Woman's Hour now: BBC walking away from Stonewall

From the Telegraph article:

While renewing its membership of Stonewall’s diversity champions scheme this year, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport noted it would no longer accept Stonewall’s legal advice. Its legal advice? Indeed. Those making the law are paying a lobby group to provide help with the law.

Nicely put.

x-post with Alektopteryx - I'm never too sure about posting archive links at present as some seem to be filtered.

[quote jhuizinga]This is a good article in today's Telegraph. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall and I don't know about archiving.

www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/11/11/stonewall-won-everyone-lost/[/quote]
Someone's already saved it if you put the URL into

web.archive.org

How much more quietly did hundreds of those same institutions sign up in the first place? When the Foreign Office paid to join Stonewall’s workplace diversity scheme in July, for example, it did so without ministerial approval. And the involvement of Stonewall is critical, because it is campaigning not just to change the ethos within individual organisations, it is lobbying to change the law for us all. In 2015, for example, it sought to “remove exemptions” to the Equality Act, “such as access to single sex spaces” – which would have allowed those born biologically male (but self-identifying as female), to enter places like refuges for women who are victims of domestic abuse. A year later, at the House of Commons (also a paying Stonewall “diversity champion”), the Women & Equalities Select Committee echoed and promoted that very same stance.

Thanks @jhuizinga, I have a sub at the moment in addition to my Times one as their coverage is quite good on this; there's a decent deal for new subscribers that popped up for me on an alternative browser.

[quote jhuizinga]This is a good article in today's Telegraph. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall and I don't know about archiving.

www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/11/11/stonewall-won-everyone-lost/[/quote]

Archived here: web.archive.org/web/20211111222156/www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/11/11/stonewall-won-everyone-lost/

It's so interesting seeing something like saying "only biological women can get pregnant" become unallowable, yet everyone knows it describes a basic truth (even if you try to change the meanings of words, there's still a clearly classifiable type of person that is the only type that gets pregnant). You can hear people thinking "that makes sense, but I'm not allowed to say it" and drifting helplessly up semantic shit creek.

This is a good article in today's Telegraph. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall and I don't know about archiving.

www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/11/11/stonewall-won-everyone-lost/

Thank goodness for sounds. That interview was cracking. And yes, what a pause!

Sorry - should have said "They employed a company". It was two ex-employees from the company their director friend had previously worked for.

I can remember when a company I worked for decided to go for ISO9000 accreditation. They employed an organisation to help achieve this.
That company went right through every department, disrupting work, insisting on training, documentation re-writes - it went on for about a year.
When a director found his staff re-writing the photocopier manual, they pulled the plug on the company and launched an investigation. The CEO of the rogue company turned out to be a good friend of another director...
In the end, they achieved accreditation by taking over another, already accredited company - but that's another story!

And don't get me started on the number of Early Years Accreditation programmes I've seen over the years - all paperwork heavy, all needing training.

Professional accreditation is a good thing, but the amount of money companies waste on unnecessary schemes to prove they're doing the right thing is shocking.

Stonewall saw their opportunity and took it.

I’m curious as to the TRA reaction. I don’t think anyone could have answered EB better because I don’t think there are any answers that would have stood up to her relentless, logical scrutiny, but are they telling him what he should have said? And why has nobody been on this thread educating and correcting us?

I listened last night and was prepared for the pause. Well, I thought I was prepared. It went on so long I had to check my connection wasn't buffering. Usually dead radio is just that, but this silence spoke volumes. Well done Woman's Hour and welcome back.

They should have run the entire thing past the Director of Better.

Oh yes

I am going on to war footing next week on our style guide which is straight from SW, and in which i am a cis woman and opposite gender attracted. This broadcast has made it just that bit easier. Thanks emma.

[quote FannyCann]Oh dear. Seems quite a lot of BBC workers are about to discover no one is indispensable and jobs with prestigious organisations may not be quite so easy to find just now.

BBC staff vow to QUIT over plans to end Stonewall relationship
mol.im/a/10191733[/quote]
Say what you like about the Daily Mail, but the subheading refers to Stonewall as a “controversial trans group” which is absolutely correct. It’d be good if more media outlets did that, rather than referring to them as a gay-rights charity or similar.

Dame Jenni has also tweeted to Stephen Nolan

My hero! Keep on keeping on!

twitter.com/whjm/status/1458581489449328643?s=20

it's the easiest thing in the world NOT to discriminate

Have to say I disagree with this. We all have biases, some unconscious, I don't think there's anything wrong with being shown how to identify these and actively work to reduce discrimination which might not even be noticed (see Invisible Women for all kinds of examples).

WH was interesting and well done to Emma for pushing on some vague answers. While I agree he wasn't to be expected to make black-and-white decisions on specific out-of-context wording on the fly, it was a great opportunity to air some examples of what might actually be seen as terrrribly sensitive, like calling someone a woman, etc. I imagine a fair proportion of listeners wouldn't have even known some of this wording was used/was a problem.

[quote FannyCann]Oh dear. Seems quite a lot of BBC workers are about to discover no one is indispensable and jobs with prestigious organisations may not be quite so easy to find just now.

BBC staff vow to QUIT over plans to end Stonewall relationship
mol.im/a/10191733[/quote]
When I graduated jobs at the BBC were like gold dust. Funny to think someone would leave over these issues. Might be good for impartiality if they do leave though.

Dame Jenni has tweeted.

twitter.com/whjm/status/1458849960443756550

Thanks all for support but to be clear I wasn’t sacked. I quit because my 33 years of impartiality on air was no longer trusted!

And as one wise woman comments in the replies And yet all the time it was you who could see clearly and impartially. Thank you for all those years.

I so want to listen to this but I knew this bloke when I was young and he was an absolute fupnunt, don't think I can bear to listen to his voice after all these years.

There’s a difference between paying to keep up registration/accreditation with an established professional body and paying for the privilege of adhering to semi-fictitious rules made up by a lobbying body that exist mainly to further its bank balance.