Janice Turner interviews Jess Philips in the Times

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Interesting read:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d8851824-e3c1-11eb-afdb-c7b01afbcfc5?shareToken=aab7b7c1ae6d3cef2a3097ebc6dfec5b

Excerpts:

She says her greatest achievement is “making women as important as bins”. Councils only had only two statutory duties: adult and children’s social services, and refuse collection. The Domestic Abuse Act adds a third: providing women’s refuges.

What surprised her when sitting on the women and equalities committee, which discussed Gender Recognition Act reforms, was the requirement of two years living “in role” as the opposite sex before changing a birth certificate. “How do you live in role as a man? Have I got to use a spanner? No one could answer that. I’ve got short hair. I’m wearing trousers. Like, it’s not an act, is it? You can’t act like a woman, because we’re all different.”

She is aghast that the modern left seeks to legitimise, even idealise, prostitution, which through her long experience in the refuge movement she sees as sexual abuse. She uses the term “prostituted women” rather than the woke euphemism “sex workers”. Moreover, she’s long been concerned about long-standing women’s refuges losing funds in favour of generic services that purport to include everyone. “If you had £1 million for domestic violence services, you’d give £800,000 to a women’s refuge based on need and numbers. Having specialist services for LGBT or male victims of domestic abuse is totally brilliant and legitimate. They’re not the same. They need different services.”

Very interesting. Still partly on the fence, but you get the sense that on the hard issues like prisons she would come down on the side of single sex.

Trending on Twitter now. As someone has commented Jess Phillips "speaks out of both sides of her mouth".

Yes, she always keeps all options open. Pity, because I've heard her speak live on several occasions and she has always seemed engaging and open, despite no one being entirely sure where she stood when they thought about it afterwards. Hints here, hints there, but always plausible deniability if anyone takes umbrage.

What surprised her when sitting on the women and equalities committee, which discussed Gender Recognition Act reforms, was the requirement of two years living “in role” as the opposite sex before changing a birth certificate.

It's remarkable that someone sitting on the women and equalities committee wasn't already familiar with this important piece of legislation.

In any case, what does she imagine happens when someone changes legal sex? This is a woman who went along with a committee that discussed reforms to the legislation without once interviewing a single woman or women's organisation that might be affected by the change, and heard exclusively from trans lobby groups and activists including some with very dodgy aims and histories - Jess Bradley being one notable example. The woman has no shame at all.

"How do you live in role as a man?" ....

Yet living "in role" as a woman is a woman

I suspect that on the "hard issues" she would go to the side of the fence that she is pushed.

My views on Jess Phillips are all over the place and that article encapsulates why. Very astute from Janice Turner - as usual.

They hate her on multiple fronts, so nothing she says is going to placate them. Particularly her opposition to prostitution.

@Floisme

My views on Jess Phillips are all over the place and that article encapsulates why. Very astute from Janice Turner - as usual.

Yes, it is a very good piece of journalism, as she usually does.

I didn't really appreciate journalistic writing until I saw how she put something I knew about into clear, yet informative and illustrative language. A talent and a well honed skill.

I met Jess Phillips at an event a few years ago & asked her about transwomen in single sex refuges. She looked uncomfortable & said they should be admitted on a case by case basis. I suspect that’s what she’d say about prisons.

As for LGBT victims of abuse though - given the choice I’d be using the women’s service every time, not one that lumped me in with men.

Having specialist services for LGBT or male victims of domestic abuse is totally brilliant and legitimate. They’re not the same. They need different services.

This is where LGBT doesn't work as a group. It's a mix of women and men who are same sex attracted, alongside bisexual men and women, and men and women who say they are the opposite sex or non-binary.

That's a whole random range of people.

She doesn't think sex offenders should be in low security prisons. So she didn't directly say they shouldn't be in female prisons. Still on the fence.

I feel positive to know she is anti prostitution, hopefully she'll be a sensible voice at some point.

Why the obsession with refuges? Why should women have to run away?

I have a lot of time for Jess Phillips, I think she does get it really but she knows what will happen to her career if she says anything.
You could accuse her of cowardice, but really she's doing as much as she can while remaining within the Labour Party.

And having an actual feminist with a background in DV work as an MP, is worth the sacrifice of her having to pay lip service to TWAW. In my opinion.

Councils having only 2 statutory duties is such utter bollocks - their statutory duties number several hundred including housing, waste management, education, licensing, pest control, planning etc that I’m immediately inclined to ignore everything ejse she says as also being founded in utter bollocks

She’s right on LGBT & refuge issues but she knows damn well what the massive elephant in the room is

@DecayedStrumpet

I have a lot of time for Jess Phillips, I think she does get it really but she knows what will happen to her career if she says anything. You could accuse her of cowardice, but really she's doing as much as she can while remaining within the Labour Party.

And having an actual feminist with a background in DV work as an MP, is worth the sacrifice of her having to pay lip service to TWAW. In my opinion.

Totally agree with @DecayedStrumpet. I'm sure Jess Phillips gets it, but she knows perfectly well that if she came out as GC her career would be ruined and her life would become intolerable. She does a lot of really great work for women and especially female survivors of DA and I think we should applaud that.

“I think that biological sex exists, and we are discriminated against on the basis of our biological sex, without question,”

Ooh... twitter isnt going to like that 😬

I might get her book actually, I enjoyed the last one of hers I read.

Archive version of interview in case the share token lapses: archive.is/bs2TZ

She compares activist-journalist Owen Jones and Novara Media writers to noisy, overexcited children who have had too much sugar – “Who cares what they think, frankly.”

She's right, of course, but she should care, because they are very influential.

I have a lot of time for Jess Phillips, I think she does get it really but she knows what will happen to her career if she says anything.

I think she has said more than enough to put herself on the ‘wrong side of history’. Fence sitting won’t win acceptability from the left of the party, so why not just speak clearly? Is the problem that Labour MPs fear deselection?

She compares activist-journalist Owen Jones and Novara Media writers to noisy, overexcited children who have had too much sugar – “Who cares what they think, frankly.”

😂😂😂

My views on Jess Phillips are all over the place

because Jess Philips's views are all over the place?

she has done sterling work on the issue of sexual violence but otherwise she is a windsock of a politician.

I hope this means the wind is blowing our way

She's right, of course, but she should care, because they are very influential.

And therein lies the problem behind preference falsification - if nobody speaks up for fear of [?] (and this might be a rational fear grounded in reality) then we are left to deal with this phenomenon. (Apologies to those who see me quote this on a regular basis.)

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies , Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.

A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.

In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.

www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

@DecayedStrumpet

I have a lot of time for Jess Phillips, I think she does get it really but she knows what will happen to her career if she says anything. You could accuse her of cowardice, but really she's doing as much as she can while remaining within the Labour Party.

And having an actual feminist with a background in DV work as an MP, is worth the sacrifice of her having to pay lip service to TWAW. In my opinion.

Is this really true — that she's doing as much as she can within the Labour Party? I was sent a link the other day that included Labour MP Tonia Antonazzi standing up and saying sensible things that are clearly GC and she was getting a lot of support. Antonazzi has made speeches about how important it is to record actual sex, not self-ID'd sex, in crime stats, for example. She never mentions the word transgender, she just talks common sense.