Radio 4. Right now. Is freaking me out.

You've got too old for radio 4. It's a natural progression. Time for you to listen to classic fm instead.

I love how snowflakey you are about emojis. Proper makes me lol.

The Times radio has a weekly - that’s right, I said weekly - listenership of about half a mill.

Even with the decline in listeners to Today, which is partly explained by new listening habits (see: podcasts and catch up) R4 has a listenership of 9.3million.

Maths doesn’t seem to be your strong point, so I’ll be clear: that’s a lot more than Times ‘owned by that Aussie arsehole’ Radio.

Also lol’ing at you directly lifting your post from a Guardian article. Guess that puts you in the ‘trust the Guardian’ camp I mentioned earlier.

Oh my goodness, this post has really resonated.
I’m 50 and Radio 4 has been the sound track to my life: it was always on (LW) as I grew up in Holland; it was the background sound to being a SAHM mum for a few years. The first thing I did as I walked into an empty room was put Radio 4 on.

And as I read this, I thought ‘I don’t do this anymore’. I put on a podcast. As others have said, a lot of things seem to have a clunky agenda now. Of course nothing can be completely subjective, but I often feel like I am listening to reeducation camp
propaganda 101.

I think wish we could just be allowed to say that TW are TW, TM are TM and they have the right to exist without harassment or denigration.

I agree, and if we could all agree on this, things would cool down IMO.

I believe there are men and women, and then there are trans men/women. They should be able to live their lives peacefully, but not at the expense of others.

But many people are somewhere in the middle, not wanting to be oppressive to transpeople but not able to sign up for TWAW/TMAM.

Why do you think it's "oppressive to transpeople" to acknowledge which sex they are?

Like many others on here, I have given this a lot of thought and think it is a complex and challenging area.

I know many mumsnet members will say "It's not challenging at all. Transwomen are men and transmen are women".

But that's actually no different to my son's generation who say "It's not challenging at all. You just let people lead their lives and don't be a bigot."

Both sides are saying "It's not complicated. I am clearly right."

But many people are somewhere in the middle, not wanting to be oppressive to transpeople but not able to sign up for TWAW/TMAM.

I think wish we could just be allowed to say that TW are TW, TM are TM and they have the right to exist without harassment or denigration.

But there seems to be no room for any debate in the middle, just a culture war style division.

We really should be leaving adults to live their own lives, how they choose.
I agree with this 100% but that ends when their choices affect others. I'm an old fashioned liberal. I don't much care what people do as long as they respect other people's rights.
I see this as very similar to the weird trend for 'surrendered wives'. It's deeply sexist and problematic, however if a few individual women chose it, that'd be their right, even if privately I'd have concerns.
However, if 'surrendered wives' and their husbands were suddenly lauded in all the left wing newspapers, changing laws to suit their beliefs to the detriment of all women, and were cheerleaded on Radio 4, then I sure as hell would be speaking up.
I don't see this as much different.
Like the surrendered wives, the trans movement is incredibly sexist and homophobic belief system, reliant on stereotypes and female people being put second.
You can't say 'leave people alone to live their lives' when what we're objecting to is those people pushing both legally and culturally to diminish women's rights and take the gay rights movement back decades.

If you have concerns about the welfare of babies gestated and fed by trans men, perhaps it would benefit you to read some scientific literature on the subject.

If this was aimed at me, you might want to re-read my original comment as I was talking about men (transwomen) not transmen (women).

I’m assuming you were talking about those transmen who haven’t amputated their healthy breast tissue and/or crushed it with compression binders before giving birth?

Because, if you were, they’d be much less likely to need the help of drugs to start their milk and, if you weren’t, then drugs aren’t going to magically regenerate what was destroyed so not really relevant to them.

I’m going to assume, (not being a midwife), that a woman who is not the birth mother will evidence many of the same issues that a transwoman will, when taking Domperidone to induce lactation. Including that the drug is not without risk to the baby; there’s a reason that the US has banned it completely.

It’s meant to be used short term, monitored by HCPs, to stimulate milk flow in the birth mother because the NHS judges that the benefit of her passing on her immunities to the child outweigh the risks. No such benefit to the child has been identified when men or non-birthing women are induced to lactate.

Oh, and a closer comparison (than Covid vaccine scares) might be the neo-natal ‘wonder drug’ that was also distributed before anyone had properly understood the side effects on children. What was that called again…

Oh yeah… Thalidomide.

