America’s New Female Right - BBC

Ed Balls did a program about groups in the US a few years back, tempest. I found it interesting although I can’t remember much about it,

No need to be ashamed, theilltempered!

It’s hard to believe that Guardian writers have been dismissing feminists on this topic for ten years.

Mangan didn’t exactly cover herself in glory: dismissing everyone but herself as a bunch of girls.

I find shows like this really annoying.

There are some crazy weirdos.

But there are also some interesting movements toward more right wing positions by some groups in the US. Young black men, for one. And increasingly I'm seeing this with some women too. Gay men and lesbians, immigrants, especially African, lots of Hispanic Americans.

Some of these people are more what you'd think of as socially conservative, others more center right, and of course there are a variety of viewpoints on many issues. But it is absolutely a thing.

It's really interesting, and could be worth looking at in more depth. But of course the BBC, Guardian, etc would much rather focus on people who are actual nut-jobs.

I also think, that while it can work for a person doing this sort of documentary to take a hard hitting approach, it also doesn't work if the person is unwilling to be really honest about listening and understanding their POV. You have to be able to really see things from others' POV and be willing to be self-critical, especially about your own assumptions.

“And I just thought to myself - is this the only way the BBC are prepared to cover this issue? By dismissing it as just another right-wing trope?“

In a word: yes.

I went looking for evidence of Mangan's earlier terfiness, and it turns out I'm wrong: I'm so ashamed.

Posting a link to her earlier piece, just because it's that rare thing, a trans piece in the Guardian with comments enabled:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/09/lucy-mangan-terf-war

She does seem to be saying that Guardian readers do support teenagers having their genitals mutilated. I suspect she would claim she supports no such thing, that she supports transgender teenagers. How she thinks these kids transition from their own sex to, well, their own sex with an approximation of the opposite sex's genitals finangled onto their bodies, I don't know. She wouldn't use 'mutilated'. She'd say 'gender affirming care' or some other synonym that helps her sleep at night but it amounts to the same thing.

Edited to add

Just seen pp. If LM is GC well good for her and i apologise but she made her point rather poorly imo.

@LoobiJee

So this article means that Lucy Mangan thinks that most Guardian readers would object to campaigns against the genital mutilation of teenagers and that teenagers campaigning against genital mutilation of teenagers should be subjected to robust challenge on behalf of Guardian readers?

I think that's very unlikely. Unless Mangan has changed her views in the last few years, she is very much on the gender critical/sex realist side of the argument. I think she was making a wider point about the interviewer failing to challenge any of the interviewees (who, she points out, aren't necessarily wrong about everything).

“I am going to go out on a limb and say that most Guardian readers who watch a BBC documentary called America’s New Female Right are unlikely to be in accord with the views espoused therein.”

“Third is Hannah Faulkner, 17, who came to her particular brand of fame three years ago when she organised a Teens Against Genital Mutilation rally in her native Nashville, Tennessee, supporting a ban on medical intervention for young transgender people.“

“If you are going to interview people such as McMichael, Hutcherson and Faulkner, you need a presenter who is capable and unafraid of going toe to toe with them. These are people with sincerely held beliefs. You need someone with the intellectual and temperamental firepower to challenge them – someone who is not afraid to, in British terms at least, be “rude” to their subjects and see if they can really defend assertions that are otherwise allowed to stand as truth.”

Mangan doesn’t mention any other campaigning by Faulkner.

So this article means that Lucy Mangan thinks that most Guardian readers would object to campaigns against the genital mutilation of teenagers and that teenagers campaigning against genital mutilation of teenagers should be subjected to robust challenge on behalf of Guardian readers?