BBC responds to backlash to article about lesbians being pressured into sex by some trans women

[FindTheTruth]

BBC spokesperson said: “The article looks at a complex subject from different perspectives and acknowledges it is difficult to assess the extent of the issue.

“It includes testimony from a range of different sources and provides appropriate context. It went through our rigorous editorial processes.

“It is important that journalism looks at issues - even where there are strongly held positions. The BBC is here to ensure debate and to make sure a wide a range of voices are heard.”

attitude.co.uk/article/bbc-responds-to-backlash-to-article-about-lesbians-being-pressured-into-sex-by-some-trans-women-1/26090/

[Scraggythang]

I think the BBC have taken a HUGE step back and can now see things a bit more clearly.

Thanks to Stephen Nolan and David Thompson for finally allowing that to happen.

[LivingLaVidaBabyShower]

It's a slightly pathetic state of affaiŕs that i was shocked to read the article on the bbc because in general their reporting is so one sided, biased and pro-trans.

I was they didnt backtrack apologise and fire /remove the author from public gaze.
Pardon the pun but perhaps they have woken up.

[JustcameoutGC]

I say lets put it to a vote.

Are lesbians by definition transphobic?

Now there is a referendum i could get behind.

It is so scary how the gang closes in to silence these women. This is industrial scale erosion of healthy boundaries and barriers.

[Piapiano]

@Lammysaurus

NoNotMeNoSiree: Just if you be like repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans, that's different. As that shows a prejudice.

Where specifically in the BBC article is there reference to anyone "repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans"? This is the same line Ash Sarkar tried to pull, but she's entirely made it up as far as I can see. She was going on about people telling her every five minutes they wouldn't have sex with a "woman of colour" and then today it was "but if all you do is talk about who you find disgusting, who you’d never sleep with because of their minority status, then maybe that’s a bit bigoted!"

These aren't things that were said in the BBC article. It in fact stressed that the women were very polite and considerate and felt they couldn't say much of anything. This claiming that something was said that was not said and then harrassing the BBC, the journalist, and the interviewees is at absolute best irresponsible and misleading projection and also uncomfortably close to lying, bullying, and intimidation.

So, where exactly is the "prejudice"?

Is Ash Sarker really saying that being a man is a "minority status"? 🤣

Lesbians don't want to sleep with men, and wearing women's clothes and make up doesn't change that.

What about all the straight men who don't want to sleep with transwomen? Why are men not being called transphobic, only women?

[WarriorN]

I stand with lesbians is still trending this morning.

[WarriorN]

@Lammysaurus

NoNotMeNoSiree: Just if you be like repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans, that's different. As that shows a prejudice.

Where specifically in the BBC article is there reference to anyone "repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans"? This is the same line Ash Sarkar tried to pull, but she's entirely made it up as far as I can see. She was going on about people telling her every five minutes they wouldn't have sex with a "woman of colour" and then today it was "but if all you do is talk about who you find disgusting, who you’d never sleep with because of their minority status, then maybe that’s a bit bigoted!"

These aren't things that were said in the BBC article. It in fact stressed that the women were very polite and considerate and felt they couldn't say much of anything. This claiming that something was said that was not said and then harrassing the BBC, the journalist, and the interviewees is at absolute best irresponsible and misleading projection and also uncomfortably close to lying, bullying, and intimidation.

So, where exactly is the "prejudice"?

Ash practised full DARVO.

As have the others.

[MidsomerMurmurs]

Read the whole letter with Jane Clare Jones’ annotations.

Hilarious that it got no traction at the BBC. Also, for a movement so obsessed with pronouns, I couldn’t help noticing that they mis-spelled the possessive pronoun its as it’s with an apostrophe. A minor pedantic point of course but still.

[Shehasadiamondinthesky]

Quite honestly nobody has to have sex with anybody they do not fancy whether gay, straight, trans or alien.
I'm straight and would not consider having sex with any man I didn't want to be with. So just say no and report anyone who hassles you. how is this just a trans thing, it's an across the board thing.

[Piapiano]

Because lesbians who don't want to sleep with transwomen are being abused. That's why it's a trans thing.

[Whatiswrongwithmyknee]

"Nobody's said that lesbians are lying? You're entitled to be attracted to who you're attracted to.
Just if you be like repeatedly stressing not sleeping with you because you're trans, that's different.
As that shows a prejudice."

A) I've never heard anyone, straight or gay, repeatedly stressing who they won't sleep with. It certainly did not happen in the article
B) Lesbians may want to sleep with trans people. They would be transmen - female bodied.
C) Lesbians do not need to justify not sleeping with someone who has a male body. They do not need to justify seeing these people as a male body. Men and women have different bodies. Asking someone to pretend not to know that in order to justify someone's identity is ridiculous.
D) many people see trans ideology as built on stereotypes and prejudice. There is no such thing as feeing like or wanting to be a woman, unless there is some concept of woman which is more than biology. No-one has shared any information about what they would be.
E) You say you're entitled to sleep with who you want but you don't recognise that if women are harangued after making such a decision, called bigots, pressurised to change that decision, that entitlement is undermined.

The prejdice here is not coming from lesbians who do not wish to sleep with a class of people who they don't fancy. If you took this to its logical conclusion, no-one is allowed any sexual preference whatsoever - unless you believe in the aforementioned concept of innate womaness. Most people don't. If you want to change our minds about that, lets start with you defining what you mean.

