Grace Campbell - Alastair Campbell

[BlueLegume]

If I have missed any threads already started about this then apologies.

I am literally lost for words on the post she added to her podcast along with Charlie Craggs.

My own daughter has been lost to this cause. I am hoping I get her back. How utterly vile can a young woman be - Grace Campbell - towards women who have worked so hard to give her such privilege. I might be ugly and a freak Grace with awful hair. But I am not a mean girl.

Does he ever wonder about how Eddie Izzard used to be everyone's favourite out and proud transvestite, but how these days he presents himself as a woman and demands 'she'/'her' pronouns as well as the right to use the women's toilets?

I alway think of Sarah Phillimore saying that in order to believe in it you have to make yourself stupid

The Orwell quote is "Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals believe them"

Over on the thread about Robin ince there were some reflections that he as a proud atheist a couple of years ago would have had no truck with a religious movement that advocated the stuff he subsequently spouted because he is a good and kind and tolerant and above all intelligent person who stands up for oppressed minorities.

Well, I suppose AC spent many of his best years telling everyone that Robert Maxwell was one of the world's most respected statesmen and philanthropists, so he's got form for saying ridiculous things with a straight face.

For the sake of balance I took AC's advice and clicked on the interview with McBride.

God just Campbell's introduction of McBride made me want to vomit. He was a giggly, squirming mess as he fawning over McBride saying how he was "absolutely thrilled" to be interviewing her.

As I don't normally listen to TRIP, I had to click numerous other interviews to see if thats his normal demeanour when he is doing introductions and I can categorically say it is not.

Which is very revealing. Sadly I think we fail to appreciate just how exciting / titillating certain types of powerful men find the idea of both cross dressing and getting permission to invade spaces where girls and women undress? It seems that boundaries about safety and privacy relating to women become a thrilling subject, hence them ignoring the need to safeguard children and women's rights in favour of enabling boundary breaching behaviour.
A very depressing thought.

I suggest that such fawning behaviour is acting as a cover for feelings that may be going in the opposite direction - and which one thinks are socially unacceptable. An over-compensation.

I’ve done the same @Thingybob, listened to the podcast and agree completely.
The silence of women’s voices is deafening, particularly wrt 2 anecdotes.
AC reports that he and Tony B recalled a trans woman helping them out in sedgefield decades ago and says ‘it was never an issue’. By that I understood it wasn’t an issue for them - 2 men. I assume he never checked if any aspect of that was an issue for any of the women involved, and how he would have been sure that the women could raise issues without any of the punitive consequences we’ve seen (disciplinary/ sacking/ ostracism/ threats)
SM recounted the incident of a young staffer being evicted from the women’s toilets in the Capitol, due to being mistaken for SM himself. It turned out that this young g staffer was in fact female and therefore entitled to be there. SM uses this story to prove that those who are hurt most by excluding men from women’s spaces are women themselves (gender on conforming women / women w short hair / tall women etc). But it wasn’t his story to tell - it was the staffer’s story, and her conclusion to draw. Sure, she might have said ‘that was awful, we should never question anyone’s right to enter women’s spaces’ but she could also have said ‘that wasn’t pleasant, but it’s important that we can question anyone’s right to who we think might not be entitled to use the women’s space’.
SM argued that causing discomfort doesn’t disqualify him from using women’s spaces. While showing awareness that many women will be uncomfortable with him there he pointed out (men - evaluate for yourselves how accurately) that men would also be uncomfortable with him present. RS andAC’s silence shows hat the 3 men agree that it’s was better for women to be made to feel uncomfortable than the men. Haven forbid that men are made to feel discomfort in their spaces.

I sometimes feel as a society we're always a certain distance away from predatory men being more or less open about their rape impulses.

I suppose we had "grab 'em by the pussy' as a prime example.

And the Epstein situation reveals a glimpse of how men use women as tokens and tools of status and power.

So I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that men accustomed to power and swimming in those waters dont really see male abuse of women as an issue per se. Maybe a history of abuse offers the potential for a little bit of leverage, but its not actually inherently of consequence in itself.

