"Is it a crime to say ‘women don’t have penises’?"James Kirkup Spectator article

[R0wantrees]

James Kirkup article concludes:
"Reactions have been striking, to say the least. At least one Twitter user has asked Merseyside Police to investigate a potential crime. Others have asked local politicians to act. Just the usual Twitter nonsense, right? No one is actually going to treat stickers saying “women don’t have penises” as a crime, are they?

Well guess what Merseyside Police said when people sent them tweets asking them to investigate those sticker?

@ MerPolCC
Hi, thanks for the tag, I can confirm we are aware of this matter and enquiries are being made.

And here’s Joe Anderson, elected mayor of Liverpool:
“We will remove stickers and work with the Police to identify those responsible.”

It’s traditional to end columns like this by making an argument or a point, but in this case, I think the most eloquent comment I can make about Britain today and the state of the transgender debate is just to restate the facts and let readers draw their own conclusions: A feminist group is today facing the prospect of investigation by a police force and a City mayor for saying “women don’t have penises”.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/is-it-a-crime-to-say-women-dont-have-penises/

Labour Mayor and Cops admiring the Emperors new cloth while the nation roars laughing at them.

Meanwhile in Merseyside, there are calls for the dictionary and science books to be burnt.

I understand that the Liverpool Mayor's comment was in response to Dr Adrian Harrop?

relevent threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3248676-dr-adrian-harrop-dr-misogyny-is-pursuing-another-woman

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3244781-dr-adrian-harrop-who-the-funk-does-he-think-he-is

The response says it all: acting on Dr Harrop's Tweet, replying to a complainant who has 'troll' in their name; Starting a witch hunt for sticking up stickers with a bioligical fact while Jess Bradley is not mentioned while every day the news contains stories of women and children being abused by men.

In the 70s and 80s I coulsn't walk past a wall without seeing a graffiti penis.

It's a fucking disgrace.

The hope is this raises the subject in wider society.
Do they know how misognyistic and totalitarian this is?

No doubt the narrative will be manipulated.

I do hope the mayor and Cops are not inclusionary on the streets, exclusionary in the sheets.

Thanks Rowantrees. There's an existing thread on this here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3340181-Is-it-a-crime-to-say-women-dont-have-penises-James-Kirkup-article

I have also linked from there to here

I found myself idly thinking of the obscenity trial of Penguin books for publishing 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' unabridged.

A key feature of the defence was the expert witnesses they called, described in the Telegraph article lined below,

(extracts)
'I don’t think this novel is one of Lawrence’s best, or a great work of art,’ wrote Doris Lessing when approached by the defence as a possible witness. 'I’m sorry, if there is to be a test case, that it will be fought over this particular book.’ (continues)

"Lawrence Durrell was more helpful: 'The use of obscenity by an artist was a most desirable psychic purge for the community and very much in its interest. Lady Chatterley was a weapon against horror comics and the literature of sick violence, which only inflamed the secret pruriences and buried guilts of the community without purging them.'

The defence still needed female witnesses; Iris Murdoch hadn’t made the cut, her eloquence tempered by her criticisms: 'LCL certainly may strike one as an eminently silly book by a great man.’

Dame Rebecca West was deemed to possess the authority that the much younger Murdoch lacked, and together with 34 other witnesses, she contributed to what John Sparrow, Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, called 'the most thorough and expensive seminar on Lawrence’s work ever given’."

I was musing about this in relation to stickerwoman's alleged crime and imagining a possible trial

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8096567/The-tumultuous-trial-of-Lady-Chatterleys-Lover.html

Wanderabout Im so sorry, I did look but missed it,
Thank you for the link.

R0wantrees: It's odd that they don't mention Margaret Drabble, who was a witness for the defence and, obviously, a female one.

Doris Lessing really was an awkward sort, wasn't she? She could have just said, Yes, I'll appear for the defence. It's kind of ridiculous, though, that they ended up with 35 defence witnesses and not a single prosecution witness.

Back to the penis stickers - I think it's more than likely that, after a brief investigation, the police will conclude that a hate crime has not been committed. Unless they're really desperately keen to turn themselves into a public laughing stock.

hackmum I have a great fondness and respect for Doris Lessing and yes she was awkward too! I also share her opinion about LCL.

But yes, back to the sticker penises /penis stickers- I really don't think the Merseyside CPS will be keen to pursue this. I imagine that given the pressures on policing, tracking down stickerers won't be a new target for the police.

(One can't tell nowadays though so I am now imagining a briefing Hill St Blues style...

I would like the Mayor to be tackled about this and not just on Twitter. Fucking arsehole!🤬

R0wantrees: am also a Lessing fan, though I imagine she was a difficult woman in a lot of ways (don't know if you read Jenny Diski's memoir, but she didn't come across well).

I'm worried about Dr Adrian Harrop. How on earth did he cope at medical school if he is so offended by biology?

I think there are many reasons to be concerned by Dr Harrop! I'm amazed that he continues to exert such apparent influence and wonder when his NHS supervisers will take seriously what he has been doing online for the last few months.

I did read Jenny Diski's memoir. I found her writing after she was diagnosed with cancer very powerful and hers was a very important story to tell.

I studied English Lit at university so have a lot of novels and poetry that I admire despite the authors' personal failings. Sometimes this can be a challenge.