Laurence Fox Speaks Out For First Time About His Arrest and Exit From GB News With Megyn Kelly

There was a woman named Ava Evans who went on this talk show in Great Britain, and she made some comments that were very dismissive of male suicide. I actually listened to you on Trigonometry, which I love too, a great podcast, and they cut a very nice soundbite from the exchange that set this whole thing off. I stole their cut of it because I liked how they did it. Here is the thing that got Lawrence upset. He made comments then in response in GB News, which got him ultimately fired, and I think now in jail. Here's what she said. A conservative MP new role would champion issues such as reducing male suicide. Would that be something you'd be in favour of? What's interesting about that is the hostility it sometimes faces whenever it comes up. I saw a programme where there was a feminist academic and a Lib Dem MP, and they were so hostile to this idea. And I thought, if you flipped those things, i.e. the biggest cause of death for men under 50 is suicide, men are less likely to go to the doctors, men are less likely to maintain friendships. If that was for women, we'd have to look at, well, why is society making that happen? Whereas with men, the argument is often, why are they doing that to themselves? So I'm not like totally wedded to the idea, but the hostility towards the idea, I find it instructive. Ava? I think that it feeds into the culture a little bit, this Minister for Men argument. In my mind, I think there should be a Minister for Mental Health, which would be all-encompassing. I mean, you've got something like 7 million children waiting for prescriptions for mental health at the moment. It's a crisis that's endemic throughout the country, not specific to men. And I think, you know, a lot of ministers kind of bandy this about to sort of, I'm sorry, but make an enemy out of women, I think. Not you, and I don't think your book is, but I think SUNAC. I don't accept that. I don't think it is to make an enemy. If we looked at during COVID, men were literally more likely to die from COVID. I don't really want to cast myself as a meninist or one of these guys from the menosphere, because that's not who I am. But I do find it interesting that sometimes the arguments tend to throw it back. But who was doing all the work during COVID? You know, a lot of the time, if you looked into people's households, it was the women who were taking on the laundry, the school care, all of that. But I'm not disputing any of that. What I'm saying that there are specific issues that men face that might warrant specific attention. I mean, literally, the biggest killer of men under 50 is suicide. That is an arresting statistic. And if that doesn't warrant specific attention, mental health is an umbrella issue. I have to say that it's also because women are unsuccessful. That is a lot of that is feeds into that statistic. It feels like it just doesn't feel like you've got any space for this idea that men might have unique challenges that face them. Well said. He was exactly right. And when you watch the longer clip, you can really, I feel the frustration you felt. She is dismissive at every turn. Over and over, he tried to say, look, because there is a minister for women. He was just trying to say, look, men have their own specific mental health issues. And this is the leading cause of death for men under 50. And we really might need somebody to help start looking into this. No, no, no. Even when he said, look how many men died during COVID. And her response was, but look who was doing all the work inside the house. What does she do? She was the one making it a tit for tat issue, refusing to acknowledge the problem. So let's just start there. She displays quite a lot of misogyny. And I think, you know, genuine misogyny, which is like women did all the housework and all that stuff. I'm a single father. I raised my two boys. I do all the housework. You know, it's like if we're looking for equality in the gender roles, then we should look for genuine equality in the gender roles. What she did, and what really upsets me to this moment, is diminish the idea that men suffer too. And it's like, how dare you? And then turn around and say to me, oh, you're a misogynist. It's like, I'm not a misogynist. I'm just going, my point was badly made, right? I could have expressed it a lot better. But my point is, how dare you belittle the suffering of men? Because when they take their own lives, of which I know at least two that sear into my mind on every single day, they didn't say anything. They didn't speak up, exactly because of women like her, who belittle the idea that men also feel and think and worry and take their own lives. As you quite rightly pointed out, it's an arresting statistic that this stuff happens. So still to this day, a week later, I'm sat there going, God, I'm so angry with you. I'm so angry with that comment being allowed to pass like nothing in the night. I'm appalled that we live in a country that allows that to happen. The callousness of her tone and the way she addressed this very serious issue. And I feel it too, Lawrence. I haven't, thank God, lost anybody in adulthood to this. But my cousin shot himself in the head and died when he was 16. And it was the most horrific event of that piece of our family's lives. They've never fully recovered. It's absolutely deeply alarming. And like so many other men and boys, he succeeded, quote unquote, on the first try. And there was no warning. They didn't know. This is the pattern with men and teenage boys. They don't reach out for help. They don't get diagnosed with anxiety or depression. And even when they