Nicola Williams was FANTASTIC on R4 just now!

[BabyItsAWildWorld]

Fiesty, not backing down and made the core points despite attempts to distract,.

The point that biological facts are can't be stated should have made a few listeners stop and go WTF??

Thank you Nicola you are doing an amazing job.

I actaully did a 'Yes!!' and arm punch when she had the last word and said 'we have to be able to say that trans women are male.' (or something along those lines).

I caught the end of it and it sounded a bit of a bun fight. She must have been up against it. I will listen again to the whole thing.

I thought it was a bit of a mess to be honest. She did get in some good points but the discussion degenerated and became a bit shouty.

There was a bit of talking over, but Nic held her ground and the female voice didn't get sidelined as has so often happened before when the trans opinion dominates with the transphobic argument.

I thought she was determined to make her points and not back down.

I think Nic is becoming media savvy and has realised she has 3 mins to get the points in that make the general pubic go WTF?

No time for establishing how nice and civil you are, no time to politely allow the trans advocate to make lots of irrelevant points which derail and dominate.

Yes ended up a bit talking over, but she still sounded calm and in those few minutes got some great points in (girl guides, prisoners, penises, womens' safety, privacy, all in 3 mins!) with an excellent last word.

I thought the most striking point that was clearly put across was about the Girl Guides. I guess the idea of a male sharing a tent with girls will be news to many Today listeners.

Would be interesting if they could get GG on for a grilling...

It was a bit shouty at times but actually I think that reflected Nicola not allowing herself to be talked over. I thought it was good-clear and concise. Is it FPFW or WPUK who have the list of aims? I can’t remember but I am wondering if stating a summary of those would be helpful at getting the point across?

If there is another interview opportunity, (if not a derail) it would be good to mention Twitter’s hate speech policy where sex is not mentioned and some utterly vile sexist/misogynistic abuse is allowed to stand. This combined with the targetted reporting and suspensions stacks the deck for gender critical women & makes Twitter a particularly hostile platform for debate. Also, the point people made about their IP addresses being blocked by Twitter, so that they can’t even access the platform once they’ve been excluded - this seems problematic from a democratic point of view & also means former users can’t see if they are being publically defamed post-exclusion.

Re the IP blocking, it also means GC are completely excluded from even following the debate. It’s rather chilling.

I thought it was disappointing because the non-binary gaslighter framed it as "women are being banned for bullying and harassment not just stating facts" with a smug "no this type of targeted harassment should not be tolerated and that's what Twitter is addressing"...

The hypocrisy of how Tweets like "die in a fire you terf scum" remain but "this person is a man" leads to a suspension was not covered. TRAs engage in far more abuse towards women but are not banned.

I'm glad Nic got to mention girl guides and prisons and the importance of being able to say TW are men at the end.

The nob-binary gaslighter also threw in "no women will be effected by changes to the GRA" which is just a lie.

The presenter kept saying "the penis is a sex organ" as an example given for hate speech... missing out male. They're so confused by it all!

The goal isn't to get in as many talking points as possible. It's to make an impact with the audience. In this case, the audience isn't us, we have already reached our views based on our reading/watching/listening. The audience is people who don't know about this issue they will stop listening to any side that comes across as shouty.

It's not fair, and I ground my teeth at Nicola's assertions being tackled but everything said by the non-binary person being taken at face value, and at the fact that Mishal Husain was keen to shut down the Girl Guides point (I presume because there was no one from that organisation to respond), but there it is.

Thanks for the heads up @BabyItsAWildWorld

Now available on Listen Again, starts 2:38: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b42pvc

I wonder how many people listening wil have understood the girl guides issue if they didn't already know.

I'd have liked Nic to have had a list of examples of things people have tweeted and been banned vs a list of things people have tweeted and not been banned. That's what the interviewer wanted, knowing it would drive outrage in the listeners. I was left feeling slightly like maybe the banned people were harrassing which was why Nic couldn't reel off a list of examples, even though I know it is not true.

