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.

The public would watch programmes about transwomen if it was about them being good at something, they go on an adventure or they’re funny or something.

The “Look at me, I’m oppressed” storylines will have people running a mile because it’s not like gay people who definitely did not have the same rights as heterosexual people. Trans people in the West have exactly the same rights as everyone else and no amount of pouting can change that reality.

I’m going to assume that the use of the word girl means that the programme is about teens. Teenagers usually prefer streaming channels like Netflix over terrestrial tv so I’m surprised if many young people even watched the programme. This is clearly an attempt to virtue signal and say that they invest in diverse programming. The license fee system is going to crash in the near future when young people stick with streaming and don’t fall into the con of buying a license. They stream their music and podcasts so don’t need BBC radio either.

Accepting that people can change sex is not inclusive it’s regressive, misogynistic and homophobic, because it’s a lie. Teaching our children that people lying to them in the name of a harmful ideology is not inclusive it’s dangerous and a safeguarding risk.

In terms of representation I do wish those of you who support this ideology would get together and form some sort of consensus, because one minute we’re told that trans identifying men are everywhere and in all areas of life, but we just don’t notice them (😂😂) or that they are such a teeny, tiny part of the overall population so why are we so bothered? In fact the latter is true, in terms of numbers, so why does such a teeny, tiny part of the population get such a massive amount of representation in our schools, NHS and our media? There are approximately 17 million disabled people in this country, where is their representation, why are there no lanyards for disabled people being worn by NHS workers, where are their trains or zebra crossings, or flags being flown from civic buildings? I notice that none of you on here scolding us have even mentioned disabled people, which says quite a lot about you.

They never seem to have a genuine buz around them do they?

Ive never met anyone who's recommended that paris lees thing to me.

Is this another thread moaning about things being ‘shoved down our throats’? There’s plenty of recommended shows that I’m not interested in watching, guess what - I don’t watch them!

Its such a non issue that people get angry about women just talking about it on a feminist board of the parenting website.

Id say theres a million things more pressing than my hobbies, but no one comes onto those forums and tells me to quit talking about them.

Good for you. But that wasnt the point of the OP.

IKR? After attempts to shut down FWR it was split into two because of all the waaahing about FWR being dominated by sex and gender issues. We were told we had to use this board which we do and it's clearly labelled sex and gender and yet somehow ppl still find their way here to scold us for discussing it or to tell us they just don't care

I don't turn up on the litter tray telling them off for discussing pets because they're are sooo many more important things in the world but apparently we must be regularly scolded for discussing gender & sex as they impact on women on a board clearly labelled as such

You know it is possible to be concerned about all sorts of issues at the same time.

Some issues, such as those you mention, are 'bread and butter' issues and are with us always to one degree or other....taxes and prices rise and fall; jobs come and go..... in every generation; whereas other issues are more fundamental and go to the heart of how we organise society; how we understand reality; and how we balance the competing demands of different groups within that society. These sorts of issues are often dismissed as 'culture wars' but they go to the heart of how we define ourselves and the values we share. Being concerned about these matters does not mean you are not impacted by any of the other bread and butter issues. Of course, we are, everyone is.

I get the impression that “allies” of the trans movement are less tolerant of jokes and representation of trans people on screen so it’s difficult to make interesting programmes with mass appeal.
What I mean is I can’t imagine say a trans equivalent of say Will and Grace because they seem to be very serious and hypersensitive as a group. If they grow up and allow people to laugh at jokes made by trans people or about trans people then there can be the possibility of good programming with mass appeal.

There’s a word for what the scolders are doing and it begins with M. I think Reddit must be down, maybe they’ve run out of 50p’s.

Well up until 16/04/25 women didn’t have the right to single sex spaces according to the government.

I have had another thought about how we could gauge popularity. The BBC has a mandate to educate and entertain us and so it is completely in its box to make TV for minority audiences with numbers being an irrelevance, but commercial TV must live or die by numbers and I imagine can be ruthless about anything else. Does ITV or Netflix promote any trans centric programmes (not just minor, token characters). Again (sigh). Not saying they shouldn’t be, I just want to figure out if there is an actual demand for them (and completely not saying if that would be a good or bad thing).

I’ve seen gay centric content promoted by NF in the past eg Heartstopper but I think that sort of programme won’t be promoted until Trump leaves office because it would face lots of “Go woke, go broke” accusations even if it reached number one on their streaming charts.

Feel free to do so.

And do you know what? We won’t be going onto your threads about the difficulties your daughter may face in buying a house to scoff and making accusations of you ‘frothing’ and that you should be concentrating on what is admittedly a pretty major crush’s fur women’s rights and equality.

