Beechgrove Garden inclusivity.

It's rather sad really that these people, many of them rather young, are so convinced that so many "spaces" aren't safe. I think some are really convinced of this.

Others are just drama llamas though, wanting everything to be about them.

Watched the segment, it's a cooperative garden set up by a few people (probably quite new to gardening) who are going on about discrimination they think they will face (if they had any knowledge of gardening and community gardens they would know that this wouldn't be the case).

No doubt there will be a lot of "queer" people joining because they like the idea of a communal garden.

You can see how some people think their sexuality is WHO they are, not just WHAT they are. And it's disappointing that they are self-isolating, pre-assuming discrimination, instead of just going to a community garden and see how they get on. I suppose people not going on about pronouns would be a micro-aggression to them.

There is no need for a safe green space for LGBTQ+ when green spaces already are.

It will no doubt depend on the community garden. I was involved in setting up one a while back and as part of that we went to numerous other gardens to see how they were established and run. There were no trans people, no pronouns, and the members appeared to be primarily straight. A lot of emphasis of the importance of the gardens on health and wellbeing and on community cohesion - LGBetc wasn’t even mentioned.

I was involved in a community garden decades ago, with lesbian, gay and trans people I guess statistically speaking very overrepresented. Maybe there's a history to community gardens being places where social acceptance came ahead of the rest of society?

Many Gay men and Lesbians are fed up of Pride being hijacked by the TQ.

Me and Mr Veg had a thing a few years ago when our main client asked about the 'gender' of a plant. We both automatically shouted 'Sex not gender!'. Fortunately the man just laughed.

Plants are plants, they are not 'queer'.

I did and bloody hell, didn't they push the whole queer thing. It was really quite irritating.

Although I liked the ethos of their cooperative I felt that the segment didn't really fit in with the rest of Beechgrove.

It was specifically seed saving.

You know, like when male pollen fertilises the female flower and a seed is produced!

I used to work with the bloke that ran the project that generated this conference, I know he knows how seeds work.

I have absolutley no fucking idea!

I sat there at the time the session was going on, thinking I should have just attended but knowing I'd lose my rag.

I remember that. It was utter bollocks. I wouldn't have minded if he'd actually been shown gardening, the plants he's grown, tips etc but it was just him wafting around at a plant show in a dress 😂

AlisonDonut · Today 09:18

This was a session on a previously respected [by me] professional group from 2023.

If we had 'queer botany' then we'd have no fucking food to eat. This was completely embarassing and I am still not over it.

What do they do? Scurry about "fertilising" all the male flowers with a modeller's paintbrush, then rip them all off, before they can contaminate the female one? Fuck's sake!

Fizzadora · Yesterday 11:57

I joined a local Facebook gardening and plant swap group recently and was asked to introduce myself and my pronouns to the rest of the group🤔

I've asked my plants if they care how I identify. They haven't said.

Your mashed potato squash and runner beans are judging you silently, you massive bigot!

Gardening is and has always been for everyone, and there never has really been a gender divide in it either.

I wonder if it was an attempt to make botany sound more exciting by pointing out well-known differences between plant and mammalian reproduction, e.g. some plants produce both male and female gametes. This is no more relevant to gender ideology and 'queerness' in humans than our old friend the clownfish.

@AlisonDonut That paragraph reads like something in Private Eye. “Queer botany”!

The screenshot from Alison above is idiotic.

In the interests of accuracy, though, I have to say I watched the programme and it was a perfectly nice little segment about a community garden and a veg box scheme. There was no detailed discussion about planting, preferred varieties or anything else, but in that respect it was just like the segment about the Afghani community garden earlier on. It was about how having this space gives people with common interests and backgrounds a meeting place and a shared activity of a kind that is particularly good for mental and physical health. There was no discussion whatsoever about anybody's sexuality or gender identity. No problem with any of this.

It has been creeping in for years, mainly through the links between the Greens and Horticulture.

This was a session on a previously respected [by me] professional group from 2023.

If we had 'queer botany' then we'd have no fucking food to eat.

This was completely embarassing and I am still not over it.

🤣

I switch off the TV or radio as soon as I hear the long string of letters now as it’s very rare that anyone’s sexuality / self-proclaimed identity is relevant to the story or news item. I couldn’t care less about an enby feeling “safe” in a garden - whatever this actually means.

Foucault can Fouc Off out of my garden.

So when we mention Foucault, we need to be clear which one we are talking about.

Michel Foucault, philosopher, post-modern thinker, deconstructionist. Foundational to the idea that words create reality rather than describing it. See Judith Butler and queer theory.

Beyond this, I am completely out of my depth!

Léon Foucault is the maths/physics one.

What does a french physicist who demonstrated the Earth's rotation have to do with FWR?

Michel, not Léon.

@FlippingFliperoo

It doesn't have to permeate everything, this is what pisses people of. Certainly nothing to with non heterosexual people not being able to express themselves. There's a time and a place for everything, gardening isn't it.

Exactly that SirChenjins.

@FlippingFliperoo did you actually read what I said?
I'm a regular viewer of Beechgrove, it's full on gardening- lots of technical stuff, comparing different varieties/ fertilizer and whatnot, I just missed that episode.

Did I say that anyone should not be allowed to take part? No I didn't- I specifically said that anyone talking about gardening should be able to take part

It is absolutely though not the sort of program that discusses personal feelings, if the "queer" or "trans" or whatever person was on there to talk about actual gardens then so what, tell me how you plant your tomatoes for best results, I don't care how you identify if you have a cure for blossom end rot or can rid my greenhouse of snails!
It's almost as if you want to stir things up, by deliberately misinterpreting what people say.