Interview with Helen Joyce and Maya Forstater of Sex Matters

[ArabeIIaScott]

https://lawliberty.org/podcast/when-does-sex-matter/

It's there as a podcast to, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

I skimmed the transcript and am around a quarter-way through the podcast so far, but this is an excellent, fascinating interview. As one would expect with a discussion between Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce, and host Helen Dale.

Can't wait to listen to this .. met them both for the first time in Manchester on Sunday, walked down the street with them while the lunatics hurled abuse. My admiration for them is now in the stratosphere.

I've just been watching the footage.

They are astonishing.

I'd have been a wreck; it looked so intimidating and unpleasant. Women chanting 'fuck Helen Joyce' right in her fucking ear! At least the idiot had the good grace to look a bit uneasy. FFS.

The Police were really good, had a good chat with one of them, they seemed completely bemused by the whole thing. Couldn't understand why they were wearing masks!
Helen and Maya were brilliant.
The best thing about it was we were laughing at them, I don't think I've really seen that before. It's only up close you realise how sad and pathetic the activists are. If they weren't so vile I'd feel sorry for them.

It was a shame we couldn't go round the museum or leave in a normal manner but as always it was a massive TRA own goal. Footage gone around the world already, iconic images of Helen and Maya. The TRAs should all get jobs at Saatchi and Saatchi.

Just finished listening. It's excellent. Every time I hear Helen Joyce speak (and I catch most of her interviews) I can see how she's opening the debate up, moving it on, touching on something new. This was a particularly good interview in which she and Maya were allowed to speak at length. I'll be forwarding it to everyone on my WA groups. Thanks, OP, for spotting it.

Could someone please link to the footage of Manchester/Sunday, please? Fighting a dreadful flu and my brain isn’t listening to me…. TIA 🥺

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them." They must be fucking terrified of Helen Joyce.

https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1701136599264739464

https://twitter.com/QueensSpeechUK/status/1700846012812652691

https://twitter.com/JoolsJuevans/status/1700840507381813653

Some of the footage from Sunday.

As I said above, the Police were very good and took Helen, Maya and Emma away to safety in a car. I still don't understand why the activists are allowed to do this though. They treat it as a protest, it isn't, it's surely a public order offence harassing people going about their lawful business in the street. The guy in Scotland got arrested for shouting 'deviant' at Patrick Harvie, in Manchester you can shout 'fuck Helen Joyce' down her lughole and face no consequences.

Oh interesting. I'm just sort of marking my place because I've not finished it yet. But I notice them saying it's a lie that men and women are the same from the neck up - which I'd like to go into more because my general opinion is that men and women don't have wildly different brains - although they may tend towards different strengths - apart from on measures of things like violence (hence sex being a hugely varying risk factor for violence), and I wonder if this is what they mean or if it's something else.

I'm also slightly surprised at the focus on motherhood, i think it is obviously important to feminism but I don't see many reasons why, apart from physical stuff, being the female parent is inherently "better" than being the male parent, indeed my DH is better than me at several aspects of parenting (they do talk about the "primary caregiver" so perhaps I'll read again). But in context of women's lives as a class, obviously important.

I was there on Sunday too. It’s shocking that women can’t even meet without
being harassed by the men’s rights movement.

Thank you, @Mollyollydolly !

Thanks for the heads-up, OP! I'm listening now, only part way through but I just wanted to note down something they said that I found interesting.

It was with regard to why/how the judiciary/legal systems were so easily and deep captured. The broad idea was that legal systems often rely fundamentally on the power of "magic words" making reality (one example was oath-taking, another was marriage vows) - and that perhaps judges and lawmakers being steeped in this concept for years/decades, makes them particularly susceptible.

Yep.

'These are not counter-protesters to an event or a march. This is a mob following women walking down the street shouting personal abuse and intimidation at them.'

I am a massive, massive fan of Helen Joyce and Maya Forstater.

