BBC article about cotton ceiling

[GingerAndTheBiscuits]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385 including Angela Wild, Rose of Dawn and Debbie Hayton. There’s no way this would have been published even just a few months ago 🤯

This might depend on different servers - the article and site are there for me.

Also worth noting that someone has already archived it at web.archive

Thank you EmbarrassingHadrosaurus and Alektopteryx - I have a terrible habit of reading the first bit then the last bit, skimming the middle before going back to read in detail so I missed the archive link. Thanks for letting me know I thought someone here would have archived it. I did read the article earlier but I wanted to share it - must be my server.

Tim Davie the DG of the BBC has been in post now for just over a year. Looks like he's finally turning things around.

Undoubtably thats part of it but I think we have the Nolan podcast to thank for this. The BBC higher ups will have had the details of that investigation a long time before it got published and they will have been shitting themselves.

I suspect the loss of Ben Hunte, leaving Stonewall Champions and the recent shift towards more balanced content is all part of the cleaning house ready for what was comming.

The societal pressure aspect was in the context of if someone doesn't want to date a disabled person, a person of colour, a fat person or whatever then there are valid discussions to be had about the societal pressure behind those views - preferences aren't formed in a vacuum.

I mean the article literally says:

"it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions"

@allmywhat

But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.

Why though? It’s not in any way in my interest to “include” more people in my sex life. My preferences currently exclude the entire population of Earth, minus one, and that works great. Obviously if you’re having trouble finding a date, then “examining your preferences” or whatever is a sensible thing to do. Or if you keep ending up in bad relationships. But if that’s not the case then why not keep doing what works?

Clearly Stonewall are confused on this point because they think women are sexual resources to be distributed to men, and not people.

Excellent, excellent point. In what way would it profit a woman to include entire groups of people in their sex life?

This is only about men's access to women's bodies.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes that account is so moving, thank you, it's losing friends and family that makes it worse than section 28.

Sexual orientation is based on what sex you are. And it's protected by law.

Dismissing sexual partners based on anything else is sexual preference.

Datun nails it as usual.

@VladmirsPoutine

The societal pressure aspect was in the context of if someone doesn't want to date a disabled person, a person of colour, a fat person or whatever then there are valid discussions to be had about the societal pressure behind those views - preferences aren't formed in a vacuum.

But people are allowed not to find people attractive for any reason. I wouldn't want to go to bed with a fat bloke (or woman for that matter) and my sexual preferences are personal and don't need justifying to anyone.

The article is eye opening -and shocking. But it is amazing it has been allowed to have been written, and on the BBC!

[quote FindTheTruth]Cotton ceiling workshop "was led by a trans writer and artist who later went to work for Stonewall (the organisation has asked the BBC not to name her because of safeguarding concerns)."

This is the same person who opened the door to 30-40 year old male abusers into an LGBT youth group to abuse teenage females. If you can stomach the heartbreaking details (and language used by the victim) you watch it here

[/quote] Yes, horrendous. Listen from about 18 minutes - horrible targeting of under 16 transmen/lesbians by 40 year old male "transwomen".

@VladmirsPoutine

I mean the article literally says:

"it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions"

Unless I am struggling to find someone I want who also wants me, there is no gain to me from this.

@Datun

Nancy Kelley:

Nobody should ever be pressured into dating, or pressured into dating people they aren't attracted to. But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attraction

Yup, the foremost LGBT organisation in the country is calling sexual orientation prejudice.

"We know that prejudice is still common in the LGBT+ community, and it's important that we can talk about that openly and honestly."*

I'm glad that the concept of the cotton ceiling is being discussed. Anyone reading it will instantly believe it, too. It's sooo same old, same old.

Men pressuring women into sex is such a familiar concept, that everything else will just instantly slot into place. Like calling the LGBA a hate group, and the huge backlash against lesbians protesting at Pride, eating pizza, or sitting on seats, etc. Just being lesbians.

And Stonewall have the nerve to complain about the LGBA wanting to represent gay, lesbian and bi people only.

Not rtft yet so sorry if someone's made this point, but a lot of TRAs are getting angry about the survey of 80 self-selecting lesbians saying whether or not they've been pressured to sleep with transwomen.
It's a shame the same scepticism over survey and the number of respondents wasn't employed over those incredibly dodgy suicide stats that they've been throwing around for years.

Interesting that OJ is asking BBC LGBT journalists to contact him "about their experiences working there, under strict anonymity".

