BBC misgendering in article about "Staying warm: What does an unheated room do to your body?"

[howmanybicycles]

The article says that the body works hard to keep the core at 37C and describes a number of ways our bodies do this. It's written from the perspective of a male bodied person Then it says that "this would happen even more quickly if I were a different gender".

But what is their evidence that if a person had the same body but a different gender identity, this would happen more quickly? Or that it would not happen quicker for me because despite having a female body, like most adult human females, I don't identify as a woman.

Should we be calling out the BBC on their inconsistent use of the term gender? Would that help them see the damage they do when they use it in ways which woman find offensive?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63602501

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Have a day off

I too found the article very interesting and understand what the author meant when talking about differences between men and women.

I understood perfectly too but if BBC choose to use the term woman as an identity statement rather than a biological fact then they should not assume that I, and other females who object to the assumptions within that, identify as women.

The BBC has taken an entirely disrespectful stance towards gender critical woman and has supported use of terms which obscure the word woman in relation to experiences only females can have. But here, they are happy to use a binary and biologically tied definition of gender. Can you not see why that is problematic?

The cold, cancers, illness and many other natural phenomena don’t factor in how you identify when they make an impact in your life. You are affected by them according to your biological sex - unless you have had particular parts of your anatomy removed or altered by the taking of hormones.
I could identify as non-binary. That wouldn’t stop be getting (for example) womb cancer if I had a womb.
If one day many years in the future I’m dug up from the ground it will be very clear from my skeleton whether I was a male or female. No one will know how I identified.

No. We don't need to identify as a woman, we just are women.

This stuff makes my brain ache

If the BBC had decided that a woman is an adult human female and nothing else, my god I am going to have a big party!

Op, you're making this very complicated

It's not me making things complicated!

We only know what they meant because we grew up in a world that knew the difference between men and women.

TRA are trying to obscure that.

Woman gender is either an identity statement or it is a biological statement. It cannot be both. Pretending it is both is what is enabling men to come into women's spaces.

If we stand up to this nonsense, the house of cards - which is built on our acceptance of this incompatibility - falls.

I noticed this when reading the article yesterday. I thought it was very sloppy use of language in an article purporting to be scientific.
It has long been known that being cold puts a huge strain on the heart, so there was little new information there.

But, with the spotlight of the moment on keeping warm this winter, I felt that by allowing the use of this fuzzy language, the BBC missed a chance to make some helpful points.

CAn you explain what you mean what you mean by that? What is complicated and how do you think it is OP making it so?

First world problem.

I saw that earlier today and have written to the BBC to complain as using the word gender at that point in the article followed by "women feel the cold more..." makes use of the word gender stupid and non -scientific - it has to be biological sex. I pointed about what would be the impact of cold weather on a nonbinary or free spirited etc person,. Grrrr

What does this even mean? What do you think "first world" means, and since when is womens rights not everyones problem?

I think that the reporter has used 'gender' when they should have used 'sex'. A common mistake.

😂😂😂😂

I think the entire world had gone mad.
I grew up in the 70's, I'd like to go back there please.

It's not so much a mistake as a ploy which allows men into women's sports and other settings where they cause harm.

If we focused on sex properly then a gender recognition certificate is weird as is a male heading up a female rape crisis centre.

Direct quote from the article: 'if I were a different gender.' This could be any of the 80+ named genders.

Now if he had written 'if I were THE different gender.' That would seem a direct comparison with female, though a bit clunky, perhaps. Being a bit prim about saying sex, tee hee giggle simper. Why not say woman (hah we KNOW why not, don't we)

But he chose the first statement, so we don't know for absolute sure that he doesn't mean any of the genders, do we? Quite poor, BBC, quite poor.

Oooh! I identify as Frost Gender!!

<waits.>

<Looks at body>

No, still bloody freezing...... still an adult human female.

Can they not just say that rather than make us assume their gender?

No, out of all generosity about this now, and am naming bollocks as and when I see them.

That is not what he said. I'm not enabling a whole lot of women-harming bullshit by extending comprehension in silly directions on the grounds that less than 1% of males may be offended.

I think he’s just using it as a way of saying women feel the cold more? I’m a bit confused tbh.