Does the general public want to watch programmes about Transwomen?

[TiredOldHen]

Media like The Guardian, Independent, BBC…etc really seem to push and promote any programmes with a very prominent transwoman/transwomen content. I just wondered how popular they actually are with viewers. For example there was lots of Trailers and ‘You must watch this’, ‘Essential viewing’… for What it Feels Like for a Girl. Do viewing figures reflect the same level of interest amongst viewers for programmes launched like this or Drag Race. I would genuinely like to know if they are satisfying a demand. Most programmes for young people now seem to have at least one trans person. It’s hard to tell in my bubble how interested people are outside the GC/TWAW debate.or if it’s just (in a Dr Who way) pushed upon them as something they should be aware interested in.

I think media are confusing abroad acceptance of trans in the younger age group, to assuming to get a younger audience they need to have trans everywhere.

Also programme makers know that if they dont have trans representation in their shows, its going to be noticed, so best stick one in.

I’m tired of the entire thing to be honest. Is there an issue with how society treats women? Yes. Is there a trans issue? Potentially.

But this issue is being used to direct our attention away from much larger ills in society. The rich are getting richer while the rest of us are left languishing. We’re getting to a point where minimum wage workers and even those on “decent” salaries 20 years ago are unable to afford housing and food. Our NHS has been stripped for parts and is awaiting sale to the highest bidder. Children’s teeth are rotting in their heads because you can’t get to see a dentist, or their parents just don’t care. None of that is being addressed, issues like this are frothed up to try and distract from the actual issues in society.

BBC don't issue viewing numbers unfortunately. And even when they do for specific programmes, it's based on a "panel" of viewers and not actual viewers. You would assume with modern technology they count count actual viewings. I think they can with iPlayer, but not live terrestrial.

I have often wondered "who watches this shit" too!

I find it incredibly tiresome that every programme now features a trans, or a drag, particularly game shows and lifestyle entertainment shows. Things like sewing bee, pottery throwdown, bake off, are like bingo cards.

Excellent post @toastedteddy, I completely agree.

I'd hazard a guess that its less than 0.1% of the viewing audience who wants to see this crap.
Neither of my dc or their friends (all target audiences for this crap) want to watch this shit as their sick and tired of it being rammed down their throats at school, online, in books and on tv.
The BBC are the worst offenders when it comes to pushing this shit probably because the lgbtq+ are massively over representated in their workforce

Thank you. I’m a bit sick of it all to be honest. The “boat people” (0.6% of immigrants), the “trans issue”, what’s next? Going full evangelical America and starting on unmarried women and abortions? I wish people would open their eyes to the actual issues at play.

@toastedteddy do you honestly believe that stripping women of our rights, language and spaces will help women or harm them?
Is it easier to promote surrogacy and all its harms when there's no words for women and we're just gestational carriers or birthing parents rather than exploited women and mothers?
If we cant define women as a separate sex class to all.men regardless of how they identify we cant protect our rights including abortion rights. That's why fighting the trans madness that has taken over all our institutions and reclaiming our language is the most important thing we can do

Most people don't care one way or another. MN users are obsessed with this but if you asked random people in the street I doubt 25% would care one way or the other.

You probably don't need a large audience for such a programme to be deemed successful.

Can you name a right you don’t have today that you had a year ago? 5 years ago? A decade ago? There is an issue - and I’m not denying that. But I just do not believe it is the biggest issue facing our society today and I will maintain that.

As I have leafleted on the streets before about prioritising sex over gender, I can confidently say that that your figure plucked out of the air is wrong. The majority of those that I talked to did care. Because it impacted their lives in different ways. Single sex spaces, children, sports, work, schools and so on.

But don’t just take my word for it, YouGov polls have shown a consistent increase in concern about single sex spaces and sport. So I think your plucked out of the air figure is just as contemptuous as how you view the people on this board discussing the issues.

You see while we now have clarity from SC judgment earlier this year, those ‘rights’ have been largely ignored still in practice.

Even the NHS has refused to change their policies so far and are holding off for some reason. Even considering the NHS Fife and NHS Darlington cases where male people accessed female single sex changing rooms.

So, no. Actually I would say that women still don’t have the right to access single sex spaces because even thought it is law, that law has been ignored.

And it is also very well to declare that we have ‘rights’ when it was only after Forstater and subsequent legal cases that we have managed to re-establish even the discussion of reprioritising sex over gender identity. Even though it has been the law since 2010!

I don’t disagree with you here actually

I think a huge amount of it is just lazy bandwaggoning.

When I was a teen in the 80's pretty much every book I read had a gay male character inserted in a stereotypical way, a few years later you couldn't escape the 'sexy lesbian' minor character.

Now, especially in genre fiction it seems to be the law to have at least one trans character with some tedious 'couldn't tell' or female bonding scenes.

Single sex spaces, same sex carers for intimate care.

At the moment, if I were unfortunate enough To get in trouble with the police I could be searched by a male officer and imprisoned with trans identifying men.
If I needed rape crisis services or a domestic refuge, I could have to share with a trans identified man.
A doctor in Scotland was adamant he’d present himself if a female doctor was requested.

You can say it’s rare, the numbers make it unlikely, but it should not happen at all. Muddying these waters makes safeguarding hard and statics irrelevant. They currently don’t accurately distinguish between male crimes and female crimes. That’s a problem.