Transing as gay conversion therapy, effectively. Young lesbian girls fear they will be treated as the lowest of the low and abused as lesbians, but if they say they are really a boy, they will be given a ticker tape parade, special status forever, and get to go out with girls all the same. Effeminate boys can avoid similar abuse by becoming girls, being gay is nothing and opens you to abuse, being trans is everything and affords you special political and social status. PSHE and Sex Ed in schools, outsourced to some pretty nefarious, agenda driven third parties, has been teaching children about all the numerous genders and sexual identities they can be - why be boringly gay or straight, when you can be aromantic, demi sexual, grey sexual, queer etc etc. The trans lobby, proponents of queer theory and bodies like Stonewall have created this climate, hand in hand with heterosexual fetishists who have found a home under the rainbow umbrella.

In Our Time still good. Good old Melvyn. His kind has well and truly disappeared 😞

Some of these still crop up, although the choice of guests on a good read seems to have gone downhill. There’s a certain profile they have to fit these days I think. I listened back to an earlier episode which had Hilary mantel on FFS. No one of that calibre appears nowadays.

On DAB. You need a digital radio.

TW take away women's rights. TM take away women's identity. Fucking sick of it.

How could you be so dysphoric you had a baby?

Exactly. My femaleness; breasts, periods, etc. caused me so much distress that I went to very extreme measures to rid myself of it. Once I reached manhood, I did the ultimate female thing and got pregnant, grew a baby, had massive breasts that produced milk, and gave birth.

How can you do all that if being a woman is so repugnant to you?

Same here. R4 was on all day everyday until a couple of years ago. There’s not even a pretence of impartiality any more, and when Woman’s Hour started selling misogyny as progress, that was me done.

Listen to The Nolan Report on Stonewall’s takeover of the BBC. In fact, check out the protection racket Stonewall has been running in all major government bodies, institutions, charities and media outlets to know why the F McConnells get airtime and a serious hearing, while ordinary, common or garden women without a fancy identity are told to shut up you bigot.

So, tolerate the boring rubbish the beeb pumps at you or you are some kind of fascist.
never knew poor old Stig and Asma were the leaders of the new stormfront. A development surely no one predicted.

Sure. That emoji clinches it.

Today reached 7.5 million people a week in 2016 during the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. But with changing listening habits – the launch of rival talk stations such as Times Radio, and the growth of news podcasts – this declined to just 5.8 million weekly listeners by the start of 2023, according to official listening figures.

Their flagship programme is declining and Times Radio is picking up some of their listeners

I agree re radio becoming absolute tripe. I heard a programme being advertised about man.givin birth to a baby. I was intrigued. Earphones in, charity bag for clothes donations rwsfy and we are off. Turned out it was a trans man. False advertising I think. Sick of it. People are frightened to speak out for woman's rights for fear of being vilified.

non-carrying women (eg from lesbian couples) have also been able to breastfeed through a combination of drugs (similar to oral contraceptives) and stimulation

Theres nothing wrong with women breastfeeding babies just as long as the drugs don’t harm the child.
Men using small children to suck their nipples is a whole different ball game.

It's been captured, it's got a shadow over it. So much of the BBC's output has been - I used to watch Casualty which was primarily about people with interesting medical conditions, episodes focused on the 'patient', and at some point it became an agenda wagon, and it is now completely unwatchable. All I can conclude is that ideological self-consciousness is the enemy of creativity.

According to the latest stats I can find, the Guardian is the second most read paper after the Daily Heil - only by 1% though, so there’s hope - and scores highest for trust. The BBC is by far the most read news site.

So I don’t think either needs to worry just yet, whatever you think. 😂

They won selfie reflect until some one complains

I am interested too.

My youngest is turning 17 and has long heavy miserable periods that are painful.

She wants done with them and to go on the pill.

I'm nervous of it and obviously need to do research.

Unfortunately it's "infiltrated" radio 4.
I don't mind balanced debate but unfortunately like brexit it's very one sided.

How do I get rimes radio?

Op I agree

I like listening to the comedy show on the way to school with my daughter and someone started sheering at mother's who didn't want trans men reading story time to their children.

I had to turn it off and can't listen to it now. I was horrified because it was so ignorant on such a big topic...

Op write and complain