At a Notting Hill party the Saturday after the referendum, I had a stand-up barney with a Labour MP. "It’s a disaster!" he cried. "We need a second v… - Janice Turner

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At a Notting Hill party the Saturday after the referendum, I had a stand-up barney with a Labour MP. "It’s a disaster!" he cried. "We need a second vote right away." Other guests nodded gravely, but I couldn’t contain myself. Hang on, I said, are you saying a democratic decision is invalid because you lost? "It’s appalling," he wailed. "It can’t happen!" Thus began my life for the next five years.
I voted Remain – "with no illusions" as we used to say when I was a student Trot – but I was raised in Doncaster North, a Red Wall seat. I saw the gradual untethering of traditional Labour supporters in my own late father. In 2009, after the local party was discredited by the Donnygate expenses scandal, he voted to make a so-called English Democrat mayor. My father, and millions like him, had little in common with bien pensant London lefties whom I call friends. A reckoning was coming.
What surprised me wasn’t the result, but the reckless determination of Remainers to reverse it. Did they think 17 million people would just accept their votes being cancelled? If Remain had won, would they have been cool with Nigel Farage demanding a rerun? The contempt for Brexit voters – that they were thick, old racists, from shitty places – disgusted me.

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About Janice Turner

Janice Turner (born 8 April 1964) is a British journalist, and a columnist and feature writer for The Times of London. Turner is an advocate of gender-critical feminism.

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Additional quotes by Janice Turner

In her book Material Girls, Stock asserts that although a person’s professed "gender identity" should be respected, biological sex is immutable and, in some circumstances — prisons, rape counselling, sports — must take precedence to protect women’s rights. This mainstream opinion is protected under the 2010 Equality Act. Yet her persecutors believe trans people literally change sex. They believe that in granting her academic freedom, the university fails to be trans inclusive. "We are not up for debate," they say.
That such unscientific, magical thinking has become sacrosanct is calamitous for academics, especially feminist scholars who study how women are historically oppressed via their reproductive role. An Edinburgh lecturer in gender and education tells me she offered students both LGBTQ and feminist reading materials. "As with any subject, I tell them to examine all sides, to think, talk, then form a considered view." For this she was reported to the staff Pride network, which solicits student complaints, and then quietly dropped from lecturing on gender.
Across British campuses women academics — and it is always women — face threats, witch-hunts and lost livelihoods for holding gender critical views.

I will use female pronouns for some trans women. My rules are personal. I will call no male who commits a sexual or violent offence "she". But those who respect women, like Debbie Hayton, or those I meet in real life, I will respect. This will win me abuse on both sides: Stonewall would say the choice should not be mine; gender-critical ultras will cry traitor. But I reject all compelled speech.
Using pronouns doesn't mean I no longer believe sex is real. I use them, in their original sense, as a courtesy. You can hold concerns about youth transition without screaming at a bereaved mother that her child was a boy.

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[T]rans demands and women’s rights are often in such clear and irreconcilable conflict. Take Martin Ponting, jailed in 1995 for raping two girls, one disabled. After cosmetic surgery, but still possessing male genitalia, Ponting, now called Jessica Winfield, was moved to Bronzefield women’s prison but after making unwanted sexual advances to inmates has been segregated. Are you appalled that a rapist is confined with women prisoners, mainly non-violent offenders and themselves often victims of male sexual abuse? Do you think the Soham murderer Ian Huntley should never be allowed to transfer even if, as reported, he calls himself "Lian"? Then you too are a TERF and deserve to be punched.

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