“If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face!” Speech at Trans Pride London 8 July 2023

[IwantToRetire]

Sarah Jane Baker, on the Trans Pride stage, saying

“If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face!”

to a cheering crowd :)

https://twitter.com/unpopulargenz/status/1677790606561628160

NB to MNHQ the video shows this being said. It is not just an allegation being shared.

As well as the Telegraph article others linked too the Mail has also covered it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12280305/Transgender-activist-tells-crowd-Trans-Pride-march-TERF-punch-face.html

The Mail article picked up on the fact the left leaning Labour MP Clive Lewis condemned Baker's threats even though he is very much on the TRA line though he followed the usual threats on both sides nonsense. Alice Sullivan picked him up on that and Mail quoted her too.

My suggestion is if you are going to write see if you can get more media and political coverage going on. Evening Standard, and BBC did positive articles on Trans Pride. Suggest they cover the threatening aspect as well. The fact it got mentioned on Radio 4 in newspaper coverage is important. Also worth contacting Times and and even the Guardian/Observer this is a big story. Questions needed answering because the organisers put Baker on stage and are trying to justify his perspective. They decided a convicted criminal with a history of violence, who claims to be mates with Denis Nielson as if that is something to be proud of, is a key part of their movement not someone to be condemned. Baker got to advocate political violence and terror on stage. Then a crowd cheered him on. Following up on this is the reality of the history of TRA violence in the UK. Plenty of damning stuff to mention here:
https://the-lies-they-tell.org/2023/05/20/profile-of-trans-activist-sarah-jane-baker/

Also may be worth hassling your MP even if they are TRA because having to defend violent threats is embarrassing as Lewis showed and might push them over the edge. It is dreadful publicity and peaks people like crazy.

Questions needed answering because the organisers put Baker on stage and are trying to justify his perspective

They're claiming it was some sort of open mic event. Something that no one ever seems to see as a justification when it's at a Standing For Women event. They went through almost the whole of the narcissist's prayer:

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

Good morning Britain mentioned it on their newspaper round up, Owen Jones was one of their pundits, along with Andrew Pierce. Owen did the whole ' I don't condone violence but.... ' thing.

But if a woman says no to you, yeah she's asked to be thumped in the face eh Owen?

My God the sheer ugliness of these people's beliefs and standards is horrifying.

Well Probabtion Services must be well and truly aware of this by now. Wonder if anything is going to happen?

I should think that SJB's political career is dead in the water now too.

One of the things that often troubles me about some parts of political debate (particularly on the left) is how quick people are to excuse violence and unacceptable behaviour so long as it’s coming from one of their pet ‘marginalised groups’.

You see it again and again. Apologism for terrorism, for looting and violence, for pretty much anything. There’s a pretty long history of this.

For examples, I grew up listening to some people making excuses for even the bloody IRA on the basis of ‘weapons of the weak’ in a colonialist conflict or some other reality denying nonsense.

But the same pattern repeats again and again, where some people are determined to attach a ‘but’ to unacceptable things because they feel they’re aiding with the weak and vulnerable. These same comfortable middle class people don’t care because the violence they’re minimising doesn’t directly affect them, of course. So they can feel smug and identify as worthy ‘allies’ to the dispossessed and marginalised.

Just depressing.

Completely agree with IncomingTraffic that there are some people who are reluctant to condone violence if it's from the 'right' side.

I saw a tweet from Sarah Phillimore pointing out that a rapper attending a Black Lives Matter protest was told that he risked being recalled to prison.

https://twitter.com/svphillimore/status/1677949952230555648?s=61&t=ONvRKaVGQGpQEV6-b6Z5EQ

I know the Met say they are investigating now but how many complaints needed to be made?

It tends always to be those on the mainstream Left - especially at the more hard Left fringes; those who proclaim moral righteousness, kidness and every worthy quality under the sun, who are the most vitriolic, angry, abusive, prone to ad hominem attack and name calling, cancellation.

I think when you elevate yourself in such a way, and project everything you consider to be bad or dark or evil on others, then your own shadow gets increasingly bigger and more toxic. Time and time agian some of the most jidgmental and ugly behaviour is coming from so called 'progressives' and 'equality' champions.

Blog post On Weaponising Kindness – includes reflections on how people rationalise violence in the name of kindness.

https://www.flaneurnotes.com/post/on-weaponising-kindness

That.

It is even more depressing to note that this Lady Bountiful manner of expressing leftist values only actually values the sweet little pets of marginalised group people who stay in their box to be used by their betters, stay on message and serve their little purpose.

So we loooooove homosexuals of course, except the ones who won't smile and do straight sex rather than present an inconvenient boundary to male absolute freedoms. Their voices? Urgh. Silence them. And worse.

And we looooooove other cultures and faiths and rich diversity and our kiddies growing up with lots of cultures, excepting the ones who want their faith to be respected in ways inconvenient to absolute male freedoms. They need to shut up and get back in their box.

Dear little disabled people! Awww bless! Excepting the ones who want single sex carers and have conditions that mean they cannot use mixed sex provisions, presenting an inconvenient boundary to male absolute freedoms. They need to get over it.

Refuges? Gosh yes! Oh of course, loooove women and women's issues and down with VAWG - except of course those wretched women who present inconvenient boundaries to male absolute freedoms and won't get over their trauma on command. They can stay in relationships where they might end up dead and serve them right for being bigots who won't put male interests first.

And we loooooove trans people, excepting the ones who say things like 'I don't agree with that' and really excepting the ones who detransition.

It's all skin deep and only as their little pets are usefully serving them. Which is revolting and demonstrates that it is nothing more than shallow sentiment attached to a whole lot of personal snobbery and belief in superiority to these people. It's a perversion of what original left beliefs were and nearer to the head patting of middle class Victorians.

