Woman's Hour on the ruling

[Pluvia]

I wondered how WH would cover yesterday's ruling on today's programme. They gave the job to a new presenter, one I don't think I've been aware of before: Nuala and Anita not appropriate or capable, I imagine. The programme opened by flagging up features about Roblox, a female author, a female musician and a hockey player who campaigned to wear shorts instead of a skirt.

And then: 'But first, the UK supreme court ruled that woman=biological sex. Six years of campaigning by FWS (which of course WH barely covered). FWS says it's grateful to the court for its ruling while campaigning group Scottish Trans urges transpeople not to panic.'

Joshua Rosenberg, BBC legal commentator, was then called in to explain the ruling. He says the EHRC read the law wrongly and advised the UK government wrongly. Lady Haldane's decision was wrong. Judges have ruled man/ woman = biological sex. Kishwar Falkner's interview on Today was quoted very briefly. Questions about toilets and changing rooms were dealt with in purely legal terms, though Rosenberg said he supposed men who pass as women will continue to use women's facilities. Transpeople still covered by the Equality Act, no need for transpeople to panic, still protected. The end.

They covered the minimum they had to in a purely legal way. Certainly no kudos to the three FWS women who took on the Scottish government and won. Nothing even remotely celebratory or a flicker of acknowledgement that women's rights, and lesbian rights in particular, were under serious attack.

I hate Woman's Hour with a vengeance.

I listened, and when I realised it was over, loudly exclaimed, “is that it?!”. As a neutral explanation it was fine, but nothing on the women who campaigned so hard for so long? Poor show women’s hour. I bet Jenni Murray is fuming!

What really riles me - no, makes me a passionately angry feminist - is not the assault of women's current legal rights in public & private society.

No, it's the absolutely fundamental attack on the definition of what it is to be a woman as a member of the class or category of woman.

How DARE any man tell me - not as an individual, but as the member of a sex class - what I am/we are?

No man has been raised & socialised as female - a socialisation that has an impact on girls and women from before birth.

How dare they?

And then they come on the one 45 minutes each week devoted to women in our national public broadcaster, and just focus on practicalities. No understanding of the fundamental philosophical - nay, epistemological (about how we know what we know) - shit that's been thrown at women as a class.

They were celebrating (fawning over) a novelist and a musician, giving them plenty of publicity and celebrating their success. But nothing but a brief factual account of the work of three ordinary, relatable women who have spent six years of their lives fighting for women's rights. It's shameful. And yes, I hope Jenni Murray is fuming and in the mood to do something about it.

Sounds like they have no understanding of:
how momentous this ruling is,
how all these smart little grassroots groups beavered away for years funded by tenners from ordinary women,
how each tribunal win has built up a wall of evidence of harms,
what defining classes in law is really for (not identity validation but rights and protections),
how this benefits women,
how this benefits lesbians,
how this benefits trans men (legal clarity on maternity rights).

The media class, with a few honourable exceptions, are a joke. Thanks for listening OP and saving the blood pressure of a few of us.

I am unsurprised but just so disappointed. I read Jenny Lindsay's account of being in the room in edinburgh watching the judgement being read on the livestream, with other women who have been harassed and bullied out of their jobs, or harassed from being lesbians who all ended up weeping into their hands with relief. How on earth can WH just shrug in the face of such torment of women?

But this is Woman's Hour. It should be covering all women's issues with equal depth and enthusiasm. It should be celebrating the achievement and effort of FWS.

I think 'no big deal' is going to be one of the ways the judgment is minimised.
Like on news broadcasts -
'....And now - a giant squid has been spotted..'
or TRAs saying
'Yeah but it didn't define 'biological', now did it?'

and it sounds like WH is going down the 'no big deal' path🙄

Yes, I think you're absolutely right. Bring back poor, sacked Joshua Rosenberg as a voice with gravitas, get the occasional stand-in presenter to do the piece rather than a WH regular and minimise, minimise, minimise. I had no idea what a huge capacity for contempt I had till now. A great show under Jenni Murray and other feminists now brought to its knees by women who don't give a shit about women's rights.

Jeremy vine did a phone in. The only non trans caller was a Yorkshire man who did the whole " everybody knows what a woman is" spiel.
It was so incredibly biased!

Woman’s Hour has been terrible over this, every bit as bad as Channel 4.

I hate Woman's Hour now. I listen to Times Radio, they had Helen Joyce on their breakfast show being brilliant as usual. I no longer care if Woman's Hour dies, it deserves to.

I've just watched ITV lunchtime news who led with the new ruling; they had Bel Priestley on, a transwoman, who complained how hard done by he is, and they also featured a "women's gym" in London, one of the owners, a woman, said they've always admitted transwomen into the gym, because "Who are we to decide who can use the gym", or words to that effect. Outside was a sign saying "No Boys". Wtf is going on when these news reports seem to be skewed in favour of men, with no mention of how women have been impacted by the trans issue, for years?!!

Times radio have been much more positive generally apart from Jane Garvey who in her show yesterday wondered what it all was about when it is obvious women are women and in her experience it was not a subject women cared about🙄

I listen to both and there is a hilarious spilt with who different shows have had on to discuss.

Luxury beliefs on full display on today's World at One. Sarah Montague reported the ruling in the funereal tones usually reserved for a train crash or a bombing, and interviewed nobody who wasn't completely hostile to it.

Some very funny bloopers as well. Throughout the segment, Montague aka Lady Brooke (her full title: she's part of the hereditary peerage) kept returning to the impending tragedy of trans people not being properly cared for on NHS wards. Whisper it: wards have side-rooms for patients who cannot be on the open wards. If Her Ladyship had ever set foot in an NHS hospital she might have known that.

Sarah Montague's performance at lunchtime today was, so far, the low point of the coverage of the Supreme Court judgment on Radio 4.

By the way @earlyr1ser, did you also notice how Montague tried to put words into the mouth of Peter Carter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carter_(nurse)) who, contrary to what he was supposed to say, said that there have been issues with transwomen in the wrong-sexed spaces, and transmen too, and that there are problems being experienced by female members of staff.

Yes @nauticant, I did. The whole thing was a case-study in naked bias.

My impression of having listened to most of the news coverage of the judgment on Radio 4 over the past 30 hours is that there are some presenters/journalists who are committed to the most oppressed/most marginalised narrative, and are seeking to uphold it, and there are others who want to treat it as a news story where they report the facts. I'd imagine there have been some tense discussions within the BBC since yesterday morning about this.

I had to turn it off. The transwoman bleating about 'we just want to live our lives' (go right ahead) and worrying that it would cause him problems abroad having M on his passport when he 'looks like a woman' (don't worry love we can all see you're a man). And the elderly man who thinks it's all a load of nonsense. Did they even have on a woman to shed some light on the importance of the word woman being accurately defined???

The Newsagents was particularly galling with Jon Sopel and Lewis being very very shouty about how no one cares about this anyway. Must be great to be a white man.

I suspect there's been a BBC memo instructing everyone to minimise women and maximise trans visibility for the next 48 hours. The Women's Hour presenter sounded as if she was reluctantly discussing this issue because someone had a gun to her head.

@Pluvia yes - BBC execs must be at def con one today: appraisals, points and bonuses are at stake. Snouts in the trough.

I have said on another thread that the BBC had a trans woman on who said he couldn't pee in a bottle so had to be on a women's ward...

I know, right? As though there are nurses who train to look after boys, and nurses who train to look after girls. The detachment from reality is tectonic.