Moral Maze - Radio 4 8pm 19 Feb - Transcript

[pombear]

I'm looking at Pencils but she shouldn't have to take the transcription-duty always so thought I'd kick it off. For those who would like a transcript - here's the first part.

MB: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. How bewildering old fashioned, perhaps worse that sounds at a time when a time when a BBC Schools video tells 9 year olds that it’s really really exciting that there are a 100 genders if not more now. Gender is the new social battlefield. Where minorities who see themselves, with some justification, as having been marginalised and discriminated against, not only fighting the normative majority, but increasingly each other. Two of the three labourship candidate have waded into this increasingly venomous cultural civil war. They’ve pledged themselves to a transgender manifesto that labels named womens and gay rights organisations trans-exclusionary hate groups. The manifesto insists that transwomen are women and trans men are men. Their refusal to accept this fundamental aspect of their perceived identity, or even attempts to discuss it are explicitly, or implicitly, regarded as hateful, bigotry. In this case, meriting expulsion from the party.

The main women’s group involved says it’s only concerned with protecting hard-won women’s rights, particularly women’s changing rooms, refuges, prisons, which could, and in many cases are, open to male-bodied people. Some, even, with records of male sexual offences.
There are other issues for those who do want to debate the moral implications of gender self-identification
Can biology be a matter of opinion?
Is it morally right, or even scientifically tenable to make an absolute distinction between sex and gender?
The one, objective, assigned at birth. The other entirely a matter of feelings and individual self-perception.
Where does masculinity end and femininity begin? What constitutes transphobia?
Most worrying, for many, what’s behind the increase in sometimes very young children, mostly girls, mostly identifying as gay boys, who say they want to change gender. And how should they be treated?

You are a pombear. I tried to log on to the beeb but had a conniption when it asked me my gender couldn't remember my password. Transcript much appreciated.

MB: Our panel tonight, Anne Mcelvoy, Senior Editor of the Economist, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Inter-religious studies at Edinburgh University, and, new to the panel, the Reverend Canon Rachel Mann, - more to the point, in this context, a transwoman. Just to be clear – raised as a boy?

RM: Absolutely.

MB: Do you regard those who think you are not a real woman as bigoted?

RM: Bigoted is not a word I would use. Let’s just say, I would hope with a little more conversation and information they might be a little more generous.

MB: Anne McElvoy?

AM: Such a fascinating and sometimes troubling subject which we do tend to approach with a bit of trepidation and I’m very pleased we’re talking about it on the show tonight because it’s an area where liberal and progressive rights often come into conflict with each other around something, gender, in this case which is already difficult to define. And sometimes slippery. So we also have a bit of an exploratory programme I think, as well as a maze before us.

MB: Mona Siddiqui?

MS: I think words like bigoted don’t actually open any discussion, they close discussion. So let’s try and move away from that. This is a very sensitive and very topical, erm subject, and I think that, erm, it’s great that the maze is actually doing this.

MB: Michael Portillo?

MP: Erm, a transwoman, Debbie Hayton, recently wrote, I believe transwomen are male and women are female. Male women are not female people and therefore transwomen are not women. I think that’s my starting point, but I’m all ears.

MB:Panel thanks very much indeed. Now, our first witness is Torr Robinson, who’s chair of the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights who drew up this manifesto.

You describe yourself as gender non conforming. Does that mean you’re transitioning out of one gender but not actually, but not yet, into another?

TR: Well, the term I use for myself is non-binary.

MB: Oh, right.

TR: But yes, that’s I suppose essentially correct, yes.

MB: OK. Michael Portillo?

MP: is a transwoman a woman?

TR: Yes

MP: And that must mean that you know what a woman is? Can you define a woman for us?

TR: Can you define a woman?

MP: Erm, yes, I think I can. I mean, I’m not a medic, medically qualified but I would talk about sexual organs and so on. yes, I think I can. How do you define a woman?

TR: I would define a woman erm, based on. If somebody lives as a woman, if someone actually experiences of a woman, then I think that is the most accurate starting point for saying they are in fact a woman.

