Anita Rani on WH - do you think she’s aware of her hypocrisy?

[Sparklybutold]

Anita Rani got quite a bit of backlash last year for the way she handled discussions on the trans debate. She came across as very one‑sided and pretty adversarial, and it was hard not to notice which side she seemed aligned with.

What I find interesting is that she’s still fronting Woman’s Hour and also hosting various podcasts on women’s health. It does make me wonder whether she recognises the contradiction in how she approaches these topics, or whether she genuinely doesn’t see it.

she wants to keep her job

It's more than that. She seems to have "#be kind" and being a "one of the good people" built into her personal brand.

There's loads of women like this. I think it's partly a privileged position of being wealthy and not having to deal with the sharp end of things like mixed sex wards, changing rooms, rape centres, prison.... And that she's in the media so they're all luvvies and probably an echo chamber.

I'm in a university. It's pretty much the same.

She was on Twitter the first week she hosted WH calling out posts she thought were anti trans.

I can’t remember the context but I think it was in relation to a guest or an item on the show.

I don’t think anyone on MN noticed because I’ve only seen posts gushing over her when I look on MN.

I’m disgusted by the levels of transphobia on here. @BBCWomansHour is a space to discuss everything including LGBTQ+ issues. Listening to people’s stories helps us understand something and hopefully empathise. Ditch the hate

https://x.com/itsanitarani/status/1398221484779347968

”I’ve only seen posts gushing over her when I look on MN.”

On FWR? Have people been gushing over her on FWR? I remember there were discussions about those tweets here, but admittedly it could have been just one thread. However, I didn’t think many of us believed Anita Rani as being supportive of women who prioritised sex over gender identity.

I remember many who lamented that the small gains we had made with Emma Barnett allowing the discussion and her pushing back on some guests who had the agenda that allowed harms to women and girls disappeared when Emma left.

Nuala is more adversarial to women involved in the fight for our rights.

True. But WH in general now is adversarial to women who disagree that any male person is in any way female.

Interesting to see what she thinks Woman's Hour is about.

She thinks it's about discussing 'everything' and listening to 'people'.

I'd assumed it was primarily about discussing everything which affects women and listening to women in particular.

It's in the name. Did she misread it and think it was called 'People's Hour'?

Oh, so people who think women’s rights are important simply don’t understand the issues and/or are unempathetic. Selfish, selfish women wanting to keep our women only spaces. Who do we think we are!

This with bells on.

And women like me with PTSD from male violence are probably less likely to get into those powerful positions in the first place.

Patriarchy is a bastard.

I hardly listen to WH these days. I tried to find out the listening figures but a quick search cannot find anything more recent than 2016 when there were "3.7m weekly listeners".
You.Gov figures aren't good. Popularity rating of 23%.

I gave up listening some time ago which saddens me as it used to be a regular part of my day. I miss Jennie Murray and Emma especially after having to put up with Jane Garvey and her relentless fangirling and faux self-deprecation. Nuala is really awful and well matched with Anita. Sad how they let it get to this but unsurprising given the way the BBC has gone.

I don’t think anyone on MN noticed because I’ve only seen posts gushing over her when I look on MN.

If you type 'Anita Rani' into Advanced Search and select Feminism Sex & Gender you'll find an abundance of very un-gushing posts about AR... I don't know about the rest of MN but she is well known around these parts as prioritising men and 'kindness' over women and reality.

I was an avid WH listener until the supreme court conversations in April last year. It was so one sided and i actually found womens hour to be offensive to women and their rights.

She's a proper handmaiden. I turn off when she's on. Cannot bear her.

WH is infuriating. This week they did a tiny bit of coverage of the Darlington nurses' victory using their male health correspondent to do some bland analysis. No interrogation of the importance of the case, or how it affected women. As usual a complete disgrace. I used to listen regularly but not any more.

The BBC is better than us plebs and has better views and values. They know what a woman is, and they know the best women are men. If you complain to WH about this you will be scolded and shamed for wrong think. Know your place woman! Men's feelings matter far more than our lives!

It is an interesting part of the debate, but that post on X was from 2021.

Commiserations. I will soon be qualifying from a uni whose training programme was destroyed by a TRA. She/they/per jumped ship before she could be held accountable. She is now working at another uni on the same type of training programme. I won financial compensation from the uni because ‘process wasnt followed’, but they couldn’t actually investigate her because she left - coward. Unis have become an absolute cesspit of narrow and uncritical thinking. Of all the things I remember one of the difficulties I still have is other members of the team did nothing. I was telling them for years. It was only when people started to feedback after they qualified and were safe, plus the amount of people leaving the course, did they start to investigate. My training course was full of progressive types or people who remained silent. It was an awful experience. If you’re still in it - I hope you’ve find your tribe?

I have written in a few times - get nothing back. Why is she still there? I think she’s genuinely rubbish. Loved it when Jayne and the other lady hosted it (forgot her name), but the vibe was very different and I genuinely felt that women’s issues were front and centre. Only a few days were they talking about bullying in female coaching, and of course the majority of the perpetrators were male. Considering the fact that women are massively underrepresented in coaching I wondered why the guests didn’t bring in the issue of the impact of TW and the influence they are having on female sports in general. Do you think guests are asked to sign a no trans talk contract?

Yes it is. It looks like she's been more circumspect since then. But I'd bet good money she's not shifted from where she was then.

She struck me on race across the world as staggering naive and out of touch tbh.

It was really weird.

I have a friend who works for the BBC who has some of the same always positive about everyone vibe. She doesn't want to see the bad in anyone.

She has worked there a long time and has some stories to tell. I honestly think it's a product of the only way you survive the BBC is to either be staggering naive and overly positive or to become so cynical you jack it in because it's so fucking depressingly awful.

I wasn't impressed by the number of times she hijacked WH to include plugs for the Race Across the World she was in. I did wonder why the producer hadn't said that that wasn't on.

@I have a friend who works for the BBC who has some of the same always positive about everyone vibe. She doesn't want to see the bad in anyone.
Such people unnerve me. I'm always left thinking "haven't you got any critical faculty at all?"