Lawrence Fox

Freya5

Whenever I have forced myself to listen to this woman, she is very vocal, very unwilling to listen to any point of view apart from her own. A strong woman, supposedly,who can dismiss suicide by men, yet be offended by words. Now she becomes a victim. See her agenda here.

Which does beg the question why she was part of a discussion on such a sensitive matter. Her 'reputation' precedes her so why was she chosen to be part of it?

It would've been more effective to hear from those affected by male suicide.

However, she has become a victim - no-one should be threatened to "watch your back" because of an opinion... regardless of who they are - and I'd include Fox in that category... neither should be expected to accept death-threats because of the controversial things they say.

I see an important noun was missed out of my post - perhaps because I represented it by 4 *
Fill in the gap for yourselves.

Perhaps someone else could fill me in on what the woman has said about suicide? I don’t know what she said, and incidentally, I’ve never been aware of her before. Lots of posters seem to know more about this than I do. I do know of Fox and I don’t like him at all.

If you Google politics live Male suicide you should get it. It is I think important to watch the whole segment as clips can give a misleading impression. For example they were all, men included, talking about quite a lighthearted subject and both men and women were smiling (one of the accusations was that she was smirking about the subject and I am not entirely sure that is what was going on) both women werent great but the other woman was much much worse. I think shes in the house of lords.

I wish people would watch the BBC clip which I linked to on the first page of this thread.

Geoff Norcott started talking about his book The British Bloke Decoded, about the foibles of blokeish behaviour (he describes blokes as a sub-species of men), e.g. why they are reluctant to use sun screen, don’t like going to see a doctor, forget birthdays, can’t remember the names of their nieces and nephews etc but then he went on to talk about more serious matters. He mentioned the controversy about appointing a Minister for Men and questioned why it triggers such heated arguments. He went on to say there are serious issues regarding men’s health that need to be discussed, male suicide, the biggest killer of men under 50 and the gender disparity in the Covid death numbers.

Norcott talks about male suicide. Santini Evans responds by saying that women do the laundry and school care. Norcott says that many more men than women died from Covid. Santini Evans responds that this is because women are less successful. (She did not elaborate on that so it's unclear what she meant.) Her comments were insensitive and fatuous. O’Grady shouts over Norcott, talking about sexual harrassment of women.

The expression I’m not going to shag you, or He/she isn’t going to shag you. has long been used in social media exchanges, specifically towards people who are deemed to be behaving obsequiously. It’s frequently been levelled at Nadine Dorries over her support for Boris Johnson. He still isn’t going to shag you, Nads.

Santini Evans uses it so often it’s become a trope, so this was Fox taking a brand of insult she uses hersel to another even nastier level. She’s been involved in X spats about Fox before so there’s history.

I am not excusing him. He’s a loathsome character. It’s become his modus operandii to switch the debate. It’s only a few weeks since the QT spat with Rachel Boyle where he turned her comment about press bias against Meghan Markle and the reasons for it into allegations of racial bias against white men. He’s an attention-seeking agent provocateur.

I’d much rather we did talk about the important issues that Geoff Norcott raised.

Thank you ladies, that’s filled in a few gaps. I’ll do a quick Google search too.

Thank you Caravansera

youtu.be/re7K2SGMmHU?si=3y_sg1_BNFQWx-DD

This is a link to the Question Time episode which was actually three years ago.

Unfortunately the link didn’t work, unles I was willing to register, which I’m not as I don’t want everything I look at to have my details, and Google didn’t bring up the goods either, maybe it’s been taken down, I don’t know. Anyway I did watch a you tube clip with Geoff Norcott discussing what he called ‘sexual politics’ and thanks also to your explanation Caravansera I’m getting the gist of what has happened now. However it’s hard to form a judgment without actually seeing the full clip, nonetheless Fox shouldn’t have said what he said in my opinion. I did see a clip of that.

Thank you merlotgran. ‘You are a white privileged male’ !
what does his skin have to do with it

You do need to see the full clip, maddie. Apart from anything else, the whole thing was a setup between Fox and Wooton. Evans is so far from being likely to want to have sex with Fox anyway, so the whole thing is so arrogant and dehumanising. It ignores what she said (whether she was right or wrong) and reduces her to her 'shaggability'. It's disgusting, regardless of whether her comments were insensitive - he should have dealt with them, not commented like that.

