refuges can turn away *trans people would you change the EA?

*Should say - “males who identify as women”

She thinks the same sex partner thing is a “gotcha” and then says TW are at “significant risk”. Neither of which are relevant to what the interviewer is clumsily trying to get at which is

Should trans women be allowed into female refuges?

She managed not to answer but I wish he’d asked her directly.

The more I see of her, the more I struggle to see this as just naivety and ignorance. She’s had enough replies enlightening her on the Sarah Brown tweet alone for “ignorance” to be no defence here.

What on earth is her agenda? How bastarding shite is it that you get a woman leader of a major(ish) political party and it turns out she seems to genuinely hate women? And especially lesbians, eh. Appalling.

The truth is that TW are more likely to be both abused and murdered by their male partners

Says who? Source for this "truth" please?

Fucksake Jo

Oh dear God, I just read the transcript of her reply to Andrew Marr - what an awful woman. How on earth is she leader of a party? I mean, I know things are bad, but was there no one else in the whole party who could have been better than her?

@ArcheryAnnie

”Can women be perpetrators of domestic abusers? Yes, of course they can. Some are. Some of those are lesbians, even. But overwhelmingly violence against women is committed by males, by a huge, huge margin.”

DV in lesbian partnerships happens at nearly three times the rate of male to female DV.

Why is she talking about cis women?
A woman is "an adult female human being" no need to prefix it with cis.
Jo Swinson's so shouty and awful.

”DV in lesbian partnerships happens at nearly three times the rate of male to female DV.”

My mistake - I subsequently looked it up and it’s bisexual women who spike at that rate. Lesbian DV rates are still higher than than the rates for heterosexual women, though.

I amnt even too sure what the DV rate amongst lesbians has to do with this. Like it's additionally hateful to bring up something negative about gay people that not at all related to the question

( always assuming that the published rates do not include transwomen)

To me

1. partners of victims should not be allowed in DV shelters
2. DV shelters need at least sex separation , because it has been shown that a traumatised women will be further traumatised by any Male..not just the abusive Male

There may be a need for transwomen DV shelters that provide support specific to the transwomen victims , which is likely to be materially different to that required by women( pregnancy for example not being relevent whereas fear of being outed might be relevent)

But as yet I have not heard of women who want to exclude lesbians from single sex spaces on account of being lesbian...except some weird politicians

Why is she talking about cis women?

Presumably she was referring to that miniscule minority of women who identify as walking sexist stereotypes of their own sex, which is what 'cis' means in this context.

Of course this does not include the vast majority of women who do not identify as walking sexist stereotypes of either sex, nor those women who identify as walking sexist stereotypes of the opposite sex so why she wants to talk about maybe 1% of women and exclude the 99% is beyond me.

But then she can't even answer a question about bog standard males in women's spaces without wittering on irrelevantly about lesbians so it's probably way too much to expect her to stick to the topic of women rather than some miniscule minority of women, most of whom come from extremely privileged backgrounds like Laurie Penny (one of the few women I know identifies as a walking sexist stereotype).

This is my point about how people who are actually probably properly homophobic and transphobic cover it up with a veneer of being woke and then totally reveal themselves under pressure because their wokeness has no real foundation in how they view the world.

So - when presented with the issue of males in refuges - Swinson doesn't hear anything but 'blah blah male gaze' and she responds with 'yeah but lesbians have the male gaze, 'cos they fancy women innit?'

It's deeply homophobic. And as you've pointed out in your OP perhaps more concerning is the extent to which it exposes her inability to follow a basic political argument.

Men, as a class, are not allowed into women's refuges, because men, as a class, are much more high risk than females and we don't know which ones are the dangerous ones. And also women, particularly women who have been abused, may be uncomfortable around men.

It's not just male partners who are not allowed in, it's any men. And everyone is OK with that.

So, what Jo Swinson seems to be suggesting, is that we apply the same logic to lesbians? So we don't let any lesbians into women's refuges? That's definitely homophobic isn't it?

Agree. This issue is the reason I'm spoiling my ballot - none of the parties are willing to protect women and our sex based rights.

So, leader of major political party is ask if her party will change the Equality Act to ensure that women only refuges are forced to accept males who identify as women, and her answer is no, lesbians blah blah blah.

So no, the Liberal Democrat’s don’t support changing the EA, but something about lesbians blah blah blah.

How enlightening. Not only has she no fucking idea what she’s on about, but she thinks letting men into womens’ refuges is something to do with homosexual females.

She’s staggeringly thick, and lesbophobic.

I think she completely misses the point.

As far as I know there are refuges that accept trans women and nobody is trying to change that.

The problem is that single sex refuges are also necessary, and it's not just a question of assessing the risk of a particular male bodied person or preventing men from accessing refuges under false pretences. Some women are so traumatised by male violence that they just need space where there are no men.

However, as far as I understand, according to Swinson a women who has experienced traumatic male violence should not have access to a single sex space because the concept of a single sex space makes trans people commit suicide.

Honestly this seems offensive to trans people.

DV in lesbian partnerships happens at nearly three times the rate of male to female DV

I have no idea whether this is true, but I don't think random lesbian violence is a particular problem in society. If it were there wouldn't be so few women in prison for violent crimes.

Yanbu i'm shocked that a political leader is making unfounded and baseless homophobic slurs in 2019. She can sling her hook.

I think she completely misses the point.

I don’t think she’s missing it so much as running away from it as fast as she can.

Yy Empress. Exit pursued by the truth.