Jolyon Maugham QC comes out as a misogynist on Twitter

[AlessandraAsteriti]

After posting this tone-deaf tweet, Maugham doubles down when asked by women to consider fairness and safety of female rugby players. What can make an adult, intelligent person pretend they do not understand the difference between females and males anymore?

The man's an abject coward and intellectually dishonest

Yes, totally agree with this from Fermatstheorem. It is a very deliberate stance. Lord Moonie’s tweet is very funny . Hadley was, as ever, also excellent. I was also pleased to see this from Matthew d’Ancona:

There is no way that this has anything to do with trans equality: exploiting the residual physical advantages of male physiology to beat natal women in sport. Sport is divided into all manner of categories - for fairness. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

twitter.com/matthewdancona/status/1164929342436253697?s=21

Jolyon makes his living helping the wealthy avoid tax. That should tell you everything you need to know about his social conscience.

He blocked me too. Asswipe.

Brian Moore has told us he has not commented on the thread. He's going to gift his pearls of wisdom via his podcast next week. #PeakAnticipation ?

Here is the latest:

"So, despite all the abuse I receive - the complaints to my Chambers, the tagging of my family members, the demands I be removed from advisory boards - I will continue to argue for tolerance and respect for the rights and dignities of both trans and natal men and women."

Do you believe him? If anyone has done this I would say it was a provocateur.

What about the rights of women rugby players?

What happens to women rugby players when a born male starts to play on one of the teams? It's just dangerous. How can anyone not see this?

Julian - look at yourself - look at your wife. Look at yourself - look at the woman standing next to you in the coffee shop queue. Chances are she's shorter and slighter than you. Because she has not had a male puberty, and male hormones swimming in her blood stream since almost forever.

Look at your family members, look at your friends - the males are bigger, taller and stronger than the females FFS. WHY WHY WHY (!!!) do you think women's sport exists as a separate category in the first place, huh??

zebrasdontwearbras

I agree, but it is not just size. My short weedy ex was much stronger than me.

Is he not being sarcastic?!?

I can't believe he's congratulating himself for being a pillar of reasonableness

Have met him. Tit.

Coyoacan definitely. I am not as strong as men who are 2 stone lighter than me. It’s more about strength than height and size. Not all women are petite and delicate and nor do we want to be but put us in a strength competition with even the weediest blokes and chances are they will be able to overpower us with little effort.

He’s so fucking sanctimonious. Does he hear himself? He must have some ability to understand how he comes over to others, surely.
He really is a prancing twat.

The sexism runs so deep he isn't even aware it's sexism. It's just this engrained belief that of course women can be kind and step aside when a man wants something. We're just supporting actors. Our roles and ambitions aren't as important.

It amazes me that in a world where women have been excluded and disenfranchised for thousands of years, a man can believe he is the one being "tolerant and compassionate" when he tells women to give up the small gains that they've made in favour of men.

Anyone genuinely serious about rights for trans people would be figuring out a way to get trans men into sport. They'd be lobbying, devising handicap schemes or new leagues or something. That isn't happening. No one gives a shit because they're female.

So, despite all the abuse I receive - the complaints to my Chambers, the tagging of my family members, the demands I be removed from advisory boards - I will continue to argue for tolerance and respect for the rights and dignities of both trans and natal men and women.

"Someone grassed on me and my wankery to my friends! Oh woe is me!"

What an utter tosser.

Oh Jolyon - what a trooper you are - a true martyr to the cause!

You can't argue for both sets of rights, Jolyon - unfortunately in this debate, rights ARE pie. If you argue TWAW, then a male is taking a slice of the pie away from a woman. A male has taken the place of a woman on a rugby team.

Jolyon called women wanting women's sports to be for women, "extremists".

My son is 15 and just a pack of muscle and strength. He could easily outpower me (even when I wasn’t ancient).

Men generally have more power and strength than woman. Why is that hard to understand?

Jolyon member of the happily all male Garrick club.

What gets me in the BBC article is joking about women getting hurt as if it's nothing.

Girls and boys stop playing certain sports - including rugby - together at a certain age, not because of sexism but to prevent injuries and to promote fairness.

