Rosie Duffield Quotes

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.

They don’t threaten criticise, yell or exert their physical strength in increasingly frightening ways.
Not at the start. Not when they think you're sweet, funny and gorgeous. Not when they turn up to your third date with chocolates, then jewellery.

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.

Today I have made the extremely difficult decision not to attend local hustings events during this general election campaign. Hustings are usually an enjoyable and interesting part of any political campaign, but sadly the actions of a few fixated individuals have now made my attendance impossible.
The constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation from certain people - having built up over a number of years and being pursued with a new vigour during this election - is now affecting my sense of security and wellbeing. The result is that I feel unable to be focused on giving a clear presentation of the Labour Party's manifesto commitments.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Those patterns continue: reward, punishment, promises of happy ever after, alternating with abject rage, menace, silent treatment and coercive control.

[In March 2023, Duffield] dared to like a tweet by the writer Graham Linehan, who was responding to a tweet by Eddie Izzard claiming that, had he lived in Nazi Germany, "I'd have been murdered for it". Linehan – and rightly, so in my view – retorted with a sarcastic, "Ah, yes, the Nazis, famously bigoted against straight white men with blonde hair."
You might well think Izzard was wrong to make that comparison to Nazi Germany in trying to score points in the gender war. But remarkably, in Labour land, it is Duffield who is being investigated.

In a strange city his face changes in a way you are starting to know and dread. In a way that tells you, you need to stay calm, silent and very careful.
You read a city guide … mentally packing a day full of fun. But he seems to have another agenda.
He doesn’t want you to leave the room. He’s paid a lot of money and you need to pay him your full attention. You are expected to do as you are told. You know for certain what that means, so you do, exactly what you are told.
It’s when the ring is on your finger that the mask can start to slip and the promises sound increasingly like threats.

Is it starting to look like Labour has a women problem? It certainly is for the 7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration and had a stall at last year’s party conference refused.
It is for Lesbian Labour, who were also stopped from exhibiting at last year’s conference. It is for Dr Karen Ingala Smith, the formidable feminist campaigner who compiles a list of women killed in the UK each year which is then read out in parliament by Jess Phillips every International Women’s Day, and who had her membership rejected after she made a few gender-critical joke tweets featuring kittens.

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.