I don’t know the root cause (and I’m not sure I want to find out) but I have a lot of stress around toilets and men being in enclosed spaces with me. I want my daughters to have the same rights and protections that I enjoyed growing up and currently, while the law might be clear, in practice they don’t.

You, Suggestions et al are very welcome to skip this thread if you don’t like the topic. As my grandmother used to say “it’s no skin off your nose”.

There are separate conversations going on here:

-are programmes entirely about trans people of interest to the general public? Hard to quantify, but I've never heard one discussed/recommended by the many tv-obsessed people I know.

-are trans characters being randomly shoehorned into programmes for the sake of it? Probably, but the general public are used to writing that off as obligatory tokenism.

I've never seen Love Island (most talked about show in my office/volunteering space), and find the concept bewildering. Could it work at all with trans participants?

My bet is that it doesn’t.

The inherent untruthfulness of the basic premise of trans gives a clunkiness and total lack authenticity to any programme involving them.

As an example, the storyline on Hollyoaks with the very large man who claimed to be a woman who was in a women’s prison and supposedly attacked and injured by a woman literally half his size. He was terrible actor and the majority if the attack seemed to hinge on dirty looks from the women but somehow thus tiny lady managed to overpower the man and break his harm somehow. Utterly unconvincing and ridiculous.

This actor was a consultant to Coronation street when they introduced Hayley Cropper the ‘trans identifying male ’ character as a propaganda tool ahead of the GRA. It is hugely significant that they cast a female actress in the role. The storylines of making the female factory staff out to be nasty by objecting to sharing their toilets with him would not have worked at all had they been honest and cast a man.

Interestingly the only interesting and authentic trans programmes I’ve seen have been the early ones in the 70s and 80s where they interviewed many of these men about their lives and feelings. They were quite open about their homophobia (which makes their glomming onto LGB causes even more risible) and some of their motivations and it was interesting to hear them speak.

Might that also depend on including men in the definition of women in those countries?

When we are told that bin collections are a higher priority than pushing for organisations to provide the single sex provisions that they were supposed to be providing, we need to take that as reflecting just where that poster considers women's rights in the scheme of things.

The number of 'you have got the law clarified, now move on and STFU about this issue' is something we see regularly. But it is especially interesting when it is done on the feminist board that has been created especially for these discussions to happen. Of course, those doing the censuring know very well they are doing so on the Sex & Gender board, the arrogance that goes with 'STFU and focus on my list of issues as they are far more important' also is shown in censuring posters on the Sex & Gender board for having the discussions about Sex & Gender.

I don't think some people really think it through though, about what it really highlights when they do this.

I am sure Love Island could be done with all transgender participants. No doubt, some one would watch it.

Corrie did much of the heavy spadework/propaganda in the early days with the Harold/Gayley Cropper character who became much loved nationally but was a totally dishonest representation of trans because it was played by a woman.

Nowadays I don’t think they could introduce a similar character as the trans lobby would be up in arms because it’s not played by a trans person (although the female actress was entirely to their benefit by confusing the public) and if they used a male ‘trans’ person they could never put them on the screen with a woman because the contrast is so glaringly obvious. Look at the vast male head and build of the trans identifying male in Orange is the New Black US prison series.

Aside from housing these issues have been as the same for decades.

Your friends might enjoy watching men parody women having had a mastectomy and dangling the bag of raw amputated flesh like a handbag but personally I find it quite disgusting.

We are also aware that the trans lobby are shameless in their misuse of ‘stats’ to prop up their lies. See the much quoted but totally misleading ‘suicide stat’ extrapolated from a survey of something like 14 people who were thankfully still alive favoured by Stonewall and chums.

Why are you so desperate to stop us talking about this? Are we close to the target - the ground zero of the propaganda?

I’m not sure even young people give a toss about trans anymore if they ever did, its as attention seeking phase as far as most as concerned, just all a bit yawn. Cross dressers yes but a very tiny minority have genuine desire to transition after the identity confusion ends as they age. God help the crop who’ve had their poor bodies mutilated, thats the next crisis.

To answer the actual question, Drag Race is very popular amongst all of the people I know except for pensioners, who are arguably the people watching the BBC the most.

The stark difference between UK drag queens which are quite low rent comedy acts, very British and the super glamorous more performing art type performances you get on the American Drag Race is quite entertaining to see. Though being a smaller population we have run out of entertaining UK drag queens much quicker than American ones and the latest two seasons have been rubbish. You can't deny it's a saga at this point with over a decade on TV, a huge fan base under its belt and it's own culture it's created as well as bringing drag artists to mainstream entertainment.