Anti-Social on R4 now on the girl guide and single sex spaces

[Missproportionate]

FYI
Anti-Social on R4 now on the girl guide and single sex spaces

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

That man was annoying and ignorant. Single-interest clubs based around a protected characteristic don't need to justify themselves. And girls do do better academically in a single-sex environment, and we all know why.

On the plus side, the words "women are not support humans for men" were spoken, and no klaxon went off. I wonder how many complaints there will be about the programme.

Thank you. That was a good (if a bit frustrating) listen.

Doesn't it show how much damage that transgenderism has done to society that smug men like Oliver feel completely emboldened to argue that women must never be allowed to meet and organise without his permission!

Talk about the patriarchy. So many of these men would be completely at home in the Victorian era with their extreme views about women and independence.

Listening now. Milli is GREAT, unsurprisingly. Oliver is a muppet. At the first mention of the Equality Act, he whinged that he can't cope with 'legalese' 🙄

I didn’t catch the name either but I thought she was great. No surprise to hear it was Milli Hill.

Milli Hill wiped the floor with the clueless man.

Is he really the best they could find on the subject?

Laws shouldn't be followed when inconvenient to men and boys eh?

He's proving exactly what it is that law does and why it's needed. To protect women and girls from sexist muppets that don't have the capacity to see girls as anything more than props for boys. In an entirely binary, sex based way.

Would quite like to go through the legislation for women actually and check what else he feels should be ignored. Where is the line? Marital rape? Voting? Permission to own land or have a bank account?

And what other laws should be optional based on feelz? I find the tax laws quite upsetting, shall I just take no notice of them? Speeding?

How would he feel about ignoring the Equality Act protection for people identifying as trans if it's just a silly old law not to be bothered with in reality?

Here's the article.

What you realise is that being in a same-sex bubble is fine, as long as there’s a justification for it. This extends to institutions too. Woman’s Hour on Radio 4, for example, may have started in 1946, but it needs to exist because female representation in the media is still woeful.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/mens-clubs-gender-garrick-b2554384.html

Edited to change link to the article rather than the comments.

Oliver came across as fucking insufferable.

Oliver was totally out of his depth and made a show of himself. His suggestion that the girls in individual guide packs should decide whether to admit boys totally overlooks the reality for women and girls who do defend their boundaries ie they are accused of bigotry and transphobia and (worst of all) being unkind.
Also, I was fuming to hear him say that he’d told his 11 year old daughter that he ‘would die’ is she chose to go a single sex school. He really came across as not very intelligent and not very well informed. In total contrast to Milli.

Just listened to this. Milli was brilliant - I was very much hoping she would use the phrase “women and girls are not emotional support humans for men” and she did 👏👏👏.

Oliver really had no arguments did he, beyond “be kind” and “but think of the poor trans people!”
The bit where he said he couldn’t get his brain into the “legal stuff” was like the “Women Know Your Limits!” sketch where the woman says “I don’t know anything about the Gold Standard, but I do like fluffy kittens!” - what a plonker!

I was at a FiLiA conference session once where a lawyer said that while seemingly dry and dull, the law and policy is where many significant protections and upholding of rights for women happen, so ignore them at your peril. I think this episode proves this point - Oliver was floundering not because of his views but because of a wilful blindness to facts, evidence and the law

Scouts admitted girls because their numbers were dropping.

Guides still pretend they did not admit boys.

Typical bloke - fairness feels like an attack to him -classic male entitlement. No matter that 51% of humans are female, they only want to throw us the scraps from their table.

That was nearly an hour of my life I will never get back. The presenter was terrible, the so-called expert on the law got it all wrong, and the Oliver person was a complete fool. Milli was reasonable, but I wanted to scream and punch my laptop all the way through the programme.

If there’s anyone here who doesn’t know Milli’s own backstory (in the surprisingly vicious world of pregnancy and birth!) then it is well worth a read:

https://millihill.substack.com/p/i-will-not-be-silenced

I just listened. Expected to do some internal screaming, too, but honestly found Oliver's contributions seriously satisfying.

• The law? It can be ignored (and is reeeally confusing anyway).
• The stats on playground use? They don't justify single-sex spaces (btw, the boys totally dominate it at my kids' school, so they instigated a single-sex Tuesday).

• Single-sex spaces? Girls must be allowed to decide for themselves, you authoritarian!
• Single sex schools? I positively forbade my daughter from so much as considering one, in as many words.

• Parents take responsibility for teaching boys better behaviour?! But these boys are children, Milli, children, the poor lambs.
• My own son as a teen? Shocked by his monstrous behaviour, I was - horrified!
• So, yeah, girls used to mollify badly-behaved boys? That's the way to go.

