Zoe Williams -

[Sizzlysausage]

Kate doesn’t want Prince George to go to Eton – and for once I agree with her | Zoe Williams | The Guardian

Sorry if there is another thread on this article by Zoe Williams which is rather extraordinary on a number of counts, but especially confusing is the following:

"Which isn’t to say that nothing good came of it – my experience of an all-girls’ school, followed by twice as long as a trustee of a prison charity, informed a lot of my politics, including why I became a transgender ally. Before I had thought seriously about trans rights, and the immeasurable preciousness of any human being with the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life, I thought: “Wait, are you saying all-female spaces are kinder? Purer? Inherently less violent? More supportive? Are you joking? Are you out of your mind?”"

I think I might be struggling with my comprehension today - but I don't think gender critical feminists are necessarily saying all-female spaces are kinder or purer - although, yes, almost certainly inherently less violent. It seems like a conflation of different points flung together to construct a straw man argument and entirely misunderstanding safeguarding as a concept in the process. Is this deliberate? Or is she not able to see this? Baffling.

ZW is one of those women who I hope comes face to face with the reality of supporting TRA policies in all our public places one day.

To misquote Dickens: the worst you can wish these women is that their eyes be opened by (personal) experience.

Well said. ZW gives no fucks at all about women's human rights, that much is clear. How awful she was a trustee of a prison charity - as if the prisoners don't have enough problems.

That would put Zoe in the "do it Julia" category then BackToLurk.

Anyone going along with this for fashion is doing it because they don't want a backlash. Anyone dong it because they actually believe it, is extremely gullible.

Reading back through the thread, I find this statement from Zoe astonishing:

"I'd go as far as to say everyone with a cervix knows they have one."

Has she really never met anyone outside her own bubble? Just a reminder of this finding from Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust:

"Almost half of women (44.2%) are unaware of what the cervix is, unable to correctly identify it as the neck of the womb (uterus). One in six could also not name a single function of the cervix with less than half (41.40%) aware that it connects the womb to the vagina and only one in three knowing that it provides a seal to hold the baby in when pregnant."

I'm also thinking of something I read by Joan Smith recently, where she said that in London, domestic abuse shelters are so overwhelmed by demand that they can only offer spaces to the worst-affected women, ie those who have complex PTSD from years of violent abuse. These women literally shake with terror if they have to be in the same room as a man.

I just can't understand why someone like Zoe Williams, who has spent years as a journalist, and whose very job it is to go out and listen to other people's stories and to take an interest in the outside world, is so ignorant of what's going on outside her immediate social circle.

No wonder people hate the Guardian. She reminds me of one of those do-gooders in Dickens who think the only thing wrong with poor people is that they're not sufficiently like the middle-class.

That's an unbelievable statement royalcorgi. Especially in a left wing newspaper

What a blinkered, sheltered life she must have led. What use to humanity is the Oxbridge degree if you come out of it knowing so little about the humans you live alongside?

I'm sure Zoe's on a posh street, but most of London is still very mixed. Does she not realise what a high proportion of the people she lives amongst speak English as a second language? Is she completely unaware of the kids in special education or not in education at all? Some of the people whom Zoe relies upon daily to keep her city and life running will not know what or where a fucking cervix is.

Zoe Williams has always been an idiot.

I hadn’t really been aware of her before she got involved in gender stuff but she was on the For The Many podcast recently with Iain Dale and she was unbelievably annoying. It sounded like very mixed feedback from listeners, whereas often guest presenters are well-received. Also ID asked her about that piece by a Jewish employee of the Guardian who was experiencing an awful time in the Guardian offices after the Hamas attack and she denied all knowledge of the Guardian being like that. Although in other pieces she says she always works from home so how she’d know what’s it like in the office I don’t know. But going from others opinions of her I suppose not knowing about a subject has never stopped her before!

She's very privileged, was given a graduate job beyond her abilities IMO, and has struggled all through her career as a writer. She seems always to cover that up by being very, very aggressive with those who challenge her.

It's the social virtue veneer thing again.

The kind of person who will talk at length about how wonderful it is to live in a 'rich multicultural diverse area' and chatter anxiously about ensuring her children's chosen school isn't 'too white' because gosh how awful that would be, but those people creating all this for her are just props. Just scenery. There's no real understanding, there's no real care, there's no real interest, the interest is in how the presentation of care makes her look to others and provides her with status.

This is why all the cognitive dissonance. And why often when you start to respond to and challenge their comfortable narrative you suddenly find you've taken the lid off quite staggering racism, homophobia, ageism etc, from someone who's marketing themselves as so right on and socially conscious and caring.

