TW in Women's prisons - Zoe Williams' Take

[IcakethereforeIam]

You may wish to put away your breakables

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/01/trans-rights-prison-rarely-defended

Did anyone watch Rain Dogs, with Costello and her friend doing OnlyFans for men with a battered-woman fetish?

That blithe disregard for vulnerable women. The fact I'm nostalgic for the days when ZW was just thick and boring.

She's not a nice person. I remember seeing her lolling about "terfs" with abusive Twitter troll CursedE.

I have always thought she comes across as a snob, the sort of guardianista who believes themselves inherently benevolent but loses patience with anyone who dares disagree.

I think her reasoning is

a) but they want to be there

b) but they want to be there

c)but they want to be there

The reasons why someone accused of a sexual offence would claim that they are a woman and demand to be accommodated in the womens estate seem to have passed her by.

More holes than a Swiss cheese in her reasoning, as others point out above.

I've read and reread, trying to approach it as objectively as possible... and each time finish wondering how it got published. Content aside, there's the ambiguous language, chaotic structure, and such blatantly problematic use of statistics that it feels pretty generous to attribute this to the usual selective misrepresentation, but does rather come across as if she's just a bit confused. It adds up to being a very weak piece indeed, to the extent that, for any thinking reader still on the fence, I honestly think it may be more likely to convert them to our way of thinking than her own...

I have found it extraordinary how naive so many women have turned out to be in this debate.

Yes, she's such a bloody disappointment these days.

Stopped reading as soon as I read the “c” word in the article.

Just watched this with Zoe Williams. OMG what a piece of work she is. Poor Ella Whelan looks as if she might explode.

Life's too short to spare any time on the "thoughts" of Zoe Williams.

Great post.

'Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.'

I heard this this Herman Melville quote earlier on, on the telly, and it reminded me of Owen Jones and Zoe Williams opining about female prisoners.

I'd rather have Elizabeth Fry's views, thank you. In fact surely the espousal of the work of Elizabeth Fry on sex segregation in prisons is due a revival?

I managed 7 minutes, then Williams started again. Was she drunk? I had to bail.

Drunk ?
Has anyone seen her sober ?

That is what I would have said if I was quicker and more articulate.

Ikr @MorrisZapp . A whole article about her husband being younger and prettier than her. A carnival of cringe. Would have been OK in Cosmopolitan circa 1973. Maybe.

Perhaps if she stuck to such vacuous wittering she'd just be irrelevant rather than insufferable.

This struck me too. What she is describing as prejudicial (and theoretical only) is the basis on which until very recently it was an unremarkable and common sense position for feminists to support separate sex spaces for certain activities.

However, I imagine Zoe would come at that argument with a line about how separating the sexes is based on old-fashioned sexist notions as I have seen TRAs argue before. Because it’s so progressive to wish away the danger that males as a class pose. It’s infuriating.

At 12:18 in the video, Zoe claims that the prison rules changed in 2019 and that people with penises are no longer allowed in the women’s estate.

That’s a lie, but nobody challenges her.

She repeats her lie very clearly at 13:25 and remains unchallenged, yet there are obvious cases, Rapist Bryson being the most obvious, that fully intact men are still being shoved in the women’s estate.

No wonder she can defend her views - she is breathtakingly ignorant.

Oh god. I had to stop watching. ZW's heckling and aggressive tone was unbearable.
I used to like her years ago but I can't read any of the fluffy lifestyle articles she writes for the Guardian now.
She does come across as drunk in this clip.

Zoe also repeats some garbled disinformation towards the end about women’s football being stopped because the women were better than the men and showing them up. The women’s game might have been popular enough to threaten the popularity of the men’s game, but the women, then as now, could not have beaten the men if they had played against them.

Unfortunately those defending women’s rights in the clip are not well enough informed to debate factually and clearly. I would love to see an informed journalist such as Helen Joyce on there. She would have taken Zoe’s misinformed stance apart.

Still at least, for once, it isn’t four men discussing the topic.

Unfortunately those defending women’s rights in the clip are not well enough informed to debate factually and clearly. I would love to see an informed journalist such as Helen Joyce on there. She would have taken Zoe’s misinformed stance apart.

Ella Whelan's quite well informed, but Zoe keeps interrupting her every time she speaks. Then near the end, when Ella tries to interrupt Zoe to correct her, Zoe tells her to 'pipe down for one second' so that she can continue her incoherent and nonsensical rant. Helen Joyce might have done better, but only if she'd been given the chance to speak without being constantly interrupted and shouted over.

Zoe understands nothing because she's never shut up for long enough to hear the other side.

Thanks for linking to this video. ZW’s body language shows she’s nervous, agitated, even angry at times. The other three women remain impressively composed in the face of her (self-involved, non) argument.

She did have time to dispute the twice-repeated lie, but to be fair to her, when confronted with a bare-faced lie, it takes huge confidence and presence of mind to challenge it. It would be easy to end up on the back foot, wondering if you had missed such a change, when Bryson was a very clear example that (in Scotland at least) no such amendment to the rules has occurred.

My previous comment was perhaps unfair. Outright lies, presented confidently, are very difficult to challenge. Those willing to lie can, unfortunately, sway entire debates and it is a pity this one was not pointed out as it might well make a difference to how people judge the situation.