Who is listening to the Today show: debate over Trans rights and the parliamentary bill

[Bovneydazzlers]

Pleasantly surprised so far that the BBC are giving balanced picture and giving platform to Janice Turner as well as Stonewall.

I think more could be said that hormone blockers have side effects and likely to lead down path to being sterile etc though.

8:30 AM. Radio four.

I was compared to Germaine Greer by DH this morning for my reactions to the programme about sex & gender on radio 4 this morning.

Surely it's acceptable to believe in equality. But also that women should be allowed to have their own private spaces

Thanks :) I’ll catch up whilst getting on with the tidying/cleaning this morning.

blowing I would take that as a massive compliment. Is that how he meant it?

blowing

It’s frustrating isn’t it? How can people be aware of the Harvey Weinsteins of this world and how endemic sexual inequality is in society, condemning him saying how awful it is, and at the same time not realising why.

Of course, if there was equality between the sexes, we wouldn’t need any private spaces. We could all pack up and go home.

Ha! I did
He was just pointing out that GG got flamed for similar comments. No judgement. He would call himself a feminist.

Ok. I heard most of it and thought the Times journalist (Janice?) was spot on. What is the problem with acknowledging we're born male or female (depending on whether you have a penis or vagina) and then allowing our ' personality' to decide who we want to be? I'm sure a lot of us have a mix of female/male traits, in variable amounts depending on the person.

I think children (under 18) are far too young to make life-changing decisions about taking a course of drugs to interfere with biological processes. Sorry, any parents that allow their children to do that need professional help. I'm sure a lot of children have binary preferences (eg like guns and barbies) and that's normal and healthy, isn't it? But not a cause to believe that they've been born into the wrong body.

Also I don't agree with the cash-strapped NHS paying for self-elected treatment to change sex - if you decide to do this after you've turned 18 I have no problem with that - but pay for it yourself.

Finally, agree we do need to have proper debate about this rather than being shut down. And please can us born as women (with vaginas from birth) be allowed to have a view as to whether we're comfortable with men presenting as women to be allowed into: women prisons, women's changing rooms and loos; domestic abuse refuges. And what happens in competitive sports - does a man presenting as a woman have a biological advantage? Then that puts the whole issue of drug testing onto another level too.

Radio 4 ought to do a three-part series about this: the science (actual biology), the psychology and social science (gender, sexism, social contagion), and issues with the wider ‘conversation’ (TAs, mainly).

This programme was just dipping its toe in the water. Cautiously putting their head above the parapet because they can see which way the wind might be blowing in regards to children.

Wait until JH has to ask what a lady penis is.

I heard it. I was glad the last voice was from someone critical of the whole thing.

Illtellyou. Unfortunately, parents going through this are getting professional help - professionals who tell them that they risk their children committing suicide if they don't affirm their gender identity. This is made far worse by the fact that children and teachers in school are getting all their information from trans activists who believe that being transgender is a biological phenomenon (you are "born that way"). It is completely toxic.
Also 18 years old is too young (speaking as a petrified parent of a 19 year autistic DD identifying as male) to make irreversible decisions about your body - whether funded by the NHS or not. The brain does not fully mature until around 25, later in the case of autistic individuals.
Hipster - those topics would be a good basis for training for teachers and social services.

It was a really good balanced coverage and for the first time I didn't feel as if the trans community got all the air time.

very nuanced.

and I really hate the whole sex/gender vocabulary thing, I just can't get my head around it I haven't a clue. I get it wrong every time.

The non binary child who liked pirates and barbies even had my 13year old going ' so bloody What??' So I think most radio4 listeners would have thought that was a load of shit
yy to this!

The other good topic would be the disproportionate number of teenage girls and autistic young people, adopted children and children in care being affected - why is this (social contagion and the new way to self-harm anyone?) and where are their rights in this?
I actually read someone suggesting that the reason adopted children are disproportionately represented in gender clinics is because they were put up for adoption because they are transgender. Not that an individual's identity formation is a really important and complicated and can be knocked off track...(by being adopted, by being autistic, by being told by a beloved parent that your choice in toys means you are in the wrong body). I do not doubt for one moment that there are some individuals whose identity formation has been knocked off track permanently so that eventually transitioning is the best course of treatment for them.

