 Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, has told the Sunday time she won't be attending Labour Party conference due to threats she has received online. The story made the front page of the Sunday paper, alongside comments from the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Hoyle. The headline speaks of extremists terrorising Rosie Duffield. And this was the first paragraph of that front page splash. The Speaker of the House of Commons has made an unprecedented intervention of the security of politicians after a female MP was forced to pull out of the Labour Party conference later this week after receiving online threats from militant transgender activists. I find it unbelievable that militant transgender activists are threatening people can appear on the front page of the Sunday Times, but there we are. Duffield told the paper about her decision to stay away from the conference. She said, I mainly took the decision not because I really thought I was going to be attacked, but because I did not want to be the centre of attention. We have had Labour MPs who have had to have security at conference over the past few years, and I didn't want that sort of attention or to become the story. I just thought it was better for everyone if I stayed quietly away. She went on to say, LGBT plus Labour now seem to hate my guts, and I feared they'd have a massive go at me at conference. The people who threaten me, I don't think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly. LGBT Labour have previously called for Rosie Duffield to lose the whip for her social media activity, which includes tweeting that only women can have a cervix, which was a response to a CNN story which used trans-inclusive language. So lots of people got annoyed that they were calling women people with cervixes. She joined in that row. She was also criticised for liking this tweet from Curtis Lemasta. I'm so sick of hearing how queer has been reclaimed. I had that word spit in my face as recently as 2018 and look at who is reclaiming it. Mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay. Stop co-opting our language. Stop colonising gay culture. So this is a tweet that says that calling queer people heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay. So a very offensive way to talk about LGBT people in any context really. Rosie Duffield was challenged on the Today programme on Monday morning as to whether she endorsed the sentiment of that tweet. I think the point about that particular tweet was this gay rights activist who I know from Twitter is like many of my gay friends incredibly distressed and insulted the Q word and other words that they find incredibly offensive are used by people. There are men activists out there who are married to women who call themselves the Q word. And they appropriate gay culture in a way that is deeply offensive to quite a lot in the gay movement, the gay rights movement. But do you not see that that tweet though was deeply, I mean, properly offensive to people who may themselves have been appallingly abused in the past? Obviously I don't understand those issues as well as someone who is in that situation but I do know that several of my gay friends, a lot of gay rights groups find the appropriation of gay culture as they see it incredibly offensive and harmful. So you're not apologising for endorsing that tweet? I didn't do the tweet. I liked the tweet. I am in touch with that particular person who did the tweet and I know that he finds this particular issue incredibly difficult and I think he has a valid right to talk about it without being cancelled as he was. I have literally never met anyone who is remotely, well, I mean, how would you be offended that some bisexual people being married to someone of the opposite sex doesn't mean you can't be queer. There's a thing called bisexuality, Rosie Duffield. And, you know, even if you were suspicious, oh, what if this person who's married to someone of the opposite sex they don't get with people of the same sex? Who cares? Who cares if they call themselves queer? You know, I do think there are issues related to the subject sports, whatever, you know, I can see how there are people who have strong feelings on both sides. When it comes to this idea that trans people are undermining gay people's identity, I'm just like, what planet are you living on? Where do these people live? I haven't met any of them. I should say we did have a transgender journalist lined up to talk about this particular story. We had some connection issues, which is unfortunate, but I'm going to go to Aaron for comment on this story. Aaron, what did you make of, I suppose, especially that front page? Look, I'm an assist head guide. Does that mean I have a right to talk about these things? In a sense, I think it does. I mean, I'm an ally, but also Michael, you know, we believe in the capacity of people to look at something and say whether that's right or wrong. And I think particularly what she was saying on BBC Radio 4 this morning was biphobia. Of course, there are many people in relationships or who are married to people of different sex who have previously been with other people or, like you say, my experiment in their private lives. I don't care. You know, knock yourself out. And it's really strange, you know, somebody like my dad, who's 65, we had my wedding a couple of weeks ago, Michael. Oh, God, heaven for me, you know, heteronormative me. And there were several speakers, a couple of gay people, a trans person. Somebody said queer and proud. And my dad's 65, he's not political. He's just like, great, they're happy. You live your life. That's that's most people, I think I could be wrong. I mean, I could be really, you know, completely misguided here, but it's most people. And I think when you lose sight of that and you go down this kind of this rabbit hole that Rosie Duffield's clearly going down, you start to say crazy things, which are which are bigoted, which is what she said about bisexual people. The kind of conversation she was having as well was at times, you know, really just incoherent. She says the Q word, just say it queer. What's the problem with the word? And then she says Q word, which is offensive. We'll know the point is it's not offensive. Sometimes it's just somebody finds himself center stage of a big public debate. She probably doesn't want to be there. I mean, look, again, it's partly an outgrowth of social media. If we didn't have social media, none of us will be talking about this, but we do. And so there is a responsibility on MPs, even