Rosie Duffield

Rosemary Clare Duffield (born 1 July 1971) is a British Labour Party politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Canterbury since 2017.

Rosie Duffield in 2017

Quotes

2019

"Labour MP moves colleagues to tears with domestic abuse story" (2019)

Quoted by Kate Proctor in "Labour MP moves colleagues to tears with domestic abuse story" The Guardian (2 October 2019); Comments from a speech delivered during the second reading of the Domestic Abuse Bill concerning Duffield's experience of an abusive partner.

• They don’t threaten criticise, yell or exert their physical strength in increasingly frightening ways.
  Not at the start. Not when they think you're sweet, funny and gorgeous. Not when they turn up to your third date with chocolates, then jewellery.

• You learn that "I’ll always look after you" and "You’re mine for life" can sound menacing, are used as a warning over and over again.

• In a strange city his face changes in a way you are starting to know and dread. In a way that tells you, you need to stay calm, silent and very careful.
  You read a city guide … mentally packing a day full of fun. But he seems to have another agenda.
  He doesn’t want you to leave the room. He’s paid a lot of money and you need to pay him your full attention. You are expected to do as you are told. You know for certain what that means, so you do, exactly what you are told.
  It’s when the ring is on your finger that the mask can start to slip and the promises sound increasingly like threats.

• Those patterns continue: reward, punishment, promises of happy ever after, alternating with abject rage, menace, silent treatment and coercive control.

"Rosie Duffield: the story behind my Commons speech about domestic abuse" (2019)

Interviewed by Rachel Sylvester in "Rosie Duffield: the story behind my Commons speech about domestic abuse" The Times (18 October 2019); Duffield's abusive relationship began shortly before she became an MP in 2017, ending in late 2018.

• It was just a big load of scary noise, this giant person. When you’re bullied your brain starts to shut down. It’s protecting yourself. And you can’t think of the words; you’re not eloquent. I would misspeak, stutter, and he would exploit that.

• He was totally withdrawing from me, to let me know that I was not to be spoken to, and I wasn’t to talk to him, or be touched, or anything, and that was really hurtful. But it was always my fault, always, always, always, without question. And that got established from day one, even when he was still trying to woo me and charm me. [At the end of an argument.] He’d come up to me very earnestly, very sincerely, and say to me, "Are you going to be my good girl, now?"

• His tempers were very violent. I knew I had to be careful. There was always an underlying threat. He would drive incredibly aggressively, yelling at me when I was trapped in the car. That was scary stuff. Because the feelings are violent, the violence is there in the room with you. The raising of a fist or the hand is the next logical step. He didn’t hit me. He did other things that made me realise he was in control.

2021–2022

• It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women.
  • Quoted in George Grylls "Labour conference: I’ve been thrown on railway tracks, says trans row MP Rosie Duffield" The Times (29 September 2021)
  • From a speech in a debate at the unofficial Labour Women's Declaration during the evening of 28 September 2021 in Brighton. Duffield had been described as a "dinosaur" by David Lammy, then Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor.

• I don’t talk about trans rights because I think it’s not my place to talk about trans rights. Trans people have got some great organisations and they’re very good at representing their rights, and that is just as it should be.
  Trans rights are the same rights as everyone else, but what concerns me is that there is a slight conflict in some cases between trans rights and women’s rights.
  Women’s rights are why I came to Parliament, and why I’m sitting here, because women are now visible in Parliament.
  I grew up in a very strong feminist household, and what really concerns me are the rights of women to have privacy and space, and the necessity to be in women’s refuge – not shared with someone with a male body.
  • Interviewed by Gloria De Piero on GB News, as quoted in Geraldine Scott "Rosie Duffield: I don’t talk about trans rights because it’s not my place" The Independent (29 November 2021)

• [On the possibility misgendering might become a hate crime.] Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to Parliament any time soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I'm not calling Eddie Izzard a woman.
  • Quoted by Danielle DeWolfe in "Sir Keir Starmer refuses to answer whether Eddie Izzard would make Labour's all-women shortlist" LBC (24 October 2022)
  • Izzard was attempting to become a Labour Party parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Central to stand in the next general election.

"Speaker’s anger as extremists terrorise Labour MP Rosie Duffield" (2021)

Quoted by Caroline Wheeler in "Speaker’s anger as extremists terrorise Labour MP Rosie Duffield" The Sunday Times (19 September 2021); As a result of threatening behaviour, Duffield had chosen not to attend the 2021 Labour Party conference in Brighton.

• LGBT+ 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.

• There are some women who get involved and want to be seen to be very woke ... but mostly it is men, and the same men that have trolled me ever since I got elected.
  So it looks like, feels like and smells like misogyny, and this is just the latest cause they have latched on to ... The fact that I am blonde — they call me a bimbo. The fact that I don’t like antisemitism. There is always something, but it is always the same people who attack me.

• For the first time in my life, having been an ambassador for a gender-balanced 50:50 parliament, I would hesitate to encourage other women to come into politics [...] I would have to really think about what I was asking them to do, and putting people into this position when they are going to be on the front line of some pretty shitty abuse.

2023–present

• Being shouted down in the chamber by Labour men who clearly don't want women to speak up for our rights to single-sex spaces. How very progressive.
  • Tweet quoted in "Scotland gender reform bill: Rosie Duffield heckled in Commons for supporting law veto" The Times (17 January 2023).
  • On being heckled during a House of Commons debate on the Westminster government's decision to block the devolved Scottish Parliament's Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill from receiving the Royal assent.

• Many of us know that self-identifying as a woman does not make a person a biological woman who shares our lived experience. But for obvious reasons, these views are not voiced outside of closed rooms or private and secret WhatsApp groups. Even there, the most senior MPs often do not post a single word; they know exactly what’s at stake and not many of them want to be me. So for now, they mostly remain silent.
• Is it starting to look like Labour has a women problem? It certainly is for the 7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration and had a stall at last year’s party conference refused.
  It is for Lesbian Labour, who were also stopped from exhibiting at last year’s conference. It is for Dr Karen Ingala Smith, the formidable feminist campaigner who compiles a list of women killed in the UK each year which is then read out in parliament by Jess Phillips every International Women’s Day, and who had her membership rejected after she made a few gender-critical joke tweets featuring kittens.
  • Comments in an UnHerd article quoted by Geraldine Scott in "Rosie Duffield: Labour has a women problem" The Times (20 January 2023)

About Duffield

• [In March 2023, Duffield] dared to like a tweet by the writer Graham Linehan, who was responding to a tweet by Eddie Izzard claiming that, had he lived in Nazi Germany, "I'd have been murdered for it". Linehan – and rightly, so in my view – retorted with a sarcastic, "Ah, yes, the Nazis, famously bigoted against straight white men with blonde hair."
  You might well think Izzard was wrong to make that comparison to Nazi Germany in trying to score points in the gender war. But remarkably, in Labour land, it is Duffield who is being investigated.
  • Julie Bindel "Rosie Duffield’s opponents are intent on destroying her", The Spectator (27 November 2023)
  • Suzy Eddie Izzard was attempting to become a Labour parliamentary candidate at this time.