The 'boat people'? Are you on the wrong thread?

or is it just the 'right wing' trope. How very predictable. And 'frothing' - the usual misogynistic tetrad. You going to throw in hysterical, foaming and shrill to complete it?

And how about all the issues you've not mentioned in your posts? Do you not care about homelessness? Levels of cervical cancer? Educational standards? The use of poisons on habitats for bees? Etc etc etc. Seems remiss of you.

There's an awful lot of drive by scolders on here recently who feel that they should be able to dictate what women should or should not think. Or spend their money on.

Again, it's quite predictable.

@toastedteddy I agreed with your first post- the world is going to hell in a hand basket and we need to sort it out! But redefining woman so stats and services are no longer useful is contributing to it. Women would have so much energy to direct at other issues if they weren’t being nickel and dimed about their basic rights.

I suspect the programme makers are working from an assumption that more public exposure to trans identifying people will somehow make people forget the reality of sex and thus become less 'bigoted'.

And yet, we each get to have our personally chosen political aims.

You can choose whatever aims you wish and others can choose their aims. It is remarkable though that you feel that you should be able to diminish, dismiss and disparage other people’s aims. Particularly since it is likely that those aims are still included in other’s lists.

Isn’t it an arrogant assumption though? That other’s aims are ‘frothed up’ to distract from your own narrow list of aims, just because other people’s lists don’t match yours?

I'm in fife and I dont have the right to be seen by a female dr even for gynaecological issues, the right to have truly single sex spaces, the right to my own words for my sex class and plane language in health messages such as who needs smear tests. Whilst these things have been won back in the crts nothing has changed in reality, we even have the schools minister ordering schools not to follow a separate high crt judgement that instructed all schools that they must provide separate facilities for males and females.
You can deny the harm that has been caused by gender ideology all you want but those of us who are fighting this nonsense have seen and suffered many harms from it and that's why we fight it

The right to ask for a female doctor and expect a female to appear.

The right to ask for a female only hospital ward and no men on it being presented as women.

The right to complain about a violent man in a female hospital ward without getting removed from the hospital.

The right to change in a female only space.

The right not to be labelled as ‘cis’ against my will.

The right not to have to declare my ‘gender’ or ‘gender identity’ on forms and therefore be forced to participate in a harmful anti women ideology.

I didn’t have to witness young girls I know have an elective double mastectomy and ruin their future health with testosterone to make themselves look like a boy.

I didn’t have to witness men marching into women’s spaces and removing my privacy and dignity.

I didn’t have to watch union after union throw their female members to the wolves and refuse to represent them and actually directly advocate against their interests and safety.

I had the right to speak up without my job being threatened.

My daughters are forced to use mixed sex toilets at school and have a bit in their sports team. My other female family members also were forced to compete at county level against mediocre boys.

The 11 yr old girls sexually assaulted by a man allowed into the ladies because he said he was a woman might disagree with your sweeping minimisation if the issue and the woman raped in a female ward by a trans identifying man who the staff lied to the police didn’t exist, the woman who’s life was out at serious risk by a hospital who cancelled her operation because she asked that the man in a female nurses uniform not be in her care team or the countless women who have been bullied at work or lost their jobs and the millions frightened into silence by seeing all of the above being condoned by those in authority and uninformed ‘pick me’s.

We can worry about more than one issue at a time. What gave you been doing to campaign on the issues you think are more important? And why do you have an issue with women discussing the issues that concern them? Why do you know better? If you can’t see the depth of harm and consequences of this ideology on women that’s on you. There’s lots of info on this board.

Quoting @Brainworm from another thread:

Circumventing public debate and drafting/ redrafting policy and guidance to reflect the law as they wanted it to be, not the law as it is (the Denton strategy) was always going to fail. They believed the momentum created by this strategy would bring permanence. They thought the Contact Hypothesis that worked so well for same sex attracted people (ever growing numbers of being ‘out’ and increased exposure to gay people, resulting in reduced hostility and fear) would mean that by the time people realised the law wasn’t reflective of what was happening, without issue, no one would object.

However, the Contact Hypothesis that served same sex attracted people does not apply to trans people. A significant proportion of people with trans identities are damaged, damaging or both, and this is evident to those who spend time with them. This is why the Denton Strategy was destined to fail.

It seems that at least in certain circumstances, this shoehorning of trans characters into every medium out there (pretty sure there was a thread a while ago about this in current books) is/was part of a deliberate effort to desensitise the general public to trans-identifying people. As @Brainworm says, however, while this worked for same-sex attracted people, it seems to have backfired for trans-identifying people. For some reason.

You are basing your evidence of public support on taking to people whilst handing out leaflets and starting to talk about a particular topic. Hardly an unbias samplling method.

Show me a Yougov poll where single-sex issues is in the top 10 or even top 20 concerns the public have.

I imagine anyone watching,is doing it in the way you watch a car crash
Utterly horrified
Wondering why they are so deluded,and why it is acceptable by doctors to mutilate your body

Only we do know it's a distraction, don't we?

Because the very best countries in the world for women in terms of rights, health, wellbeing, income, equality with men, political empowerment, education etc, according to you 'Don't know what a woman is' (ie they have policies of gender self ID)

That's because they are focusing on the important issues for women, and they know that obsession on gender self ID is a complete red herring, and in fact, when it is place correlates very closely with women having very high quality life experiences.