Emma Barnett interviews Endometriosis South Coast Steph Richards and Trustee Jodie Hughes

[ChristinaXYZ]

You can listen here - it starts around the 22 minute mark.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001scsj

@RoyalCorgi Sorry I see you specifically say about this appointment.

One thing I've considered is that if it's news I think the interviewer is able to take a different stance which is one of giving the opposing view through the interview rather than chairing an interview.

And actually, I also think Emma was that person as an endo sufferer as well as the journalist interviewing and challenging.

In other situations she's grilled people such as MPs who are for women only, and the women grilled have stood up to the pressure extremely well and given good answers.

Here, the answers were obviously silly and unfounded. She caught them out a few times. It did not stand up to scrutiny.

It's also unlikely Steph would have come on if in opposition to Bindel, Stock or Joyce.

Yes the lack of smarts and qualities for being a CEO really shone through for me. I'm astounded that woman has managed to pull a PhD together and get funding. perhaps she hasn't and is self funding and thats what this grift is about ...

HOW can you be doing a PhD on endometriosis and claim that's it's not a and shouldn't be viewed as a gynecological condition. Mind boggling.

rather than chairing an interview - with someone on an opposing side such as Bindel.

So funny. Why do you want this role? I'm an activist and care about the prison issue. Right, so you don't actually care.

Royal, Stock has been on woman's hour, certainly. I'm sure Julie has been in the past, though perhaps not about this particular issue.

I believe you are allowed to be on more than once! I could listen to Kathleen Stock until the cows come home.

Perhaps I'm not doing a very good job of explaining why I find this so exasperating. It's mostly that I think it's a non-story. If Steph had been appointed CEO of Endometriosis UK, then that would have been a story - and fine to invite Steph on the programme, along with the trustees who made the appointment. But who cares, really, that an utterly insignificant local charity has made a silly appointment? As far as I can tell, the charity consists of one person who has a bee in her bonnet about trans issues and so asked one of her chums to be "CEO" - a grandiose title for a non-job. It's not worthy of the attention of Woman's Hour or Emma Barnett's skill as an interviewer.

Meanwhile, intelligent, expert women who have something interesting to say are sidelined.

There was also this interview from a series in 2018 where they put a prominent GC person up against a TRA. Most of the TRAs refused to do it head to head and prerecorded their interviews.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06s7kqf

Sex and gender: Why are these words so controversial?
What do these words mean and why are they controversial? Jane hears from Sally Hines, Professor of Sociology and Gender Identities, University of Leeds and Kathleen Stock, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex.
Release date:
19 November 2018

Blimey. Just listened to this properly. Those people are nuts.

So Kathleen has been on twice, that I can remember.

It's worth a listen to that 2018 clip, I just listened again. To Sally Hines' credit, she did actually debate with Kathleen. However there isn't much else to credit her for, it's particularly telling that at the end she just falls back on the TWAW mantra (when she's already been able to say her piece, so is trying to talk over Kathleen when she is speaking)

Ok I do see you point of view. As a great deal of more important stories discussed here have been ignored by WH. Especially rape crisis Scotland, though I doubt anyone from them would agree to go on.

However, at the same time, it's very much got under the skin of many of us.

And it was in the news and all over feminist twitter, and maybe it was seen as an opportunity to offer balance for Caster?

And the outcome has offered up certain views that Emma gave as challenge that are otherwise rarely aired on bbc radio. And the challenge she gave offered up weak arguments as Bindel has said, along the lines of #lettranswomenspeak.

Women I know who don't have time to get as immersed in all this do listen to WH and Sharon's interview certainly opened up the opportunity to discuss it all with a GP friend. She had no idea who Sharon was being a young 30 something, but it riled her and it was clearly something she was keen to discuss.

And I will be able to mention this interview. And she's a GP (- who says no one at the practice wants to touch gender care training with a barge pole incidentally.)

I saw it as 'sports casting' for the masses.

I think it's high time WH revisited transwidows again actually.

You are right that this charity is small-fry, but hopefully the interview will have peaked many WH listeners who previously might not have realised that women are being erased from their own healthcare. In an ideal world, of course I’d love to see Helen Joyce invited on to WH, but all credit to Emma, she did a great job of shining sunlight on the batshittery.