MP: So I mean really, that trumps biology?

TR: Well, how do you, what does biology mean in this context. I mean, sex is a very complicated thing. There’s multiple different aspects of sex and they aren’t always in simple alignment. There’s, there’s not just two sort of simple, erm, always aligned forms of, of er, sexual configuration. But these sexual, sexual erm, characteristics can be changed, and they do indeed change.

MP: You might find you’ve lost quite a lot of people because I think, for the majority of people the question ‘can you define a man’ or ‘can you define a woman’ is absurd because they think, of course, they can. So isn’t that a problem, that you you may have well lost half the audience by now…

TR: I think, I think it’s a problem the more of the issue is that if you have a definition here that you’ve given to me which excludes the experiences of a significant proportion of people . If that’s the case, then the definition that you’ve given is an academic one, it’s not fit for purpose in reality. Sorry, breaking into transcribing mode – WTF!!!

MP: And you really believe, do you, that people should be left freely to define their own gender, erm, as a matter of law, or you don’t think they should be policed in any way?

TR: No, not at all. I think it’s frankly quite an absurd proposition that the state should decide what gender you are. Gender is a relatively personal relationship and it has a social dimension to it erm, but it’s, it’s a personal thing. I think it’s absurd to say the state should be investigating people, people’s bodies and minds and behaviours for this.

MP: truly the mind you’re worried about is it? But do you see no dangers in this? Do you not think, for example, bad men might be inclined to define themselves as women in the way that, in the past, teaching, and the priesthood, have attracted paedophiles?

TR: I think firstly, it’s, erm, I think it’s deeply prejudicial to, to, to compare trans people to paedophiles. Erm.

MP: no, no I wasn’t I was saying that bad people...under your, under your proposals, people can define their gender without any policing whatsoever. I’ve just asked you to consider the practical consequences of that. Could, could that not attract bad people to define themselves as women. Remember that you’re not policing it in any way at all.

TR: I think that you have, in the spaces in which this, this is talked about, you already have protocols in place to deal with these things . breaking transcript to shout – yes, no males in female spaces! in places like prisons. Or indeed women’s refuges. If someone goes into a space like that and behaves in, or acts in a way that is in some way, erm, harmful, then there should be protocols in place already Oh FFS to deal with those things. Erm, I don’t, I don’t think it’s really and furthermore if a man seeks to do harm to women they’ll, they will probably do so without bothering to go through the process of a transition.

I had a feeling TR would go down this road

(Is TR “male” or “female” non-binary btw? I didn’t listen)

Thank you

Thank you . Torr's gibberish is even more gibberful when written down. Why the hell are we even having to discuss this cobblers? Barking.

AM: Is the most difficult part of the self-identification argument not so much about people being able to live and choose to live how they feel they should be living, that their existence, as you put it yourself that they feel that they are, entitled to live and be respected for, but where that then leads is to a clash of rights which we alluded to at the top of the programme, and a very obvious one is in women-only spaces which is a set of rights which is enshrined in law. It’s a rights-based argument, going back centuries about women being [?] gets more complicated when self-identification enters the picture.

TR: There is two points to make here. Firstly, in British law as it stand there is not in fact a distinction between your legal sex and your legal gender. If you have a Gender Recognition Certificate you are regarded as the sex that it deems you to be. Erm, so, in this regard, I think the question of a conflict between trans peoples rights and women’s rights are just isn’t in plain reality.

Erm, furthermore in practice, self-identification is used in many other countries without the, the consequences I think people imagine quite wrongly it would happen erm,. And furthermore, I think that what, what this…

AM: It depends how many rights follow from it…and where they clash with other people’s perceived rights.

TR: Well,

AM: In any country…

TR: I think, eh hm, well firstly, the, the real question here is do transwomen’s rights conflict with cis women’s rights. And I think there’s no basis for that.

