Radio 4. Right now. Is freaking me out.

[OnePotPolly]

Transmen who want us all to accept that they are actual men. But they are a subset of men who can give birth to babies..
Which only women can do, in fact.

And still claim that they are men. After giving birth to babies. From their wombs.

And the presenter on R4 is actually going with it. And sympathising with the person that obviously men can give birth. Or is he just presenting it so that the audience can draw their own conclusions?

Whatever it is, it is winding me up no end. I have listened to R4 for the past 50 years - 50 YEARS!! every night without fail, while I potter about in the kitchen, tidying up and popping a bit of baking in the oven. I love radio 4, it has seen me through many traumas. Divorce, death of parents, death of sibling, permanently life altering illness of my child. Radio 4 has always been there as a stalwart support. A reality check. Reassurance that the rest of the world continues as normal - ordinary, normal even if it's bad news or a war between foreign nations. Right up to 1am and "Sailing By"

I love Sailing By. I find it, at the same time, both soothing and sad (because it's a reminder of times past)

But the shite that I've just listened to has totally wrecked it for me.
What a load of utter bollocks they have just allowed on air.

Unless they're just airing it to show how ludicrous and self absorbed some people can be. . . . .

Really hope that's what it turns out to be.

It's amazed me that everyone didn't just join the Geology Club after the first salvo. It's well worth the annual fee.

I found them very anti-EU. They encouraged Brexit by playing to an easy audience - lots of interviewing of Nigel Farage, endlessly talking about personalities rather than the realities of Brexit, which we are suffering at the moment. They didn't do their job. And they were then, as they are now, afraid of the government's threats to get rid of the licence fee, etc. They have become pretty much a government mouthpiece.

I don't think they were anti -EU - I think that the Gov and MPs and London centric BBc were clueless as to what people in the country outside the SE and Westminster bubble actually thought. If they'd a clue how it was they wouldn't have called the referendum.

They were hugely irresponsible in the period leading up to the EU referendum. I used to listen to Radio 4 a lot in those days, and it was all about political gossip. All personality-based stuff. I remember an interview with I think it was Kenneth Clarke (conservative, against leaving the EU). He tried very hard to talk about the serious issues at stake if the UK left the EU. Things that people should take into consideration when they voted. The interviewer just kept on forcing him to talk about personalities - who'd said something bitchy about whom, etc. Puerile stuff, as if the referendum was just a popularity contest rather than actually affecting the future of the UK population. And this was very shortly before the vote.

I couldn't agree more.

That's why Camoron resigned.

They didn't 'read the room' and never had a 'Plan B'.

For what it's worth, the trans people I know insist on their preferred pronouns; though TWAW and TWAM are rarely mentioned, they are constantly implied by the compelling of speech over the pronouns friends and family are told they must use.

In my experience it is the compelled speech which is the constant problem. If I must use gender based pronouns, I am made complicit in the worldview that demands it. If I use sex based pronouns, I am shunned as a transphobe and a bigot, and risk estrangement. The only way to be sure of avoiding estrangement is to lie constantly to, and in front of, those I love.

If they really just wanted to get on with living their lives, they would not demand that everyone concedes their worldview without debate.

Exactly right!

They can request pronouns, but they ought not to be able to insist. Why should other people lie to feed their vanity?

Apart from anything else, >99% of the time when we use pronouns, the person we are speaking about isn't present - as you say, it is compelling speech and they aren't even there to hear it.