Rugby has certain positions which favour both speed and physical size/strength so you get a range of body sizes and shapes playing.

But a female winger is likely to not have enough speed to outrun a large trans prop. So it places them in particular danger in a tackle.

I'm also not going to go into the technicalies of a scum, where its widely known that dodgy players make illegal moves around sensitive areas to get ahead because its difficult for the referee to do anything.

Rugby is a dangerous sport. One of DHs female friends broke her neck whilst playing at university level. She was about to get an international place. She was permanently disabled.

This isn't a sport to shout about how women are being absolutists and joking about physical harm to women.

We are talking about potential deaths or permanent disability which women are quite within their rights to make a fuss about without being told they aren't being nice or are being extremists.

Physical harm to women just isn't taken seriously and Maugham is demonstrating it in spades. It's something to be laughed at, minimumised or just dismissed outright as being unimportant and not a priority.

Maugham can't even see the potential harm to women.

This is without touching on fairness, scholarships and dignity in changing rooms. All of which are also completely invisible to Maugham.

Of all the sports to make a stand on rugby strike me as the single most stupid as the dangers of the sport are particularly significant and common. It's a sport I'm hesitate to encourage DS to get involved with (my father has also suffered from knee injuries which have caused him life long problem which came from rugby). I'd be happy for him to do just about every other sport but rugby.

Woke points are worth nothing to the woman who spends the rest of her days in a bed. That, of course, won't be the fate of the trans player who inadvertently did it...

It reminds me of that godawful Tangerine film and how it was presented by the media. Males violent against women framed as the plucky underdogs.

There's something quite comical about the woe-is-me stance of the line about all the abuse he's supposedly received. Poor, poor Jolyon. I notice that most of the responses to his tweet were not abusive, but merely mocking and incredulous, which I guess must be tough for someone that pleased with himself.

If Jolyon thinks that abuse, reporting people to their employers, tagging family members and so on is so bad, has he ever, I wondered, spoken out when this has happened to gender critical feminists? Has he spoken out about the number of feminists banned from Twitter? Sacked from their jobs? Threatened with rape and murder?

Thought not.

how do people this thick get into QC positions?

Being a QC means that you are a law nerd. You have to be intelligent and well-informed in your area of expertise, but it's certainly not a marker of having a generally intelligent world view or being generally well-informed.

There's something quite comical about the woe-is-me stance of the line about all the abuse he's supposedly received. Poor, poor Jolyon. I notice that most of the responses to his tweet were not abusive, but merely mocking and incredulous, which I guess must be tough for someone that pleased with himself.

Yeah, I especially like the way he's now reframing his tweets. It's gone from his original tweet accusing people of "hate and fear," to the disingenuous arguments about how no one minds that this is happening and what about tall women, to then calling people who disagree with him "absolutists" to finally portraying himself as the voice of reason who understands the issues, and fights for both natal women and trans people.

Well, it sure didn't sound like you were fighting for natal women when you waded in with your first tweet, Jolyon. And it didn't sound like you understood the issues when you started conflating large women with men, when you failed to grasp that the IOC's focus on testosterone is flawed and that they have ignored subsequent evidence showing this, when you believed that the article failing to quote female rugby players voicing unhappiness about this must mean that they are all fine and dandy with it, and when you asked for evidence that trans women might injure women in a highly physical sport.

Jesus Christ, if this is how he operates as a barrister, I wouldn't bloody hire him.

@RoyalCorgi. I wrote to him when I was banned from Twitter, as we had interacted several times on Brexit and other law stuff. He completely ignored me. He really is a sanctimonious prick.

I found his tweet thread depressingly revealing about what some clever, liberal men think of women: that we are silly, hysterical mean people who won't be nice. And we are so extreme that clever, liberal people like him need to come along and calm us down, show us that we have got this wrong, and generally persuade us to be reasonable and nice.

The rugby story made me angry. His tweets made me very depressed.

WhatWouldBarbaraCastleDo

I share your depression at the moment. BUT, it does make me laugh when prats like JM double down to argue the indefensible - thus self identifying as both a misogynist and a biased and inadequate thinker. Bet he's been supping in the Stonewall trough recently.