Radio 4 Afternoon Drama - blimey!

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Baselines
Drama

A drama by Mark Lawson exploring the challenges of the changing gender identity landscape for sport's governing bodies.

In recent decades, identity categories of all kinds have come to seem fragile and unsettled. Identity has become much more complex, fluid, and fragmented. As new categories have proliferated and old categories have come to seem ill fitting, we increasingly face uncertainties and ambiguities in identifying ourselves and categorising others.

Baselines considers whether male athletes transitioning to become women have an unfair advantage over born women due to their residual muscle density and larger physiques. And if so, how are governing bodies in sport to legislate to ensure a level playing field for all?

It's on now

Here's the link to the original discussion:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3618161-Radio-4-Friday-2-15-Drama

Mark Lawson also wrote another play about cancellation, discussed here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3221184-Radio-4-afternoon-play-Friday-13th-April

@TedImgoingmad

Have started from the beginning. Is the actor playing PJ (the MTF tennis player) actually female?

I think so

"This problem will go away."

"Will it?"

"Solution: transition before puberty"

"Is it?"

Missed the first 10 minutes but I really wasn't expecting that. Was this pre Martina Navratilova commenting on transwomen in womens' sports.

Wow!

Well done Mark Lawson.

This is astonishing! Loving Kerry Fox's character.

It's now on Listen Again.

Well worth it. Lawson really has done his research.

Link
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000615s

Haydn Gwynn character (the mother) is very very Susie Green. Kid is just confused.

Love the straight-talking* lesbian coach.

*straight as in direct, no bullshit

Is the actor playing PJ (the MTF tennis player) actually female?

Rosie Sheehy. See for example: www.facebook.com/thersc/videos/rosie-sheehy-sonnet-66-sonnets-in-solitude/276394320265708/

Using a female actor was either to make a point or was dumb. Listening to someone so clearly female meant that for the first 15 minutes I though the "trick" was that a girl had secretly been playing in the elite under-17s as a boy.

The other thing that continually tripped me up was the reference to "gender" when they clearly were referring expressly to the concept of sex. Going on about "the gender binary" when referring to males and females was irritating.

However, once past these irritations it was unembarrassedly direct about the problems and conflicts that "changing gender" causes in sport and elsewhere.

I see from the linked thread that I actually caught the last few minutes of this when it was first broadcast a couple of years ago. I have no memory of this

I do think it's interesting that the Beeb has chosen to rebroadcast it. I suspect they are detecting a change in the wind.

It's nice to think so but Radio 4 have been doing an enormous amount of recycling of their archive since the start of the pandemic.

Yes. But I live in hope, especially after Justin Fletcher on Today.

I'm waiting to see if they rebroadcast some of their execrable rainbow-washed drama now.

I agree, Nauticant the use of the female actor was odd, and I thought this was going to be about a transboy not being able to compete at elite level because of strength/build etc. I wonder if that casting was the compromise to get the thing aired?

It was so interesting, the entire piece was hard cold facts on the "GC" side versus everything emotional on the other. Not a single "fact" given on the trans side that couldn't be debunked. And thankfully, no false suicide stats.

I am amazed Mark Lawson wasn't hung, drawn and quartered for it by the Twitter yobs. Wonder why that was? Wonder if a women had written it whether they would have got that play on air?

Nevertheless, bravo Mark Lawson and the brave cast.

Mark Lawson has done a number of plays that can fit into the categories of gender critical and free speech. I just had a quick look on twitter for torch wielding mobs. Nowhere to be seen. What can it be about Mark Lawson that means they haven't gone for him?

This made me laugh though: twitter.com/kokokopek/status/1404800543307018240

He doesn't appear to be on Twitter.

If it's the one I heard a while ago they used old info of m to f tennis players having to have genital surgery. That is no longer the case.

Good for Mark Lawson and the drama department, boldly going a lot further than Woman's Hour dared!

I noticed that - the surgery angle was to show you couldn't just self-declare... but I didn't know either way about that.

I think there was a disclaimer at the start of the play that the organisations and rules were fictional, simply constructed to aid in the narrative being presented.

I caught some of this play just now in the car, too! So presumably, the woman I heard speaking most of the lines, was supposed to be a man.
Unfortunately the bit I heard was of (her) saying 'being born in the wrong body must be something to do with the genes then'

• I will see if I can get the quote right from BBC Sounds & repost.

There was another play I heard on radio 4 a while ago about women’s rights through 3 generations of women which ended with something like the Women’s Place UK meeting which had gender identity extremists banging on windows, obstructing entrances, shouting abuse and so on. The conclusion was a reflection on misogyny through the ages and how little it had changed. The gender identity extremists being very much like the men who didn’t think women should have the vote. Wish I could remember the name of it, I was really surprised and impressed to hear it.

That was quite a good bit I thought. They put forward the genderists beliefs through the characters and then argue a counterpoint.

Just correcting my quote above - one character says
'but to have been born in the wrong body, how would that work biologically? it's a stretch. For me, it must be a choice'
then another character says:
'no, an instinct, a perceived error, a correction. Even if there isn't a trans gene, couldn't there be, what was it, trans phenotypes?'

Not very like a real discussion about trans, is it? In reality the 2nd character would most likely have said 'terf, die in a ditch'... !! But I'm still not sure that the BBC should have been mentioning 'born-in-the-wrong-body' at all.

I thought the born-in-the-wrong body was countered well though.

I also liked that she said being gay was something she was able to grow into and experiment with and see who she wanted to be. Yet with trans debate its so binary and teens are forced to decide whether the body is righy/wrong.