Jane Garvey and the Gateway to Feminism

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Anyone else signed up for the Fortunately podcast with Jane Garvey?

This week's has a couple of minutes when her fellow presenter, Fi Glover, goes into a rhapsody about Jane being a feminist and praising her for all the work she's done on Woman's Hour.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/brand:p04x5pd7

It starts from around 8.10 seconds in and Garvey goes a bit weird when a reader praises her for introducing people to feminism. Glover then fetes her for her contribution to feminism, saying that Garvey has taken 'Woman's Hour on to a different place' and that she's been a superb presenter. It runs on to about 10.40.

I'm not sure what to make of it. I had absolutely no doubt that Jenni Murray was a feminist (and a difficult woman, by all accounts) Is Fi Glover suggesting that Garvey represents a different type of feminism — a more modern kind? Has Garvey been hurt by criticism from places like Mumsnet? It sounded pretty personal.

Jane Garvey makes me laugh and I want to like her very much but time and time again I find myself holding back. Is she a liberal feminist, ie not really what we'd call a feminist?

I think she’s terrified of dogshit through the letterbox from TRAs (both literally and metaphorically) and that controls how much she’s willing to say on air.

I expect Jane Garvey is a feminist in much the same way most women are - she'd like equal pay (not a given at the BBC), she has seen how parenthood and divorce create a heavier burden for women than men, she's interested in women and their stories and voices, the times I've heard her discuss trans issues she seems sceptical, I don't for a moment imagine she'd say "people with cervixes" or "menstruators". I'm just not convinced she's a very good interviewer - she nearly always backs away from the really probing questions or covers them in a thousand caveats and get-out clauses first so that her guests won't be made uncomfortable (although that's sometimes what journalists need to do). I'm increasingly impatient with Fortunately which often has whole sections of Fi and Jane either praising each other or sniggering at some piss-poor impression/double entendre/secret meaning - it's become incredibly whimsical and tiresome but, when I've heard them discuss it elsewhere, you'd think they were breaking new ground instead of fronting this rather chummy love-in.

(And I bleeding hate it when she puts on her "suburban man of a certain age" voice to read out one of the tedious emails they've received - cue Fi poleaxed with laughter.)

I have enjoyed bits of Fortunately, but was put off a bit by their reaction to a listeners email suggesting they had been 'fat phobic/fat shaming' in a previous episode. They spectacularly missed the point and brought up Covid as a legitimate reason to be so.

I just find her very annoying. And I suspect she is totes Lib Fem.

everythingcrossed, I'm with you. Started out enjoying Fortunately, now just find it fey and tone-deaf on a lot of things. The readers' emails make me cringe, the vast majority aren't clever or funny.

At her best Garvey is crisp and irreverent and she's made me laugh out loud with her exasperated asides, but the longer Fortunately's gone on the more bored and desperate and placatory they both sound. Garvey sounds like a woman who wants to be anywhere but where she is and the more readers' emails they read out, the more convinced I am that I'm not the right sort of listener. There's nothing of the calibre of comment that you can see here in Feminism FWR every day.

I used to devour every episode of Fortunately. Now I'm just hearing a lot of Fi fawning over Jane and the guests and both of them constantly making disclaimers to demonstrate how middle of the road their opinions are.

I don't know if the show has lost its bite or if it's just that I never noticed before but the constant paddling underwater to stay in the middle lane is disingenuous and placatory.

Can't listen anymore.

She’s got that querulous Radio 4 voice that makes me turn off every time, and the irritating habit of starting questions with “but”. As for Fi Glover, her voice just gives me the rage. (I accept that I might be unreasonable about this.)

Garvey sounds like a woman who wants to be anywhere but where she is

That's exactly what I've picked up too. It'll be interesting to see what she does next.

It's not Jane's day job to be a feminist and prove her fem credentials to any of you but she so obviously is a committed feminist. However with the self appointed woke brigade bearing down looking for any minor infringements to take umbrage at I don't blame her for playing safe when broadcasting, which is her day job.

I keep thinking that anyone who sounds like they can't keep their contempt for Sally Hines out of their voice when they are actually talking to Sally Hines, can't have missed the point. But I would have hoped for more Dame Jenni-like push back once no longer muzzled by the powers that be. Perhaps the deal is that she gets Fortunately if she keeps zipped - or perhaps she really doesn't care and was just irritated by Sally Hines on the day.

I don't think zipping it on Fortunately is working terribly well, but I can only assume I'm the wrong sort of listener. It's frustrating to hear moments like the Sally Hines interview where you think 'Let it rip, Jane' and then to be plunged back into desperate arse-covering middle-of-the-roadiness.

@museumsandgalleries666

It's not Jane's day job to be a feminist and prove her fem credentials to any of you but she so obviously is a committed feminist. However with the self appointed woke brigade bearing down looking for any minor infringements to take umbrage at I don't blame her for playing safe when broadcasting, which is her day job.

If she's presenting Woman's Hour, then you'd hope she is a feminist and that influences the questions she asks and the subjects she covers. I don't think she has to prove anything, it should just be bloody obvious.

Absolutely what everythingcrossed says. Centring women is the single USP of Woman's Hour, its purpose and its guiding principle. The presenters shouldn't have to apologise for that, or add qualifiers. (The 'some might argue' stuff that JG does all the time.)

I'm currently listening to JG's last episode and wondering if she's going to send out a last minute rallying cry like JM did.