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.
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