Given the climate of the last few years, I think the experiences of lesbian journalists and those trying to report on stories like this would be very interesting to hear.

@FindTheTruth

Yet this organisation is in so many schools promoting these beliefs to children. Terrifying .

Stonewall sent this person into schools as a 'lesbian' gaslighting girls. Can you imagine being a pre-lesbian girl faced with this thinking, that's not me and I must be something else?

I find myself simultaneously enraged and heartbroken.

I know I will not be, by a long shot, the only woman on this board who remembers Stonewall's beginnings; we thought it a bit middle class and mandarin at times perhaps, but recognized the desirability of having an organization that could speak to the establishment in the establishment's own language. It did a fantastic job. We fundraised for it and marched with it and it delivered everything it was created to deliver.

But the moment it changed its mission to include and then prioritise the "T" it destroyed its own foundational ethos. I'm afraid this latest spewing of incoherent word salad homophobia -lesbophobia, actually, because they're not the same thing at all - is just the final squawk of the Oozlum bird before it disappears up its own grotesque imitation vagina..

Sorry to be slightly graphic at lunchtime, but if I look at someone and don't think I'd be capable of feeling sexual arousal in an intimate situation, I am not interested in seeing if I can change my own body's reactions on the offchance it will work.

I've just glanced through other social media platforms and it seems this article has caused all manner of outrage. Most trans people aren't out here trying to rape women.

"The first thing she called me was transphobic," Amy said. "She immediately jumped to make me feel guilty about not wanting to sleep with someone."

This alone, regardless of anything else is plain wrong. Why should anyone ever be made to feel 'guilty' for not wanting to sleep with someone?

She said the trans woman in question had not undergone genital surgery, so still had a penis.

"I know there is zero possibility for me to be attracted to this person," said Amy, who lives in the south west of England and works in a small print and design studio.

"I can hear their male vocal chords. I can see their male jawline. I know, under their clothes, there is male genitalia. These are physical realities, that, as a woman who likes women, you can't just ignore."

I don't get why someone would 'expect' a lesbian to find a man attractive just because he's wearing a dress and 'identifying' as a woman. Do lesbians find ALL women attractive? Clearly not.

And of course attraction is shaped by societal influence. How many 'fat' people lose weight and suddenly become 'attractive'? It's not because their personality has changed. It's sad for fat people, but that's how it is. I can't wait for 'Fatties United' to start a pressure group to change people perceptions of them, and I speak as someone who is considerably overweight myself!

@ColinTheKoala Yes! I agree that no-one is entitled to anyone's affections. But if someone were to say only date Japanese women because they find them more docile or say Black men because of their mythical hypersexuality then it is for lack of a better term problematic.

Of the things that's been happening lately - this feels the watershed moment

I've been glued to work this morning so have only just caught up with this. Bloody hell BBC! I thought I'd gone into the upside down!

Yes, I think the Nolan podcast has opened up the gates too, and the BBC can (finally!) see which way the wind is blowing.

There will be many, many tantrums about this. Tough. The end of guilting, abusing and blackmailing women into having sex with people they don't want to can't come soon enough.

Please let there be mass reporting of the BBC to the Police for committing a hate crime.

@Diaryofamadwoman

Of the things that's been happening lately - this feels the watershed moment

yes.

LESBIAN WATERSHED MOMENT

@nauticant

Please let there be mass reporting of the BBC to the Police for committing a hate crime.

Omg, genius! So inevitable, of course this is going to happen. Brilliantly spotted, nauticant

@GingerAndTheBiscuits

Link in the first post is still working fine.

Yes it was my server that was the issue.

@VladmirsPoutine

I've just glanced through other social media platforms and it seems this article has caused all manner of outrage. Most trans people aren't out here trying to rape women.

Does that mean that it's not ok for lesbian women to discuss their experiences and this issue, because most trans people aren't trying to rape women? Is it something that mustn't be addressed? NATWALT?

@VladmirsPoutine

I've just glanced through other social media platforms and it seems this article has caused all manner of outrage. Most trans people aren't out here trying to rape women.

But until now, there has been very little public pushback on those that are.

And that is the big issue. Do I think all transwomen are rapists? Absolutely not. Do I think that those who are, are enabled by a wider social circle that silences their victims and seizes on any excuse to discredit their victims' accounts?

Yes.

Rapists are rapists. There should be no special category that is allowed to get away with it.