Womans Hour Wed 23rd April.

[impossibletoday]

Apparently the women from FWS will be on.....

https://x.com/millihill/status/1914732862894694516?t=dVRYwM118BO_24mO21-05g&s=19

@Bookgrrrl they never show their original sex more than this. As you say they have no understanding that women feel endangered by strange men but nor do men in general, they walk alone or go jogging after dark without a thought. Many men are taken aback to hear how many things women don't do to keep themselves safe

But the interviewer had to put forward the counter argument, but she didn't interrupt Susan and this allowed her to give a crystal clear response.

I'm guessing that as an occasional interviewer on that programme, you would feel very much obliged to ask the 'correct' questions and adopt the 'correct' tone. She sounded pretty tense. Susan was brilliant - very clear and articulate, talked about the need to ensure the work is now done. Well done and thank you!

I hope there’s a real chance now to turn this round and put this back on men to be more accepting and sort this out. As happened with the gay community several decades ago.
Not our problem, you sort out your attitudes amongst yourself lads!

I thought it was a decent interview: questions were on the cold side but she was probably under strict orders to not appear friendly / remain neutral! And SS had uninterrupted time to respond clearly and coherently.

I very much enjoyed how SS put the blame on the organisations (looking at you, Stonewall and Dentons) who mislead everyone.

I live outside the UK, and short of paying for a VPN which I wouldn't need otherwise, the BBC have removed the Sounds app now for people like me.

So I cannot listen back to this, and am very sad about that. Be kind to me now!

Susan Smith brilliantly clear and measured... a seriously good interview and worth a listen.

See if the Sex Matters YouTube channel is streaming it?

I don't think it matters whose 'side' she is on, provided the matter is handled with impartiality and professionalism.

The interview was decidedly chilly and lacking in enthusiasm but, despite the contrast with WH's general output, I don't think we have the right to demand warmth and enthusiasm. This is overly reminiscent of the 'nothing but complete capitulation is acceptable' stance we've received for far too many years from the TRA movement.

A degree of bias was present that did irritate me, which was that the issue too-often came back to 'how will transwomen be feeling about this?' This is not women's responsibility. Our objective was to protect our own rights, not to persecute others or take rights not belonging to us. This all along has been the fundamental difference between the GC and GI positions.

Susan Smith handled those questions like a champ. She placed the onus of responsibility firmly back where it belongs: with men, suggesting in the most measured, calm and civil way possible that the rest of the world's problems are not women's to fix. And at the very least she wasn't shouted down in the usual aggressive style of today's interviewer.

Overall, the interviewer had the effect on me of the most tempting chocolate cake staring at me from the bakery window, only to eat it and find it completely unsatisfying and tasteless. The interviewee had the reverse effect.

I agree @IsabelleSE19 that the falsification of legal documents like birth certificates is alarming, and shows us just how close women have come to the wholesale loss of nearly every right our foremothers won for us in the 20th century.

Unfortunately I don't think we have heard the end of this.

Thank you! What a spectacularly good interview from Susan, deftly batting off all attempts to put a negative spin on it.

Just reposting this because it's so brilliant.

Please can Women's Hour have Datun on next?

And the PP noting how it's all about the male transwomen and not the female transmen are spot on too.

Susan Smith was excellent. I like how she was very clear about how this is a grassroots women's movement where everyone donated on average £37 rather than the grotesque pissing away of taxpayers money on delusion la la male abuser land from the Scotgov side.

How it was ever the case that men were told they could use unconsenting women as a prop for their validation I don't know. It's rape culture.

Sorry I missed this as I’ve heard very impressive things about Susan Smith but never seen or heard her interviewed.

As for the presenter, I think what’s most interesting is that none of the usual regulars were ‘available’ to speak with one of the women who’s just taken a case to the highest court in the land and won. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that they’d have been fighting each other for the gig, especially if it was pre-recorded.

Anyway thanks op for the heads up and I’ll listen later.

Thank you Susan Smith.

That interview would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.

(In fact, there are a fair few threads on here where we were all wondering if even a fraction of that would ever be possible again.)

What you and your fellow directors of FWS have done for women everywhere is unquantifiable.

It's fucking bizarre. The rights and interests of transmen haven't had a look in here, not least the observation that they now have rights and protection relating to pregnancy and maternity which without this ruling they wouldn't have had.

All I've heard is the question of whether women would be happy to see transmen using their designated spaces, as though this is some weird kind of 'gotchya'.

But the whole trans movement has never really been about transmen, which tells you the whole nature of who has really coopted it.

Even the TRAs they platform are mostly awful. Look at that terrible C4 report, and the ones they wheeled out to whinge about the ruling there. No thoughts for women at all but of course everyone is supposed to sympathise.

I am nearly 70:and is is so disheartening to see how easily women have been pushed to the side, our rights, our very real concerns eroded and ignored mainly by biological males who believe they are female who show no empathy and have threatened violence. All these years of fighting for equality reduced in the blink of an eye. How is it that we are 51% of the population and have been ignored and insulted for standing up for ourselves. Even now we are expected to show understanding and kindness to a group that have nothing but hate for women at the same time insisting they are in fact women. No women would threaten another women with rape but this is what we have been subjected to.

The fight is real

Susan was fantastically clear, concise and warm. She certainly spoke for me. I thought the interviewer was fine, she allowed SS to give in-depth and well laid out responses with no harrying. Perhaps it was better that she was a little impersonal.

By behaving towards Susan Smith in a quite different way to the way they have treated TRAs like Grace Lavery in the past — moderately welcoming, trying to sound engaged, omitting difficult questions and saying hello and thank you for talking to us — I think they displayed bias.

It would be great if Susan Smith were in a position to tell us who interviewed her and how representative of the whole recorded interview the bits we heard were. It may be that Claire O'Donnell's words were recorded and edited in late.

Live is best: they can't edit out things they wish you hadn't said. Which is why WH insisted on this carefully controlled affair.

I’ve already complained. I was shouting at the radio. Woman’s Hour handmaiden in chief, Nuala McGovern wouldn’t have touched this with a barge pole.
I hope lots of Mumsnetters complain.

And was told firmly that it was up to men to sort out their issues, as gay men had had to do. (If I heard correctly.)

I think part of the problem is that men as a sex class have never had to campaign to gain and protect their rights - they automatically hold the upper hand. Women have centuries of having to fight for what should be ours, equality, safety, dignity and so we know how to do it, how to organise. Were used to having to stand our ground, argue with ill mannered, poorly informed aggressive men. Men just don’t know how to do it and look for women who can to do it for them.

I had to go out, so I missed most of WH. But in the car on the way back, I switched on the radio, and the interviewer was enthusiastically asking a woman about the campaign she'd run with some other women to get justice, and wasn't it amazing how women had come together to win their case, and wasn't it fantastic to have the support of these wonderful women lawyers - at first I thought this was the FWS interview, then realised the interviewee was American, so it must have been something else. But it gives an idea of the sort of interview WH could have done with FWS if they'd wanted to.

It was ironic that when the news was first announced it was Jane Fae & Heather Herbert I heard interviewed. I reckoned if most people knew about JF's obsession with the most violent & extreme porn ,especially involving VAWG, & HH's transmission from the floor of an airport toilet where they were sharing with others their experiences of dilating their newly installed "faux vagina" it would give listeners a very different perspective about why they were so cross at being denied access to women undressing etc. 😑

This might become my new hobby, deleting the ‘anti trans’ bit of their Wikipedia page! Have done it twice already.

I always just say trans person.