My Name Is Anna. I've been called a terf - is the BBC starting to permit open discussion?

I got as far as the "I am a man and I can get pregnant" in response to the issue with abortion rights being opened up as a "people's problem"

Because suddenly men would worry about whether they might need an abortion?

JFC.

I'm a single-issue voter.

I am too, although its less a single issue for female people than the only issue. Once a party has declared it's committed to reducing females to a subordinate class and erasing their rights, what else can it possibly offer a female voter?

Once you've been depersoned, what other issues are there? It would be somewhat like asking a slave population to be the bigger people and forget about things like their own rights and equality and instead vote for their owners to have better tax relief.

I liked that the interviewer is a young woman. I liked the Mitch fest background as new to me. I thought Sophie was brilliant. It was going well until she met the trans man and the cis woman couple. Jamie asserting that "he" can get pregnant. The entitlement of this statement says it all. Society has not signed up to this assertion. Jamie then dictated the terms of the conversation. You can say this but not that, you CAN have your own private thoughts, but you CAN'T say them. Will my grandchild be saying to me "oh yes, in your day, only woman could have children". Society has not agreed to this -- has it?

I got as far as the "I am a man and I can get pregnant" in response to the issue with abortion rights being opened up as a "people's problem", which would then allow any man input on abortion rights, rather than it concerning the woman carrying the foetus; and I gave up.

They must really be laughing at us. A century's worth of inch-by-inch progress overturned pathetically easily.

The predicament American women faced in the last election gave a good indication of the road we were going down, IMO. A choice between two sides, one clamouring to remove their own bodily autonomy so amounting to a vote for keeping men the hell out of their uteruses, or a vote for removing their definition of 'woman' entirely with all the language-wrestling and moral quagmire that entails.

My comfort is, in agreement with the PP who made that point, that the tide is turning. The key drivers in this assault on women's rights are getting more robust responses than simply the unquestioning acceptance they've been used to.

And now - although it pains me to say it given the monumental messes with Brexit and Covid - I'm a single-issue voter.

You mustn't say questions out loud, you must think how you are told.

But don't demonise poor people who make death threats.

So if you think the right way, nothing you do is wrong regardless of how extreme, violent, unkind etc.

If you think the wrong way in believing females have rights too, you're lucky to be allowed to breathe. Be grateful we're being that tolerant.

Yeah. Conclusions drawn thanks.

I listened live and to me it just sounded too ‘sensitive’
I’m not suggesting Anna should have just come on aggressive but I really felt she was scared to object to anything she would normally have questioned had she not been on the radio
I hope this does allow more women to speak freely but I really doubt it

At least they allow some debate. The BBC needs to realise most women whilst very sympathetic to trans people do not want hard won women's rights taken away by adding non xx people into statistics of women.

I got as far as the "I am a man and I can get pregnant" in response to the issue with abortion rights being opened up as a "people's problem", which would then allow any man input on abortion rights, rather than it concerning the woman carrying the foetus; and I gave up.

Language mangling and manipulation to the point of nonsense is going to be the death of women's rights, it really is.

They seem to have started this discussion merely so they can shut it down and prove that the 'right' side of history was right all along

I think this is the outcome they'd like, but every time the discussion is put out there and 'fault on both sides' or 'it's complicated' are trotted out, more people, listening in cars and kitchens across the land, think 'really??' I imagine very few people would be moved from the position of basic understanding they've always held by anything that Jamie and Jamie's 'c*s woman' partner' (can't remember her name) said.

I wish that every programme would start by explaining that the 'complicated issue' and 'toxic debate' is about what a woman is.

Honest question is the other way round penis Havers, sperminators, scrotom wavers and prostrate people? Are they mxn? I see so much about the female side what about men?

Do you get sent rape and death threats, do you get closed down when you have points to make, or told to educate yourself? If you meet like-minded people, do others try to close down your meetings? Do you fear talking out at work in case you get cancelled?

Exactly the same innit.

My name is Laura. For not being on the 'gender critical' side of this debate I regularly get called a handmaiden.

These days, saying you're a woman is tantamount to a proclamation that you're a four-letter word beginning with 't'.

It's bloody exhausting and the BBC are completely lily-livered when it comes to this issue. The noticeable absence of Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey from their list of esteemed journalists speaks far more loudly than their weak concessions to being a properly balanced broadcaster. They seem to have started this discussion merely so they can shut it down and prove that the 'right' side of history was right all along.

Not good enough.

Did I hear it right? Jamie was implying that the people making really vile and abusive remarks towards JKR shouldn’t be ‘villainised’?

I thought it was very good for a mid morning radio 4 programme. I agree listeners with no background in this might be a bit lost about exactly what women called terf say, versus what Lib fems /trans theorists say. But Claire put her understanding of gender as a social/cultural reaction to sex. And the lady talking abt mich fest was clear about the need (&therefore right) for things just for female ppl.

I actually thought Sophie made some good points. Jamie & his partner were fixed in their thinking. Stating their opinions on gender expression & gender identity, saying that gender roles come under gender expression, but completely missing the much bigger societal structural aspects of the imposition of gender roles & stereotypes. Seeing it as personal individual expression but missing the basic reasons that feminists talk about gender.

Link for those who missed it
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s1rr

And perhaps talk to the idiot who nominated him, too.

I would've loved a no-holds-barred interview with Jane Garvey or Jenni Murray with part-time TW Philip Bunce, to talk about his nomination for Businesswoman of the Year.

I think the average person would have been lost right at the beginning, and not made it to the illogical couple. Maybe it's because I'm originally a scientist not a social scientist, but I felt it needed clear definitions at the start

Very much agree. I think most people think there's more to it and that they've missed some fundamental part of the argument. It needs to be spelled out every time. What is a woman?

Anna was great, but too polite to the annoying couple; I would have liked to have seen a 'wait a minute - can you clarify what exactly you think DOES make you a woman?' to that batshit statement about make up and heels.

It's not transphobic to think your own confused thoughts, quietly, privately...

It is absolutely transphobic to say anything out loud except TWAW/TMAM. At that point all your confusion and thinking must stop.

So many confused questions arose during that couple's conversation (privately, in my head so I'm still not a T£&%, phew) but it was clear from their double gunned approach that asking them would never be OK.