Meanwhile, Steph and Jodie are not alone in erasing women. I took a look at the Endometriosis Foundation website too and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any reference to “women”.

There’s a video featuring a female gynaecologist (their ambassador) talking about endo, I watched the whole 13.53 mins and it was all “people, people, people. Some people this, some people that.” She talked about menstruation, the menopause, pregnancy, painful intercourse, birth control, the pelvic floor, and still no mention of “women”. People throughout.

If an NHS gynaecologist can’t bring herself to say “women”, then we’re in more trouble than I thought.

Jodie sounded very fragile in the interview and I seriously worry about her mental health going forward.

There’s a video featuring a female gynaecologist (their ambassador) talking about endo, I watched the whole 13.53 mins and it was all “people, people, people. Some people this, some people that.” She talked about menstruation, the menopause, pregnancy, painful intercourse, birth control, the pelvic floor, and still no mention of “women”. People throughout.

I've been listening to a variety of health podcasts on these topics recently, and I find it so jarring. It's more the female health experts that do it in my experience, I can't tell if they are actually genderists or just trying to be "inclusive".

It's more the female health experts that do it in my experience, I can't tell if they are actually genderists or just trying to be "inclusive".

Is this a recurring pattern? I've seen discussions before that it's not unusual for a (say) father to declare to a child, "Never darken my doors again". But, left to themselves, they'd rarely faff with the organisation to manage this in a family but it's policed and enforced by the women (a range of motives).

Because women somehow achieve status through purity, this can overlap with the phenomenon of purity spirals? I'm so much more inclusive than you that I'm prepared to harm my own sex by working againsts effective communication on vital matters of healthcare?

I'm not having a day that's overflowing with optimism in case that hasn't come across. I recognise this language so much that it's one of those emotional pains that feels like a physical one.

I lost respect for Emma Barnett when she said she would move abroad if she couldn't have kids.

That was the 'We're Still Here' Conference.

Why is that? If you have kids you’re dedicating two decades of your life, where you ideally need to be prioritising with stability for your kids in mind. I can remember devising a Plan B if I couldn’t have kids (luckily for me, I did). Why is working/living abroad as a consolation unacceptable to your judgy pants?

Evidently these idiots hadn't bothered to learn anything about Emma Barnett before they went on air. If they had read her book - or even just googled her - they would have found that she suffers with endometriosis herself and so knows just a little bit about it....

Why?

It wasn't working abroad, it's the fact she felt childless women should feel so embarrassed about being so that they should leave the country. It's shocking

It wasn't working abroad, it's the fact she felt childless women should feel so embarrassed about being so that they should leave the country. It's shocking

I left my country while I was a childless woman, not because I was embarrassed, but because I easily could leave having no responsibilities other than for myself.

Re “we don’t take it seriously unless it affects men”

Heres a little experiment to try at home.

(Bear in mind that endometriosis affects, it is believed 1 in 10 women . That’s a lot of women globally. Billions of us.
Also remember that identified cases of endometriosis in men barely reaches 50 . Out of all the billions of men in the world.)

google endometriosis in women. Check how many results there are.

google endometriosis in men. Check how many results there are.

so whose endometriosis is seen as most worthy of google entries? Hmmmm.

For those who don’t want to google my results were as follows

women : 41,000,000 entries

men : 106,000,000 entries

Are you sure you've got that right? Seems unlikely someone as intelligent as Emma would adopt such a bonkers position.

Might it have been that she felt the UK was a particularly hostile environment for childless women? And that society imposes the view they should be 'embarrassed' for being childless? And that if you're suffering extreme grief because of infertility, as many women do, then being in that environment can feel quite hard and it might feel better to be elsewhere? I can imagine this might feel doubly so if you're in the public eye to some extent as she is. I can totally see how starting again elsewhere would feel an attractive way to - to some small extent - relieve the grief and escape constant reminders of your failed fertility journey.

I do know what it's like to be struggle with fertility and have several failed IVFs and moving away from the location those failed IVFs happened did provide me with some relief at the time, and a new focus.

Did she expand and say that was what she meant? Because without any further context, I'd interpret that as, 'If I can't have children then I'll go and have another, completely different adventure'