BBC responds to backlash to article about lesbians being pressured into sex by some trans women

This open letter was organised by someone who is involved with a magazine? Claims to be a publisher?
But he didn’t know any writers or editors who could help write a letter that reads well?

[quote FindTheTruth]Here's the whole thread by Dr Jane Clare Jones, ripping that letter to shreds
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1453338695709433856.html[/quote]
Gosh, that is epic.

It's good to know that I'm not the only one who, when faced by a pile of utter bollocks, starts ranting and reaches for a pen.

Brilliant from JCJ - I couldn't read on Twitter either so assumed she'd locked down, so thanks for the unroll.

I'd happily never hear the word bigot again in my life now, am automatically suspicious of anyone who throws it around these days. And the TRA line seems more and more like religious fervour.

I'm straight and would not consider having sex with any man I didn't want to be with. So just say no and report anyone who hassles you. how is this just a trans thing, it's an across the board thing.

Because lesbians had words (lesbian, homosexual woman) to label a fact about themselves, that they had no sexual attraction to the male body, which they were using both legally to define some rights, and socially to define their own boundaries, spaces and culture.

But those words have had their meanings changed and that changes all the things, legal and social, that rest on them.

So those lesbians who know themselves to be same sex attracted, despite nothing changing in themselves, find themselves to now be treated as people who don't currently fancy any male bodies but that could always change.

And although they know that not to be true about themselves, it's now treated as an act of hate to be honest about this fundamental fact about themselves, or to want any support, spaces and culture that acknowledge and support single sex attraction even though they used to have them.

Exactly the same way as if womanhood is redefined from a fact of the body to a state of mind, many people who were quite happily being women up to that point find that word name no longer describes them but are told it's an act of hatred to say so, or to do anything to preserve or recreate the single sex provisions they used to have.

"Nobody's said that lesbians are lying? You're entitled to be attracted to who you're attracted to.
Just if you be like repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans, that's different.
As that shows a prejudice."

A) I've never heard anyone, straight or gay, repeatedly stressing who they won't sleep with. It certainly did not happen in the article
B) Lesbians may want to sleep with trans people. They would be transmen - female bodied.
C) Lesbians do not need to justify not sleeping with someone who has a male body. They do not need to justify seeing these people as a male body. Men and women have different bodies. Asking someone to pretend not to know that in order to justify someone's identity is ridiculous.
D) many people see trans ideology as built on stereotypes and prejudice. There is no such thing as feeing like or wanting to be a woman, unless there is some concept of woman which is more than biology. No-one has shared any information about what they would be.
E) You say you're entitled to sleep with who you want but you don't recognise that if women are harangued after making such a decision, called bigots, pressurised to change that decision, that entitlement is undermined.

The prejdice here is not coming from lesbians who do not wish to sleep with a class of people who they don't fancy. If you took this to its logical conclusion, no-one is allowed any sexual preference whatsoever - unless you believe in the aforementioned concept of innate womaness. Most people don't. If you want to change our minds about that, lets start with you defining what you mean.

Because lesbians who don't want to sleep with transwomen are being abused. That's why it's a trans thing.

Quite honestly nobody has to have sex with anybody they do not fancy whether gay, straight, trans or alien.
I'm straight and would not consider having sex with any man I didn't want to be with. So just say no and report anyone who hassles you. how is this just a trans thing, it's an across the board thing.

Read the whole letter with Jane Clare Jones’ annotations.

Hilarious that it got no traction at the BBC. Also, for a movement so obsessed with pronouns, I couldn’t help noticing that they mis-spelled the possessive pronoun its as it’s with an apostrophe. A minor pedantic point of course but still.

Ash practised full DARVO.

As have the others.

I stand with lesbians is still trending this morning.

Lesbians don't want to sleep with men, and wearing women's clothes and make up doesn't change that.

What about all the straight men who don't want to sleep with transwomen? Why are men not being called transphobic, only women?

I say lets put it to a vote.

Are lesbians by definition transphobic?

Now there is a referendum i could get behind.

It is so scary how the gang closes in to silence these women. This is industrial scale erosion of healthy boundaries and barriers.

It's a slightly pathetic state of affaiŕs that i was shocked to read the article on the bbc because in general their reporting is so one sided, biased and pro-trans.

I was they didnt backtrack apologise and fire /remove the author from public gaze.
Pardon the pun but perhaps they have woken up.

I think the BBC have taken a HUGE step back and can now see things a bit more clearly.

Thanks to Stephen Nolan and David Thompson for finally allowing that to happen.

NoNotMeNoSiree: Just if you be like repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans, that's different. As that shows a prejudice.

