Shelagh Fogarty on LBC discussing Scottish rapist case

[Lottapianos]

Good discussion going on at the moment. Shelagh referring to 'biological men' in women's prisons. Two very angry and articulate women callers so far, just horrified at the situation, feeling quite rightly that women prisoners are being hung out to dry

No 'be kind' or hand wringing so far. Makes such a change Hope it continues for the rest of the hour

Shelagh has tweeted a couple of things tonight.

I have always thought she is very good and I am happy that she always keeps it respectful.

People are finally talking now. In a way they have not before.

It gives me hope that we may be reversing the decline into rabid misogyny.

He’s a little coward who has avoided the topic at all costs because he knows the TWAW types are the ones who follow him on Twitter.

It’s being discussed on Ian Dale now, he’s referring to the prisoner as a man! No ‘transwomen’ shit, just ‘this man, and he is a man’ 👏🏻 👏🏻 Debbie Hayton just came on too.

It’s also 🤢 to me that every Male trans rights activist that has phoned in has been all ‘ooooh I’m just so worried about the effect this will have on trans people’. No human concern for, y’know, the women that are tonight locked up with a serial rapist 🤷🏼‍♀️ they’re my primary concern, even beyond ‘women as a whole’ because they’re in direct danger at the moment.

I'm now listening to Iain Dale.

Now I like Iain but he's always been dismissive of women over this issue (influenced in part probably by Jacqui Smith who's equally dismissive)

I'm quite enjoying the cognitive dissonance of him still trying to 'be kind' while realising the whole thing is a shit show.

The day we peak Ian Dale is the day we'll win and he's halfway up that mountain. I just want someone to ring up and tell him this isn't the first time this has happened. You can only keep your head in the sand for so long it seems ..

Pick a side.

Iain Dale's so fucking clueless. I want to lock him in a room with Mumsnetters for a day.

'People are finally talking now. In a way they have not before.

It gives me hope that we may be reversing the decline into rabid misogyny.'

Ditto. Those two shows today really felt like both presenters had properly peaked. Good stuff

Maybe Iain Dale will take a bit longer because, as a gay man, he somehow conflates trans issues with the struggle for gay people to be treated decently. Fuck sake though, they are very different things, and he could do with getting his head around that soon

It's scary how women still just flat out don't matter to so many people 😩

I can't stand Iain Dale but I will say I've heard him do shows in the past about VAWG and he came across as thoughtful and very aware of how dangerous society can be for females. Same with James O'Brien. Which is why I find their thoughts on trans issues so bewildering. How can you accept that as a group men pose a danger to women but in the next breath say those that wear a dress don't and women shouldn't feel threatened sharing their safe spaces? It makes zero sense 🤯

J'O is a very intelligent man. I know he knows it makes zero sense, which makes me believe the PP was right, he swerves the issue because he's worried about the repercussions from his 'fan-base'. Not that he should be - TRAs are generally fine with men voicing biological facts, I mean, how many rape threats do you think Piers Morgan/Ricky Gervais has received compared with JKR? 🤔

J'O is a very intelligent man.

Is he?

Yeah that was painful but that's exactly what I mean - he is an intelligent man but on this subject he uses a lot of words, he talks at great speed and jumps and diverts all over the place, because he knows he's talking shite. He barely let Posie speak because she'd ask uncomfortable questions which would expose all the holes in his argument. Like this bit,

JOB: 'when inside they feel absolutely, absolutely inside female'

Posie: 'what does absolutely inside female mean?'

JOB: 'you can't answer my question with another question?'

🤣

What she asked was very pertinent to the question he posed, it was impossible to answer his Q without knowing his definition of 'absolutely female' - but he didn't have an answer so he swerved. It's not a lack of intelligence that made him do that, it was cowardice and arrogance.

I'd love to hear Shelagh discuss this on air with him - I suspect he wouldn't fare so well with somebody who had an equal mic and couldn't be talked over quite so easily.

I read a stat that 70% of women in prison have had head injuries in their lives (presumably mostly through abuse). Which are more serious in women than men in terms of brain damage.

That doesn't surprise me @WarriorN

Not read the rest of the thread yet, but I've never seen this. I'm afraid to say I don't think Kellie did very well there on some critical points, and I agree with James O'Brien on most of what he said.

Makes me wonder if maybe I'm not actually 'Gender Critical' if being GC is this argument? I'm trying to think this through...

I don't care how people live their lives, dress etc and I don't judge them. It's not my mission to prevent people from calling themselves women if they want to, even if I privately might think 'well, you're not really, you're a transwoman'.

For me, it's about preventing the erasure of everything that defines and is important to biological women. The language, privacy, dignity, safety, sex based rights, fairness and equality. These things are also about identity, and should be respected too. Also about preventing irreversible damage to damage in the form of medicalisation, chest binders, hormones surgery.

There have always been transwoman in society, and they have never felt like a threat to me, as a biological women, until now. And even so, I try very hard to distinguish between those TW, and the activists. I haven't changed; they haven't changed; but something else has. It's that something else that's the threat.

The big challenge with this debate now - especially now - is communicating the key points properly. I found that exchange enormously disappointing. Yes, if the big fight is to persuade girls they can never call themselves boys if they want to them maybe round of applause to Kellie, and boo to James, but is that really the battle? If we succeed in that word-fight, will it address all of the things that I am concerned about automatically? I don't think so.

People who don't agree with gender ideology aren't a hive mind or a 'side' or a 'gang' with group think and rules, and you're either in or out. There's just a lot of people with doubts and varying priorities. Do you, what concerns you is entirely down to you and other women here concerned will have bits in common and bits not.