They know enough to mouth the words 'feminism' but absolutely cannot grasp the idea of women as sentient beings with agency.

Oh lor, that reminds of a character in the Fast Show, Arabella Weir all business like and assertive until the man arrives and she dissolves into various little girl versions of "Ooo Dr, my fwont bottom is all hurty!"

Deleted quote instead of hitting post button!
In reply to AC going all giggly over a man.

Yeah I watched a bit too just to see if they put any awkward questions to him like 'you do know it's impossible to chance sex though don't you?' But nope just a pair of star struck halfwits giggling with a bloke who thinks we have 'weoponised' trans issues.

I don't think there was any mention of activists suggesting 'burn all terfs' or the only terf is a dead terf etc. Maybe I switched off before that.

Both AC and RS chickened out of any discussion of trans - there was the usual type of ‘difficult problem’ ‘both sides need support’ bullshit bullshit waffle waffle,AC takes his views from his super privileged DD and RS from his super privileged DW
(thank God for Piers Morgan - struggle to say that but he stands firm)
the podcast has had 2 democrats on their show , one trans -have to say there will be another rebpublican gov if this is the best the the Democrats can produce.
I pay monthly to support the For Women Scotland campaign group and I’m very proud of what they have achieved. Sniping by snotty X comments is not worthy of their attention.

Interviewing FWS is quite possibly the only thing that would ever persuade me to sit through a whole episode of TRIP. I love the History version and a couple of others: I don't mind RS. But AC is a boor and a bully and he just makes my teeth itch.

Here is McBride on toilets:

'Discomfort alone is not grounds to exclude people.

If it were, then we'd have a long list of people who feel uncomfortable with other kinds of people in spaces where they feel a little bit more vulnerable, right? Everyone feels a little bit vulnerable in a restroom. But discomfort alone cannot be grounds to exclude people. And at the end of the day, trans people exist. Trans people exist. And so the question is, even if you have academic or intellectual disagreements about gender identity and sex and and even if you have questions or concerns, at the end of the day, we have to decide how do we treat people who exist, how do we guarantee that they too can fully participate in life?

Because the reality is bathrooms have actually been at the center of every single battle for civil and human rights. Certainly in our country, probably in your country, in part because if you can't use restrooms with ease and safety, then it becomes very difficult to leave your home, to go to work, to get goods and services. It becomes very difficult to participate in public life.

And so, trans people are here. There might be some people who are uncomfortable if they know when I'm in a restroom, but there also who are women. And there also might be men who would be uncomfortable if I was in the restroom with them as well. There's going to be discomfort for some people. The question is, does that mean that we essentially create an environment where trans people can't use one restroom and quite frankly are put at very legitimate risk of not only being outed because if you're a trans person in a men's restroom, it pretty much outs you a trans woman in a men's restroom, it pretty much outs you.

But it can also put you as well at very legitimate real risk of assault. And we actually know that that happens. And then finally, stepping back, do we want
an environment where we are playing gender police with restrooms?'

the reality is bathrooms have actually been at the center of every single battle for civil and human rights.

😂

Anyway, he goes on:

'They banned me trans people from restrooms from restrooms in Congress. In Congress, just on that because in their eyes, you're at this stage neither a man nor a woman. What, What's the I should go to the men's room. I do have a private restroom in my office a ways away from the capital. Right.

In the capital, the only public restrooms that are available are multi-stall gender specific restrooms.Unless you have a private office and I'm not senior enough to have a private office in the capital. The concept of the are these the Trump Republicans who've passed this or Yes. Yeah. I came in and their concept is that you're a man and you should use the male restroom despite the fact you are a woman and you dress like a woman and all this kind of stuff. If you going to I would cause a lot of much more disruption in the men's restroom than I would in in the women's restroom, which I use without incident for my entire adult life. But they have banned me.

There was an incident in February of last year where a MAGA member of Congress named Lauren Boowbert went into the women's restroom right off the floor of the House of Representatives and she saw a freshman Democrat with shoulderlength hair and glasses in the restroom and she started to harass her
and started to scream at her, "You don't belong in here."