Where specifically in the BBC article is there reference to anyone "repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans"? This is the same line Ash Sarkar tried to pull, but she's entirely made it up as far as I can see. She was going on about people telling her every five minutes they wouldn't have sex with a "woman of colour" and then today it was "but if all you do is talk about who you find disgusting, who you’d never sleep with because of their minority status, then maybe that’s a bit bigoted!"

These aren't things that were said in the BBC article. It in fact stressed that the women were very polite and considerate and felt they couldn't say much of anything. This claiming that something was said that was not said and then harrassing the BBC, the journalist, and the interviewees is at absolute best irresponsible and misleading projection and also uncomfortably close to lying, bullying, and intimidation.

So, where exactly is the "prejudice"?

Well that BBC response was more robust than I expected. I wonder if it was written prior to the article being published!

The open letter is so utterly batshit, you could even read it believing TWAW and still see it’s batshit. “trans women are legally women” - no, a small number of them are. “Oh this probably does happen but it’s a tiny number so we shouldn’t talk about it” - well there’s not an epidemic of police murdering women, where’s the open letter to complain that we should stop talking about Sarah Everard?

I must say, I fully expected a few people I know to publicly complain about the article on social media, but there’s been absolute silence. It does feel like maybe there’s a slight shift in public opinion coming in.

supported by amnesty international no less. shame on them.
There are threads here about it if you actually give a shit to learn, or maybe you prefer to call lesbians prejudice?
If men would take no for a bloody answer rather than the beginning of a negotiation none of us would have to 'repeatedly stress' anything.
Are we allowed to have that as a reason so long as we never mention thats the reason?
Sexual orientation is not prejudice.
ffs

"If Transwomen want to sit at the table , I would like to see them put in a shift in the kitchen."
Exactly this. bravo.
I was asked if I 'screamed rape' everytime I encounter a man in public or some such nonsense, on a thread about not wanting people with penises about me when I'm vulnerable.
Ive never 'screamed rape', even when I was raped a year ago by a man I know; I told 3 people. I didnt scream. The language used is so telling.
The first point is about the Filia womens conference, where women from around the world join in solidarity against violence against women and girls and the patriarchal structures that are ruining the earth and women's bodies and lives.
We do this to build networks, to support each other, to learn and grow a movement that can free our sisters.
For some reason that I've still not worked out, tras decided this was the perfect place to hold a 2 day protest incuding signs threatening sexual violence that survivors and little girls would see.

In the last couple of weeks we have seen:
TRAs protesting a conference about violence against women and girls.
TRAs protesting young women raising awareness about drunks spiking.
TRAs now saying that lesbians are lying
TRAs getting a Bingo game , sold to raise funds for Oxfam, banned because it has the wrong kind of women in it.

If Transwomen want to sit at the table , I would like to see them put in a shift in the kitchen. Doing the feminist heavy lifting. Sticking up for raped, abused, murdered women. Standing in solidarity with women’s causes.

Isn’t Attitude predominantly for gay men? Or has it gone the Diva route and embraced the T to keep going?

#IStandWithLesbians didn't start till 8pm so it's collected 15.7k posts since then. The CIST one has been going slowly all day.

That letter claims that all male members of the trans community who identify as women are women under UK law (lie) and then goes on to say that lesbians must not say that a male members of the trans community is male because that is "an act of transphobia, because in the UK she is recognised as a woman" (lie)

That's not just another lie, that also completely denies the right a lesbian has under UK law to protection of her sexuality as same-sex attracted.

The letter then goes on to complain that the lesbian interviewed, who states she is also not attracted to post-op males (because they are male) is not someone who should be used as an unbiased source on the topic of transgender women's existence.

This is so demented I'm struggling to believe they actually published this.

The topic of the article was:

lesbians being pressured into accepting male transgender people as sexual partners by members of the trans community

And not

the existence of male transgender people

How they put this BS out is beyond me.

After all the denials, trying to discredit the groups who contributed and calling into question the testimonials from survivors as transphobic hate (i.e.lies), on page 10 of just over 13 pages, they finally admit that yes, some lesbians will undoubtedly have been coerced by some male members of the trans community. But that shouldn't be used to cast the whole community in a bad light (which the BBC article goes out of its way to make clear it does not).

But actually, that coercion is not happening enough to be worthy of BBC coverage anyway, who really - if they need to mention violence and trans in the same article - ought to focus on violence against trans people (specifically against males by other males), not violence committed by them.

Lots of nonsense follows, moving further and further away from the topic of the BBC article.

On Monday, the women's trade unionist leaders in Scotland voted down a motion seeking to keep services for vulnerable women and child survivors of male violence female-only. And like I did then, I wonder how these people will walk back from this when it's all over.

They've clearly abdicated their critical thinking faculties to someone else, because I would never ever put my name to such a down vote or such an incoherent, contradictory, illogical and in parts stupid letter. But seemingly clever and well educated people are doing so.

Is there a way back for them that allows them to save face?