What Fox said was disgusting, I absolutely agree, but I can’t comment on the rest of it as I haven’t seen it. I really don’t like Fox though.

Who is Rachel Boyle BTW? I thought LF was responding to ‘a woman in the audience with her hand up.’ She was clearly a plant.

I’m not excusing Laurence Fox’s appalling behaviour on GB News. I have no time for him or Dan Wootton and have never watched the programme but I did see the episode of QT and believe Fox was unfairly criticised and that it’s unfair to use it to reinforce the current argument.

I just want to make clear that the clip I was urging people to watch was the 25 September BBC Politics Live programme which you can find on iPlayer:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001qwx4/politics-live-25092023

The discussion is 37 minutes into the whole programme.

It probably does need registration and a declaration about holding a valid TV licence.

I am in no way defending Laurence Fox and/or Dan Wooton.

Ava Evans has often tweeted and posted on social media about men in a derogatory way, including whether or not they were/are shaggable

I am all for equality therefore, she should have been reprimanded and/or censored for her previous comments.

Can it ‘girl power’ !

maddyone

What Fox said was disgusting, I absolutely agree, but I can’t comment on the rest of it as I haven’t seen it. I really don’t like Fox though.

The rest of it may be right or wrong, but that doesn't affect the fact that Fox was disgusting, and that really is the point. He was suspended for the rank inappropriateness of his comments, quite irrespective of those made by other panellists. If their comments were worthy of punitive action that's fair enough - there should be an inquiry into that, too - but his are not in any way softened by theirs.

I did see the episode of QT and believe Fox was unfairly criticised and that it’s unfair to use it to reinforce the current argument.
I think a lot of people (me included) do see it as relevant though, which is why it is being taken together with the GB News thing. It doesn't make the comments worse, but it does give a fuller picture of how loathsome the man is, and shows that this is not an isolated example of his behaviour. There are many more, including his drunkenly burning Pride flags and posting it on YouTube.

He is clearly 'not at peace with the world', and probably needs help. I'm not sure that giving him a public platform is good for him, really, but as it's hard to argue against that in the interests of free speech, he has to take the consequences of his rants.

Baroness Frances’s O’ Grady talked much more dismissively of male suicide than Ava Evans. Interesting that Fox concentrates on denigrating the young blond one rather than the older lady.
He is a privileged little schoolboy who has never grown up. I didn’t realise though that this “shagging” smart language was a thing on twitter. It helps put the daft spiel from Fox into context. Norcott was very reasonable in the way he dealt with it given how serious a subject his book was.

Anyone who says any variation of ‘bad Laurence, but..’ or tries to find any excuses for his misogyny is, de facto, defending him.

Siope

Anyone who says any variation of ‘bad Laurence, but..’ or tries to find any excuses for his misogyny is, de facto, defending him.

Yes.

Siope

Anyone who says any variation of ‘bad Laurence, but..’ or tries to find any excuses for his misogyny is, de facto, defending him.

I hope this isn’t directed at me.

I am absolutely not defending Laurence Fox, he should be judged on his actions by OFCOM and the bosses of GB News and sanctioned accordingly.

I am pointing out that Ava Evans should be held to the same standards for her inappropriate messages which are in the public domain for all to see.

Women’s equality is not a pick-and-mix choice of when we wish to be treated equally, especially in broadcasting and on social media.

It actually quite a complex debate because of course now there are the cries to shut down GB News which I m vehemently opposed to however much I loathe it.

Siope

Anyone who says any variation of ‘bad Laurence, but..’ or tries to find any excuses for his misogyny is, de facto, defending him.

Yes, from me too.

Galaxy

It actually quite a complex debate because of course now there are the cries to shut down GB News which I m vehemently opposed to however much I loathe it.

I haven’t seen that Galaxy, where are the cries coming from?

I don’t agree with GB News being forced to shut down either, but I do think they should have exactly the same impartiality rules as other channels.