The hill he chose to die on
Men like Owen Jones are all too common in history
First, some context.
Here’s Jack Duncan, who very much follows Owen’s thinking on the ‘problem’ of Rosie Duffield. This is a grave charge that I hope catches Rosie’s attention.
Doesn’t take these guys long before forgetting a female MP was murdered under ten years ago by someone who believed utter nonsense. “Her words and actions put queer people in serious danger.” He said this thing to almost 35,000 followers.
After years of dehumanising women as ‘TERFS’ they are currently closing the other end of that process by putting these same women at physical risk.
And no-one seems to care, not even the authorities. For instance, could the police put down their trans flag riot shields a one second and maybe looking into investigating Jack Webster here for hate crimes? Just a thought!
Or perhaps the Guardian’s female editor could finally do something about Owen Jones? Here he is carefully avoiding Rosie Duffield’s pronouns so that it’s not too apparent he’s adding another coat of paint to the target on a female MP’s back.
There’s not many of these lunatics left, you know. It’s just Owen Jones, Michael Cashman and a few others who made such fools of themselves in this debate that there’s really nothing they can do except front it out until the bitter end. I believe Owen deleted all his tweets about the Wi Spa. And now he’s directing his followers at a woman who doesn’t think the bloke in the Wi Spa should have the automatic right to her private spaces. A woman who has been receiving death threats because of that stance.
That’s the hill Owen Jones has chosen to die on: he argues that women should have no safe spaces, no privacy, no dignity, no safety. Only his ease with dishonestly smearing left-wing women like Linda Bellos and Helen Steel has he been able to hold for this long an untenably stupid position. Now, he is proving that he is willing to put women at risk rather than admit he got it wrong.
Stella O’Malley told me that up until a very short time before the Stasi finally fell, everyone in East Germany thought everyone else supported the Stasi. We need a moment like that. A moment where the dam has no choice but to break.
For the sake of brave women like Rosie Duffield, that moment can not come soon enough.
Great piece, Graham, it really is powerful.
The behaviour of these men is utterly disgusting and someone needs to take action. It is an offence to incite violence. Why don't they realise that? And why aren't the police knocking their doors to "check [their] thinking"? (I know the answer to the second question, sadly.)