Rosie Duffield Quotes

Being shouted down in the chamber by Labour men who clearly don't want women to speak up for our rights to single-sex spaces. How very progressive.

His tempers were very violent. I knew I had to be careful. There was always an underlying threat. He would drive incredibly aggressively, yelling at me when I was trapped in the car. That was scary stuff. Because the feelings are violent, the violence is there in the room with you. The raising of a fist or the hand is the next logical step. He didn’t hit me. He did other things that made me realise he was in control.

Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for — why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment?

[On the possibility misgendering might become a hate crime.] Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to Parliament any time soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I'm not calling Eddie Izzard a woman.

As prime minister, your managerial style and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long 14 years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.
Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.

We're watching not only those white men that run things having the safe seats, giving themselves the safe seats, but then they're the ones that get to judge whether or not we get to be candidates.
So that's incredibly uncomfortable for me to watch from a so-called progressive party. It needs cleaning up, it needs tackling. It was the same under Jeremy Corbyn's faction and time, it's exactly the same under Keir Starmer.

It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women.

It was just a big load of scary noise, this giant person. When you’re bullied your brain starts to shut down. It’s protecting yourself. And you can’t think of the words; you’re not eloquent. I would misspeak, stutter, and he would exploit that.

I don’t talk about trans rights because I think it’s not my place to talk about trans rights. Trans people have got some great organisations and they’re very good at representing their rights, and that is just as it should be.
Trans rights are the same rights as everyone else, but what concerns me is that there is a slight conflict in some cases between trans rights and women’s rights.
Women’s rights are why I came to Parliament, and why I’m sitting here, because women are now visible in Parliament.
I grew up in a very strong feminist household, and what really concerns me are the rights of women to have privacy and space, and the necessity to be in women’s refuge – not shared with someone with a male body.

You learn that "I’ll always look after you" and "You’re mine for life" can sound menacing, are used as a warning over and over again.

He was totally withdrawing from me, to let me know that I was not to be spoken to, and I wasn’t to talk to him, or be touched, or anything, and that was really hurtful. But it was always my fault, always, always, always, without question. And that got established from day one, even when he was still trying to woo me and charm me. [At the end of an argument.] He’d come up to me very earnestly, very sincerely, and say to me, "Are you going to be my good girl, now?"

It seems Rosie has received literally no support from [Keir] Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life.
But she fights on ... because she feels she has no choice. Like me, she believes the stakes are too high to walk away.

The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed,” she said. “I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.”

Most backbenchers I'm friends with are women and most of us refer to the men that surround him [Keir Starmer], the young men, as 'the lads' and it's very clear that the lads are in charge. They have now got their Downing Street passes. They are the same lads who were briefing against me in the papers and other prominent female MPs.

The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale [...] I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.