BBC Reply to complaint about Ben Hunte 'analysis' or article about trans atheletes

[LiterallyProblematic]

Thanks for getting in touch with us regarding an article on the BBC Sport website titled "Trans female athletes must lower testosterone levels, IAAF rules."

I understand you feel our LGBT correspondent Ben Hunte is political biased in favour of transgender issues.

Firstly, I’m sorry about the delay in getting back to you. I know people appreciate a prompt response and unfortunately we’ve taken longer to reply than usual – please accept our apologies.

All staff working for BBC News, though clearly entitled to hold personal opinions and beliefs, are acutely aware that their views should never in any way influence their work for the BBC, nor should they be apparent to our audience. It is important to recognise however that a fundamental part of the role of our correspondents is to offer analysis, using their experience and knowledge, but this is not indicative of bias.

Furthermore, we feel in this instance using the term 'cisgender' is appropriate as it accurately differentiates between the transgender athletes in the article.

Nevertheless, we do value your feedback about the article. All complaints are sent to senior management and in this case the BBC Sport team every morning, and I included your points in our overnight report of audience feedback.

These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly.

Thanks once again for getting in touch with us.

Kind regards

This is the article but I'm not sure how to clicky link. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/50049449

Following Michelleoftheresistance's post, if there is a subset of women who do not consider themselves to have a gender identity then it follows that applying the label cis-gender to all women means that those in the subset have been mis-gendered.

I thought all progressive media outlets in the UK would do anything rather than mis-gender people. Seems this doesn't apply in relation to certain groups.

Some good posts here - just sorry I didn't get chance to read the censored post in full.

When I went back to The Independent and said they'd misgendered the women from Get the L Out, who marched at Pride 2018, the paper still stuck by its definition. The editor came back with a response that was even more befuddled than the original:

we do not consider "cisgender" to be derogatory, but rather simply a description of people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

I see the disputed guidelines are still in force to perpetuate the lie that women are oppressors and shouldn't be allowed to clearly and accurately describe the means and methods of their oppression and those who are oppressing, even after TalkingInTheDark's extremely clear explanation of why this is abusive. That long, detailed, tricky conversation MNHQ are having in the back room about whether or not to stop pretending women are oppressing trans people born male seems to be taking ever such a long time, while still enacting these strictures.

Yes that's a good point that the word cisgender actually misgenders all of us, because most of us don't identify with gender at all, and are in fact gender abolitionists. We are women because we are female and that is all.

It feels like an oppressive term to me, something that is placed upon us that we neither want nor relate to.

1. Cisgender is derogatory indeed. Forcing the prefix 'cis' (upon women in that case) is a hostile takeover of language that amounts to a denial of the existence of natal females. The female sex has been appropriated without consent.

2. How do you know if people identify with their birth sex? What does that even mean? How does the editor know what those females identify as? If they assume that's female, how did they draw that conclusion?

3. Nobody is assigned sex (at least they didn't say gender) at birth, it is observed.

1) Cisgender is derogatory indeed. Forcing the prefix 'cis' (upon women in that case) is a hostile takeover of language that amounts to a denial of the existence of natal females. The female sex has been appropriated without consent.

Absolutely. This sums it up well.

we do not consider "cisgender" to be derogatory, but rather simply a description of people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

This does not make any sense at all, not even by the cis-users' way of thinking.

If 'trans' means people who identify as the opposite sex to the one observed at their birth, and 'cis' means people who identify as the sex observed at their birth, then they are assuming that everyone falls into one of these two camps. They are assuming that everyone fits into the binary - the self-same binary that they are rejecting! What about people whose identity fluctuates? What about people who identify as the opposite sex to the one observed at their birth, but chose to live according to the stereotypes of their observed sex? What about people who identify with the sex observed at their birth, but choose to live according to the stereotypes of the other sex?

What claptrap.

Also I forgot to add, I notice the headline of that BBC article uses the term 'trans female athletes.'

The term 'trans female' to me is a dishonest term, since transwomen by definition are male. Otherwise, they would not describe themselves with the prefix 'trans.' It implies that somehow, males magically become female by some process of identity or belief or surgery, which is scientifically impossible. The whole problem of transwomen in female sport is caused by the fact that they are male-bodied.

I am not a fan of the term transwoman, because I feel it too is dishonest, I much prefer transsexual and another term that describes another group under the trans umbrella that I think I'm not allowed to use here (that was used for decades and was never considered offensive but I think is now considered a banned term). Trans female is even worse. It is just more appropriation of women, the female sex.

Trans female is increasingly being used in sports debate. Completely misleading, and as predicted, colonising female because handmaiden handed over the term woman.

Whenever I read 'trans female', my first thought is that it is a shorthand for - actually I just realised that I cannot state my thought, as it is dangerously close to a banned term.

Try again:

Whenever I read 'trans female', my interpretation is "transman", with a side-order of "they are both recognising biology and respecting the athlete's personal identity." But then the article becomes confusing...it stops making sense...eventually the penny drops - they've made up another term that screws with established meaning, with reality, with our heads. That appropriates women's biology. That lies and deceives YET AGAIN.

Ceriden I've lifted that description of cis from the astute women on MN. It really is spot on.

I love this thread so much. You lot are so Intelligent and smart. How do I save it for future reference? Not entirely used to the ins and outs of MN yet. 😊

Yes, it's deliberate of language to make a certain implication. It implies 'there's a female trapped in this man's body' or 'this man has had surgery so now he's a female' rather than 'a male who plays sport in the female category.'

