Woman's Hour today (Monday 3rd Oct) on Mermaids and the CC

[WinterTrees]

Just heard Emma Barnett announce this will be discussed in today's programme

Thanks for heads up.

Thanks for posting this - will listen in

Well that’s jolly interesting

wonder if they’ll cover the £126,861 grant Children In Need gave to Mermaids in 2017?

Thanks for letting us know!

There seems to be quite a packed agenda for today's programme so it doesn't look like there's going to be time for a detailed discussion. But just keeping the WH demographic updated and aware of these issues is a massive improvement on their 'what elephant?' approach of yesteryear.

Talking about it now...

It's just started.

The report is by Lauren Moss, the BBC LGBT correspondent. She's interesting, she seems to approach stories from the perspective of a journalist rather than that of an activist.

I just missed a huge chunk because the lovely chatty postie knocked, but from what I've heard it's a good fact-based summary. It makes me think that the WH team have woken up to the fact that their audience is not just the WI ladies of Cheerful-on-the-Wold but families of teens who have strayed into the clutches of this ideology, who need proper information and deserve support.

Yep, it would have been a very different story back in the Ben Hunte days

decent, fairly even handed coverage I thought

I agree. Proper journalist, proper coverage of the issues.

Lauren Moss was formerly covering Home Affairs, Politics and Health for the BBC and it shows.

I thought that it sounded like a Mermaids press briefing that was read out. No real discussion about the work we feminists have done on the dangers to young lesbians and other of wearing binders etc. Someone wrote in who Emma stated was involved, but it was never read out….but yes at least the case is mentioned along with the fact Mermaids are still involved in trying to remove the LGBA charitable status. More needed however. The D Mail and Times have got there first. In another item about “ indicator” offences such as flashing I got very annoyed by the interviewee constantly referring to offending people, when it was clear he was talking about crimes committed by males.

Lauren Moss’s role also includes “ identities” apparently.

They had a gender and identity correspondent before. This was a report by the correspondent, plus a minimal questions / discussion between her and the presenter only, a format they've used before, avoiding having any outside involvement.

The BBC is a disgrace, having a Woman's Hour that has for the most part studiously avoided even mentioning this subject and major developments and activities affecting women, while leading off with party politics & other BBC agendas or some sensational news interest, followed by girly trivia about underwear or something equally frothy, for which they are only too happy to have outside people interviewed. I too noticed that mention of someone writing in and waited to hear it read out and nothing came. That's another trick I've noted before.

The person writing in was for the gentle parenting section.
I was annoyed by the description of binders as basically minimisers that don't cause any harm.

The coverage of the Mermaids and LGB Alliance tribunal case was reasonably balanced, I thought.

That said, the earlier discussion about the Charity Commission's regulatory compliance case looking at Mermaids and safe-guarding glossed over some important details. In particular, they discussed binders being sent "without parental consent", but the allegations in the Telegraph were somewhat stronger - the binders were sent in full knowledge that the parents were actively against their child having them. And as a PP mentioned above, the damaging effects of binders were not fully spelt out and so were misleadingly minimised.

On the plus side, at least the Beeb are finally covering these issues and slowly getting better at doing so. And Emma did say that they would be covering the outcome of the LGB Alliance tribunal when it is eventually handed down.