Nevertheless there is only so much you can do in 3 minutes and I reckon this will have helped raose the profile. It was nice to hear a presenter who was not starting from the position of "shut up you nasty transphobes.", good to see the BBC aren't running scared from actually discussing the issue any more.

I think the issue of people being banned for saying that women don't have penises could draw lots of attention. A bit like Man Friday. It is something easy to understand, worthy of outrage and can make a good headline.

Maybe some of you guys who have discovered you've been banned (or blocked by public figures) should flood other sites with examples of the tweet you made that got you banned.

Maybe one of you could start a thread on MN to gather all the examples to make it easier for the journalists. Sort of a twitter vs feminists Me Too.

The thing that struck me was the whingily robotic voice of the trans spokesperson.

I have a special contempt for Creasy after she dismissed the reports of a girl being told off for objecting to a male student "but I'm a girl" wanking in the female changing room.

In my efforts to raise awareness IRL, I have found the guiding issue of mixed sex sleeping arrangements is the one people latch onto and understand the most and most quickly. You're saying the guides won't tell me if my kid is sharing a tent with someone who could get her pregnant? What the FUCK? Hoi, so-and-so! Come here and listen to THIS. I can't believe my fucking ears.

I only caught the end of it, but frankly I’m just relieved that we are hearing more women’s voices about this topic.

It sounded shouty but it was clear that was because Nicola was being talked over as the presenter had to ask the other person to let her speak. I can’t quite express why, but this felt good as I’ve previously heard presenters allowing women to be shouted over.

Keep it up, it is an inspiration to see so many elequent women willing to speak publicly about this!

Also, apologies for the sideline, but if your IP is blocked by twitter (mine isn’t as I don’t use Twitter) can’t you use an IP blocker/hider so you can at least see what is still being written even if you can’t post?

It contained enough things to get people googling. Excellent.

I was pleased that the non-binary person mentioned the trans teenager being discussed by twitter users. People will search, will find Lila Perry and will be gobsmacked. Same if they find discussions of the Mermaid's founder's son. It may well peak trans people who were on the fence.

Do they have voice coaching to have a velvety whispy voice?

Nic was good - but so was the other one. To the uninitiated, they both sounded like they had valid points to make - obv I'm firmly on the side of Nic.

The problem we have here is it's such a massive topic, and it just can't be covered during a 3 minute R4 interview, or a twitter thread.

Fact is, Fair Play For Women were (temporarily) banned for twitter - but my feeling was Fair Play never engaged in any abuse or harassment - but were all about the women's and girl's rights to talk about female biology and women's issues, and name them as such.

They posted factual stuff, as Nic said, like "a penis is male", "transwomen are male", etc - and Twitter, and other organisations is now defining that as hate speech. And banning users.

We're now at the point that calling abortion a women's issue is considered transphobic - and we really need to resist this. Only women have abortions - we must be able to talk about female biology as a women's issue.

LM not happy. Again. Because males have a right to sleep in a tent with females without parents knowing, so that they can 'fit in'

Have to laugh though, LM announces that taking a break from twitter every two weeks, is off it for 36 hours max, then is back on. Every flounce is met with a 'you poor gorgeous thing'.

Trans girls = transitioning teenage boys with intact penises.

You can't just throw out sex-segregation on residential trips over somebody's gender feeling. It goes against all current safeguarding guidelines. A penis is a male body part.

It is so grim a TRA is complaining about teenage boys not being able to sleep in the same area as girls at girl guiding. Imagine being that shitty that you demonise girls who just want to be safe.

I also wonder whether it is worth focussing on some the accusations made by TRAs which seem to go unchallenged.

Language matters and for example LM in the above tweet uses 'demonise'. Last night on R4 Jane Fae described Amy Desir as a bully.

Nic Williams is described by an 'Advocacy Director @libertyhq. Former Obama DOJ Civil Rights counsel and @ACLU lawyer ' as "a transphobe" who has been allowed to "spew hateful nonsense" following the R4 interview.

Mumsnet , WPUK etc have regularly been described as like 'Nazis, KKK etc' , 'nest of vipers' etc