Trans rights activists have been accused of "sheer theatre" after defacing several statues in London on Saturday, during an "emergency demonstration" against the Supreme Court's ruling on biological women.Following a challenge by the For Women Scotland campaign group, the Supreme Court ruled that women are determined by "biological sex", not those who are transgender and simply identify as women.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00I have strong feelings on this issue, so I'm going to come to you first on this one.
00:03Obviously, you're a woman as well, if I can say that without offending anybody.
00:07Now, in my head, right, explain this to me, right?
00:11Trans activists claim to be women.
00:15They want to be women. They are women, right?
00:16OK, so why are they defacing the statue of a feminist icon if they think they're women?
00:23Can you make that make sense for me?
00:24Well, I can't, Dawn, and I was about to say that to you.
00:26You know how I feel. You know how I feel because I've spoken quite strongly this week.
00:30About the issue of biological sex and in favour of trans women.
00:34But I don't understand the defacing the statue.
00:37Now, what I would say is, having been on many a protest in my life, either reporting or as a campaigner,
00:43if people deface things, they don't always tend to be with the main cohort of protesters.
00:49So now I understand that we're being told that these are trans activists.
00:52But I would like that clarified first because it sounds quite like it could just be somebody who's randomly hopped on this to have a go.
00:58Someone that was hijacking it.
01:00This often happens at protests.
01:03Now, if that's not the case, and it is somebody who is a trans activist, then my question is why?
01:07Because, you know, I mean, Millicent Fawcett has given women the right to vote.
01:11If you're a trans woman, you have the right to vote.
01:13And that is tied to Millicent Fawcett's campaigning.
01:15So I don't really understand the logic, unless it's for sheer theatre, that it's done.
01:21You know, a bit like the Just Stop Oil protesters.
01:24It's not winning friends and influencing people.
01:25No, it isn't.
01:26And it doesn't win it for me, even though I'm in favour of what they're protesting.
01:29And we did see some pretty horrific...
01:31I'm coming to you on...
01:31I know it's difficult for a man to talk about this because it's like we...
01:35It's not my...
01:35It's not really my argument to have.
01:38Absolutely.
01:38But we did see...
01:39I mean, it was a protest, and we did see some pretty horrific banners there as well.
01:43And I don't believe all these people were just hijacking it for theatre.
01:47I think they actually mean some of these things.
01:48It's like, you know, burn the witches referring to people like J.K. Rowling and sort of like, you know, the only TERF trans...
01:55You know, feminist, basically.
01:58The only good TERF is a dead TERF with a picture of a noose.
02:01Now, these are really, really offensive banners.
02:03And seeing as we are meant to be cracking down on hate speech protesters,
02:06we saw it with the Southport riots, remember?
02:08We saw people putting words on social media, jailed for 31 months.
02:13So we saw some pretty hateful banners.
02:14So what do you think is going on?
02:15Well, I think the problem for the trans movement is that so often those that are trans
02:23and those with the loudest voices in the community are their own worst enemies.
02:28And I think what it comes from is that very often being transgender comes hand in hand with quite a radical extremism.
02:41A lot of them spend a lot of time online.
02:44They whip themselves up into a hysteria.
02:48They, you know, online you can say things like, you know, burn TERFs as the trans exclusionary radical feminist.
02:54That's their term for people like J.K. Rowling, who believe in women's rights and women's only spaces.
03:02And then they actually leave their homes, which I think is quite rare for some of them.
03:06And they encounter the real world hate speech laws.
03:09Now, I will give the police the sort of initial benefit of the doubt and presume that they are going to chase up on these.
03:16There are clear photographs of a lot of the people's faces who are holding these banners.
03:20I'm a bit less sympathetic on the statue point.
03:25I think a lot of the protests were happening around those statues.
03:29And I saw very pro-trans graffiti on the base of the Lloyd George statue in Parliament Square as well.
03:38I suppose ironically, of course, the Supreme Court ruling would mean that, you know,
03:45counter to what you were saying, trans women were not reliant on the feminist movement to get the votes.
03:50Instead of having the vote from birth as biological men.