Caroline Nokes says it's 'depressing' to regard men as dangerous

[ArabeIIaScott]

“It’s a wholly depressing state of affairs that we regard people who are born as biologically male as dangerous.” Caroline Nokes, Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, voices her support for the Women’s Institute’s decision to allow trans women to join.

https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1648240070602936321

How did this woman get into the position she's in? She's just ... she's not bright enough to be a politician, I'm sorry.

Yes, she got the memo a while back.

She's a great example of identarianism at work.

One day, blame men, especially the white cisheteronormative ones for the ills wrought on all those below...women, gays, PoC, even the planet itself.

On another day, where men mysteriously can become women, they lose this feral imperialist discriminatory drive inherent to their male cisheteronormative patriarchal power base, and thru pure force of will, lived experience and millenia of genetic and hormonal drives and societal control, these individuals magically become part of the victim class.

Her logic is both so preposterous in physical reality terms yet totally internally coherent to advocates because intersectionality rules over real world outcomes and inevitabilities.

And because like a toddler, she screws her eyes shut, jams fingers in her ears, and screams "BECAUSE! BECAUSE! BECAUSE! BECAUSE!" over and over again.

This is a fur coat message over the no knickers position that goes 'I think it's ok that some women (not me, or mine, or my sort of women, the sort nothing to do with me) get excluded, raped or worse so that I can feel lovely about patting men with special identities'.

Try some St John's Wort and long walks Caroline. Or just identify as not being depressed, if facts and reality don't matter.

I'd love someone who interviews CN to ask whether Adam Graham/Isla Bryson is not dangerous because he feels like a woman and has done for years, according to him. Does he only become not dangerous when he utters the magic words, or was he safe around women all through the time he was committing rapes, before he decided to claim womanhood?

I think there is a problem with people regarding males as dangerous - I have had this discussion with my teenage GSs who feel that they are somehow unacceptable and are regarded with wariness. The "all men are rapists until proven otherwise" has become part of our culture. Grayson Perry in his "The Descent of Man" describes this very clearly: "“I sometimes watch the evening news on television and think all the world’s problems can be boiled down to one thing: the behavior of people with a Y chromosome.” He acknowledges that the majority of crime, especially violent crime, is committed by males.

It is a massive problem worldwide; and I wonder how the parents of boys deal with this - how they help their boys grow into the sort of young men that they can be proud of.

It is sad, but I have to agree that men are regarded with caution and suspicion, often for very good reasons, and that, whilst I wish that we could get to a point where this is not so, we have to deal with the world as it is. It is for this reason that I find the idea of biological men in the WI or any other women's spaces unacceptable.

I agree with her. It is depressing that men are violent. But this is the world we live in, and for all the fuss about Letby's whole life order, only 4 women have ever had one, and 2 of those women committed their crimes with male accomplices. There are currently some 60+ prisoners on a whole life order and I believe that 57 of them are men and most committed their crimes alone. 85K men in prison. Approx 4k women. Almost all incest is committed by men. Almost all murders. Almost all sexual assaults. All rapes (using UK legal definition of rape). Almost all cases of dangerous driving. And so on and so on.

@Mischance It's really difficult. I've got a teenage son. My father was a wife beater, as was his father. One of my uncles went to prison for manslaughter because he killed his wife. I have been very open that this is the family history. Men have to accept that they are in the group that does this. They need to deal with the shame and the guilt and the bad feelings they get when this is pointed out and face up to it. Women have to live with being the group most likely to be raped and assaulted by their sexual partners. We are trying to teach son how to be a decent man, and what that means, and teach him positive ways to deal with frustration and anger and accepting that sometimes he will fail, or not get his own way, and that when that happens, you suck it up, you don't use your male strength or the threat of it to get what you want. I also regularly talk to him about the fact that he will see other boys doing things that make him uncomfortable, and how to deal with that. It's really about making it clear that within men as a group, there are men that do this stuff, and it's his job to make sure that he isn't one of them, because men and women need to work together, our skills and abilities are complimentary. Neither is better, we just bring different things to the table, all of which are important.

One part of the problem is always focussing on 'safety' and 'danger', though.

In this context - the Women's Institute - it's as much about women wanting a women-only space.

Has Nokes never experienced single sex company - a group of women who can talk freely about all the things that women talk about? It's never, ever the same with a man present. It makes me sad to think of losing those spaces.