However, I was really disappointed that in the extended discussion of the state of affairs in the US, and in response to this from Helen Dale in particular:

It’s very clear that a lot of the most effective opposition to gender ideology, as you would call it, in the United States is coming from people who are varying degrees of religious.

there wasn't any pushback or acknowledgement of the American women (few of us though there may be) who have been working on this from the left or center for a lot longer than your Matt Walsh type religious conservative---and in many cases, more successfully with FAR fewer resources:

WDI USA's role in keeping a law that would institute self-id across all 50 states from coming to a vote:
https://womensdeclarationusa.com/celebrate-every-victory/

WoLF's role in an important circuit court case affirming the right of organizations to define women as female for single-sex opportunities:
https://womensliberationfront.org/news/victory-ninth-circuit-upholds-womens-free-speech-decision

WoLF coauthored the Women's Bill of Rights to define women as female in the law, and WDI USA endorsed it. It's become law in Tennessee, with efforts to continuing to enact it elsewhere:
https://tennesseestar.com/news/governor-lee-signs-bill-legally-defining-woman-in-the-state-of-tennessee/khousler/2023/05/23/

Both organizations have a number of further amicus briefs in important cases before the courts right now.

There are too many examples of feminist efforts testifying before and providing sample legislation to state legislatures for me to list them here. Also comments before federal departments like Education, etc.

Anyway. This is mostly an issue with Helen Dale's spending so much time asking UK women about US issues. Helen and Maya are experts on what's happening in the UK, not the US.

Sex Matters, WDI and WoLF are all great groups. Do they work together?

I'm not aware of any collaborations between Sex Matters and any US group, but I suppose there could be one that I don't know about. I get the impression Sex Matters are pretty laser-focused on the UK, though.

WDI USA and WoLF are definitely friendly with each other but not in lockstep. Plenty of individual women are both members of WoLF and signatories to the Declaration/participants in WDI USA actions.

There is SO much work to do in our big, complicated country that I think everyone is just rushing around trying to cover as much ground as possible.

I can't remember which of the three of them made the point that federal countries, where there's a central government but then also various state or regional governments each with their own legislation, are more difficult and time consuming to challenge legally. Each state's legislation needs to be tackled independently. This is why the USA is finding it so difficult to unpick.

I thought this interview was really useful in highlighting how the structure of government, and the law of each country, has made it easier or more difficult for GI to get a hold. It also explains why we're Terf Island and why other states have fallen quickly. Our legal system, the Equality Act and our centralised government have all enabled women to fight back effectively.

Funnily enough I’m listening to that bit on US religiousness right now, and I’m glad Forstater makes the point that we’re constantly being judged by some of our unusual bedfellows on this issue.

Maya and Helen J are brilliant.

I know people have sometimes felt that the leading women's rights activists / feminists have not listened to grassroots women, particularly the stay at home mums, the working in not particularly fulfilling 'career' type job Mums (there are a lot of us*), working class women in general, and those of us concerned about child safeguarding and I felt personally that this showed they HAVE been listening. It was brilliant.

I was trying to listen to it whilst working (both paid and unpaid labour - both of which they touched on) but I think I just need to sit and listen and do nothing else because so much ground was covered.

I did get a bit annoyed about the interviewer constantly going on about the US which was a little odd given most of what Maya and Helen J have achieved is UK based, but I suppose it was intended for a US audience?

*I find it quite odd that some academic feminists never seem to realise that the reality of childcare and elder care, which some women can't opt out of or get other women to do for them, means that a lot of women when they go back to work aren't doing some amazingly fulfilling and lucrative 'career' type job but something that fits around everything else which is quite possibly more soul destroying than being a SAHM. That the move to needing two incomes instead of one to fund a family has made a lot of women's lives worse, not better. Oh and also that some women - even those who could have glittering careers - CHOOSE to care for their families instead. Kellie Jay Keen is a good example - she was a SAHM for years and is clearly incredibly talented and very successful (even after so many years 'in the wilderness' as a SAHM). I think that's why they hate her so much!

Yes, I increasingly find the "legal" side of all this in some ways the most fascinating. Funnily enough, or not, I believe this was one meaning (the original?) of the word 'performative' - that it makes a thing happen, brings it into existence, by its utterance. EG "I now pronounce you man and wife" (although I suspect it's signing the papers that legally causes this?) or "I baptise thee". And now "I identify as a woman".