University Challenge

[Ingenieur]

Just finished watching the University Challenge Christmas Special semi-final. Teams are usually mixed, but I was disappointed to see Bangor fielding an all-male team.

Just one more thing being taken away from us, I suppose...

In the grand scheme of life and patriarchy I am for them to take University Challenge!

Really stupid, dumbed down questions this year. Surely University Challenge is meant to be about university subjects - you know, Keats, Wordsworth, Proust, D H Lawrence, Picasso, quantum mechanics, etc. Not tennis and rap music!

What? Get a Grip.

Care to expand?

After you......

I think female representation is important. University Challenge teams are supposed to be mixed-sex for this reason, but Bangor have fielded an all-male team, which I think is disappointing.

Now you...

For a number of years there have been grammar questions that relate to the Y3/4 English curriculum, so age 7-9. To be fair, many adults wouldn't be able to answer them.

Just say it straight out. Bangor had Juno Dawson, who is a transwoman. Edinburgh had Freddie McConnell, who is a transman. Neither did particularly well, as it happens, but they weren't alone there.

There is no rule that University Challenge teams have to be mixed sex. There was a season where a member of the production team tweeted that all universities had been asked to ensure that there was at least one woman on every team. That person doesn't work for UC any more though, so I'm not sure anybody is trying to put that pressure on now.

The questions for the Christmas specials are never as taxing as the ones for the normal programme.

I don't believe I was being coy. I'm not sure what you intend by mentioning the Edinburgh team; my concern isn't with people who identify as trans, it is with men appropriating places that are there for women, and there being places for women.

While it may not be a formal rule of entry (I don't have their rules to-hand), teams are essentially always mixed, because representation is important.

I agree that it was a very poor show for Bangor to be unable to find a single female graduate to represent them on this team. I didn't think you were being coy, just obscure.

I don't think there are any rules for the universities on how to put their teams together, but for PR purposes I'd have expected most of them to want to select a genuinely diverse group of alumni of all ages, from several fields of study including at least one person with a scientific background, more than just White British ethnicity represented, both sexes, and successful in a range of careers since graduation.

We are rooting for Corpus Christi Oxford, but Middlesex are a strong team, so should be a good final!

PS Just got to get this off my chest - Alex Bellos, captain of the CC team, is a dead ringer for Michael Sheen. Anybody seen them in the same room at the same time?

Ahh it’s only the Christmas one! The questions are never easy enough for me

It is always a wondrous moment when a university challenge team has two women on it. That never happens.

There was that team last series from the last remaining all-woman college at Oxford, or just possibly Cambridge [a non-Oxbridge person writes]. They were marvellous!

University Challenge frequently has all male teams. All other things being equal, in the competitive normal season the producers will pick a mixed team over an all male team, but they don't always have a sufficiently good mixed sex team to choose - it's quite a sex-skewed hobby.

And they've included questions about popular culture for decades now. The panic on the faces of a team of very middle class, very white, nerds from Balliol when they realise they've got to answer a round on West Coast Rap or Grime is one of the great joys of UC.

The all male team got their arses kicked by a team with 2 women on it!

One of my favourite moments in the last Paxman series was in the final when a team who were brilliant on quantum physics/high literature/obscure rivers etc failed to identify Rock Lobster by the B52s.

The Christmas editions have also done away with the photos of contestants from when they graduated/were at university. I expect that’s because the difference in some contestants is too…….great? <diplomatic>

I haven’t been enthused by this year’s anyway, even before having to boycott episodes where womanface is being worn imo. There were 2 team members who had to ask for their first rounds to be withdrawn, as apparently the BBC were unable to ensure essential accommodation for disability, which is very poor.

The disability fiasco was intriguing. They failed to make allowances for a visually impaired contestant, which is simply inexcusable because they've adjusted the picture rounds for blind contestants successfully in the past (using Braille images).

But another contestant had a processing issue I think and they fudged the question of whether they could make allowances and then failed to deliver on their promises at the time, rather than simply saying "no, sorry" immediately which would probably have been the right answer (depending on the specific details, I've only seen a summary report).

Women don’t want to go on it because when they do, they get torn apart and sexualised on Twitter/X.

https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/22/university-challenge-social-media-abuse-lucy-clarke

Editing to add link. I mean, there are loads of other reasons I’m sure but I imagine this does put some women off. It would have put me off.

They've had previous trans contestants on the Christmas shows, they just showed photos from as long ago as they were happy with for those contestants, rather than their university years specifically.

Ah right, I hadn’t noticed that as I don’t watch episodes with transwomen in. Rest of the household like UC Christmas and are #bekind because they are male and don’t care, so I generally just go and find something else to do while it’s on.

Bangor's appearance in the earlier rounds was the first time I have seen Juno Dawson 'in action' as it were. The number of performative hair-flicks, hand-clasps beneath the chin and touches on the arm of the neighbouring male contestant were off the scale. Last night this person giggled 'Don't ask me, I only got a C in my GCSE Maths' along with similar tinkly declarations. So 'feminine'.

No women did this.

I thought that. Of course, it was Juno Dawson who said 'A lot of gay men are gay men as a consolation prize, because they couldn't be women'.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/juno-dawson-attitude-magazine-interview-transgender-gay-man-lgbt-trans-woman-a7752701.html

Freddie McConnell's appearance on the show gave me the opportunity to inform my family that this is a person who took testosterone for years, had their breasts cut off in a double mastectomy, got a GRC changing their legal sex from female to male. Then a few weeks later got pregnant, gave birth but tried to insist on being registered as the baby's father. Took legal action and lost. And lost again.
And I think somewhere along the way complained that nobody had told them a mastectomy meant you couldn't breastfeed. But I might be wrong about that.

Bring it into the mainstream, I say. The more people who can see how it makes no sense the better.