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?

carol i am speechless. Piece of shit does not even begin to describe it. Horrific and inhuman.

McKinnock was referring to Magdalen.

Complete sociopath. Genuinely.

McKinnock was referring to Magdalen

I have felt much rage, despair, fear and sadness reading about transactivism and male misogyny, but I have never felt such horrified shock that that sentence just produced.

McKinnon must be a deeply unhappy individual. He has just blackness where his soul should be and I doubt he has many or indeed any genuine friends. I have seen him posting several times that he believes himself to have ‘passing privilege’, ie that people do not perceive him to be trans when meeting him. There’s obviously a huge disconnect between what he sees as real and what others see. Coupled with a total lack of empathy and what appears to be narcissistic personality disorder, it’s not a pretty picture. It must be incredibly frustrating to live that life- hence the rage at women who dare expose the total delusion.

It's difficult to find words for someone like McKinnon. I wonder how people like Maugham feel about being on the same side as someone like that.

A couple more thoughts about Maugham. One is the appeal to his record. I recall that when Martina Navratilova stood up for women in sports, she was instantly called a transphobe, a bigot and so on. A number of people pointed out her 30 year record of courageously standing up for gay and lesbian rights - but that didn't wash. All that mattered was that she'd now written something that was deemed "transphobic". So if it's not going to wash for Martina, I don't see how it can be allowed to wash for Jolyon.

Second thought. On a lot of these issues, there are people who believe themselves to be trans allies, and are OK with trans people in women's spaces. But quite a few of them can see that a contact sport such as rugby is a different kettle of fish. The core issue isn't that of privacy, sexual boundaries and so on (though of course that is part of it). The core issue is that allowing someone who has a male body to play alongside women in a rugby match is inherently physically dangerous. It's incredibly likely that allowing this person to play will result in serious injury of even death of a female player. Even people who have not followed this debate at all understand that instinctively.

So it's perplexing that a highly-educated person such as JM cannot understand that. I think that's why we're all groping around for an explanation: is he doing this to gain some kind of woke credibility? Is he stupid? Does he just hate women? He hasn't once attempted a rational defence of his position. I assume Jolyon Maugham is the sort of person who likes to vanity-google, so I would love it if he came on here and explained himself.

If you accept that TWAW, literally, then it becomes impossible to make exceptions, or balancing rights. No group of women would be excluded from rights or spaces belonging to women. So he knows that his stated position that TWAW is incompatible with any exception for sports etc. So while he keeps insisting he is for balance, he never says what exactly needs to be balanced. Because he cannot. Because there are no competing rights here. And he knows, it, because he is not an idiot. So instead he attacks the women who point this out to him.

You're right, Alessandra. This is the logical endpoint of believing that TWAW. For people who haven't swallowed the ideology whole, a case such as this demonstrates the absurdity of the position. I suppose if you have swallowed the ideology whole, then you have to keep defending it however ridiculous it is. I think they imagine that saying "black is white, black is white" over and over again absolves them from having to get to formulate an actual argument. The cognitive dissonance for someone like JM must be off the scale.

I know the party line is to despise piers Morgan but I quite like him. He is standing up for women here anyway

Don't know if this has been clarified previously on this thread but isn't. I'm not going to say who they're talking about as but it can be found on Twitter. He is a vile inhuman POS. Even our dear friend Dr Haddock has spoken up against it.

Yes, was shocked to see that. There is no doubt whatsoever that Magdalen was meant.

Definitely agree with the suggestion upthread that Jolyon wants to be an MP. He publicly left Labour over Jeremy C, which is a shame in that I would love to see his reaction if he was fighting to be selected for a seat against a trans woman with lots of support from Momentum.

I assume he wants a London constituency (it’s quite common to be a QC and MP) but that will be hard as there are currently only 4 Lib Dem London MPs, including Chuka. I think they can nominate life peers though and I think Jolyon could see himself in a bit of ermine.

Bit of a derail here. I think the TWAW conundrum is that legislation was designed for a small number of people who had gender reassignment and wanted access to rights like marriage that essentially only affected themselves and their partner. Former spouses and children were regarded as being in similar position to those in contested divorces.

I don’t think legislators ever anticipated that that the number of trans and non binary people would expand so much and that single sex spaces (which I think the Equality Act mainly assumed would be invoked by those providing services to religious groups, children and people using domestic violence services) would be used by a much larger group of people. People like Jolyon lead very protected lives and never have to live with the consequences of their principles.

That was about Magdalen? Words fail. And shows in spades why McKinnon has no qualms at all about the unfairness of competing with women, this is the kind of person representing this agenda. And you find this utter lack of empathy, compassion, basic morality, ability to be interested in anything at all other than their own personal wants regardless of impact on others - basically an angry toddler - in pretty much every single one of the most vocal, most well known TRA lobbyists and representatives. The ones giving the presentations, writing articles, advising governments. This is not a bug, it's a feature.

I agree completely that the TWAW is exactly the issue Barracker pointed out in her excellent article. The language establishes the thought processes that enable much of the lunacy, and to comply with the language makes it possible. It's the reason I've hit the boundary of what I'm willing to do out of 'politeness' when actually to do so enables an agenda I find very very far from polite or harmless.

Be transwomen. Crack on with that. Go for it. Discrimination laws to ensure fairness, safety, exactly the same rights as everybody else.

Women are something separate and different, and nobody can change sex. The line is here.

McKinnon has gone too far even for Harrop, and Harrop despises women who won't toe the line.

I should think McKinnon checks several, if not all, the boxes on the sociopath checklist.

What did Harrop say?

Screenshot attached.

Adrian Harrop has been so utterly vile to women in the past, I'm actually quite surprised he called McK out like this.

And any criticism (ie truth) of the cyclist and they go crying to twitter HQ and get people banned.

Well I do wonder if Harrop has now been added to McK's monumental blocklist for daring to disagree.

Harris has been under the watchful eyes of the GMC, he's not going to joke or agree with anyone joking about a person dying of cancer.

As that's probably somwthin they'll actually care about.

FFS
Harrop!
Something!

True - god knows what actually goes on in the Harrop-brain. Anyone's guess.

Maybe the peak trans Sherpa is guiding Harrop to the foothills.

At least it shows he’s not altogether a stranger to basic human decency. I’m prepared to accept that he actually doesn’t set out to be as awful as he so often is. But his unconscious and unexamined assumptions about the inferior status of women have lead to him to a set of positions it’s now quite hard to row back from.
Speculation. At least he’s got this one right, whatever the reason.

He knows who to charm to get up the ladder, that's all.

I believe Harrop has been spoken to and has deleted his criticism of McKinnon. So still a knob.

You're joking - the only decent thing he ever writes, and he goes and deletes it

Well, he did go off-message there, I guess.