The M word

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Daniel Martin in The Telegraph:

Bridget Phillipson has been accused of blocking guidance on upholding women’s right to single-sex spaces over fears it could damage her career.

Baroness Falkner – who drew up the equality law changes – said Ms Phillipson was putting her “personal ambition” before her role as women and equalities minister over fears pro-trans backbenchers would scupper any chance of promotion if she publishes the guidance.

Well, you know: it’s a tough call. On the one hand the rights of women and girls, on the other hand one woman’s career.

Lady Falkner, who led the Equality and Human Rights Commission until the end of last year, suggested the Government risked making the same mistake over trans rights as it did with grooming gangs, by failing to take action for fear of upsetting a minority group.

Well, you know, not all “minority groups” should be protected from being “upset”. Murderers are a minority group; so what? Their feelings don’t become the standard of what we can say and do about murder just because they’re a minority group. It’s the same with men who pretend to be women. If they’re taking our stuff and barging into our spaces we get to tell them to stop, no matter how “minority” they are.

Before Lady Falkner left her previous role in November, the EHRC submitted an updated code of practice to Ms Phillipson, instructing businesses and public bodies to ensure that trans women were barred from toilets and changing rooms.

But almost 12 months after the Supreme Court’s ruling and the updated code being submitted to the Government for sign-off, Ms Phillipson has still not proceeded with its publication, claiming time is needed to get it right.

It means hospitals and sports centres across the country are still allowing trans women into female spaces.

Men’s desire to invade women’s spaces continues to outweigh women’s desire not to have men invading our spaces – what does that sound like? It sounds rapey. Men blithely ignoring what women want is the main ingredient of rape.

Comments

8 responses to “The M word”

  1. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    Sort of on topic, sort of not. I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream last night; we walked out during intermission. It was a terrible performance, but what made it worse was that they were apparently playing Helena as trans. I say apparently because on a couple of occasions they referred to Helena as ‘he’ and ‘lad’, but the man playing her was wearing earrings and was referencing things that were not permitted for his ‘sex’ – which was pursuing and courtship, things which absolutely are and were permitted for males.

    Switching the roles of Titania and Oberon, where Titania was doing what Oberon usually does and vice versa didn’t help either.

  2. guest Avatar
    guest

    The Bridge Theatre in London did a version in which Oberon’s and Titania’s lines were swapped, and honestly it was much better. It’s funnier for a woman to play a prank on a man than for a man to play a prank on a woman…and, interestingly, after a charming scene at the end where Oberon has a good long laugh at the joke and at himself, he has a long hard look at himself as Theseus (providing an actual explanation for Theseus’s change of heart). I loved it, and don’t intend to see a ‘normal’ version of the play again. (There is an NT Live video of the performance, if you’re ever able to see it.)

    Off topic – I would appreciate being able to see the presence and number of comments on each post from the overall post page.

  3. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    guest, that relies on it being done well. But the bit with Helena was just…too much. I probably will never see a ‘normal’ version of it (I never have, and I’ve seen some wonderful versions) because directors want to make it ‘different’. And this director did have in their (name non-gendered) notes that the purpose was to paper over the uncomfortable parts of a man pranking a woman into falling in love with an ass.

    I don’t think all plays need to be changed to some modern idea of appropriate. And I have never found a director who can write Shakespeare as well as Shakespeare, though a good cut can improve on him. I saw a version of Comedy of Errors where the director cut it way down, but the parts she removed were not missed, and the play was actually more cohesive, at least in a modern sense.

    But transing Helena was a bridge too far, and since the actors hammed their parts with great screechiness, we left at intermission.

  4. guest Avatar
    guest

    Oh I completely agree re Helena, that sounds completely pointless – but swapping Oberon and Titania actually made the play both funnier (to modern audiences at least) and, really, more profound (I guess it’s not mandatory for Theseus and Oberon to be the same character, but I believe it’s usual practice).

    I was in A Comedy of Errors once – I had a very small part, eight lines. But I couldn’t remember even that many, so the director cut my part to six lines.

  5. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    swapping Oberon and Titania actually made the play both funnier (to modern audiences at least) and, really, more profound

    Not this production. It made it more prurient. It fell into the juvenile kind of humor favored by Trump and the Trumplets…not to mention countless leftists who have arrested emotional development.

    Recipe – Take one Shakespearean play. Remove all depth and profundity. Add a healthy dose of prurience. Mumble through the best lines in case people might actually get something good out of it. It is unfortunate that we’ve been seeing a ton of those lately.

  6. guest Avatar
    guest

    Speaking of editing Shakespeare’s plays, I didn’t know for decades that Hamlet has a whole subplot about the Norwegian invasion – I had never seen a version in which that subplot hadn’t been completely excised (so to almost all modern audiences Fortinbras just seems to arrive out of the blue at the very end).

  7. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    guest, that has been so long-standing, I didn’t know it either until I read the play as part of my play-writing degree. Hamlet is like five hours long; they have to cut something, but too many of them lately I have seen cutting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – unfortunate. When everyone is dead on the stage at the end, a little comic relief helps.

  8. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    Last night we saw Un Flic, a film from 1972, on television. It’s not a very good film, and I suspect that if it didn’t have Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve in it it would be largely forgotten by now. A police informer called Gaby worked as a transvestite prostitute in a nightclub. The word “transvestite” is mentioned, just once I think, but there is no suggestion that he was “living his true life” as a woman, i.e. that he was transgender in today’s sense. Nonetheless, the English Wikipedia article about the film calls him transgender. (The French version still says travesti, but it won’t surprise me if someone changes that.) On Wikipedia one can look at all the earlier versions of an article, and sure enough the first description of Gaby said “feminine impersonator”, quite quickly changed to “transvestite”, both OK as far as I’m concerned. In 2023 (I think) the trendy modern “transgender” appeared.

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