Women are right to stand firmly against the steady creep upon our right to single-sex space. It does not stop at a wee in the ladies and I don’t think it was ever going to stop there once the “trans rights” juggernaut had fired up the ignition. Women are enraged about men crossing these established single-sex boundaries and rightly so. We don’t need to make exceptions for Eddie Izzard Some were angry and demanded to know why I hadn’t got up and asked him to get out. Some were disappointed in a man they had once admired. Another said, “There used to be a name for men hanging around women’s bathrooms ”. One user said, “It’s like a cat spraying up a wall isn’t it? He’s marking what he thinks is ‘ his’ territory ”. I tweeted the picture to horrified men and women. I decided to photograph Izzard coming out, again with women bowing and scraping at his feet. The “ gentleman’s” toilet was just a few feet behind me. These women were smiling sycophantically and held the door open for him in a supreme act of betrayal to women of the UK, who have a right to single sex services under the Equality Act 2010. It was hard to believe that, in full view of the large audience, a man would be assisted to the women’s toilet by two other women. I realised as he was whisked into the women’s toilet that it was Eddie Izzard. As Julie and I became more irritated at the long wait for Izzard’s appearance on stage, I suddenly spotted a man being ushered through a curtain at the side, shielded by two women. The bar had a long queue and people seemed in good spirits. We had taken seats at the front of a room containing around 300 people, many of them women. In the end we weren’t enlightened or entertained, we were outraged. We didn’t expect them to be asked but thought that we would at least be entertained by a professional comedian, even though our concerns as feminist women were ignored. The journalist Julie Bindel and I attended this event to see what Eddie had to say and had both submitted questions around issues of women’s rights being in conflict to Izzard’s right to self-identify as a woman for this parliamentary seat. I don’t capitulate to compelled speech and would find this article impossible to negotiate unless I was truthful and use “he ”. I don’t have to concur with that belief and my belief, that men can’t change sex, is worthy of respect in a democratic society. Now he does exactly the same thing, but expects everyone to believe he is actually a woman. This came after years of being happy to declare himself a “transvestite” and challenge gender stereotypes, by wearing dresses and lipstick. We weren’t enlightened or entertained, we were outragedĮddie fairly recently announced that he is a going to live “in full girl mode”, whatever that might mean, and wishes to be addressed using “she/her” pronouns. Our beloved city of Sheffield is not a “project” for Labour to hand over to a bored, millionaire bloke in outdated knee-high boots, trying to reinvent himself as both a woman and an MP. I sniff an ego looking for a new vanity project. The buses are a really important issue for Sheffield people, but I don’t think Eddie has much call to clamber aboard public transport carrying some of his estimated net wealth of $20 million. Izzard has not yet been formally selected by Labour.Īs a Sheffield Labour Party member, I am sceptical of Eddie’s proclaimed love of all things Sheffield, which appears to have come upon him with some vigour of late as he poses with police or holds forth on issues of Sheffield’s buses. Eddie has recently confirmed a desire to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Sheffield Central which will shortly be vacated by Paul Blomfield who is stepping down. On Thursday, 29 September Sheffield Labour Party hosted a fund-raising event featuring an evening in conversation with Eddie Izzard at Crookes Social Club in Sheffield.
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