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October 27, 2021 - 10:46am
‘I had to pinch myself to check I wasn’t dreaming’ is a cliché — nobody actually pinches themselves — but it’s hard to know how else to react to the publication of this BBC report.
For years, lesbians (and to a lesser extent gay men) have been voicing their concerns about the gender movement encroaching on their definitional sexual boundaries. But the cultural establishment has either dismissed them as bigots or tried to cancel them.
And now suddenly, the BBC, which until five minutes ago was one of the worst offenders in this regard, so utterly captured that it recently erased the very concept of homosexuality from its style guide, produces 4,000 words on the subject.
So yes, unexpected, but also for me strangely familiar. I remember in the early 90s feeling that the world had turned upside down when the BBC joined a youth campaign against homophobia, just after one of its top Radio 1 DJs had been cracking AIDS gags on air. Is this a similar shifting of tectonic cultural plates, or just a blip that the establishment will shut down as soon as possible?
The wider situation is very different from thirty years ago. With astonishing rapidity, almost every major corporate and public sector body has fallen to gender ideology, often led by the very same institutions that were originally created to defend and advocate for lesbians and gay men. An organisation with the sheer heft of the BBC allowing even minor critique on one aspect of it feels significant.
It’s always fascinating to watch the same people who routinely exhort us to listen to women when they speak up about sexual abuse saying ‘yeah, but not those women, the hateful bigots’. My lived experience is sacrosanct; your anecdotal evidence is flimsy ‘hate speech’.
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SubscribeToo little, too late. And besides, all communistic institutions perform ideological summersaults when it suits them. Depending on an incoherent ideology they substitute internal discipline for argument. This makes them a priesthood which issues bans and permissions according to convenience at first and to corruption at last. Once the corruption reaches a certain level, the institution folds, but not without having done a deal of lasting damage. The BBC must go; it is rotten with woke where before it stank of PC. It has no right to charge money to support its agenda in any case; and less right than ever now that the agenda is so extreme.
Yep. As Orwell said, one of the differences between Catholic and Communist dogma is that the latter is apt to change on a moment’s notice. Hence Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, until it’s always been at war with Eastasia instead.
That’s a bit like neo conservatism, right John. We’ve always been at war with east Asia.
I see that you specialise in futile debating points.
Not much of a response Simon.
Oh, really? At worst, it is just a taste of your own medicine.
Blatant whataboutism.
The first claim made by you – that the bbc is communist is spurious. Nor am I by the way. On the other hand neoconservativism is a communist heresy. Maybe that’s why we have always been at war with EastAsia.
If the BBC publishes a distinct point of view and has a substantial number of viewers it must stay to ensure diverse sources of information. If it has few viewers or competes with identical channels then we do not need it. If you want it to change its outlook work on it rather than eliminate it.
Nonsense. Any state monopoly which covers 86% of media output is a threat to diversity of information and should of course be reduced or obliterated. Obliteration is by far the best option given that monopolies of this kind involve taking money from taxpayers who may not agree with the the organisation’s editorial line. Information should be made available and / or obtained by free agents in a free market. End of.
I disagree Simon – too much is happening to expose the legal contradictions in equality law and employers responsibilities. It’ll only take a couple of cases, probably prompted by women challenging the FCA requirements for senior management ratios based on genders, before it’ll collapse about their ears.
Check out the Virginia Stone Bridge school case of the impact of just one incident – it’s possibly going to result in the Democrats losing Virginia and their majority.
I got rid of my tele. I refused to line the the pockets of the BBC after their fastidiously neutral coverage of Brexit which favoured Remain.
Too much drivel on there now anyway.
I prefer reading and the radio, (and UnHerd of course).
I read the article and was shocked that the BBC published it and also, somewhat perversely, pleased that the issues it addressed were finally being aired in the open. A few things need to be said to the ‘trans community’ and their ‘allies’ (I know they don’t speak for all trans people so these comments are targeted at the loony but far too vocal fringe):
1) Remember that trans people are an absolutely tiny proportion of the population of any country.
2) Remember that more than 90% of the human population is heterosexual.
3) Your predecessor organisations fought successfully for homosexual people – a natural minority – to have the same legal rights as heterosexual people – a natural majority.
4) Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 (NOT ‘gender identity.)
5) In some specified contexts it is still necessary and legal to discriminate against people on the ground of sex.
