Riot Women sums up everything wrong with the BBC

[IwantToRetire]

Riot Women, by Sally Wainwright, is not the first drama to challenge traditional gender roles in the name of female empowerment, but it really seems to hate men. The six-part series is ostensibly about how five menopausal women come together to make music and inspire each other to rise above the difficulties they face. But another way of seeing it is that it is six hours of prime-time television in which every male character is portrayed as (at best) hopelessly ineffectual and dishonest or (at worst) a psychopathic murderer and rapist, with not much in between.

what it does tell us is that, five years after being appointed as Director General, Tim Davie’s BBC is still, fundamentally, a place that sees such dramas as suitable for mainstream viewing, and that the ideas it promotes are essentially incontestable and inoffensive. Wainwright’s world view is indistinguishable from the BBC’s because they originate from the same set of values.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/riot-women-sums-up-everything-wrong-with-the-bbc/ and at https://archive.is/iEEB9

So what was the point of it at all then. Might as well have just made the lead singer a man and rejoice a few women were allowed in the band.
It was meant to be about women. One show, that's all we wanted.

@DuesToTheDirt
Bloody loved Riot Women, it made me cry several times and made be bloody angry re how women are treated. We need more tv like it.
A very odd article.

totally agree x

The Theory of Everything

You are actually making it a trans issue you brought it to everyone's attention so distracted with what we were actually discussing, and the real way men actually were portrayed in this drama, not 1 trans actor who had a minor role, trans people exist and the drama showed that, I mean you didn't switch off you were not that offended !

Posts like yours is why posters stay away from this section of mumsnet we are not allowed to discuss topics that actually affect us without Trans being "shoehorned " in into every other thread!

And as for no non disabled actor portraying a disabled person 🙄

I can't comment on the show itself, or whether it did a great job of being women dominated, or whether it failed because of shoehorning in a man (and, I think, ignoring the fact that by definition he is a mentally ill man or a paraphilic man).

All I can say is that I have no obligation whatsoever to watch programmes about rugby or gardening or anything else, nor do I have any obligation to watch any programme featuring elderly characters or kids or characters who are performing opposite sex, sex-based stereotypes.

I am sick of the mainstream agenda ramming trans down our throats.

I saw the programme's description and (I swear this is 100% true) thought, "that sounds great, but it's on the BBC so it is bound to have a male character who is performing opposite sex, sex-based stereotypes. I will google to check, and if men performing opposite sex, sex-based stereotypes are part of the show then I'll definitely not watch. [Googles]. Oh, I am shocked, shocked I tell you".

I also avoided this section because you'd be called horrid names just because you knew basic biology. Despite the High Court ruling that sex is biologically determined at birth we still have to pretend men can be women in our shows.

That was what affected me most about this show, because I wanted to like it, I made a point of watching it as a woman, as a feminist, and I tried to not find it distracting, but it is jarring. I would love to know if the BBC forced this character in to make a point that men can put on a dress and be women, as the BBC still seems to believe, or if it was originally written as a trans character. If it was written in I would love to know what the point of it was; how the author meant for the character to show the female story.

It's a valid part of the experience when you watch a show that is meant to showcase women.

Well I would agree that show Name, the Picture used above and on Iplayer and the Wardrobe departments contribution to characterisation were stereotypical dated sh** about adult women I assumed these were not created by grown women it by committee style box ticking. So bad I almost didn’t watch!

Guess the trans character was in as a process necessity - maybe a story about just adult women won’t be made without hitting certain targets.

But the story about the lives of adult women and the acting…excellent …nearly missed it due to the above issues. Obviously I am bright enough to note
that this wasn’t and isn’t intended to be representative of all men…. Or women.

But the trans actor is a man. Do what the show is saying I think is all men are horrible apart from those who claim to be women?

They didn't show all men are horrible they showed why men were problematic , and how middle aged women are often forgotten and often dismissed by family and society, anyway I don't think this discussion is for me posters want to focus on something else and it isn't how I thought the conversation would flow,

so theyre showing men are problematic apart from the one claiming to be a woman? I’d think surely a man claiming to be a woman would be the most problematic. Although it does highlight that women are indeed dismissed by society. I mean, how misogynistic is it for society to believe a man who says he’s a women over women who say he’s not.

Of course, this is an illustration what happens... you start letting men into women's spaces, and suddenly the attention tilts towards them and we all start failing the Bechdel Test... 🤦‍♀️

Well I’m enjoying it! Stuff the spectator

Talk about missing the point.

The whole point was to show that at a particular time of life many women find themselves juggling with the menopause, parents with health issues, negligent or even unpleasant children, being invisibilised and thinking what about me.

And, on the telly addicts thread said, if you live in Hebbdon Bridge having men around thinking they are women is noticeable.

This series wasn't about trans issues, and maybe wasn't even feminist.

But it was about, maybe in a contrived way as a lot of "issues" were included amoung a small group of women, recognising that this is some women's realities.

I know lots of women who dont claim to be politically have been so grateful to have something on tv that reflects their lives.

Some women dont have to cope with any let alone all of the issues the series raised, and you can count yourself really lucky.

