BBC Pride article

[CervixSampler]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj63jyl09jxo

An interesting read. Manchester is my nearest city. I’m not a fan of the ugly, dirty place where I feel anxious as a GC straight woman. There does seem to be less overt support in terms of fewer pride flags flying. I think Lloyds bank was fully window dressed in rainbow colours in June, as was possibly the Halifax if I’ve remembered correctly. The Lego store has had a Lego progress flag at the back of the till for weeks. I’ve not seen anything in Starbucks though. Last year they had rainbow straws. I’d like to shop without politics and don’t see why banks and building societies need to get political. The money would be better spent supporting local LGB charities imo. And Tunnocks giveaways.

I see I should have explained myself better. I didn’t say I felt unsafe, I said I feel anxious. I should have clarified that to say in a certain area. A few years back now there were threads where gay women talked about how unwelcome they were around Canal Street and as someone anxious around men due to past trauma, I tend to be wary in busy places. Places displaying the pride progress flag make me feel unwelcome. I am not feeling unsafe due to differing opinions. An opinion can’t hurt me.

Aside from all the very apt and valid criticisms of the BBC feature made by previous posters, I have a minor gripe about the use of inverted commas around “gender critical”, but not around “trans”. I think this signals a lack of impartiality which is incompatible with the BBC’s stated mission. It’s like they are doubting the veracity of gender critical thinking, but without actually stating it or giving reasons why it’s dubious. But trans ideology does not get the same treatment, even though there are many well known examples of men falsely claiming to be trans in order to abuse women.

It's worth complaining to them. I've made several complaints to the BBC, as have many others. I think it does have a cumulative effect.

The problem is, "trans" is so mainstream now that it doesn't need inverted commas.

"Gender critical" is a neologism/clunky label for what most people think

An interesting article. Thank you for sharing, OP.

Haven't RTFT but am looking forward to doing so as this seems to be a relatively significant shift for the BBC.

They have dipped a toe in the water with the idea that perhaps all things "trans" are not as simple as they might first appear when LGB is paired with T. It's a shame they couldn't explore this further though. The feature would probably be better named as No Depth rather than In Depth, but it's certainly a good start.

I've not been to Canal Street for about 25 years but if that vibe is now being felt in towns like Crewe this sounds like a big positive.

It's interesting that the article describes it as a family atmosphere. It sounds like that means grass roots gay rights etc, rather than fetish gear and forced adherence to TWAW, which is great if true.

I think "in depth" is a bit of a misnomer here. The entire article felt very superficial to me.

Agree and think these small details are where they get people to click on ridiculous stories a lot of the time. We need a better label than "gender critical" for "knows men can't have a cervix / did science GCSE / doesn't live in cuckoo land". Educated might work but we know how some members of the public feel about experts (bloody Gove).

A friend of mine did join a lesbian dating site on her phone and showed me all of the pictures which had been doctored that were still clearly men, the way they wrote was male, what they wanted was male in it's origins, what they wore was male and what they enjoyed doing was male. One man was clearly a man with giant fake boobs posing as a "woman" with a woman's name. All were stating they are lesbians. I cannot see how anyone can defend this as keeping rights for women in any way. Any lesbian not savvy enough to see the AI doctored images is potentially talking to and arranging meet ups with men who at the very least have mental health issues and are happy to lie when they want a relationship or sex.

No, obviously I wasn't claiming that gay life was hunky-dory in the 1980s.

I was saying that the claim that Crewe's gay scene in 2017 was only a hidden corner of a pub seems extremely unlikely, given that rural East Anglia - at least the bit I was (and am) very familiar with - managed gay pubs by 1990. There was a gay scene in Ipswich c1990, for God's sake. How do I know? Because I have gay friends who were a part of it.

Maybe if you'd read the post I was responding to you might have got the drift of what I was saying.