Bloody BBC Woman’s hour - oh the poor menz can’t help it!

[NameChange2PostThis]

Just listened to yesterday’s episode with an article ostensibly about the lack of public understanding of toxic masculinity. Ooh this will be interesting I naively thought. Instead of covering the misogynistic violence perpetrated by men on women, the article centred the poor menz and their hurty feelz. The presenter even asked about how the male guest would be celebrating international men’s day.

• I think I have to accept this is another space we’ve lost.

I lost count of the number of times I heard "intersectional" in today's episode. The serial that followed it was a fetish-driven short story that left me feeling distinctly queasy.

I cried when Jenny Murray left. I thought I’d give it a chance in its new incarnation but the last few episodes I’ve bothered with have been infused with woke messages, LGBTQ+, ‘nice’ female stories (promoting musicians, authors etc). And references to gender, not sex.

Maybe I’ve missed the good ones? But this previously regular listener now generally puts on a podcast instead.

Slow handclap for BBC radio 4’s editorial attitudes to women.

Afraid I just tuned out...

The programme is often being engulfed by a wave of fluffiness at the moment NameChange2PostThis.

And even when they have a perfectly nice and clearly talented female artist on ,you get JG hurrumphing away, sounding bored, making puerile comments about how she could never manage to make something like that (no shit sherlock). It's absolutely crap now and I never listen

It's been pretty clear for a long time that this was the way WH would be going, especially after Jenni Murray announced she would be leaving. Jane Garvey is a cool girl, who cut her teeth in the hugely masculine environment that is 5live. That station is also wokety woke woke woke, whilst populated mostly by white, straight men (they certainly get all the plum presenting jobs). Victoria Derbyshire and Shelagh Fogarty (now LBC) are from the same 5Live generation. They may as well call it Handmaid's Hour.

Hoover I thoroughly enjoyed Chamli the artist the other day. Could have done a whole programme on her. The interviewers just seem to get in the way..

I bowed out with Jenni Murray. Just knew I'd be reading this shortly after.

BlueCatRedCat I'm calling it Handmaid's Hour from now on! I can't bear to listen any more.

I just started another thread on wh...
the new presenter (Jessica Creighton) is all about 'people' not women. she let that guy mensplain on gender issues and didn't cut him short. awful.

I decided to only listen to jane garvey episodes and then stop listening when she's left.
shame.

Oh god, are these the actual new presenters? I thought they were just filling in before Emma Barnett took over. They're dire - hesitant and appeasing. No way up to national broadcasting standards, especially on women's issues, it would seem.

I always have the radio on in the background and said out loud this morning (ostensibly to DH working in the next room, but really to myself) 'Woman's Hour is a pile of shite these days.' I know they're working their way through the Power List, which is an important thing in itself but doesn't necessarily make great radio as there are so many women covered there's no depth to any of the interviews. It's all very polite and dull.

Sadly the only thing I remember from yesterday's programme was the drama at 10.45 which was a grotesquely self-absorbed tale of a male author (brilliant, of course) 'finding himself' with a tanned semi-naked hippy on a Greek beach while his soon to be ex-wife was at home in Hackney with the children. There was a line or two about him returning to London and taking the children to the park on a drab winter day, but it was only filler to take us to the happy ending where he returned to Corfu to live on the beach surrounded by semi-naked hippies and write his brilliant novels. Twat. Why the fuck was that picked for the Woman's Hour Drama?

I've been listening to Women's Hour since I was 15. Pass the ....

All the shiny happy people in people's hour land can skip about merrily centering the menz all the way to irrelevance as far as I'm concerned. Where are the grown ups? I used to love that programme.

The serial that followed it was a fetish-driven short story that left me feeling distinctly queasy.

Yes! I thought exactly this. I had to turn it off.

I was listening to that short story in mounting horror until I thought "Is this actually by a woman and it's a piss-take of how some men write/see themselves?" Turns out it is (as far as I can tell), and once I'd worked that out I thought it was good - but I'm not sure it will have been taken that way by most.

Handmaid's Hour :o

Jane Garvey's not woke. That's why she's leaving, I reckon.

I only came in in the middle of the show this morning. The presenter sounded completely disinterested.

Then the serial started. Some bloke flirting with any woman with a pulse, gobsmacked at the Scotswoman saying 'No' to giving him her number. 'Why are you being so difficult, I was just going to asked you out!' 'I know. And I said no.' The only bit of it that made any sense.

what was the book and the author? that sounds like an utterly bizarre choice.

Not a book, Helmetbymidnight. Website describes it as "Five specially commissioned tales revolving around the possibilities of the word spice." This episode is about some wandering gonad with a thing for elbows who drinks vinegar for breakfast and calls himself Spice but he's actually John.

I hope the other specially commissioned tales were better. I usually enjoy the 15-minutes-of-Women's-Hour-that isn't-Women's-Hour.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kfy3

oh jaysus! i tried to look it up and couldnt get anything, and nothing on twitter.
did you catch the authorsname?

Jesus, that sounds dire.

The Recipe for Love
Spice
Episode 4 of 5

A series of five specially-commissioned tales revolving around the possibilities of the word spice.

4/5. The Recipe For Love by Agnieszka Dale. A man called Spice is becoming bored with his life - until a chance encounter changes everything.

Agnieszka Dale is a Polish-born London-based author. Her first collection, Fox Season: And Other Short Stories, was published in October 2017.

I can but wonder at the brief given to the authors of these "five specially commissioned tales revolving around the possibilities of the word spice."

Must have been pretty broad, given that in Dale's story, 'spice' is the name John prefers to be known as - no explanation for this. I wonder if she had something kicking around and thought she'd crowbar a possibility of the word spice in by having John The Total Wanker parade it as his I'm Really Cool Me moniker.

Can you tell I thought it was dire ?

i can't be bothered with WH anymore either and i used to listen to it on bbc sounds in the evening and never missed an episode

podcast recommendations anyone?
I really enjoyed intrigue - tunnel29