Sorry, I mean one of hte problems is always ONLY focussing on safety and danger.

This is what Labour have done with their 'safe spaces' line. I guess that was partly to evade getting into the difficult honesty of 'single sex spaces', but it also dismisses women's very straightforward and natural desire to sometimes have some spaces away from men.

MadamePickle - that is interesting about your son. It sounds as though you are very aware of the situation and are helping him to grow up as someone you can be proud of. I only had girls, and worried about them (silently!) when they started dating - who were these young men? What were their life experiences and attitudes? Would their testosterone levels mean they would drive recklessly with their precious cargo? We have been lucky - their partners are all lovely men and I fully trust them to take care of my DDs.

But I do often think about how a parent nowadays can help their sons to live well. As I now have 5 grandsons it is a topic of particular interest.

I look at these evil men who commit these terrible crimes and often think that once they were sweet little babies and toddlers loved and treasured by their parents.

@ArabeIIaScott It reminds me of going to baby groups as a new mother, still in shock and trying to figure out what the hell had just happened to me with women in the same boat. You could do that when it was just women. But then there would always be one with a velcro husband which meant you couldn't say what you wanted to simply because he was there and it felt like the privacy was gone.

My father was a violent, abusive man.
My husband is a kind, gentle man.
My son is also a kind, gentle man, brought up by both of us to respect women and use his size and strength carefully.
I really believe that male role models are very important in the upbringing of boys. Unfortunately good role models are few and far between. Men like Andrew Tait and other misogynistic, violent, pornographic social media perpetuates the very worst male traits.

C'mon, Sadiq has it all sorted
"Maaaate!"

Sadiq Khan is on the right lines, in the sense that men need to take control of themselves and be responsible for their own behaviour and other men's. The specifics may not be right, but the principle is. It's in women's interest that MVAWG goes away, but it really shouldn't be up to us to fix it.

@MadamePickle
Brilliant post.

@Mischance the interesting thing is that the stories I heard about my father as a child were that he wasn't a sweet little toddler at all, he was an absolute sh!t. And frequently in fights as a teen. Aggressive his whole life. It wasn't something that suddenly started later in life, he was always that way. I also know that his own father used to knock the kids around (encouraged by his mother, because if he was bashing the kids, he wasn't bashing her). Modelled what he saw at home, definitely, but I also think he had it in him to behave that way, because not everyone who grows up with that legacy carries it forward.

I think it's depressing to regard cars as 'dangerous'. To say that they can and do harm people is just pure bigotry. Everyone using a car is only doing so for perfectly normal reasons like getting about.

To put any kind of 'safeguarding' in them just because they are physically automobiles is ridiculous. We should identify the ones that hurt people and put seatbelts in those ones only. Or we could risk-assess each street and put a speed limit only on the ones where it's been proven that people have been actually "hurt" - which we all know doesn't happen.

The objection to trans women is not that they are dangerous (though some of them are). It's that they're men. Why is she so stupid?

(Whoever brings Letby into this discussion is as dense as CN.)

many men ARE dangerous. just look at the stats. they are the ones to commit the most heinous of crimes no matter how loudly the incels and "not all men" lot scream . she's an idiot.

She’s a proper MRA isn’t she? How on earth did she end up being Chair of the WEC?

Forewarned is forearmed.

Unfortunately my MP😡

Very good analogy from popebishop.

I wonder if she's planning to stand down, or thinks she will be de-seated, and is making ever more bizarre statements in line with whatever she has her eye on.

Stonewall are recruiting, for instance.

What is depressing is that so many men are indeed violent and abusive.

Perhaps if they stopped doing that and said 'maaaate' a bit more it would all be sorted.

The WEC, like anything else currently specifically for women and supposed to be representing women, is under the ownership of those whose main goal is the control and suppression of women for the benefit of a small number of male people. Who see women as resources and not equally human. It's the same reason why at this point in history, any laws on misogyny would be a disaster for women.

Regardless of danger or no, the women's institute is not for people with penises. It was only ever intended for the female sex. Not the postmodern appropriation of 'womanhood' care of gender ideology.

There are aplenty of clubs and societies to join which are mixed sex. TW are free to join those.

It's not a big ask to exclude males, especially those with zero surgery.

It's depressing that Caroline Nokes doesn't get this.