Women’s Hour not fit for purpose

[IdaBWells]

So we can’t even have an HOUR a week and hear women speak during that time, male bodied people are centered.

See, this is why we HAVE to have Women’s only party lists, Women only sports, women only spaces because if it is not clearly defined that we mean BIOLOGICAL difference men will find a way (and the current one is to say they ARE in fact women) to erase us and tell us to like it and be nice about it.

We are 50% of the fucking population and through media alone they can think they can bully us by Orwellian thought police into earasing all our boundaries. While heterosexual men can be as laddish as they have ever been and never have to change or budge over for men in dresses, women are told, as ever, that we are the problem and now our privacy and boundaries around our biology is wrong.

I have to have a rant. I remember my mum when she was pushing boundaries and taking on bullying males in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s listening to Women’s Hour and I’m sure it was actually worth listening to?

Why can’t we have ONE televised show that would be on for an hour every week, run by all women that actually talk about what women want to talk about and not be a mouthpiece of the latest male propaganda. We don’t have one. Loose women doesn’t count, I mean meaningful discussion.

Women are now statistically more educated than men in the UK but we are treated as if we have no brains.

We must have a new women’s movement that is based on BIOLOGY and reality.

Eh???

I'm so glad I've seen your post today. Really fed up with being called transphobic, bigot ect for being critical. Had women tell me kids will kill themselves. Comments deleted for saying kids are being led down trans rabbit hole. Start to doubt myself then I see posts like this and I'm reminded I'm not mad or alone in my views. We need to keep going!

It's already pretty insulting that they deign to give women an hour TBH 😬.

They need to re-name themselves as "Front Hole Hour" and be done with it.

Yep totally agree OP. I couldn’t listen to WH today but after reading the commentary today I don’t think I want to. The one hour a week 51% of the population are allowed on the radio as their own is taken over by men! Fucking disgusted and angry.

Wonder why exactly WH were a) so late to the party; b) so badly prepared re basic facts (i.e.the difference between sex & gender / the relationship between the GRA & EA); c) so inept in the selection of contributors, few of whom actually knew what they were talking about; d) so unbalanced in the time given to the views of trans vs GC speakers; e) so unfocused in relation to the advertised topic which was supposed to be the impact on women & girls of self-ID. That was hardly touched on. It was unbearable.

If no other criticism could be levelled at them ( and there were many), it was ill prepared, badly researched, innacurate and unprofessional. Do better BBC

BlackType it is just the stark fact that women struggle - massively - to be heard. You may have missed the fact that on Women’s Hour today an issue that is extremely concerning to thousands of women from all walks of life, especially on the board you are reading, got basically no serious discussion.

It was clear from the hodge podge of people chosen to be on the program, that research had not been done properly before hand because they were bringing in irrelevances. As a result the issue was not covered properly in the coherence and to the depth it needed. As per usual the two sides were not given equal airtime. Those who had the point of view supported by a majority of women on this board were given 25% of the airtime compared to 75% given to the other side, one who of course was a (pre-recorded) representative from Stonewall who basically spoke unhindered for the longest time. That individual called Bex gave factually incorrect information which went unchallenged.

And it was all predicated on this very board yesterday to play out exactly as it did,

BBC editorial pressure.

It wasn't a coincidence that the new BBC Gender & Identity compliance officer (or whatever the title) was interviewed.

I don't believe this is the last that will be said.

Jenni Murray will not have changed her mind about sex, gender etc.

Keep writing to them if you can.

Times March 2017 Jenni Murray: 'Be trans, be proud — but don’t call yourself a “real woman”
Can someone who has lived as a man, with all the privilege that entails, really lay claim to womanhood? It takes more than a sex change and make-up'
(extract)
"The fury that a male-to-female transsexual could be so ignorant of the politics that have preoccupied women for centuries hit me again last year — 16 years after I had met Carol. This time I was speaking to another trans woman, India Willoughby, who had hit the headlines after appearing on the ITV programme Loose Women.

India held firmly to her belief that she was a “real woman”, ignoring the fact that she had spent all of her life before her transition enjoying the privileged position in our society generally accorded to a man. In a discussion about the Dorchester hotel’s demands that its female staff should always wear make-up, have a manicure and wear stockings over shaved legs, she was perfectly happy to go along with such requirements. There wasn’t a hint of understanding that she was simply playing into the stereotype — a man’s idea of what a woman should be.

She described hairy legs on a woman as “dirty”. But hairy legs are not considered dirty in a man. Did she not know that the question of whether a woman should shave her legs or her a rmpits had been a topic of debate among women for an awfully long time? And that to describe a woman who chose not to shave as dirty was insulting and again suggested an ignorance of sexual politics?

