Labour MP Jess Phillips in her Parliamentary office
A Labour MP says she has hit ‘peak block, peak mute’ on Twitter, receiving hundreds of death and rape threats a day for her attack on ‘brocalists’.
Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, called left-leaning men the ‘absolute worst sexists’ two weeks ago, as she hit out at claims Jeremy Corbyn helped lead the fight for women’s equality.
In an interview with the Times today, she said the statements had led to hundreds of death and rape threats.
She said her Twitter feed was full of: ‘men telling me I didn’t understand sexism, that I deserved it, that I was fat, ugly, that I was probably on my period.’
Ms Phillips, who lives in a flat in South London with her husband and their two children, admitted she had filtered the word ‘rape’ from her feed.
She added that the fight against sexism in her own party was harder, because ‘brocialists’ would counter her by talking about women that they love, who happen to support leader Mr Corbyn.
The interview follows her comments attacking the inner-circle around Mr Corbyn, after she criticised him for failing to appoint women to top positions.
Ms Phillips has been an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, saying he has not appointed enough women to the top positions
Ms Phillips last week at the Edinburgh International Book Festival where she spoke about sexism in the Labour party
She described how a leading Guardian journalist lectured her on how the party’s former deputy leader Harriet Harman ‘was not that great for women’ and Mr Corbyn had done more for the cause.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival she said the reporter – who she refused to name – said Mr Corbyn had ‘always voted the right way’.
The reporter is rumoured to be Jeremy Corbyn’s chief aide Seumas Milne, although he denied it.
According to The Times, she added in a sarcastic tone she said: ‘So yeah, Jeremy Corbyn better for women than Harriet Harman, obviously.
‘I remember him in all those meetings, there with his banners for [equality]’.
The MP said that men on the left talk about being feminists but fail to recognise the achievements of women.
Ms Philips revealed that a Guardian reporter lectured her on how Labour’s former deputy leader Harriet Harman (pictured) was not that good for women
She said: ‘When they close their eyes at night and think of amazing people who have changed the world, it’s always some white dude that pops into their head.’
Since being elected to Parliament in 2015, Ms Phillips has made a name for herself as being a prominent campaigner on women’s rights.
She campaigned against the tampon tax, and made history last year when she read out the names of the 10 women murdered in Britain in a year.
And she told the festival how she is abused on Twitter by ‘dunderheided Neanderthals’.
She said that after the murder of her friend and colleague Jo Cox, she reported all the death threats she got online to West Midlands police.
But she told how she refuses to let the sick threats she receives online cow her, and that she think ‘ f*** it, I am still going to buy milk from the corner shop’.