[Blibbyblobby]

I'm straight and would not consider having sex with any man I didn't want to be with. So just say no and report anyone who hassles you. how is this just a trans thing, it's an across the board thing.

Because lesbians had words (lesbian, homosexual woman) to label a fact about themselves, that they had no sexual attraction to the male body, which they were using both legally to define some rights, and socially to define their own boundaries, spaces and culture.

But those words have had their meanings changed and that changes all the things, legal and social, that rest on them.

So those lesbians who know themselves to be same sex attracted, despite nothing changing in themselves, find themselves to now be treated as people who don't currently fancy any male bodies but that could always change.

And although they know that not to be true about themselves, it's now treated as an act of hate to be honest about this fundamental fact about themselves, or to want any support, spaces and culture that acknowledge and support single sex attraction even though they used to have them.

Exactly the same way as if womanhood is redefined from a fact of the body to a state of mind, many people who were quite happily being women up to that point find that word name no longer describes them but are told it's an act of hatred to say so, or to do anything to preserve or recreate the single sex provisions they used to have.

[Whatiswrongwithmyknee]

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

Quite honestly nobody has to have sex with anybody they do not fancy whether gay, straight, trans or alien.
I'm straight and would not consider having sex with any man I didn't want to be with. So just say no and report anyone who hassles you. how is this just a trans thing, it's an across the board thing.

Society would protect most people who don't want to sleep with someone for whatever reason and then were hassled about it. Organisations like Stonewall are actively encouraging hassling of women who do not want to sleep with transwomen. Their choices are being storied into hate and the aggression which that generates is not being challenged in any meaningful way.

[BraveBananaBadge]

Brilliant from JCJ - I couldn't read on Twitter either so assumed she'd locked down, so thanks for the unroll.

I'd happily never hear the word bigot again in my life now, am automatically suspicious of anyone who throws it around these days. And the TRA line seems more and more like religious fervour.

[Grumpyosaurus]

[quote FindTheTruth]Here's the whole thread by Dr Jane Clare Jones, ripping that letter to shreds
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1453338695709433856.html[/quote]
Gosh, that is epic.

It's good to know that I'm not the only one who, when faced by a pile of utter bollocks, starts ranting and reaches for a pen.

[OneEpisode]

This open letter was organised by someone who is involved with a magazine? Claims to be a publisher?
But he didn’t know any writers or editors who could help write a letter that reads well?

[Gncq]

@Isthatthebestyoucando

Can you even get a GRC and keep your knob?

TW who get "gender reassignment surgery" get penis surgery only about 0.5% of the time. It tends to be mainly breast augmentation/facial feminisation). Most TW don't even do that.

The vast, vast majority of TW with a GRC currently, will be fully intact, and most won't have seen a surgeon for anything at all.

[Gncq]

I'm so extremely pleased that the BBC grew a fucking backbone.

[SaltedCaramelHC]

That's a great response to the letter, and I hope that it can be published/shared widely.

One of the telling lines to me was:

"Additionally, this article completely overlooks the massive rates of violence faced by transgender people¹²,

yes, because the article was about violence against lesbians! Not every article has to feature transgender people as the victims. Not every article about violence against women has to, either. You can have an article about any particular group's experience with rape and coercion, and the fact that it exists and thus is a problem, without having to mention every other group who may also experience violence. This just seems so typical of this insistence that every time someone mentions something affecting women, they also have to acknowledge that transwomen have it too/worse

[ApricotShandy]

The open letter's obsession with how the interviewees in the article are not "unbiased sources" is ridiculous and makes them look completely idiotic.

There's no such thing as an unbiased source - all sources contributing to news stories are always biased because they're stating their personal experience. It's the job of the BBC as a news outlet to be unbiased, and therefore for the journalist to balance the article by providing context and responses from the other side of a contested issue. Which she's done here very fairly, by attempting to contact people who disagree, and by including that magnificent self-own of a quote from Stonewall.

The BBC has done nothing wrong here. The open letter writer and signatories just haven't understood journalism, at all. I mean they've barely understood how to read.

[BraveBananaBadge]

Yes Salted, that sums up what seems to be their main objection to eg the LGBA as well? It's not about us so it must be 'hate'?

[Chrysanthemum5]

[quote Enough4me]@334bu thanks for the link to give the BBC anonymous feedback, I tried it and it's very straightforward and great idea to let them know that people want the truth reported

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comments-feedback/#/Your%20comment[/quote]
I wrote using the link above, it was very easy. I pointed out the article was very clear about its sources which was excellent journalistic standards, and compared it to the BBC articles on suicide risk in the trans community which use a survey which had very few participants, yet the small sample size is never mentioned. I also asked the BBC to stand strongly behind a female journalist who is receiving the most awful abuse

[ScreamingMeMeSawUs]

@Whatsnewpussyhat

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4386594-BBC-article-has-been-reported-to-police-as-a-Hate-Crime

I'm sure this thread will end up here in the naughty corner but this is the latest tactic.

Batshit. Hopefully the BBC is now wode awake to what they have been uncritically supporting.

[AlfonsoTheUnrepetant]

Hooray for the BBC! That is a grown-up response.

[AbstractEim]

It’s a trans thing as it’s trans id men claiming lesbians not wanting to have sex with them are discriminating against them. Like ash sakar, they have it round the wrong way, it’s pure DARVO.

It’s not about them, it’s not about anyone pointing the finger at a group of people and saying they’re all disgusting as ash has claimed. I saw a gay guy on Twitter who put it well he said; I’m gay because I’m same sex attracted, not because I think all women are disgusting.