Jenni Murray's final Woman's Hour

Her last episode of WH was on pick of the week. They ended the section with her sign off finishing with 'we all share our sex'. It was quite a good bit of coverage of the programme and the moment.

www.telegraph.co.uk/radio/radio-presenters/sex-sharejenni-murrays-last-womans-hour-sound-feminist-putting/

"Jenni Murray is a complex figure. She has spoken and written about the history of feminism, and about her weight, her treatment for breast cancer, and about the struggles for women of juggling work and family life, and she has resisted any label or expectation given to her.
She has always seemed to care more about intellectual rigour and truth than about being nice just for the sake of it. She is a woman who has never fit into any imposed category but her own, and wherever Woman’s Hour goes next without her, that’s an important legacy to preserve."

Jenni had been so roundly told off by the BBC, so it's really not surprising Jane Garvey didn't voice her views clearly.

However, she is leaving WH, probably because of the same restrictions that Jenni faced.

Jenni is fantastic 🥰

Just heard it too Errol. Magnificent!

Jenni's signout featured in both weekend woman's hour and in Pick of the Week just now.

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8799931/amp/DAME-JENNI-MURRAY-cancelled-BBC-adore.html

"My last programme on Thursday was a sad event as I thanked the audience for being such a loyal part of the Woman’s Hour family. I explained that I’d always had to remember that no one stereotype fitted the definition of woman — there were many, many different types in our gender who had to be served but we did all share one thing: our sex."

And about the reaction to her article on the GRA-
"I was roundly ticked off publicly and informed that I would not be allowed to chair any discussions on the trans question or the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. I had lots of emails and tweets asking me why I had not been involved in this debate, as it was so important to Woman’s Hour listeners. You have the answer."

"First came the furore concerning an article I had written in which I acknowledged that I was entering the most controversial and, at times, vicious, vulgar and threatening debate of our day.
I made clear that I was not transphobic or anti-trans. Indeed, I emphasised my belief that everyone — whether transgender or those of us who hold to the sex assigned to us at birth — should be treated with respect and protected from the bullying and violence that so many like me have suffered.
I merely asked the trans activists to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender, a trans woman and a woman, respect our right to safe single-sex spaces and abandon the nonsensical idea that we should be known as ‘cis women’.
We are women. No need for further definition. I begged trans activists to understand feminism and the struggle we had experienced in fighting for our right to be viewed as equals to men.
I reminded them that feminism had fought against sexual stereotyping, and that it was ridiculous to assume a girl who liked cars and trousers really wanted to be a boy, or a boy who loved dolls was ‘born in the wrong body’ and needed to be a girl."

I hope she carries on writing about this now the muzzle is off - she sums up the whole thing for me in these paragraphs.

Just listened to this and cried all the way through! Bless you Jenni

It will be Whataboutthemen's Hour.

I listened to today’s edition. It was about a film which concerns how a Father’s transition affected his daughter . Both were speaking but I thought why is the father on? Might have been better to have had on the widow concerned. He had too much time and most of the time was focused on the father’s difficulties in being his true self, rather than the daughters distress at the time. Still maintaining the becoming a woman fiction and one interesting part where the daughter was obviously pissed off about his performance of femininity , which she did not subscribe to. I no longer know why the programme is called woman’s hour.

bbc radio four on facebook have got Jennis 'final minute of her last programme as a presenter' - nothing about sex there

I don’t think there’s any excuse for Jane Garvey not to be on top of the arguments, or for finding it too tricky on a personal level to engage with them. It’s her job, or should be. She’s the presenter of a program that is solely about women. I think she’s sticking her fingers in her ears and going “la la la”. Given that the BBC completely muzzled Jenni Murray for her difficult opinions, my guess is that Jane Garvey took a career decision to not rock the boat on this one, and so she had to park critical thought to enable her to do that. I always get the impression she just wants to get these discussions over with in case she hears something that will force her to have a difficult view.

Today womens hour festured something about a transgender dad who became a woman. I must admit I turned it over but did wonder.

Give Jane Garvey some time. I'm not convinced she is completely on top of all the arguments yet so maybe she doesn't feel fully qualified to comment. Also, I wouldn't blame any public figure for hesitating before sticking their head above the parapet ATM, especially if they have teen DC. Me and my friends who have teens are constantly having very lively debates about this issue in our own homes which is stressful enough, but bringing that out in to the public domain, with the level of invective that would attract, is something else all together. And remember she is leaving the programme soon too ... .

I heard it on the news bulletin. When she first said gender my heart sank. Should have had more faith. What a fabulous, clever woman she is. So glad so many of us noticed and came here to recognise her achievements.

They played the sex we share bit on later news bulletins on R4. Evening and late.

40.53 or thereabouts, over Joan Baez. 😊✊

It’s the last thing she says on the show.

What’s the time stamp on the BBC sounds app? I can’t seem to find the part about stereotypes.

She signed the jkr letter too.

I noticed the journalist who wrote the piece had deleted her twitter account and I wondered whether she’d written something outrageous, but it seems not. Not surprising really!

Thank you very much, @StandUpStraight!

mary I don’t think I can paste the whole thing under the site rules, but here are some extracts:

“And then finally, for her closing remarks, Murray chose to give a subtle nod to perhaps the most divisive issue in contemporary feminism: the interaction between sex and gender identity.

“If you do a programme like Woman’s Hour,” she said, “you have to consistently remind yourself that women are a vast range. There are many, many, many different stereotypes that fit our gender. So there is no one stereotypical woman. But our sex, we share.”
This was a careful and clever choice of words. It’s rumoured that one of the reasons Murray finally decided to leave the programme was that she had been muzzled from talking about the debate over the relationship between sex and gender identity.

Murray has not presented a programme tackling gender identity since 2017, when she wrote a long and meticulously argued article for The Times...In it, Murray firmly differentiated trans women from, in her words, “real women”.

For that, there was an outcry...and since then...it has been Jane Garvey, and not Jenni Murray, who has always been the presenter to navigate the choppy waters of gender identity. With that silence in mind, we can draw our own conclusions about the significance of Murray’s final remark. Was it the sound of a feminist putting her foot down?”

Could anyone paste in the text of the Telegraph article, please? I tried to sign up for the free articles but it wanted to take my bank details for a free article. Thanks!

Wonderful outcome.