Prof Jo Phoenix on R4 Antisocial 3/2/23

[WarriorN]

The prof is on tomorrow's programme

I’ll be on BBC Radio 4’s Anti-Social tomorrow talking about pronouns, risk assessment and the issues around transgender prison placement policy.

Should be good...!

Shame WH are too chicken.

Fleming ‘why were we not able to talk about this before?’
Well, surely you would be the expert in that Adam - why weren’t you covering it?

The most noticeable thing about the stats was that there really aren't any reliable ones, or at least very few. Is it too much to ask that if the prison service is enacting this dangerous experiment on imprisoned women, that they should be expected to carefully monitor the impact?

Steph was dire, despite the fact that this is apparently Steph's 'specialist subject'. Long, rambling 'answers' that bore no relation to the question interspersed with heated accounts of what a bad time transwomen have in the male estate. I don't think Steph is very bright. Both the presenter and Jo Phoenix were very patient in waiting for Steph to make a substantive point or actually get to grips with the issues. At the end Jo Phoenix was positively kind in gently framing a question in very simple terms in the hope of eliciting a meaningful answer they could debate.

It was frustrating in that one side contributed nothing useful to the discussion. But it really exposed the fact that without slippery wordsmithery they've got nothing. Nothing at all.

That’s an excellent summary. Exactly this.

Really interesting programme, which wouldn't have seen the light of day a year or so ago. Prof. Phoenix was great.

Glad Jo blew apart the "risk assessment()" that everyone keeps replying on

Steph: " If it ain't broke don't fix it" - ffs.

So glad Jo commented on how we work out who is true trans or not!

Just want to post this thread from Jo today where she shows the ppt that led to her unlawful cancellation from Essex and the Harassment she then later received.

Given the context of the programme I really can't see how on earth it got so bad as it's pretty much everything that's been discussed today on R4, on both sides too.

twitter.com/jophoenix1/status/1621444367738195972?s=46&t=XdsD3esbtFI4wAG08v_Gbw

It seemed to me that Steph talked herself out of self id during that hour and the main objection to it appeared to be it makes the trans women/ sex offender/ prison overlap stats look bad!

Steph is awful.

Responsible for the horrible misogynistic protest outside FiLiA in Portsmouth.

And they keep talking about the ‘very small number’

In a close living community of women, who rely on women guards to keep them safe, how many men does it take to make everyone feel unsafe? Just one is enough. And, as raised by pp, there was a section on Women’s Hour about deterioration of mental health etc with another women’s prison. I would love to know whether there is a demonstrable correlation between women prisoners’ mental health and whether they are incarcerated with men who identify as women.

Steph highlighted how terrible the prison experience is for some men who identify as women. Of course that shouldn’t happen, but I’m sure there are other groups of men for whom the experience is equally awful, and it shouldn’t happen to them either. Male violence is for the male prison estate to deal with.

I've seen mention on here of Steph's Place. Is this the same Steph? Apparently now heading up an outfit called Translucent.

Yes same person.

I know there are specific things that can be criticised but overall this program was excellent. They did a good job on the research theyd done, explaining it clearly, the questions posed and allowing both to give their pov. Jo was very clear explaining things as ever. It's interesting that Steph's position is actually quite different to most trans rights campaigners and organisations, in that she recognises that some ppl will use trans as a flag of convenience, and thinks some ppl should only be 'allegedly trans'. But there is a tension between this and the policy aims of the trans rights movement. In fact it's completely incompatible with self id as a principle. I wonder how well that goes down with other trans campaigners?

I don't think Steph is very bright.

I expect Steph really is bright but has spent too long hiding from painful and threatening facts. Head in sand.

This programme is more sensible and knowledgeable than most in this series. Unusual to have all the statistics and the prison processes (with differences between Englan/Wales and Scotland) so carefully laid out. They made the producer work really hard doing all that research!

I wonder if there's a transcript somewhere.

I just went onto this page to see Steph. I honestly cannot work out from the accompanying text who any of these people except Steph think they are.

Steph has a GRC , though.

Great programme and so refreshing to hear the matter talked through properly without attempts to shut people down. It was interesting to hear both sides, hopefully there will be more mature debate like this going forward.

And bravo to the producer and team for the research done and explained.

I thought it was a really good hour. Prof was calm, measured and factual, the woman doing the facts told it as it is and dear old Steph was just pitiful really. Steph did a good job for the realist side and really spelled out why it's an absolute NO for self ID.

Bobbi is Bobbi Pickard, former husband and father now making a good living currently offering D+I training to major UK companies via Trans in the City. Bobbi is Stonewall approved.

Bobbi gave a talk at How the Light Gets In, a philosophy festival held at Hay on Wye, about being majorly depressed and going out to throw Bobbi-self under a lorry but suddenly realising they hadn't written a playlist for their funeral. Horrified at the thought of someone playing an inappropriate track, Bobbi popped back home to write their funeral wishlist and then realised that they were trans. I recorded the talk if people don't believe me. Bobbi's taken to camper vanning and has been a presence at various lesbian events where discerning lesbians steer a wide berth.

Thinking about the Antisocial programme, I had memories of the BBC's climate change debate policy which was to give equal time and weight to the climate deniers in the name of impartiality. The BBC admitted, subsequently, that this held up the progress of the debate and political action on the problem for years.

Here we had equal time and weight given to a community that according to the census figures forms 0.2% of the population — and a very diverse community too, with groups (autistic teenage girls and lesbians) that have very little in common with others (older heterosexual men). And yet here is the BBC giving equal time and weight to Steph who can't seem to answer the questions put to her, while the expert (Jo) has to sit quietly getting very little air time except to set some of Steph's assertions straight.

The BBC hasn't learned from the climate debate, has it?

I only caught some of the programme but thought the female presenter (researcher?) laid out the situation of (no) risk assessment SPS very clearly.
I thought Steph’s ‘if it ain’t broke’ comment which followed this segment tone deaf, crass and very telling of exactly what is broken with this.
Prof Phoenix was great. Eloquent, calm and honest about what stats could and couldn’t say.

Just finished listening to this.

Aside from Steph being incredibly uniformed as to the subject of the programme not one shiny shit was given by Steph that regardless of whether a transwoman physically hurts an actual woman prisoner. Every woman in that prison for the length of the transwomans sentence still have the psychological fear that something COULD happen.

I assume that's acceptable to Steph

Have not listened yet but is this the same Stef from series 1?

Even though I would take issue with a lot that Steph said, I think it was good to hear a trans person with a different position on this to the rabid "TWAW and I am what I say I am" TRAs. There are real issues anyway, but self-ID is bonkers and dangerous. Jo Phoenix needed another 20 mins really to totally expose the faulty logic, but she was great. Quite impressed with Adam Fleming's steering of the discussion overall, and especially reassured by the producer and her careful research. Didn't get the same captured (or scared) vibes off this programme as so many others.