I notice that as well as taking sides by including biologically male people in a list of women and therefore proclaiming their belief in the ideology that TWAW, the quote from one of those biologically male people baldly contains an overt piece of ideologically driven propaganda, to wit:
”transgender people, already the most vulnerable on Earth”
Again with the “most vulnerable” trope. Fabricated because it’s just not true, not borne out by the statistics (or the real life experience of the vast majority of women) in any way. Misogynistic because repeating this baseless claim denies and diverts attention away from the very real vulnerability of women and girls, ie biologically female people.
Vulnerability which the compilers of the list must be all too well aware of, seeing as they’ve concentrated so much on Afghanistan, a country where women’s and girls’ rights and lives are once again viciously circumscribed by the Taliban because they are biologically female.
Not to mention the myriad ways in which women and girls are still massively vulnerable here in the western world and the UK.
Earlier today I watched an interview with a young woman who survived the Ecole Polytechnique massacre, five years after the event, and she said that what it taught her is that she is a woman.
Prior to that, she had thought equality had been achieved and her being female made no difference to anything in her life. Being the victim/survivor of such grotesque male violence against women made her realise how fragile, to use her word, she as a woman actually is. How vulnerable we as women are.
This incessant repetition of the lie that biologically male trans people as a class are more vulnerable than biologically female people as a class, more vulnerable than anyone else, is gaslighting of the first order.
The BBC has no business promoting this lie, a lie which is often used to justify eroding women’s boundaries and rights, and used to manipulate women into believing they must sacrifice their own rights and needs, and those of other women, for the benefit of these “most vulnerable” of people: a lie that directly harms women, the people this list is supposed to be celebrating.
Kirkup is right, it looks like the BBC has quite a way to go yet before it can be said to not be taking sides on this issue, recent apparent advances notwithstanding.