For me, I'm not interested in how a male wishes to identify or define: just that women's access and services and language are not used as a male therapeutic resource, and single sex provisions are unaffected. Anything that does not work for male people or those who identify out of being women are a job for new and additional resources. Not the hijack and theft of women's needed resources at the price of female exclusion and harm.

That's all fine, and I agree with it. But unfortunately, 'GC' is treated as an umbrella term by TRAs. And if KJK stands for election and becomes known for primarily that sort of argument, then the stuff that matters profoundly to me and my daughters gets lost in that sort of smoke. I'm honestly just trying to think this through, on the hoof...

For example, Tories are coloured now by the words and beliefs of people like Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Truss, ERG crowd etc etc. It's lost the defining 'feel' that more moderate old-school Tories gave to the party.

Someone like Rory Stewart retains respectability and integrity among a a section of the electorate because he stood as an Independent. That distance from the party means something. I am more likely to listen to HIM than I am to someone still loyal to the current Tory brand.

Substitute Tory for GC. How the movement is defined and what it stands for matters. I think ... 🤔

But there isn't a GC movement. It isn't a political party, there's no manifesto, and the whole 'x is coloured by looking sideways at y's aunt's hamster' is a lot of purity spiralling nonsense.

Vote for who you want. Do you.

For me, it's about preventing the erasure of everything that defines and is important to biological women. The language, privacy, dignity, safety, sex based rights, fairness and equality. These things are also about identity, and should be respected too. Also about preventing irreversible damage to damage in the form of medicalisation, chest binders, hormones surgery.

Yes, this is the bit that gets me.

Very very often these issues are presented as being about trans people, when actually they're about women, and women's rights.

The trouble is that the idea that we can change sex is blurring the issue.

It's two fundamentally different positions that are utterly incompatible.

To have women's rights, you have to define women, and women can only be defined by differentiating them from men.

We can either categories by sex, or by gender.

It is absolutely and categorically impossible to have both systems running at the same time.

They contradict each other completely.

Anyone can be any 'gender', because it's an inner feeling.

We are either one or the other sex; there are only two, and sex is immutable.

You've missed my point completely, but I can't follow up properly because I have to head out. It's not about 'me doing me'; it's about public perception and being able to get people to listen, really listen, when this issue is being discussed.

Sorry - my reply was to @nilsmousehammer ... just to be clear.

If JOB was ‘properly’ debating TWAW JOB, he would rip him to shreds. He plays faux naive and uses logic holes that he criticises other people for all the time. It’s very deliberate - I don’t agree with him on everything but I used to respect him and listen to him regardless. I no longer tune in because this proves to me he’s fundamentally a coward who if push comes to shove would rather appease the Male Rights Activists than show the same critical thinking he applies to everyone and everything else.

I'm going to be late but ...,

*To have women's rights, you have to define women, and women can only be defined by differentiating them from men.

We can either categories by sex, or by gender.*

My thought is, is this the 'opening argument' though? Because I think people unaware of all the bigger stuff that really matters tense up instantly and think unkind / exclusion / transwoman exist / etc the moment this is stated. It might instead be the endpoint, that once you understand exactly what is at stake, you appreciate why sex-classes are so important in law.

Oh, gosh, no that's not the opening argument.

The opening argument is 'why is there a rapist in Cornton Vale?'

I'm with you on this, I think J'o'B is very expensively educated and has all the right opinions. I'm not sure he's a particularly intelligent or deep thinker tho.

@Cuppasoupmonster

"I no longer tune in because this proves to me he’s fundamentally a coward who if push comes to shove would rather appease the Male Rights Activists than show the same critical thinking he applies to everyone and everything else."

I think, irrespective of what JOB might say about being learning to be wrong or learning from his listeners, being 'right' matters to him. I don't think he'll engage with a topic unless he's confident he has the argument and thinking lined up and ready to win it. And this argument is complicated - there are a lot of threads to unravel. It's much easier to get a grip of this if you are a women because you tap into a lifetime of thinking and experience. So for Shelagh, this is more accessible than it is for James. I just don't think he's got there yet, and also, he has teens. My own husband doesn't fully get it either, and he has me talking about it endlessly.

@ArabellaScott

Coincidentally, it was the dawning realisation that some transgender women could / would commit rape that got me started on this journey a few years ago. Prior to that, I think I thought that living as a female, dysphoria, by definition included being psychologically incapable of committing a male crime against a female. I certainly thought excluding TW from female toilets, prisons seemed cruel.

When I think though of the arguments that gain traction in the public sphere, it's pithy questions like 'What is a woman?' Or 'Can a man have a cervix?' For a lot of people the answers to these are philosophical thought exercises. But a politician answers these questions doesn't tell me anything about what matters most to me and I think derails the main issues.

Whereas, if the opening question is 'Do you believe rapists should be in women's prisons', it gets more real fast . It also means you can go on: "What if the rapist identifies as a woman ...?" To "how do you legislate to stop this?" Etc.

@scratchedbymycat
I would say you are gender critical because you oppose changing the meaning of the word "woman" to a gender instead of a word for a sex - the female half of the human race. And you understand that having a female-sexed body has implications which are different to those of having a male-sexed body.

I don’t even want to kow-tow with anyone over the meaning of the word ‘woman’ anymore, trying to prove I’m right, when it’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying to even those hard of comprehension skills. My 3 year old knows if somebody is a woman or a man regardless of fashion choices and hair length.

I’m not even going to try any more because I feel like it indulges the madness and gives the TRAs imagine ‘cracks’ in which they try to slip through. ‘it’s someone who can get pregnant is it?? What what about women who CANT get pregnant?? See, not that simple’ and so on.

We all know what a woman is and what a man is, I’m not going to explain myself any further or indulge in their semantics. I don’t need to ‘win’ it because it’s already won.