Unsurprisingly, my polite and informed line of questioning exposed me to a barrage of criticism on social media. I was a Terf and didn’t understand what Simone de Beauvoir, the author of one of the great feminist tracts, The Second Sex, meant when she wrote: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

As a matter of fact, I have understood perfectly what de Beauvoir meant ever since I read her as a teenage girl. Her subject was that “second sex”. She used the word sex advisedly." (continues)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/be-trans-be-proud-but-dont-call-yourself-a-real-woman-frtld7q5c

Woman's Hour and its presenters still think this is niche. They are really behind the times.

On a really important note, the Gender and Identity correspondent got the job thus summer while knowing very little about the controversy around gender and identity, as we heard today. What does this say?

It says that she was interviewed during the most intensely controversial period for the subject of her remit and was considered suitable despite her naivete.

Despite, or because of? What more suitable target for the soft whispers of TRA lobby groups - someone who knows next to nothing about it?

It's not her fault, really. But the people who appointed her knew what they were doing.

If this board were closed down we would have no other place in the UK to get our thoughts collectively heard. We would all need to go to Peach Yogurts boards but she is based in Europe. That’s why lots of men attack Mumsnet so aggressively. It’s not enough that they literally have the entire media complex to themselves, women mustn’t speak!

I am in recovery for a serious illness but as soon as I am well enough I am organizing a women’s group IRL. I am so frustrated and angry. Especially at being called abusive names for having an opinion, especially for being lumped together with every other woman who thinks as I do and labeled because those against women’s rights just do not see us as the hugely diverse range of individuals we are. This stuff is radicalizing me.

The BBC is a disgrace, basically just a trans propaganda machine

You are right Ida. You have no idea how right you are. This is it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3296433-BBC-Bias-Collecting-Examples-here

So true hermione

I don't know who said transwoman's hour but I will now always think of it as trans woman's hour lol

And TWH staff will all despite Mumsnet for sure, no question

Another very angry and worried woman here. There are a lot more of us than you think .

They never mentioned safeguarding
Safeguarding is the most important aspect of this
JG shut down Dr Nic when she mentioned Karen White
The Rabbi FFS her DD was gnc. Or cool and special
Bex she may have peaked a few people
The new BBC person with her job title that was so fucking woke she didn't know anything
And the Irish journalist had done no research.
There's a bloody thread on here about the problems they're facing in Ireland
And their prisons are segregated by SEX not gender
And breathe

Despise, that should be

There are so many worried women, and Transwoman's Hour thinks we are all silly billies

That was me Charlie.

One of the most important things we should do is not give a stuff about being called a bigot or any other insult that is hurled at us.

I really don't care. Bigot is an easy intellectually sloppy way of shutting down debate. It was done over immigration until even the woke lefties realised they had to engage with the issue. It was done over Brexit and look what happened. Joe (and Josephine) public will only take so much shit before they rebel.

We have to keep pushing.

As for WH - it should be ashamed of itself. Not for giving both sides but for it's utterly and openly unbalanced programme.

Please can people complain to WH and/or Feedback

I was quite surprised when the general view of MN FWR was that Jane Garvey is a feminist and with us. That's a definite no. I would rate the IQ of the average FWR sister as much higher tbh.

Biology - it will always be Transwoman's Hour for me. You nailed it.

Charlie I thought the very same thing. She literally sounded like a rabbit in the headlights and completely out of her depth. We all know that a very experienced, mature, well known, well respected, senior correspondent should have been given that job. Someone of the caliber of Jenni Murray. But this is the way it always works in a misogynistic world, the job was given to an eager to please younger woman who they believe is easy to manipulate and then use her against other women (also they never want to pay for talented older women).

However the journalist in question Mega Mohamed is 30 years old and I’m sure intelligent and well educated. If she took the time to open her mind and

1. Speak to all the women who are leading the women’s organizations that have sprung up in the last couple of years and really listen to them.

2. Read this board daily and keep reading it along with all her other media sources and give some serious consideration to the women’s voices here and why we are organizing around certain issues

There is hope. She is intelligent, left to her own devices I am sure she is a critical thinker. She just needs to balance out her sources and make sure she is truly giving grassroots voices an opportunity to be heard in her thought process. I am not telling her what to think, just to be part of the discussion rather than reacting to it. Women don’t need to brainwash her like the other organizations, we just invite her to think.

After listening to the trans debate WH today, the worrying thing for me was that if this was someone’s introduction to it, it could look like nice fluffy caring people v some “Nasty” feminists.

I’m going to have to listen again with my mum, who has no idea what’s going on. I’ll ask her what she thinks.