News
Kate Plummer
Jan 20, 2022
BBC Breakfast
While speaking about misogyny on Politics Live on Thursday, Labour MP Jess Phillips received a sexist email.
Explaining that she could see emails pinging in while she spoke about the House of Lords defeating the government and voting to make misogyny a hate crime, she said she had received a message calling her a "dirty wh*re" as she was talking, showing the extent of the issues she faces as a female MP.
Jess Phillips gets an email, while appearing on #PoliticsLive, calling her a "dirty bought & paid for whore"... this is the kind of thing I get... & I don't want this person just to get away with this.\n\n#PoliticsLivepic.twitter.com/iDLhBLwhsR— Haggis_UK \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa (@Haggis_UK \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7 \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddfa) 1642684036
"That won't be the only message I get because I'm currently on the television, if I appear on anything this is the kind of thing that I get," she said.
Phillips went on to explain she once had someone convicted for sending her sustained abusive messages but that she had not been able to use misogyny as a reason.
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Tony Eckersley sent the Labour MP more than 300 threatening messages over a nine-month period including ones calling her a “treasonous cow” and a “virtue signalling rape facilitator” and said that it would be “appropriate” for her and other MPs to be blown up during a terror attack at the House of Common.
He pled guilty to racially aggravated harassment and was sentenced to 28 months in prison at Manchester crown court in April 2021.
"There is a fundamental flaw in the way that our legal system works at the moment that doesn't put anywhere near enough of the mitigation onto the hatred of women," she added, referencing the fatal shooting that took place in Plymouth last year, in which incel culture was partly attributed as a cause.
"I want somebody who sent me this email with their name perfectly clearly calling me a wh*re to not just be able to get away with that."
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