(Rory Stewart: Thinking it was you.)

McBride: Well, the freshman Democrat was bewildered, continued to go about her business. Lauren Boowbert went on to the floor of the House of Representatives to secure the backup of Congress's top bathroom sheriff, a woman named Nancy Mace. They come off the floor of the House of Representatives, march into the bathroom, and sheepishly walk out a couple of minutes later, realizing indeed that this freshman Democrat with shoulder length hair was not me. The people who are most often victims of gender policing in restrooms are nontransgender women who are non-gender conforming. Women who have short hair, women who are taller, women who have a more muscular build, women who don't wear makeup, women who dress in a more gender non-conforming way. Those are typically the victims of gender policing. And so we just have to grapple with this diversity and and maybe just allow one another to live and express.

And if someone does something wrong in the restroom, punish them for that behavior.'

Fuck me, it does go on.

'the Democratic Party has become the avatar of womanhood, of really all of the different sort of marginalized identities it's been fighting for and the Republican party has become the avatar of sort of white straight men.

And because of that, Republicans can be loud and yell and get angry and they're seen as strong. And when Democrats do that, they're seen as shrill and hysterical.'

The obsession with peeing and toilets in this bloody debate. Never in all my decades of feminist activism did we have to spend so much time droning on about toilets.
Let's speak about sport, changing rooms, the word woman being redefined as bigotry by the terminally stupid, the gaslighting of generations of children that a sex change is a legitimate life decision to cure pubertal angst, the wedging of men into every single sex group that women have chosen for ourselves or even the prevalence of threats and violence evident amongst transactivists.

It's always toilets. 😡

Edited to apologise for the rant 😁

Well, I gave it at least ten minutes. The man's a smug prick, whatever he's wearing. I don't really care what he thinks, he needs to stay the fuck out of women's spaces.

Next!

I honestly just don't think I can listen to any more trite bollocks the like of which I've heard fifty times before, which misrepresents women's views and fails to address the central issues. I can't be polite anymore and do the nice dance pretending to care how McBride feels. He's a lumping great bloke who came from privilege and remains relatively powerful as a politician and a male, why should I defer to him because he wears a frock? Because he feels unhappy using the men's loos? Why is that my problem?

It's always toilets.

It's because that's the piss easy way to get daily validation. Multiple times a day, in fact. Everywhere. Across all walks of life. And using multiple different women. In shops, bars, restaurants, theatres. Fresh women wherever they go.

Gotta use those womenfolk to get their daily hit of me me me sexy time.

Campbell and the other one treat him like a china doll with kid gloves because they are astounded a man could willingly abase himself by wearing woman-coded clothing and growing his hair long.

Since when did cross dressing grant someone saint-like powers? Since when did changing his name mean he is now a delicate flower? Since WHEN did he become more in need of women's spaces than women themselves, particularly rape survivors, religious women, women going through menstruation or menopause or miscarriage or any of the other things women need space and fucking privacy from men for for five minutes?

'But nope just a pair of star struck halfwits giggling with a bloke who thinks we have 'weoponised' trans issues'

I just watched the first 5 mins and honestly can't face any more, but 'star struck halfwits' is such a perfect description of how AC and RS are coming across. God, they're so embarrassing 🤦🏻‍♂️

Women with their inconveniently female bodies leaking and bleeding all over the place. Why can't you be more nice and noble like the fragrant Sarah McBride? Look how UNDERSTANDING he is of your bigotry! Learn from him, ladies, for he knows more deeply about womanhood and the fetishisation of it than thee.

Quite.

Amazing isn't it, that wherever he goes he apparently discomforts multiple people, but the ones he comes down on actually doing it to are women.

What a coincidence.

Also, has he never heard of all the apps you can get now to show you where every gender neutral toilet is?

I'm sure the other thing they don't like to mention is quite how often men have to go to the toilet. Especially men who are getting on.

I'm guessing it's a bit of a nuisance.