I had never thought that FWR would have so many snobs on it.

Most women's lives are messy. Most women (who inexplicitly to me!) have involvement with men. And this often makes their lives worse.

To whine on feminist forum that these issues shouldn't be the subject of a tv series is completely bizzare.

Effectively saying the male author of the article was right.

We should only have tv shows where men dominant, have no flaws, and women know their place, keep quiet and take their clothes off for men on demand.

How did your experience of midlife inspire the story?
One of the points of this show is women of a certain age, but it's not just about the menopause, it's about the responsibilities that come your way. My marriage broke down, my two boys are adults, but they still come through with their new, different problems as they get older. It feels like you're just carrying a lot of stuff and, in the middle of that, you start to feel like you're disappearing because your hormones are whittling away. I suddenly started to feel like a little old lady, and that was a real shock. So I wanted to write about that feeling, but in a way that was uplifting, interesting and entertaining.

What triggered the story itself?
I came up with the idea about ten years ago, when I was getting into my 50s and realised my mum had dementia. A few things start piling on when you get to a certain age. When you get to 40, you suddenly realise you don't give a s* what people think any more. You genuinely don't worry about all those niggly things; you get to that age where it just stops and you're sorted. Then the weird thing is, you get to 50 and things all go wrong again. You're often at the height of your career, so you've got a lot of responsibility at work, and the big thing for me was my mum had started to get dementia. I just didn't see it coming and wasn't prepared for it. There are no guidelines, like when your kids start school and you get all this help; there's nothing. You have stuff to deal with that you didn't quite anticipate. You have to get tough as you get older to deal with what comes your way and it often coincides with the menopause.

https://www.hellomagazine.com/film/861715/sally-wainwright-riot-women-exclusive-personal-inspiration/

Absolutely, NorthXNorthWest. Exactly what I felt, and I watched the whole thing.

I watched it and enjoyed it. I rolled my eyes at the BBC's daft trans tokenism, but I just treat it like I treat sexism in old films: I recognise it's a function of the writers' cultural envirnoment and it's lack of education rather than deliberate malice.

It is interesting to consider how these tokenisistic characters get written and what that tells you about the writers' own prejudices.

If I mentally recast the trans character (Madeline I think) to think how he'd come accross played by a female actress she's clearly a sort of soft best friend type who says the right things to the main chatacters but has no inner motivations and definitely no hint of sexuality or anger. A sort of sponge for the others' drama.

That’s a good point, @FlirtsWithRhinos. I noted the Miranda character the same way, and I agree that making the character trans painted the writing into a corner. In a story full of difficult, complex, messy people, Miranda was an unusually uncomplicated sweetie - to the point of being a little underwritten.

I also found it a little odd that a woman who had clearly completely embraced and accepted a trans-identified son had had such a huge glaring blind spot about her daughter’s earlier same sex relationship and possible bisexuality. I know she didn’t like Ines after she’d left, but not even considering it before seemed strange.

She just hated Inez, didn’t she? It was nothing to do with them being the same sex.

there was a tiny allusion to the trans character in episode 1- something about things changing/being progressive- just look at Miranda type thing. I would have to rewatch it to spot it again.

I'm enjoying this. I like SW and she's so often the only tv playwright writing about women being women (not sexy spies who happen to be women or whatever).

I knew this wasn't going to get the kind of approval Happy Valley did because there are no James Nortons and all the women are over 50. I was apprehensive about a transwoman character being shoehorned in but that's not the case, if it wasn't for the recent TRA wars, I'd have thought nothing of this minor character.

There are some grimly real scenes - the one where the older teacher is being scolded for her 'tone' towards a younger person by her young male boss, who doesn't want to hear she just tried to kill herself. I've seen something chillingly close to this exchange.

But BEFORE she hated Ines, she was close to her - friends, even. And when Ines was friends and living with her, she was involved with the spiky daughter but apparently Jess was so distracted by the breakdown of her own relationship she didn’t notice the romantic sparks flying.

And then - and this is where my sympathy for everyone beaks down a bit - Ines and Jess fell out and Jess’s daughter took up with an abusive bastard of a bloke and this somehow is Jess’s fault? But Jess has no idea her daughter could possibly be bisexual, despite all the Pride flags all over the pub.

Actually maybe what we’re seeing is that SW is my type of TERF - someone who has been an gay ally and pro gender non-conformity for decades before it was fashionable, and has noticed that some people who still have a problem with gender nonconformity and sexual fluidity can sometimes be quite accepting of the idea that feminine men must REALLY be women, and vice versa. But not of feminine women being bisexual or lesbian, or of feminine men being bi or heterosexual. Which is quite a sharp observation to sneak into a BBC drama, I have to admit.

I haven't been watching this, but I will now. Not sure this was the intention of the review?

I haven't either; I didn't fancy it. Although there's no doubt SW has produced some of the best TV drama of recent times.

Completely off topic, but the idea behind Riot Women reminded me of a show from years ago on BBC which was about a middle aged woman becoming a racing driver.
I've just looked it up, it was called Driving Ambition and when I watched with my mum (in 1984 🫣) I thought it was awesome, I expect it's dated a bit now though.