MS?: Well a lot of people disagree with you, including some groups of women’s alliances, and other groups where you’ve been very vocal against them and refer to them as hate groups. Now, they do disagree with you, they have a though-through position. You have your thought-through position – why go into this stance of flinging about accusations of hate, of hatred, of transphobia. Not simply saying ‘you don’t understand me and I want you to listen to me and change your mind’. Why go into this quite extreme position?

TR: I think it’s right to describe any organisation which was founded for the purpose of, and exists for the purpose of, limiting the rights of a marginalised group as, as a bigoted one.

MS: But it is the rights of an existing group, who also feel themselves to be marginalised, that is the clash of rights.

TR: That. So that assumes that, erm, these groups actually do represent cis women. I don’t think that’s actually the case, to be honest. These are, these are quite small groups which don’t represent the majority of people’s opinion. Erm, and ultimately it would be quite absurd if they did because trans people are, we’re a significant…

MS?: Trans people have different views to yours as well. So we can just assume all our coalitions are just a little bit ragged at the edges. Is that right, I mean, would you?

TR: I mean, we can but, I do think it matters, if you’re speaking for a broad swathe of the majority.

MS: Once you’ve got so sectarian, you end up in a position where you have an argument with some radical feminists, with liberals, with centralists, so you start out as a broad progressive coalition. Do you not worry that it narrows in and becomes a bit of a, sort of, a sectarian identity politics argument?

TR: No, because I think the, erm. Firstly, the concerns, the issues, the material issues trans people have are shared with many other people. The biggest issues we have are the fact that we are, that, in some areas, the waiting time for trans healthcare is up to four years, and that’s because of NHS underfunding. We have a massive crisis of homelessness, a massive crisis of unemployment in our community. A massive mental health crisis because of the effects of transphobia and all these problems. These are issues that are shared with the working class, and with many other groups. I don’t think this is a sectarian concern. I think, furthermore, the fact that we’ve shown there is a broad base of support within the Labour Party and amongst the Labour leadership contenders shows this isn’t a fringe, sort of concern, this is something that matters.

There endeth Torr Robinson's submission to the witchhunt!

Up to my ears in it until Friday but happy to jump in and help if there's anything left to transcribe by then.

I think a full transcript would be incredibly enlightening and useful.

Jane Clare Jones analysed Torr Robinson's article, 'For Trans Liberation' prior to R4 The Moral Maze

concludes:
"At this point, as we’ve seen playing out over the last week, the whole thing collapses into pure totalitarianism. There’s all the fluffy Maoist talk about developing “education for the rank-and-file” in order to produce “awareness and affinity towards our movement (p.6)” (and what, pray tell, will happen to those of us who don’t ‘respond to education’???) I have to say, this scares the absolute crap out of me. Not because I think they’re really going to cart us all off to a re-education camp (although I’d like to see them try to explain the Genderbread Person while we pepper them with questions about why they’re forcing this sexist bullshit down our throats and whether they’ve considered the analogues between the transcendence of gendered souls and The Resurrection). But because I want to know what has happened to the brains of our young people that they think this kind of wanton authoritarianism is even remotely acceptable in a democracy. And I want to know why, after the most disastrous election in nearly two generations, they think this was a good moment to get the Labour Party to engage in gratuitous acts of self-immolation in full public view. Listen Torr, we are not going to let you bully us into complying with our own political annihilation. If you have the actual brass neck to start waxing on about the ‘arc of justice’ you need to understand this. Justice was never achieved by refusing recognition to any group of persons and their interests. It was never achieved by dehumanizing them as a faceless pathogenic force. And it was never ever achieved by fantasising about exiling and erasing them, by imagining you can purify yourself of an evil you have yourself constructed. LOOK US IN THE FACE TORR. WE ARE WOMEN. WE ARE PEOPLE. AND YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK TO US."

janeclarejones.com/2020/02/19/for-trans-liberation/

Next up, the awesome Kiri Tunks
(I realised after I'd transcribed I wasn't paying attention to the interviewee, mostly RM, I think but jump in and correct me if I got it wrong!)

