Womans Hour Wed 23rd April.

They never do. They cancel last minute or only do pre recorded interviews. Refuse to debate with other interviewees

I still think it was a useful piece, but I have now watched the clip on Woman's Hour on X, and another clip of the same interviewer. It was a short extract, but she was not making it at all easy for Susan Smith imo. There was no engagement with her interviewee, and tbh if it's possible to look antagonistic by just sitting there, Clare McDonnell was doing a very good job of it.

The comments below the WH Instagram post on this segment are unedifying display of pick-me pandering. Lots of 'I'm a woman and you don't speak for me'. Given WH's output over the last few years I suppose it's not surprising that the average listener doesn't seem to be great at critical thinking.

I would like to see TRAs face a grilling just once

I agree that it is good the interviewer gave the excellent Susan time to speak. I thought the interviewer could have been more positive about the court result though and as transmen are female it’s odd she ignored them and focussed on transwomen. I think the “other men just have to accommodate gender non conforming men, they shouldn’t become women’s problem” was a good answer and stressing the number of transwomen who have minimal changes to their body was good. Men can dress how they want but I don’t want them in my changing room, sports or hospital ward just because they are wearing a wig and lipstick.

Yes, it's again the massive disparity . Women raised money for this. A entire government paid for the other side. Using taxpayers money.

Yet women are the ones being scolded for big donations !

Also, this kind of interview around more serious things to do with law etc, always has that tone. The fluffy stuff comes later.

I haven’t heard it all but I always welcome a hostile grilling, though I don’t feel it was.

We need the tra questions so they can be calmly refuted. As without fail, every single woman standing for the cause has always given intelligent and well reasoned/ evidenced replies.

I actually feared a TW on for balance which hasn’t happened thank fuck. Hopefully never again.

Absolutely the fight is real. I'm 55 and I was a very political teenager in the 80's and 90's then not much as I got on with my career and having kids and life. This trans stuff has completely re-radicalised me! I have zero sympathy for these entitled grabbing group of men.

Having finally managed to listen to the interview I would agree with this. It was a pre-recorded interview ("I spoke to her earlier") and at first the interviewer did start in a studiously impersonal way. However I felt she warmed to Susan as the interview went on and sounded much more human by the end. My guess is the lack of a thank-you is because it was pre-recorded and the thank-yous and final pleasantries were cut to save time. I was impressed by the fact Clare allowed plenty of time for Susan to answer and didn't interrupt, an example I wish so many other interviewers could follow at least some of the time. Overall I though it was a really good interview and Susan did a superb job.

I always just say trans person.

This might become my new hobby, deleting the ‘anti trans’ bit of their Wikipedia page! Have done it twice already.

It was ironic that when the news was first announced it was Jane Fae & Heather Herbert I heard interviewed. I reckoned if most people knew about JF's obsession with the most violent & extreme porn ,especially involving VAWG, & HH's transmission from the floor of an airport toilet where they were sharing with others their experiences of dilating their newly installed "faux vagina" it would give listeners a very different perspective about why they were so cross at being denied access to women undressing etc. 😑

I had to go out, so I missed most of WH. But in the car on the way back, I switched on the radio, and the interviewer was enthusiastically asking a woman about the campaign she'd run with some other women to get justice, and wasn't it amazing how women had come together to win their case, and wasn't it fantastic to have the support of these wonderful women lawyers - at first I thought this was the FWS interview, then realised the interviewee was American, so it must have been something else. But it gives an idea of the sort of interview WH could have done with FWS if they'd wanted to.

And was told firmly that it was up to men to sort out their issues, as gay men had had to do. (If I heard correctly.)

I think part of the problem is that men as a sex class have never had to campaign to gain and protect their rights - they automatically hold the upper hand. Women have centuries of having to fight for what should be ours, equality, safety, dignity and so we know how to do it, how to organise. Were used to having to stand our ground, argue with ill mannered, poorly informed aggressive men. Men just don’t know how to do it and look for women who can to do it for them.

I’ve already complained. I was shouting at the radio. Woman’s Hour handmaiden in chief, Nuala McGovern wouldn’t have touched this with a barge pole.
I hope lots of Mumsnetters complain.

By behaving towards Susan Smith in a quite different way to the way they have treated TRAs like Grace Lavery in the past — moderately welcoming, trying to sound engaged, omitting difficult questions and saying hello and thank you for talking to us — I think they displayed bias.

It would be great if Susan Smith were in a position to tell us who interviewed her and how representative of the whole recorded interview the bits we heard were. It may be that Claire O'Donnell's words were recorded and edited in late.

Live is best: they can't edit out things they wish you hadn't said. Which is why WH insisted on this carefully controlled affair.

Susan was fantastically clear, concise and warm. She certainly spoke for me. I thought the interviewer was fine, she allowed SS to give in-depth and well laid out responses with no harrying. Perhaps it was better that she was a little impersonal.

I am nearly 70:and is is so disheartening to see how easily women have been pushed to the side, our rights, our very real concerns eroded and ignored mainly by biological males who believe they are female who show no empathy and have threatened violence. All these years of fighting for equality reduced in the blink of an eye. How is it that we are 51% of the population and have been ignored and insulted for standing up for ourselves. Even now we are expected to show understanding and kindness to a group that have nothing but hate for women at the same time insisting they are in fact women. No women would threaten another women with rape but this is what we have been subjected to.

The fight is real

Even the TRAs they platform are mostly awful. Look at that terrible C4 report, and the ones they wheeled out to whinge about the ruling there. No thoughts for women at all but of course everyone is supposed to sympathise.

It's fucking bizarre. The rights and interests of transmen haven't had a look in here, not least the observation that they now have rights and protection relating to pregnancy and maternity which without this ruling they wouldn't have had.

All I've heard is the question of whether women would be happy to see transmen using their designated spaces, as though this is some weird kind of 'gotchya'.

But the whole trans movement has never really been about transmen, which tells you the whole nature of who has really coopted it.

Thank you Susan Smith.

That interview would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.

(In fact, there are a fair few threads on here where we were all wondering if even a fraction of that would ever be possible again.)

What you and your fellow directors of FWS have done for women everywhere is unquantifiable.

Sorry I missed this as I’ve heard very impressive things about Susan Smith but never seen or heard her interviewed.

As for the presenter, I think what’s most interesting is that none of the usual regulars were ‘available’ to speak with one of the women who’s just taken a case to the highest court in the land and won. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that they’d have been fighting each other for the gig, especially if it was pre-recorded.

Anyway thanks op for the heads up and I’ll listen later.

Susan Smith was excellent. I like how she was very clear about how this is a grassroots women's movement where everyone donated on average £37 rather than the grotesque pissing away of taxpayers money on delusion la la male abuser land from the Scotgov side.

How it was ever the case that men were told they could use unconsenting women as a prop for their validation I don't know. It's rape culture.

Just reposting this because it's so brilliant.

Please can Women's Hour have Datun on next?

And the PP noting how it's all about the male transwomen and not the female transmen are spot on too.