BBC Coverage and Balance on Self-ID Issues

[Ouchbirthhurted]

What BBC coverage have people seen that cover either self-id or trans access to opposite biological spaces? How has the balance been with biological women's concerns?

I have been really shocked that much of the coverage - even where some questions have been asked - has seemed to accept the premise that 'trans women are women'. This is basically accepting the premise of one side of the argument before starting the debate (see also the labour party's approach to self-Id policy)

Can people link to any BBC coverage of these issues that they feel isn't balanced?

Can people also link to any BBC coverage they have seen that offered a balance on this?

Hopefully we can then encourage a balanced debate on the issues where all voices and concerns are heard.

The issues are complex and often obscured so I think explaining clearly what the issues are to those covering and the questions that we feel should be asked is important. Also the strength of feeling on this!

Please post mention of (and ideally links to) any and all BBC coverage, written, radio or tv or whatever, that you see on this area.

[Ouchbirthhurted]

Here's one on a transwoman playing women's sport:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-australia-43044082?__twitter_impression=true

[Popchyk]

This on the online BBC News site.

who or what defines you as a woman

How do you define a woman? It’s a question that’s caused a rise in tension amongst some feminist and trans activist groups, following government plans to consult on the way people legally change gender.

The majority of the content given over to men who identify as women.

[Patodp]

There was the Nick Robinson Paris Lees podcast.
A TIM talks about how Transgender issues effect women.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05xp3z2

[shedalight]

The Nick Robinson publicity was terrible. The podcast though is well worth listening to as he really challenges PL to explain the inexplicable - and PL got quite cross

[Patodp]

Yeah the Twitter storm was hilarious!

[Datun]

I've just listened to that Paris Lees broadcast.

Absolutely infuriating.

Paris has a very good knack of sounding reasonable.

But the actual words they use are manipulative and knowingly deceitful. There is no way Paris doesn't know the statistics.

It's very interesting, to me, that Paris simply regurgitates the same arguments. Arguments that women can effectively refute in a heartbeat.

Paris has been at this game for years, and has no other argument, other than the ones we constantly hear and can comprehensively rebut. Their arsenal is empty, and they know it.

This is like gay marriage, Paris says. No it isn't. It's deeply homophobic, for a start. Paris's credibility in relating it to gay marriage, is completely undermined by the fact that it's a homophobic ideology. And gay marriage did not take rights away from anyone else. Gay people didn't insist they are straight, and make straight people call themselves something else and redefine the meaning of the word straight.

What about lesbians, Lees says. There are 120 women in prison for sex offences, compared to 14,000 men, none of whom are lesbians.

This sneaky, insidious idea that violent and sexual crime is not highly sex specific is at the heart of the matter.

Nick did a fantastic job of remaining actually calm and sounding eminently reasonable. But he did not have enough information to effectively counter what Paris was saying. But even then, even without that, Paris got angry. Which led to deflection and a refusal to actually talk of the specific issues.

Because they can't.

[ellaoldie]

Introduced on Today as first woman infantry soldier on front line. Only later in programme was it revealed the person concerned was a TIM. Papers say had only been taking hormones for a very short time but not mentioned by BBC. I complained at the time.
//www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-37391807

[Datun]

I have been really shocked that much of the coverage - even where some questions have been asked - has seemed to accept the premise that 'trans women are women'. This is basically accepting the premise of one side of the argument before starting the debate (see also the labour party's approach to self-Id policy)

You've nailed it Ouchbirthhurted.

Many transactivists, including Paris, I believe, will not ever go on TV/radio to debate whether they are women. They say it is erasing their existence.

They will only ever start from the very position that the outcome of the argument is reliant upon.

There has to be a scrutiny of the statement transwomen are women.

And the start of that is to insist on a debate that can ask why is that very question censored?

[nolurkynolighty]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-37439875

the initial coverage of a TiM athlete (who had been competing for years in womens sport!!!) violently stabbing 3 uk athletics staff (in a premeditated attack, one very seriously) declined to mention she was transgender , despite it being somewhat integral to the story.

before i knew the whole story, i really noticed this particular news article because it is so unusual for women to commit violent crimes like this. i also have an interest in autism and noted that autism was mentioned as a possible explaining factor in this piece.

as i write this i am incredulous that the bbc thought it was ok to mention jeska's autism as a possible reason for committing violent crime, and not their sex.

[Datun]

Can people link to any BBC coverage of these issues that they feel isn't balanced?

Jenni Murray had the audacity to suggest that the experience of transwomen, and those of women, are different. And that you can't change sex. She was disciplined by the BBC for her blasphemy.

Despite not representing the BBC at the time, but writing in the Telegraph.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/06/bbc-faces-calls-veteran-broadcaster-dame-jenni-murray-disciplined/amp/

[Ouchbirthhurted]

There has to be a scrutiny of the statement transwomen are women.

And the start of that is to insist on a debate that can ask why is that very question censored?

Yes, I think we need to help people covering this to see that this effectively is the debate so you can't start by agreeing with it and have any meaningful discussion.

There are eleoquent transwomen who WILL debate this though, and who will argue that transwomen aren't women. Has anyone ever seen anyone like this featured on or even quoted on any kind of BBC media?

[Ouchbirthhurted]

OMG Datun !!!

[thebewilderness]

They are operating on the basis of the 8th rule of misogyny: Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.