do, they're mocked. They're mocked for it. And yet when they try to kill themselves and they try to die by suicide, they succeed at it. It doesn't, it's not a cry for help. They really want to end it. And it's part of because we, the reason is we stigmatize mental health. We make them seem weak if they want mental health. And this, what she did on that show is hashtag part of the problem. Yeah, because look, we're facing, and all of us would understand that we're facing a massive underreporting of sexual assault in women. And I don't have any female friends who have not had a really unwanted male attention or be a lot worse. You know, I don't have any female friends who've not been through that. So what she's doing essentially is she's undermining her own calls to turn herself into the victim of a situation. And I think that's absolutely morally, morally repugnant. So like, it's amazing that it makes me emotional even now, but it upsets me to hear her say that and to belittle it because I've, you know, I've spoken to people who were driving behind someone in a tank in Basra during the war in Iraq, and the tank slipped off the passageway and turned over into a marsh. And they had to comfort someone or an entire tank crew as they sank into the mud and died. And the person that came back was not the person I knew. I didn't know them. They were like a different human being. And you can have all the conversations about the war and everything like that and all of that sort of stuff. But the man that I saw was not the same man that I saw when he went away. And, you know, we can talk about the fact that women have less opportunities in life. I would say that women have as many opportunities in life as men do if they want them. You're living proof of it. These days, for sure. Yeah. And but we can also turn around and say that, you know, men, 99% of people who die in war are men, you know, informally, as opposed to civilian casualties. And, you know, this idea of masculinity being in some way toxic and part of a culture war, which is what she did, which was to diminish the idea that her fellow human beings, you know, created equal in the eyes of God are in some way being used as part of a culture where I find repellent. I just I don't have any other words for it. And I wasn't able to control myself. And what I should have done is I should have attacked her point. But instead, I turned around and said, if you find this, if you end up with a woman like that, you're going to commit yourself to a life of misery. That's what you're going to do. Because, you know, a lot of people would agree. Hold on. I want to get your comments in one second, but let's not leave her comments yet, because what I see in this exchange is her expressing man hatred, misandry. And that's what you were responding. She's got a long pattern of it, this woman. If you look back through her social media posts, which I know you've put up, she's constantly saying, I wouldn't shag him. I'm not going to shag you. I'm not going to. This is the thing. She loves this term. And she loves to say it about men who she finds weak or offensive or what have you. And she also referred to men as the most potent or most dangerous virus of them all. And then she goes out there and is dismissive over and over of the other guy who's being very respectful, his attempt to say, you know what? Men have unique problems, and it's manifesting in suicide. Something we should—no, no, no. So you respond to what is clearly her hatred of men on some primal level. And you do it in a way that is scathing, crass, but heartfelt. You try to use humor. I was there. I watched it. I was sitting on the set watching this happen, sitting on the set over here. But I was up next on Dan's show. And I totally got where you were coming from, what you were doing. And what happens? It's like more hatred toward a man. Now, the hatred this time is toward you in particular. And no one—yeah, OK, fine, you can get—you spend one minute talking about the way in which Lawrence expressed himself. But zero minutes were devoted to why, to anything she said, to any of her comments. And so I really think that's one of the reasons why you're feeling traumatized. That's my word. I think you're feeling that. Now it's happening to you. But I let down men in that situation because I should have said—I should have attacked her point. That would have been better. Because the point is weak. She's weak in, A, what's the point in responding to some shock jock who wants to turn up on TV and say these horrible things and try and increase her profile, God knows for what reason. And I do reflect and I do try and adopt some humility in this situation. And I thought I let down the side of the argument of the men. Many, many thousands of people have contacted me with messages of their partners, their male partners, killing themselves. And this is, as Jeff Norcott quite rightly pointed out in the show, people are—men are killing themselves in great numbers. They're being toxified. I'd hate to say this in a way which wasn't nuanced, but very, very feminized. And it's very—you know, I feel I let myself down, actually. And that's the bit that upsets me. I should have just turned around and taken her point and attacked it with everything I have because that's what I usually do. But this particular issue just stigmatized—it got me—in woke parlance, it triggered me so much that I just thought, who would want to shag that? And I'm sorry, I'll say it again now that I've been fired. Who—which man, what self-respecting man would want to find himself in a relationship with a woman who hated men that much? Okay, it's happening. 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