If trans boys have always existed but when Zoe Williams was a child they weren’t able to live their truthful and meaningful lives, then some of the pupils at her girls school were actually really boys? Or is there a failure in my logic?

I was going to say pretty much the same as @CombatLingerie

I've stopped being disappointed by her.

I've never read any of her columns, AFAICR. Not likely to change that any time soon on the evidence of this thread. She sounds like a Poly Filler type.

For the record, I went to a girls' school and it was great - for me, anyway. There was no physical violence of any kind. There was almost certainly bullying but there isn't a school on earth free of that, unfortunately. There was definitely bitchiness. This is not in any way equivalent to having to cope with sexual harassment or assault at school.

The huge plus for me, which admittedly would have been less of a factor a few years later (and I see she is 12 years younger than me - she's 50! 50 - take that in, not a callow kid - 50 years old) - was that in the 1970s when I was there there were no male teachers at all. We had a male Bursar and Janitor but other than that it was an entirely female environment and every single teacher on the staff was a graduate or equivalent. This gave us role models to aspire to. It was extremely positive.

Good point, she should contact the alumni organisation or pop along to the next reunion event and see how many of her former classmates are now transmen. My guess is none.

“I just can't understand why someone like Zoe Williams, who has spent years as a journalist,”

She’s a columnist, not a journalist.

Why did she need to drop that in about her "politics" - it's got nothing to do with anything. Such a badly written piece. Should waffly. How on earth does this woman keep her job?

You couldn't make it up.

That private education clearly didn't teach her any sense.

Margot would definitely be GC. Barbara would be a TRA.

It's a religion. They have to make a declaration of faith even if the topic is unrelated ("golden shoehorn" @Allthegoodnamesarechosen 🤣🤣). She's publicly showing that she questioned herself and her own experiences and came to the "right" conclusion. It's the true journey of faith, total submission.

The Guardian opinion page has become a parody of itself.

Btw I went to a girls school (for free) for a few years and they were the best, most liberating years of my life. A lot of my closest friends are men. But there's something so special about all girls, I'd spend a lot more time in all female places if I could 🤪

It becomes clearer if you check Zoe's earlier articles about the charity, as found by a previous poster.

As a declaration of interest, I’m a trustee of the Butler Trust, which was established 30 years ago to recognise the achievements of prison service staff. The thinking – from a prison governor, the reverend Peter Timms – was that it was rare for people who worked in prisons to have their excellence noticed. There are public-sector spheres where people just assume you’re doing a good job – the army – and places where the public will regularly witness you doing a good job – a hospital, for instance. No news but bad news ever comes out of a prison, which, apart from making it hard to build morale, is somewhat unfair. In all that has changed about prisons over the past three decades, this has remained constant; you might exceed your duty, perhaps by miles, but it’s not likely that the wider community will get to hear about it.

As it happens, I don't disagree with her, and I think it is important to recognise prison staff who achieve. It's important for them, and it's important for the welfare of prisoners. But I think it was somewhat misleading of Williams to describe her trusteeship anew in this week's article as having been a trustee of a prison charity. Readers see that and presume she means she's been the trustee of a charity primarily focused on prisoner welfare.

I'm sure it was inadvertent and she didn't mean to cause any misunderstanding, mostly because I am genuinely convinced she is a thick as two short planks.

Article about the Butler Trust

Here we go. Essentially the logic is: because not all women are saints, they don't unconditionally deserve single sex spaces.

Girls bully, boys bully at school. Fact. This still has nothing to do with why we have single sex spaces. Privacy respect and dignity is just hinged on being separate from the opposite sex in vulnerable places.

IIRC girls tend to do better (academically) in single-sex schools, but boys (in general) do better in mixed-sex provision.

I went to a single-sex school (70s & 80s) and tbh we were confident about speaking up in lessons, especially STEM subjects, and most got good A levels and went to uni. A friend who transferred out for 6th form to a mixed school took a massive dip in grades/confidence. Which is an anecdote but I wonder how widespread that might (have) be(en)?

No she wouldn't!!! Barbara had a brain and cared about people. She was happy to think outside the box and challenge. I like to think that they'd have travelled to the let women speak events together and shown solidarity against the MRAs.

As a side point, I also think it's amusing that ZW sets this up by agreeing with Kate Middleton about George not going to Eton (as a single sex school). My understanding is that KM went to Marlborough College, where (who knows if this is true) she is thinking of sending George. Without giving too much away, I have reasonably good knowledge of that institution and at around the time she was there (no idea if this is still the case), it was quite well known that the boys would rate female entrants into the sixth form based on their looks and amongst other things, shout scores as they entered the dining room. I could go on about other fairly hideous examples of male privilege at the school but if were to send my kids to a private school (I'm not) there is NO WAY I would be sending them to that particular mixed school.