if they don't think, oh, I don't know that much about this. Well, you're an elected representative. You represent 70,000 people in a parliament, which only 650 people sit in out of the whole country. You probably need to take your online self a bit more seriously. I just think it speaks to the kind of retrograde ignorance, frankly, which you see among a lot of people on this. A lot of people in the Labour Party, a lot of people in the media, particularly the Murdoch Empire, as we saw that Sunday Times front page. And I do get the sense, you know, you said you felt sorry for her because she hangs out with the driest gaze. I sort of feel sorry for her because I mean, she's just so clearly out of her depth. And I do feel like, you know, the Sunday Times probably had a story and they called her up and they've said, oh, LGBT Labour have said this. What do you think? And she, you know, she drags LGBT Labour. It's an affiliated organization of the Labour Party. She criticizes them. Does she know it's coming on a front page? I bet she probably doesn't. She just seems quite, you know, ignorant, malevolent and naive. I mean, it sounds strange that you'd put all three together with regards to one person on one topic. But that's the best way to describe her, I think. I have no doubt that she receives a lot of nasty messages. And I have no doubt that women in politics receive a disproportionate amount of nasty messages. At the same time, the way this story sort of gets a life of its own. You know, it had on the front page of the Sunday Times transgender militant activist terrorizing, you know, Rosie Duffield MP. And then to substantiate that in the article, she sort of says, oh, LGBT Labour seem to be upset about some things I've said. She said on Radio 4, there'd be groups that are irritated at my presence. Now, having groups irritated at your presence, that's very different from being terrorized. And this idea that the people who are sending nasty messages, I'm sure there are a bunch of nasty messages, to make out that this is about militant transgender activists, you know, as opposed to, you know, the nasty misogynists that live in every corner of the online world seems to me to be very clearly certain people coming to this story of a particular agenda because they want to smear transgender people as aggressive, as militant, as threatening. I want to go to Rosie Duffield's sort of defence of her position. This is what she tweeted. So she said, first of all, she'd been a fighter for gay rights her whole life. She said, gay rights, not LGBT rights. And then she went on to say, I also have feminist and gender-critical beliefs, which mean that whilst I've always fully supported the rights of trans people to live freely as they choose, I do not accept self-ID as a passport for male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women. That includes DV refuges, so domestic violence refuges, women's prisons, single sex wards, and school toilets. I believe the majority of people also support this view, the mostly male aggression and verbal abuse about this has resulted in changes to my personal safety and security arrangements. She goes on. This is misogyny. Some angry strangers, none of whom have ever met me, have decided that what I believe is transphobic, which seems to others piling on to be the worst of all possible crimes. My sins to agree that male-bodied people should not be included in lists of murdered women to have liked tweets such as Piers Morgan's You Mean Women when he read a health advice post about people with a cervix, while there may be a very small number of people who now identify as men and still have female organs, the vast majority of women should not have to rename our bodies or ourselves accordingly. I find my question for you, Aram, because there's a lot in that that I disagree with. I think this idea that you want trans people to live their lives freely and happily, but also you don't want them to use the toilet of the gender in which they identify. There's an obvious inconsistency there, because how can you live your life freely if you're not allowed to go to the toilet of the gender of which you identify? Yeah, I think you have to have consistency. So I think Labour Party MPs have been threatened with losing the whip for a lot less. That's not really an answer to your question. I think, for instance, what she's said and done is, I know she's not on the front bench for Kirstama. I think it's much worse than what Rebecca Long-Bailey said with regards to Maxine Peake. I'd say you need some consistency. Where I find her strange, and again, I don't know if she knows what she's saying, is that one of those tweets, Michael, it was basically disagreeing with the 2010 Equalities Act, or in by Labour. Now, if you say this on Twitter, and it is a very fluid bit of legislation, so it does give some give and take on these issues particularly, but you read some of the guidance which is given, for instance, for the High Street businesses, and it quite clearly says by the government, trans women should be able to use a trans toilet in your business. This is guidance being given to businesses from the government. So what she seems to be saying, as a Labour MP, is that I disagree with legislation which is already in place, which was introduced by Labour Government 11 years ago. I don't think she knows that. And so I think that should be said to her. Yeah, losing the whip. Again, that's something that's open obviously for discussion. Look, Michael, if I was the Labour leader, I would say many things differently to Keir Starmer, but I think that he should quite clearly state what she's saying isn't the party's position and actually it's at odds with what's already legislation, which we introduced 11 years ago and we're very proud of it. Really important to say as well, Michael, purely from a position of political expediency, it is wonderful for the likes of Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing press more generally to keep this issue alive, to keep Labour just fighting amongst itself. Yeah, I agree with you about losing the whip thing, because I think ultimately she's been elected by... I think she should be disciplined. I don't think it has to be losing the whip necessarily. I think she needs to clearly conduct herself very differently on social media. But like I say, it's a really strange mix of naivety and malevolence and ignorance. No other way to say it. But she's an MP, Michael. It has to be better than that. So I think she should be disciplined. Yeah, that would be my position, I think.