I also find myself translating their terms in my head JellySlice, because otherwise I feel like I'm allowing myself to be gaslighted. When I first heard the term 'transwoman' I assumed it meant a woman who identified as a man, because that would be an accurate definition. The terms they choose usually flip the actual meaning of a word.

So a 'trans female' = a male
transwoman = man
trans male = female
transman = woman

They've also done a similar thing with sexuality. For example, in their view:

Straight sex = a man and a woman who have sex OR two men who have sex, if one identifies as a woman
(When in fact the second pairing is technically homosexual sex)

Lesbian sex = two women having sex OR a man and a woman having sex as long as the man identifies as a woman
(When in fact the second pairing is straight sex)

I've noticed people new to the debate also have the same difficulty, because you either accept being gaslighted or challenge it and have to constantly translate the words to their true meanings.

Hi @SarahConnorFem, I usually save threads that I want to refer back to in my bookmarks, or occasionally copy and paste really useful posts into word documents. Definitely have a look at the guidelines for posting on this particular board because they are different to other parts of Mumsnet due to this being such a big political issue at the moment and a sensitive topic.

I know it's ridiculous to waste time and energy on trying to untangle the never ending mess of conflicting information, but...

I thought the whole point of 'transwoman' was supposedly that 'woman' was now a 'social category' that included all kinds of women with 'transwomen' then being seen as another kind of women. (yes, yes, I know, massive, massive issues here. But anyway.) It was a stretch but it did make some kind of sense.

Female is a fact, it's a biological fact. You either are or aren't. It can't be recreated or assumed, it just is. This is like it being impossible to be a little bit pregnant, or a little bit crustacean. At this point my brain just goes ping, and says ok, this is now plain ridiculous and it's no longer worth trying to process.

I don't like the word cis, I feel it implies that I have to qualify the way in which I am a woman.

Best thing would be for Martina or Sharron to complain themselves, given the wording of the paragraph is to describe them as “cisgender female”. Just a nonsensical term really.

And Hunte asks how many elite level transgender athletes can you name? Well I can name a few, I can name a few who think they’re elite level, and I can name some who are amateur level, but in every instance these athletes are taking the place from women and girls who have missed out because of these transgender athletes and I’d rather name those women instead, if Hunte is interested (I think we know he’s not).

Michelleoftheresistance

I thought the whole point of 'transwoman' was supposedly that 'woman' was now a 'social category' that included all kinds of women with 'transwomen' then being seen as another kind of women. (yes, yes, I know, massive, massive issues here. But anyway.) It was a stretch but it did make some kind of sense.

This is the difference between a woman’s brain and man’s brain under patriarchy. A woman under patriarchy is raised to think it makes to sense to include the oppressor class – “men” into her oppressed class of women at some level just because the “man” claims he is a “woman”.

Men as class would never think like this, but women of all types – white, black, rich, poor, educated professors to illiterates have been raised as women, who have this type of thinking still in 2019 – and that is why we are here as we are.

Where is the transwoman with a beard and penis who claims to be woman because she is self-sacrificing and willing to go hungry for her wife.

That would be brave and stunning!

Michelleoftheresistance

The way I see it is that a lot of these demands started to be raised at the same time that they adopted the word transwoman, as opposed to transsexual, and other terms under the trans umbrella. I only discovered the debate earlier this year by accident because the left wing media does not cover it, and had no idea that transsexuals and others were using the term transwoman, I'd never heard it before.

The reason I find it problematic is that it kind of insists through language that transsexuals and others are actually a type of woman, as opposed to a type of man.

You wouldn't for example hear people in marches chanting 'transsexuals are women' because they know it wouldn't be convincing, and I think that is why they stopped using the word transsexuals and other related words for groups of gender non conforming men (I'm avoiding using a term because I'm not sure if it's banned or not here).

It's much easier for people to say 'transwomen should have access to women's domestic violence refuges' than 'transsexuals should have access to women's domestic violence refuges' because the latter highlights that they are male whereas the former suggests they are another category of women.

Definitely have a look at the guidelines for posting on this particular board because they are different to other parts of Mumsnet due to this being such a big political issue at the moment and a sensitive topic.

I think that needs rephrasing, Ceridwen:

Definitely have a look at the guidelines for posting on this particular board because they are different to other parts of Mumsnet due to the threats, demands and loud complaints of MRAs.

I think the new frequency of the word 'female' as well as 'woman' is probably simply because women replied to 'TWAW' with ''adult human female". But where you might, at a push, spin the idea that 'woman' has evolved to become some socially constructed group that includes biological males and females (Yes, I know, just saying), once you say 'female', the answer is just there. You either are or aren't, there's no socially constructed concept of female. You can tell if a flipping flower is male or female, it's that straight forward.

I agree JellySlice. I've only been here a few days and am already in trouble. I might not even last the week, I'm trying but I find it difficult to know what I can and can't say sometimes.

It's much easier for people to say 'transwomen should have access to women's domestic violence refuges' than 'transsexuals should have access to women's domestic violence refuges' because the latter highlights that they are male whereas the former suggests they are another category of women.

Which is why the language we use to describe such people is so important.

fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/

The retention of the rights of women really isn't a sensitive topic.

I was revolted by Gove bottling it on that line. When you believe that permitting biologically female people to have rights is 'sensitive' then you've lost it beyond the point of taking a public service post.

It's the way that ordinary words and phrases get exploited that makes me annoyed Ceridwen, definitely not you personally!