Munroe Bergdorf 'What Makes a Woman' Channel 4 16/5

[R0wantrees]

Extract from Radio Times:
www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2018-05-16/what-makes-a-woman-review-munroe-bergdorf-transgender-activist-debate/

"There are more moments of vulnerability when Bergdorf attends a discussion by a feminist group called We Need To Talk. There’s a real sense of menace in the air as transgender people gather outside to protest the meeting of so-called TERFS – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists – who believe trans women are not female but are in fact men threatening to infiltrate women’s space.

Bergdorf is extremely articulate in one to one interviews so it’s a shame she doesn’t feel able to stay and debate them, but it’s also understandable – the atmosphere inside the meeting is toxic and she’s surrounded on all sides.

“When we [see] events like this, which directly are designed to deny [transgender women’s] very identities and the fact that we even exist, it’s extremely hurtful and concerning,” she says as she leaves. But she later sits down with one of the organisers, Venice Allan (aka Dr Radfem, just in case you were in any doubt).

They have an interesting debate about female and transgender rights, but it ends tellingly with the good Dr declaring “feminism is about women!” when surely feminism is about equality....

Concludes:
What Makes a Woman provides a valuable grounding in the ins and outs of the transgender debate for those of us who could use it – but it’s also a profile of a intriguing, sensitive, likeable person who is herself still on a journey of discovery."

What Makes a Woman is on tonight, Wednesday 16th May, at 10pm on Channel 4 and available afterwards on All4

C4 are fucking disgusting.

Munro sits there lecturing a woman about feminism, speaking in a man's voice but feeling entitled to do so because of Munro's performance of traditional patriarchally approved femininity. Made it very very clear what this whole battle is about.

Yep and s/he was mansplaining and talking over her .....just like a man!!!!

Spiked (that oh so feminist publication) has its own take on the Munroe Bergdorf/Venice Allen 'chat'.

Check out the comments.

Why aren't TRAs trolling them with rape and death threats.....?🤔

www.facebook.com/spikedonline/posts/1777651008944686

👋✋🖐👋

I watched it earlier. I thought it was actually quite sad. Growing up mixed race and gay in a small town in Hertfordshire can't have been easy at all. An all boys' school could have been a tricky environment too. But in spite of all that, I'll never understand fully why it wasn't OK to live as a gay man. The fashion business is one of the most accepting for gay people, surely? Why not start trying to push the boundaries of what it is to be a man? (Not like it would be groundbreaking. Plenty of genderbending has gone on in the recent past.)

I've never met a child who is experiencing gender dysphoria so all I have to go on is published interviews with the parents or with the child once grown up. However, I can't help thinking that what is happening with these kids is that they display a preference for something or other that in the views of their parents or someone else significant in their life they shouldn't. Or that significant person tries to interest them in something and the child doesn't like it.

Maybe a grandmother buys her granddaughter a pink sparkly dress and she hates it, refuses to wear it. Somebody says something in her hearing about her being a tomboy. Lots of trivial incidents like that, over and over again remarks/cat's bum mouth made and the little girl picks up that she is a disappointment, that she's a misfit, that there is something about her that isn't like real girls.

Easy to imagine similar things happening to a little boy. In fact I think it might be worse for boys because masculinity seems to be policed even more than femininity in pre-pubescent children.

Now, I don't think in the mind of a tiny child it is a great leap to go from 'I am not a real boy' to 'I must be a girl', especially if some of the remarks passed are of the 'Man up! You're a big boy now, big boys don't cry' and 'Don't be such a girl!' type.

We all know how painful it is for a child to feel they can never live up to their parents' expectations. I find it a lot easier to believe that people with gender dysphoria are responding to experiences like this than that they were 'born in the wrong body' or have the wrong brain for their sex.

Flattery?

What does that have to do with anything?

My observation is that men and women both like to be complimented. Whether it's about something they;ve done, or about their style.

