BBC Bitsize - Pronouns

[OhHolyJesus]

I mean I'm not surprised but Bitesize is used by schools through the country as a supposed reliable, unbiased source of education material.

mobile.twitter.com/SafeSchools_UK/status/1319025713475952641?fbclid=IwAR0rTBD2j5PKOeTKvYSSX90c4RUDmJDo7Zg613qnDBXNaAncv3J8epYWLSQ

You can complain here:

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint

Or email your MP and cc MPs Safe Schools Alliance on info@safeschoolsallianceuk.

In the tweet thread there are some people already complaining. I'm not a defund the BBC kind of person but I can see why license fee layers are questioning what the BBC are doing with their money (there is a website 'BBC complaints' that's all about biased Brexit coverage).

You don't need to know the posh words and politics to be a victim of patriarchy and a supporter of women's rights. You n don't need a badge or to sign a pledge to act as a feminist. Gender critical is just one slant or take on feminism, not a movement, every woman who fights for women's rights is fighting against gender assumptions

She hasn't changed the Equalities Act and the Women's Minister made it quite clear in the Lords that the government believes in the vast majority of cases trans people have a right to use single sex spaces inline with their aquired gender. She's also made it much cheaper to legally change sex and from the recent comments from the Womens Minister about reducing bureacracy and the paper trail in the system it sounds like it's going to be much easier as well.

The GRA stays the same as it always has been, but a bit cheaper and with some of the application process moved online.

A medical diagnosis is still required.
A medical report about treatment received or planned is still required.
The spousal exit clause remains in place.

I think that's about as good a result as we could have hoped for.

As for the Equality Act, we just need some clarification about how the single sex exemptions should work. If they protect women, there is no reason for the Act to be changed.

The greatest trick GCs played was convincing TRAs all we do is post on Mumsnet

Yup!

This place is the departures board, but the GC trains call at all stations

The greatest trick GCs played was convincing TRAs all we do is post on Mumsnet

And that the vast majority of women are GC once they are aware of the issues...

"All words are made up. That's what words are for."

And there I thought words were for conveying what it was intended should be conveyed, in a way which could be comprehended by the reader/auditor and with as little ambiguity as possible.

(Don't mind me, I've made a life-long study of language at several levels. There are some times I am more astounded by truly weird misapprehensions than at other times, is all. Or as CaraDuneRedux so sensibly expressed it, "fizzywig".)

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots. (Samuel Foote, January 1720 – 21 October 1777, making fun of Charles Macklin)

Me, I'm still here, longing to know from jj about what is "middle class" about a woman prisoner who was raped by a male prisoner taking her case to judicial review.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

"All words are made up. That's what words are for."

And there I thought words were for conveying what it was intended should be conveyed, in a way which could be comprehended by the reader/auditor and with as little ambiguity as possible.

(Don't mind me, I've made a life-long study of language at several levels. There are some times I am more astounded by truly weird misapprehensions than at other times, is all. Or as CaraDuneRedux so sensibly expressed it, "fizzywig".)

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf, to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots. (Samuel Foote, January 1720 – 21 October 1777, making fun of Charles Macklin)

I've heard people making black jokes about "When Orwell wrote 1984, he didn't mean you to use it as an instruction manual", but this is the first time I've heard the suggestion that Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass ought to be taken as a serious treatise on linguistics.

( "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.")

Yes, well communication is overrated anyway, AskingQuestionsAllTheTime so words might as well mean whatever I decide they mean. Or as my favourite childhood poet, Christian Morgenstern says

Scariboo

The Winglewangle phlutters
through widowadowood,
the crimson Fingoor splutters
and scary screaks the Scrood.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

The greatest trick GCs played was convincing TRAs all we do is post on Mumsnet

And that the vast majority of women are GC once they are aware of the issues...

There are posts after posts on here saying people's daughters, sisters, friends and other family member won't even speak to them about it anymore (or at all in some cases) after they have been made aware of the issues, so I'm not convinced the evangelicising is being that effective.

I think you might be in for a long wait, Annie.

I’m sure we can polish our agas,, or ride our ponies and shout at the servants or something, to pass the time while we wait

Ah, well, to redress that, every single woman in my extended family, teens to pensioners, plus a good chunk of my work colleagues think we're bang on.

Always encourage people be more Magdalen, me. Courage calls to courage and those erstwhile misogynists who get a kick out of trying to put the frighteners on women will be disappointed.

Solidarity with women ✊

And posts after posts of women who come on to say...ah, I see clearly now

Good grief , this isn't some playground scrap. Na na na na na

It's real people and their lives at stake

You’re right, midgebabe. I don’t mean to make light of this, at all. This whole thread has gone quite preposterous and I can’t see any way it could be made productive at all.

I am suddenly reminded of the joke about playing chess with a pigeon - "Never play chess with a pigeon. It will crap all over the board then strut around with its chest puffed out thinking it's won."

It reminds me of certain people on this thread who seem to view their opinions as the unassailable authority on absolutely everything.

@ArcheryAnnie

Me, I'm still here, longing to know from jj about what is "middle class" about a woman prisoner who was raped by a male prisoner taking her case to judicial review.

I think basing your entire strategy to save women from extinction on suing people, letter writing and lobbying MPs is frightfully middle class.

A woman prisoner suing the Home Office is clearly not. And whilst I haven't read the exact details of the case from what I've seen I hope she wins.

I'm not aware that was a case that originated from the gender critical movement. I must have missed the crowdfunder.

Perhaps you're just not all that well informed?

SophocliesTheFox I shall order my valet to warm my slippers, if I have to wait around before I retire for the evening.

jj you could make it much easier on my valet and give me an answer. Then I can retire to bed before my feet get cold.

Take pity on my valet, and do, do tell me: what is "middle class" about a woman prisoner who was raped by a male prisoner taking her case to judicial review?

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I am suddenly reminded of the joke about playing chess with a pigeon - "Never play chess with a pigeon. It will crap all over the board then strut around with its chest puffed out thinking it's won."

It reminds me of certain people on this thread who seem to view their opinions as the unassailable authority on absolutely everything.

Ah, you may have spotted some interesting connection my mind had made at a subconscious level.

I can live with being thought of as middle class (even though I come from a working class background and family). It's just another thing male people throw at women to dismiss what they say and as such I ignore along with all the other misogyny. Men never seem to be dismissed as middle class, do they? Even though many TRAs and their supporters are more middle class than me, from what I can see. Luxury belief.

you could make it much easier on my valet and give me an answer.

That's not how jj works. You will probably get an "answer" that is a deflection in the form of a question about something else.

Yeah, crossposted, and I don't think much of that answer. And you clearly know absolutely nothing about campaigning, jj, if you dismiss perfectly ordinary campaigning tactics as "middle-class".

Cara

I find the suggestion that women on here don't actually care about women really shit tbh.

I've been posting on MN for about 14 years, and was in the conversation when this board was set up.

Before this topic came up- which challenges women on a fundamental level (removing our words) there were a host of topics.

It's sad that this one dominates now with so much shit going on around the world for women and girls.

But it has to because it's impossible even to discuss these issues if we can't make ourselves as a group. A group that has experienced serious systematic oppression all over the world for as long as anyone can remember, and numbers half the population.

It's a nasty way to smear women many of whom have been active in women's rights for years.

And to make that suggestion shows more about the person who said it than anything.

Have we had “white feminism” yet? Eyes down for a full house! (Bingo is definitely not middle class)

The problem is that some people don't see women as real people and our oppression as a legitimate cause. Some of the comments, we could be in a 70s snooker club.