The man was an embarrassment. So - thank you, Oliver.

Girls must be allowed to decide for themselves, you authoritarian!

This one of the stupidest things I ever heard. Children should be allowed to choose what they want for supper (and that, only within reason), and what colour crayon to use for the sky and the water.

Letting children be children, which is something I am in favour of (and so, apparently is Oliver) means the adults make the tough decisions on behalf of and in the best interests of the children.

Not least because, as anyone who's worked or volunteered with kids knows, the scope for disagreement, bullying and ostracisation is huge. As, indeed, Oliver points out himself. So, to add to the above...

• Girls must be allowed to decide for themselves, you authoritarian! (And will, no question, make the "right" and "inclusive" decision).
• Don't you know how unpleasant to each other girls can be?! Bullying's rife in female-only spaces - rife!

I don't think I've ever heard quite such a contradictory and downright confused "argument" in a context like this before.

Just listened and this sums it up beautifully.

He really did demonstrate perfectly why women and girls benefit from not having men and boys in the room.

I was in the Brownies and Guides in the 70s and 80s. We sang the song:

"There once was a soldier and a general too,
who found out the good that the Boy Scouts could do,
so he started a band for their sisters too,
in the Rangers, the Guides, and the Brownies."

I could go on. Anyway, it seems they are rewriting history. Girls were not allowed to join the Scouts! The Guides were for girls, just girls. Anyone else remember singing this? I couldn't find it on Google.

@MyAmpleSheep you mentioned that they got the law wrong. Was it the bit where they had someone talking about the Equality Act? The presenter asked about the PC of gender reassignment, and she said children won't be undergoing the process of transitioning so the PC of GR doesn't apply when it comes to the Guides. This jumped out at me because it suggested that if someone did have the PC of GR then it would supercede sex and the Guides wouldn't exclude them, when that isn't the case. It is lawful to exclude someone with the PC of GR from a single sex space reserved for the opposite sex. And if she was supposed to be an expert, how are they still getting this so wrong?

The very irritating thing about Oliver’s suggestion that the girls in each individual guide pack be allowed to decide whether they wanted to include boys is that it totally overlooks the inevitable accusations of transphobia and bigotry that would follow if they said no. He appeared to be oblivious to the evidence that women and girls pay a heavy price for asserting their boundaries and asking that the law be followed.

Not to mention how it would be phrased.

"Now girls, we're all nice, kind girls here, aren't we? So we're going to make this special little girl feel very welcome, aren't we?"

Oliver just demonstrated why women and girls need protections in law. It's from men like him, just as much as the dangerous ones. In many ways men like him are even more dangerous; their misogyny just suppresses and subordinates women unthinkingly and pressures women to accept their place. Which then enables the physically dangerous ones.

I listened this morning and thought that it was great overall, far better than most crumbs we get tossed. The statistics of men/boys talking the most, for longer, interrupting etc were indisputable, indeed the only interruption I noticed was from Oliver. I also didn’t understand Oliver’s point about boys becoming adolescent and being pumped full of hormones so not responsible for their behaviour 🤷‍♀️ Don’t girls also get flooded with hormones at adolescence? The effects on either sex should be recognised and the adults should deal with it if, indeed, dealing with is needed. But only the boys and their parents/adults can’t be held accountable for their behaviour

It is lawful to exclude someone with the PC of GR from a single sex space reserved for the opposite sex.

I think it's more than lawful; I think it's mandatory. But yes, that was one of the issues - she said that because there was no PC that properly captured trans-identifying children that meant trans-identifying boys couldn't be included in the GG. That's complete rubbish.

What she should have said was that the section of the EA2010 on charities doesn't permit mix-and-match membership criterion. If membership is based on more than one PC the members must hold all of them. Female and Gender Reassignment - permitted. Female or (Male and Gender Reassignment) - not permitted.

Incidentally I don't see that a child couldn't qualify as holding the PC of Gender Reassigment: anyone intending to undergo a process in the future (etc.) is covered too, which could well include children. So if she said that GR could never apply to a child that would be another error.

Then she agreed with the presenter that you could only have associations based on PCs, and that for example a club for left handed people wasn't permitted. That's a complete inversion of the law. You absolutely can have an association whose members are distinguished by some characteristic that doesn't impinge on any of the listed PCs, like, for example, their being able to write with their left hand. Discrimination for society membership or in any other way on the basis of a characteristic which is not protected is lawful. The protected characterstics are the only protected ones. That's why they're called 'protected'.

Finally I think it was a material omission in what she said, as 'the' legal expert invited on to the programme, not to mention that the GG Trustees are obliged to follow the charitable purpose in the establishing document, which is to benefit 'girls', or else they are liable from their own pockets.