But that should be a very small number of people.

The other good topic would be the disproportionate number of teenage girls and autistic young people, adopted children and children in care being affected

The counter would be "where's your solid evidence for these assertions?". As far as I know the proof isn't yet there. This is why there need to be a two-pronged approach - get open debate going, and encourage proper academic study (which currently seems to be banned by an unofficial fatwah).

Lots wrong with that segment on Today but it's a sign of significant progress that this whole area needs to be looked at openly and critically.

I only caught the last few minutes after the school run but I was screaming SEX NOT GENDER at the radio. And wishing that for their "normal listener" at the end they'd chosen Datun or Nolove or many of the other extremely eloquent women on here . The man they interviewed wasn't too bad, at least he was critical and made the point about allowing debate. But I felt it was a missed opportunity when he was talking about 'normal' not to talk about the fundamentals of our biology as a species and how it can't really be changed . will listen to the whole thing when the baby lets me.....

The twitter feedback is the usual mix. "30 mins dedicated to what's a minority issue. same amount of ppl who this effects participate in blood sports. wud u dedicate 30 mins to that?" shows that there is much work to be done in order to get the basic message across about how the gender identification proposals would affect 50% of the population.

Lobby, lobby, lobby. Not just MPs but also newspapers and social media etc

This is the twitter feed.

twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/920553807536377856?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

It was a half hour slot and a good debate. And debate is what should be allowed. No platforming on this issue should be dismissed outright!

Yes. Sex not gender. Are pregnant women now bigots for asking the sex of their unborn child? Are they TERFs? It's rare now to be told, as a surprise, what the sex is of your baby. Slightly touched upon in the slot, but no one talked about gender being a social construct.

I also thought there was a slight confusion between sexuality and gender.

Sexuality is biological.

No one is born with self knowledge for example. It simply doesn't happen.

A baby is born helpless. It functions on a basic level. It cries, sleeps, drinks and expels waste.

I see a couple of transactivists and the Mermaids marketing person are on the case on twitter (can only see without logging in as I'm blocked). They don't appear to have appreciated the programme much.

If I’m thinking about this logically, it’s lose/lose for them.

The more they shut people down/refute criticism, the more people will ask them to debate it.

The fact is, there is a mammoth amount of bullshit written by trans-activists. Asking anyone who represents the ideology to agree or disagree on what they say is going to light the touch paper.

If they agree, they will look like mad fools. If they disagree, they will get a massive backlash and the whole thing starts imploding.

That's why the only tactic they have is slipping under the radar, infiltrating every group that might raise an objection ( like female issue centred ones) and changing their position and preventing the issues being discussed at all. That's been successful up to now. I hope this means the tide is turning.

Why do these programs always have a parent of a child always bring up always a child talking about pink or barbies and pirates? why isn't bullshit like that
Challenged ? ? ? Like they always minimise women in terms of babies pregnancy periods and breastfeeding.

As a child I saved up for my own barbie caravan and dolls - as I had an elderly neighbour that did a fine line in amazing fashion for barbie dolls. She was amazing.

Other than that I was a Star Wars fan - wanted only my brothers toys. Told my parents not to buy me presents especially dolls ( in part because I didn't like dolls but also because my parents were poor). I really liked listening to prince because he was fantastic at music not because he was gender fluid as I now hear him described as.

I protested being made to do horne economics and sewing at school and sat out the lessons doing none of it.

I wanted to be a boy for about a week when I won a scholarship prize and was the only girl amongst a group of private boys school kids who I thought had just so much confidence.

Was not interested in men until I was 20 or 21.

Thankfully my parents just let me be.

I wonder now would I have encouraged to think I was in the wrong body if I had different parents. I mean the mind boggles with all this stuff.

Allowing men to enter women only spaces like toilets - no platforming and the like and to be this honestly just seems another way of taking away women and their hard earned rightsz

Yes, the "progressive" people crapping on about "post gender" or "mixing up gender" in the twitter thread don't appear to have grasped that, creamy. I think they really do believe girls are hard wired to like pink and Barbies.