When I say to a man at work "Love the tie - you're looking very chipper today" they look dead chuffed.

This is gender - men and women have a range of personalities and who doesn't like a compliment? But "liking flattery" is coded feminine (I've never heard that one before TBH) and so asking this question simply finds out how much a person meets the stereotype that is given to women (even though men like compliments too). So, what does it mean, at all?

Like the leg shaving stuff. As other posters have said, WTF does that have to do with being female? It is to do with femininty, as dictated by society, in this country at this point in time. Women are not driven by some kind of internal drive to remove body hair. The idea that women who do not shave their legs are dirty is just appalling. And what ages? Is this person disgusted by an 85 year old who does not shave her legs?

MB explains how theit programme came about:
"I had decided to have facial feminisation surgery which was something I'd wanted for seven years. So, I went to my management and said, I have this idea: I want to get facial feminisation surgery and I want to film it and I want to have it as the beginning of a documentary and then talk about the real things that transgender people encounter, because I know that a lot of it is about surgery and there’s that interest,"

www.vogue.co.uk/article/munroe-bergdorf-interview-2018

Programs about people having plastic surgery are quite common and popular.

Like the leg shaving stuff. As other posters have said, WTF does that have to do with being female?

Jessica Eaton, Doctoral Researcher in Forensic Psychology's latest article, "Beat the pussy up’ – the way we talk about sex with women"
discusses the violent language to discuss sex, sexual violence and porn' will I'm sure be discussed in FWR but with regards female hair removal, it seems to me very relevant here too.

In the section discussing what professionals working with children and young people can to she describes her experience of running workshops:
"you will be talking to a large majority that have not only watched porn but have been significantly influenced by it. Seriously, I’ve taught teenage girls who have told me that they thought that having pubic hair was disgusting and weird because none of the women in porn have any."

victimfocus.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/beat-the-pussy-up-the-way-we-talk-about-sex-with-women/

Link to thread discussing article above:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3253264-Very-good-article-by-Jessica-Eaton-about-language-used-to-describe-sex

cf James Kirkup's recent Spectator article which discusses the award given to Playboy at recent LGBT+ awards:

"At last week’s LGBT Awards – and I promise I am not making this up – one of the organisations honoured for its support of the LGBT agenda was Playboy. Yes, that Playboy. The reason given for that award was that Playboy recently put a transgender woman (i.e. someone who was born male) on its cover for the first time. To some lesbians, honouring Playboy is more than a little hard to stomach because it is part of an industry that sells pornographic images of lesbian sex as an entertainment for straight men. And the fact that the LGBT Awards appears to have decided that Playboy’s embrace of transwomen is more important than lesbians’ concerns about Playboy’s porn highlights a broader issue here. Some lesbians are concerned that organisations they expect to speak and fight for them and their interests are instead focussing time and effort on speaking and fighting for transwomen."

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-silencing-of-the-lesbians/

So it would seem the goal is to look like Pamela Anderson or Jordan? What happened or feminism?

Posting for a friend who's not a member of MN but has been reading the thread.

*"I had an brain MRI at a hospital not 20 miles from Aachen (where MB went) to try and identify 'different' brain structures/activity wrt a mental health diagnosis. I lay inside the MRI scanner and was shown a variety of images (running the gauntlet from pleasant to downright disturbing).

At no point was I asked about my feels - this was purely a "what is her brain doing?" and I had to click a button to indicate Yes/No in terms of "do I like this image?".

FWIW the tests were jointly run by this hospital and one in Manhattan and the results across all test subjects were inconclusive wrt there being definitive differences between healthy brain and mental brain"*

In a rational world that much cosmetic surgery would be viewed as a clear sign of mental illness.
In this world it is only considered a clear sign of mental illness when females have cosmetic surgery.
This is from 2012, sciencenordic.com/mental-health-problems-worsen-cosmetic-surgery

current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3253452-someone-leaked-the-actual-interview-between-venice-and-munroe?pg=1