BBC backtracked on "all women finalists"

Ok just heard a kind of backtrack on the podcast. “The detail wasn’t available to the WH team.” If we knew , they knew.

I replayed the original item again…nowhere does it say anything to suggest they were wrong. I guess I can’t find podcast as opposed to download. I am also surprised that any letters responding to complaints do not come from official BBC addresses. I will be interested to see the responses to the complaint about the list of “100 women” which I find very offensive.

All good points.

I now hear 'women' in most things and the back of my mind goes 'oh yes? how many were men that you're buttering up with virtue signalling?'

Please don't worry about TQ+ male people being lost in the fogging of femalehood and existence: if anything good happens involving a TW, it will be shouted from the rooftops about the T part. It will be vigorously celebrated as T not as women as an amorphous bunch that the TW is a part of.

The 'women' part is an ego stroke only when it happens to be in the best PR interests of the male involved. Heads males win, tails females lose. It is a dimorphic sex based stitch of misogyny.

I've sent the following to the BBC in response to their "100 Women" list in an attempt to explain this thinking.

"The inclusion of 2 trans-identified males in your list of 100 women is an explicit endorsement of what is, in reality, a contested political belief: that the word "woman" (and female and sex) should be redefined in law and day-to-day usage.

The Alison Bailey judgement of 2020 states that "belief on gender theory is a belief about a weighty and substantial aspect of human life, especially when reform of the law based on that belief may have significant practical consequences for women as currently defined in law" (commonslibrary.parliament.uk/employment-tribunal-rulings-on-gender-critical-beliefs-in-the-workplace/).

In the light of this, please would you explain how this decision corresponds to your guidelines on impartiality (www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality/).

To pre-empt any disingenuous or facile suggestion that the proportion of 98 females
to 2 trans figures upholds the standards outlined here
(eg.
"inclusive... broad perspective... range of views"), I would point out that the inclusion of ANY trans figures in a list of "women" must by definition align the titular "woman" with gender-based as opposed to sex-based identity.

By extension, this imposes this re-definition on each of the 98 females in the list (and also suggests that this is your perception of my own identity, as your reader). I do not share this view, perceiving my identity as a woman to be sex-based, and having no sense of a gender identity.
I support trans people and am genuinely pleased to see increasing recognition of their needs. However, could I suggest that a list of 100 transpeople would do more to value this marginalised group than an approach that, under the auspices of "inclusivity", actively denies members of another protected group, females, their own right to self-determination?
It took courage to send this. That, in itself, is frighteningly telling. Please do me justice in a meaningful response: how is this unbiased?"

I find it genuinely distressing that I can no longer understand a reference to "woman" or "women" in the BBC or Guardian as relating to female achievements. From my early teens, I took such pride in any headline/award/list like this - thank goodness, we're getting there; people are beginning to see what we're worth. Now, I've lost that certainty. And it's a painful loss. Subsuming transwomen into women certainly undermines our validity as a distinct political class, even as we've only just gained full legal recognition in a multitude of areas in recent decades (marital rape; applying to banks for credit) - to already be losing that in common discourse and, potentially, law scares me; that questioning it is so often silenced with accusations of bigotry terrifies me. And I honestly don't know that disappearing transwomen into women does the trans cause the good that, in contrast, normalising more distinct recognition and acknowledgement of their unique needs could do. This denial of objective difference, when we could validate and celebrate it instead, seems potentially damaging in many ways.

Just received this in response to my complaint. Says I can’t reply as it is from an unmonitored email..
Thank you for contacting us about Woman’s Hour, broadcast on 22nd November, and the finalists for Brain of Britain being referred to as 'all-female'.

The statement about the gender of the finalists on this year’s Brain of Britain reflected what the programme believed the preferred gender identity of each contestant to be. At the time of the discussion about women and quizzes on Woman’s Hour, the programme team had not been made aware that one of the contestants was a trans woman and this was later clarified on the programme’s podcast and on a Twitter post promoting the discussion.

We hope this helps and we really appreciate you letting us know your views. We listen closely to audience feedback; yours has been recorded and circulated widely to BBC editorial staff.

The bit that's 'hated' is the erasing of actually female people to please male people, the forcing of personal beliefs on others, and the lying.

That's the bit there is the problem with. If you're not a person doing that, then no one cares how you identify, or what sex or gender you feel you are. It's irrelevant. I'm very inclusive in my definition of 'not being heavily misogynist'.

Shappi Khorsandi has also done a series of tweets. Apparently it's hard supporting this tiny minority who are subject to such hatred. GC people target her online, call her names and dehumanise her.
I assume that's mainly women disagreeing with her.
Oh and we've also hijacked the Women Life Freedom movement from Iran too.
Dr Maria Ines de la Cruz did a good quote tweet though, something about rentagob celebrities.

I think its an awful response.

They have identified that there was a transwoman - which I don't think is fair on the person

And they have not apologised to woman.

All they needed to say was:-

'We apologise - we should not have referred to an all woman / all female final. That was incorrect'

And to claim they didn't know it was a TW - that is laughable.

A 'detail' which wasn't made available? Are they seriously suggesting the WH team didn't realise/didn't research it properly? FFS

Oh god, just went over to Twitter. Paul Sinha hasn't just done a little tweet, it's a whole fucking series of tweets where he compares GC women to Nazis.

He's mates with the TW and that's why he's so vocally supporting the fact that TW are absolutely women and absolutely isn't a misogynist for insisting that a person with a penis is the same as a biological woman.

Funnily enough, he seems quite pissed off about the accusation that he's a misogynist though.

I believe Paul Sinha is part of the LGB community himself and I know that in some quarters there's a reluctance to criticise any other part of the LGBTQIA etc gang.

Obviously that's not universal as there are lots of lesbians and gay man who are prepared to stand up for biology.

But there are plenty who see it as a single community and wouldn't want to piss off the T-brigade - so I wonder whether that's the reason?

I think they made the clarification to ensure they weren’t excluding the TW and her achievement.

Chaser Paul Sinha has since tweeted that he holds firm that all four are in fact women.

Disappointing from someone I admire so much, and shocking coming from a qualified medical doctor!

I do think it’s very interesting that WH wished to clarify they were not given all the relevant info. They did not need to do that.

TW is not a subset of "women".

By saying "women finalists", they are still keeping up the lie.

Or maybe it's left hand Vs right hand.
One hand backtracking and the other is apologising.

I thought they backtracked the backtrack. And apologised for the first backtrack?
Difficult to keep up

Comments are mixed.

Actually never mind, before someone chops their penis off and we have to restate the record...

Well looks like being socially acceptable is no longer compatible with telling the truth...

Maybe they need to change the record to say the brain of Britain line-up has never been without penis. Then we'll all know which part of society is needs to work on representation...

Its something the media pull a lot.

Say what you want, lies and all. Most people won't question it.

Then quietly retract where only a few will see it.

Public 95% successfully manipulated, hands clean, job done.

#defundthebloodyBBC

A 'detail'?

It is a statement and an odd one at that. There’s something of an implication there about women being different and the transness being significant, because if there was no significant difference, there would be no reason to acknowledge the point. Replace “trans” with any adjective and it would be a very strange thing to say. So they’re half acknowledging that one of the finalists wasn’t a woman, but without having the courage to state it clearly.