It is depressing and infuriating. Not just the acceptance of violence either. I cannot get my head around the number of people who are happy to go along with no debate even when the safety of children is a real risk. We saw it in Oldham and we see it again now where to question trans ideology means being singled out as a bigot and deserving of threats of violence.

I’d suggest that if anyone else also has time to complain to the BBC and Evening Standard about their coverage then we also do that.

Specifically to complain that these reports didn’t include this London Met-Police-attended day of er ‘love and rage’ included a specific incitement to attack women by a previously convicted violent criminal … who was cheered on by the crowd.

Omitting those horrifying facts which are widely circulating on social media and now reported clearly in the Daily Mail means the BBC and Standard’s reporting is biased and that they also appear to condone (..omit if you don’t agree with the concept of course…) hate speech against women.

I’d also include (with a HT to *NitroNine earlier on this thread, thanks) a reference to this ‘quote from EHRC’s helpful guide to Freedom of Expression. Because atm they’re banging on about “freedom of speech!” with no acknowledgement that this is a qualified freedom; & one of the very obvious examples given in the guidance is: Article 10 allows restrictions to be placed on freedom of expression for any of the following specific purposes…the prevention of disorder or crime (for instance to prohibit incitement to violence). Nobody, however “full of rage” they are, has the right to call for violence.’

The BBC has its own editorial guidelines around reporting incitement to violence and the Standard will have a press version too. (Other posters may know what this is called specifically, I don’t) so your note could ask the BBC and Standard to demonstrate how they feel that their selective reporting of this event fits with their guidelines.

The BBC report is aparticularly offensive example because they’ve edited out misogynistic slogans on attendees’ T-shirts, but without mentioning the misogynist incitement to violence in the speeches in their report. Sanitising and misrepresenting the overall woman hating tone of the event is not acceptable. It’s lying.

The BBC left in their photo the placard reading ‘Trans people deserve flowers’ but blurred out the Tshirt which says ‘TERFS are Cunts’ and the other Tshirt which says ‘U.G.L.Y. TERFs ain’t got no alibi’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9gdmenl5zo

(reference: the chorus to the brattish cheerleaderesque pop song U.G.L.Y by Daphne and Celeste from 2000). An example of TRA culture yet again leaning more heavily on their imagining of the teenage girl experience, than is probably healthy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.G.L.Y.

How can incitement to violence against women and girls be stopped if the police and the media continually gaslight us all about it?

The ends don't justify the means but the ends determine the means. Said a woman in the Revolutionary Communist Party. Possibly Claire Fox. Bit glib eh?

She is GC mind you. As is another old RCP head , Kenan Malik. He wrote an interesting piece on how culture wars only work for the right wing. Owen Jones should read it !

Having said that my own grandad was in the IRA in 1920/21. He previously served on the Western Front , at Ypres where he was badly injured. After independence he joined the police until his retirement.

His justification was quite simple ' Nationalists won a landslide election but the British refused to accept it and sent the troops in'. If he was a terrorist then so was George Washington.

Paul Foot wrote a good essay - Why terrorism is always wrong. But how to define it? Mrs Thatcher considered Nelson Mandela to be one for instance.

I can’t find that cartoon where a free speech sign was being used by a TRA to beat a women to death

It was for NZ and PP but is applying more here now too.

We are so close to being in the same place

I wonder does Nadia Whittome experience any cognitive dissonance from openly supporting this man who encourages his associates to punch women in the face, when previously she's advocated for misogyny to be considered a hate crime:

https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1310955516802236424

As a hate crime worker, I have worked with women experiencing gender-based abuse.

I'm proud that Nottingham was the first city to recognise misogyny as a hate crime, and I hope the rest of the country follows.

#MakeMisogynyAHateCrime

Some of her older tweets sound quite terfy if you ignore that she believes the category "women" includes a load of fantasist, misogynist men:

https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1237473200080138246

I spoke with my friend and colleague @CliveFoster3 about Nottingham as the first city to monitor misogyny as a hate crime.

Misogynistic hate is a spectrum from street harassment to rape and murder. How can the state protect women if it doesn’t recognise our reality?

I've emailed my Labour MP. I find the lack of reporting from anyone other than the Telegraph and Daily deeply depressing.

I've been raging for years....but have so far managed to control myself and always attempt to express my views in a reasonable way. I channel my rage into a determination and a commitment to push back against this insanity at every opportunity.

In fact my rage makes me even more determined to be reasonable in approach - because I know that in the long run, poor behaviour and emotional incontinence will get you nowhere. It just sullies your name and your reputation.

I would have thought this was an offence under S. 3 the public order act 1986, of causing fear of, or provocation of violence, or would that have to be more directly aimed at an individual? Police response that I have heard reported on radio has been that since the threat was not aimed at race or sexual orientation it is not an offence. There is a section of the same act which specifically addresses threat made on those grounds, but that doesn't stop other sections applying! Is this where the expression "cop-out" comes from?

The lack of action is useful. People are reading that this was said, in a public place, by a group who talk at very great length about how vulnerable they are and why they are not a threat to women in intimate spaces, and that the police are calling an obvious male 'female' as if people are just going to believe this. And that apparently none of this is against the law.

It all helps. The pressure is piling up and piling up.

Oh I don't know though. Sir Vix might find him a safe seat. I think there is a vacancy in Islington North.

South Beds is also MPless, although the police are currently trying to get some hanger on de-superglued from the seat.

Ha ha! Schrodinger’s resignation.

Isn't it odd? When we might possibly have a use for an opinion from a 'serving Policeman', plum silence.

Thank you, Justin. He’s always “got” the issue here.