MB: Our next witness is Kiri Tunks, the cofounder of Women’s Place UK. A group that campaigns they say for the principle of women’s-only spaces to be upheld and, where necessary, extended.
Erm, So Labour’s transgender manifesto, and by extension, two out of three of the leadership candidates for the Labour Party, reckon youre a hate group

KT: Well, we’re clearly not a hate group. We’re a group that’s been set up to campaign for women’s rights as they already exist in law and, erm, that’s all we’ve been set up to do. The other think we were set up to do was to make sure that women’s voices were heard in a consultation about a law change that we think would have affected them. Or will affect them.

MB: Mona Siddiqui?

MS: Kiri, what’s your biggest fear that you feel the need to protect women’s spaces?

KT: Well, I think what’s been interesting about this campaign is that during the course of making sure women’s voices were heard during the GRA was that actually, of the paucity of women’s rights in this country, and the rights we thought we had won actually are really under threat or don’t exist in the way we thought, or were confident about the rights we had. But we have found out that a lot of women don’t feel that they have those rights in reality.

RM?:: But, but specifically women don’t have lots of rights in all kinds of areas, but I’m talking about the specific rights you want way from transwomen Why do you need to protect that space? What’s your biggest fear against them?

KT: Well, because women’s oppression is real, and women’s oppression is recognised in law. That’s why the Equality Law, erm, it’s, it’s, there are provisions to make sure that women can ameliorate the, the discrimination, the oppression they face. So, the single sex exemptions exist to enable women to create safe spaces, to recover from trauma, from male violence, and so on. So those are the things we are concerned about. That if you have a self-ID situation you start to lose that boundary. If you can’t define what a woman is, how can you defend what a woman’s rights…

RM?: That’s true, but that’s, where’s the evidence to show. I mean most violence against women are by heterosexual men, not by transwomen. There’s no real evidence to show that transwomen are a real threat to women breaking transcribing – really Rachel, you ain’t looked have you! or women’s spaces, is there?

KT: Well, that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying…

RM: That’s what you’re trying to protect…

KT: Well, no, what we’re saying is that if you have a law which allows for self-identification, first of all, you say that the class of being a woman doesn’t matter any more and that anybody can identify as being a woman. Therefore, how can you uphold the boundaries that the law has put in place for women to protect themselves. So, in answer to your question about male violence, we know that the violence and abuse that women face, the majority of that comes from men. Yep.

RM?: Yep, that’s my point.

KT: Not all men. Not all men, but men so therefore those boundaries are in place. There’s no evidence that transwomen have a different pattern of criminality so for us it’s a simple …

RM: I suppose…

KT:…consideration of saying ‘we can’t tell’ so..

RM?: so, so a lot of this is, you’re protecting, you’re almost pre-empting something that might not ever happen. Because you are…Let me get to this. Because you are focused on protecting your rights, hard won rights, I acknowledge. But what about those rights of those people who are already feeling very vulnerable and feel they have no place where they can call home.

KT: Well, that’s wrong, isnt’ it. That’s wrong. We absolutely want trans people to have

RM: Yeah, but how…

KT: Well I’m not sure what circle you’re asking me to square. Women have the right to have sex, single-sex exemptions where they can be just women on their own. And we think the way to deal with threats to other groups is to make sure those groups have spaces that they feel safe in.

RM: So where would transwomen go then?

KT: Well we would…

RM: Let’s just say there are two rooms. One for men, and one for women. Whether it’s a toilet or whatever. And there are trans, transmen and transwomen. Where would they belong?

KT: That’s a very limited approach That is saying that we have to organise ourselves like that. I don’t want us to organise ourselves like that. We want to organise society in a way that meets everybody’s needs.

MB: Rachel Mann?

RM: Kiri, I just want to take this back a step. You’re on the record as saying ‘why is it always women who are expected to be nice and accommodate men’s demands’ Given that it’s evident that large numbers of women, the main LGBT groups, younger people, indeed the vast majority of people aren’t up in arms about transpeople, who is exactly covered by this term ‘woman’. In your view.

