In an interview with the Times published on Monday, Duffield said that she has been attacked online and even received death threats since tweeting in August that "only women have a cervix" - a reference to a much-ridiculed CNN story about "individuals with a cervix."
"You could take that as a joke and think it's just some silly boy behind his keyboard, but it's pretty sinister," she said, discussing the threats she has received. It has gotten so bad, she added, that it has started to make her feel scared walking down the street.
The MP called the seeming inevitability of backlash on certain topics "dystopian," comparing it to Gilead, the fictional Christian fundamentalist society in Margaret Atwood's novel 'The Handmaid's Tale', where "women aren't allowed to ask questions or proffer alternative ideas."
Some activists have even been calling on Labour leadership to deselect Duffield as a party MP.
The politician noted that her views on transphobia became an even more contentious issue online than the fact that she opposed Brexit, for which she was also reviled by UK Conservatives.
"I regularly talk to people who don't agree with me on things like abortion or Brexit. We have civilised conversations," Duffield said, adding: "I'm not being cancelled or threatened with a noose [over those topics], so why is this particular issue so toxic?"
Comment: Perhaps because it's a basic and undeniable fact and those living in a distorted, fantasy world are unable to reply with logic and thus resort to threats in an attempt to suppress reality.
Duffield said she feels that the extreme online backlash to her trans comments is designed to silence her and that party leader Keir Starmer "doesn't want to shine too much light" on the issue, preferring to avoid the topic instead.
"I feel like my female mouth is being well and truly closed without ever actually having been opened."
It would appear the MP was on point when describing the controversial nature of discourse around trans issues online. Her name quickly became a trending topic on UK Twitter on Monday after the interview was published.
Some commenters accused Duffield of "playing the victim," and once again "suggested" she should be expelled from the Labour Party. Some likened her to author JK Rowling, similarly notorious in online activist circles for her allegedly trans-exclusionary beliefs.
On the other hand, Duffield had many supporters who commended her "courage" in "speaking out" and condemned online attacks against the MP as "violent misogyny."
One commenter even suggested that the fierce backlash Duffield's interview received was illustrative of exactly the point she was trying to make about women's voices being silenced. "Thanks to all the nuggets proving her point today," they tweeted.
Reader Comments
Question: So how long do you think before CV takes out the trash๐ค๐๐
Perhaps these activists are realityphobic?
The radical left are really not cognitively functioning in any real sense. Actually, they seem to be cognitively impaired. Deranged. Quite obvious... Racists denouncing racism, etc. Those that can't work that one out are lost.
For example, where is the logical consistency in the claim that, if 'a woman' is born in a man's body, that is biologically determined, but if 'a woman' is born in a woman's body, that is socially constructed?
Equality of outcome seems to me to be motivated by resentment. Why talk about diversity, when they claim they want equality of outcome? Duh!
Why is everything about power to them, and not competence, ability, responsibility? Then, add to that, what do they want. Power!!! See where it goes?, not good at all.
All morals are relative, everything goes.
PS: I think you are smart enough to recognize it as sarcasm...
R.C.
[Link]
Basically then: penis == clitoris, scrotum == vagina, testes == ovaries, prostate == uterus, various odd ducts as required for function same-o same-o.
Not very different at all... but as the froggies say, vive la difference !
I've probably got some of this wrong, but it's not wildly wrong. I don't see a male version of the female cervix, so maybe the quip about people with a cervix is entirely apropos.
Humans exist in a range of expressions. Trans rights should simply be human rights, to dress and live as they wish without judgment or discrimination. This tran-activism is not how that has been accomplished in the past, and it is not how this will be accomplished now.
RC
The indigenous people just let their two-hearted brothers and sisters fulfill the role of the opposite sex completely. They didn't mutilate themselves to do it, and a straight man or woman would marry or commit to a trans man or woman like it was normal. That's how it should be. Surgery for aesthetics is an unnecessary risk, and instead of trying to convince the world it is, they should be trying to convince the world to simply accept humans as they are.
This whole thing is so anti-science and anti-human.
A Sign of the Times.
Created a wondrous machine.
Concave and convex,
It would suit either sex,
And anyone found in between.
RC
RC
One not so unimportant point, I think, is division (as in "Divide And Conquer"). Pit one against the other, so they ignore the third.