Tatchell's views on safeguarding.
Full video here.
His thoughts on girls who want single sex provision:
"we need to challenge those who feel uncomfortable, to make them feel comfortable in their own bodies, and around the bodies of others, to enable them not to feel embarrassed or threatened or ashamed".
This is a man who wrote to the Guardian in the late 1990s, saying consensual sex was possible between adults and 9 year olds. While that doesn't for a moment mean he would pose any sort of a threat to children or young people himself, it does mean he has espoused views that should give teaching staff at least some pause. Is it now too much to ask, that schools don't invite guest speakers with a history of paedophile apologism? I mean, sure, he was an LGB campaigner at a time when there was hideous bigotry. So were, and are, plenty of people who didn't say raping children was fine in some contexts. Why not ask them?
He also claims girls pose a sexual assault risk to one another. That is a clear lie. Stats on this are unequivocal. Sexual violence is, overwhelmingly and almost wholly, male perpetrated.
And let's get real: if he honestly believed that transwomen were women, he wouldn't give a shit about them, either. He knows.
The whiteboard example Nina Funnell gave:
'Some years ago, I ran an exercise with young men and women. I asked the men to write on the whiteboard what they did every day to avoid being sexually harassed or assaulted.
Blank faces.
I then asked the women what they did every day to avoid being sexually harassed or assaulted.
Mad scribbling ensued.
“I cover my drinks at bars.”
“I sit in the backs of taxis”
“I walk the long way home because it’s better lit”
“I thread my keys between my fingers like Wolverine when walking through carparks”
“I sit with other women on trains”
“I try not to dress for attention”
And on and on it goes. Women are surprised to realise the extent to which they have internalised sexual threat as an omnipresent white noise in their life.'
Yet Tatchell thinks that young girls reluctant to strip in front of boys and men should be challenged over it because they're no longer allowed to feel threatened. Tell you what, Tatchell. Stop men raping, assaulting, threatening, flashing and filming us, and we'll consider it. Till then you can fuck off: women get to decide how they feel about who accesses their bodies.
Those are boundaries. Boundaries women and girls need to enforce from the youngest possible age, just to try to avoid male depredation. Is he deaf? Do we need to use smaller words? Or does he just not regard us as human?
Women's rights are not his to redistribute.