KT: So, the law is quite clear on what a woman is. In the Equality Act there are 9 protected characteristics, and sex is one of those. Another protected characteristic is gender reassignment. So the law makes a distinction between women, biological women, and transwomen. Erm, and I think that that is the thing that women are wanting to protect. They want to uphold the political and social protections they have to ameliorate their oppression.

RM: But don’t you think you have a rather reductionist idea of what a woman is? Biological? I mean, looking at you now, and I’m not judging you by genetic criteria, I’m actually just encountering you as a woman, a I hope you’re encountering me as a woman

KT: I’m glad you’re not judging me. I mean I, you know, the, the, the question is how women, whether women can organise for their own rights and so on, OK, and that’s that is upheld in law. We have the single-sex exemptions that allow us to do that. I think that, that if we start saying if anyone can self-identify as a woman, then we start removing the boundaries that women want that help them make. Make sense of their lives, and protect themselves from the oppressions that they face.

RM: So is the implication of your position that those who support transwomen, transpeople in their self-identification, which include many non trans women, non trans-lesbians, lgb people, lgbt people, that they’re actually kind of dupes, that they’ve bought into something ridiculous…

KT: I don’t think that. We don’t have that opinion that we think people are ridiculous. What we think is that the, this issue hasn’t been properly explored. We think many people haven’t fully considered the impact of this change to the law and that, you say ‘many people’, ‘the majority’, I don’t know what you’re basing that on, I don’t know what your evidence base is for that. So I think we actually don’t know what people think. I think the vast majority of the public, not on social media, are maybe not fully informed of all the arguments and that’s what Women’s Place has always asked for.
It’s always asked for respectful polite debate and we’ve been shut down and harassed for trying to get it.

RM: And very finally, the government are on record at saying that that if self-ID is permitted, the, there will be no change to the provision of women-only spaces and services under the Equality Act 2010. So actually, to what extent is your campaign a surrogate for something else, a proxy for?

KT: Well, first of all, we’re not naïve enough to believe what politicians tells us. Secondly. We know that there are a huge number of lobbying groups who are calling for an end to single-sex exemptions. The removal of them. For example, Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Scottish Trans Alliance, are all calling for the removal of the single-sex exemptions. So it’s not a surrogate campaign. It’s a real campaign. Women are very worried about it. And we are going to fight to keep those rights.

Thanks for transcribing pombear only omission is the incessant sighing when they can’t answer the question. Thank you Kiri Glinner and Michael .

Thank you so much for transcribing. Really rather awesome of you.

Brilliant, thanks Pom!

Brilliant transcribing, the actual thing was too infuriating to listen to!
It really is like arguing with a moody toddler.

Portillo: Can you define a woman?
Robinson: Can YOU define a woman?

They have all these (cringey) comments they think are oh-so-clever rebuttals, when actually it's them with the jar of chocolate spread in their hand and smeared across their face saying the dog made them do it.

Thanks, pom. It makes for very interesting reading.

I listened to this last night.

They were all incoherent. The agression towards kiri was awful. I have to say she did brilliantly. Everyone was actively trying for some kind of "gotcha" she didnt rise to it. She remained calm and factual.

These debates on radio are great they cant rely on their clothes and mannerisms to appear threatening and oppressed. They all just sound like, well, erm,

Thanks. I'd have like to have seen the potential of harm to minors raised a bit more. But well done Kirri and Michael, they did well.

Huge thanks for the transcript Pombear. I often listen to the Moral Maze but could not listen last night. I’ll listen on Sounds or perhaps to the repeat on Saturday night but it’s going to be much easier not to miss anything with the transcript. Plus it will only be on Sounds for 28 days I think so this is a permanent record.

Thank you so much pombear. Hugely grateful as I can't listen at the mo

Part 2 tonight. I'll try to get the IDs right this time!

Thank you for the transcript Pom. Hoping to listen to the programme on the train later but this is very useful.