6) The suggestion that any person who declares that they would not be sexually attracted to a trans person is guilty of ‘discrimination’ is both nonsensical and has no basis in law.
7) There can never be any legislation or remedy in law to compel anyone to find you sexually attractive.
8) There is no such thing as the ‘Cotton Ceiling’ because, unlike the female half of the population who have historically and demonstrably suffered from being denied promotion to top jobs (the shorthand for which phenomenon is the ‘Glass Ceiling’) there is not, nor can there ever be, an expectation that trans people have a right to be considered equally as ‘candidates’ for a sexual partnership with any individual based only on the trans person’s perception of their qualifications for that role.
9) When you talk about lesbian women who refuse to have sex with trans women being ‘transphobic’ and ‘discriminating’ against trans people you appear to be insisting on a trans woman’s RIGHT to have sex with an unwilling lesbian woman.
10) No person in this country, of either sex or any sexual orientation has an enforceable right to have sex with any other person.
11) Those in the trans community who denounce as ‘transphobic’ women who defend their rights to privacy and bodily autonomy, including the right to refuse sex with anyone without having to explain themselves, reveal themselves to be allied with misogynists and provide an eloquent case for the very protection from abuse that women seek in single sex spaces.
These points need to be repeated, often, and everywhere.
Very good, except that I think you need to make 11 a bit more forthright. The people you describe reveal themselves to be rape enablers.
The best part of the BBC article was :
“The language is gross because you are evoking the metaphor of the glass ceiling, which is about women being oppressed. So saying that if someone doesn’t want to have sex with you that person is oppressing you.”
It made me realise that, as a young heterosexual male, I have been oppressed by hot girls all my youth.
Well said! I suspect that the majority think this way, and moreover would never consider abusing trans people, or even discriminating against them. Yet our sainted national broadcaster sees fit to castigated us all (daily it seems) as a country of vicious bigots. I am male and I have been in a relationship with my male partner for 33 years and apart from once (25 years ago – in a hotel that made Faulty Towers seem sophisticated) we have never been made to feel uncomfortable anywhere in he U.K.. The ‘real’ people here are already tolerant and inclusive, far more so than those forever angry people the BBC constantly gives it’s airtime to.
That’s great to hear Lee, and just as I would have hoped. There seem to be people and organisations around who want to paint us all as homophobic, transphobic, racists, but everyone I know and everyone I have ever met in this country is tolerant and accepting.
Unfortunately, these ‘dogooders’ appear to want to divide us into our little groups based on sexual preferences, skin colour or pronoun preference rather than realise that all of us are far more than just any of those three attributes.
Good points, well made⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The above paragraph was quoted by the BBC from an account of a lesbian in Lesbians at Ground Zero. By going to the source (http://www.gettheloutuk.com/images/LesbianAtGroundZero_Eng4.jpg), you can see that the BBC took it upon itself to obscure the sex of the alleged assailant with the use of brackets to replace the male pronouns used in the original.
Methinks the BBC still has a lot of work to do here.
To be fair it’s clear the assailant is male. What with the p***s.
My concern was more for the way this could be seen as the BBC gaslighting the alleged victim. It’s almost like telling the person that what they know happened to them couldn’t have happened to them.
That’s the problem with gender ideology: the mental somersaults you have to do to ensure that you are using the correct pronouns and not inadvertently offending someone. I honestly don’t know how people find the time…
Let’s be grateful the BBC didn’t use the pronoun ‘she’.
I saw this article yesterday, too and I was totally gob-sm*cked (and appalled by the content). Perhaps it is a slight change in attitude – we can only hope.
Not a change of attitude more a fig leaf so that they can claim to be putting both sides of the debate fairly and fulfilling their public broadcasting remit.
You can find the article on the website through the link here and if you search under Trans or LGBT you can find it, but if you are just looking for general articles coming up on the website in the normal way it is not there. So effectively it is invisible to anyone just looking at the website but will be counted as a balancing article should anyone claim the BBC are a propaganda arm of Stonewall.
They are not just pretty faces at the BBC.
‘should anyone claim the BBC are a propaganda arm of Stonewall’ – as the recent BBC Nolan podcast has intimated. The BBC knew it was in the pipeline so I wonder whether that explains the publication of this piece. Still, never look a gift horse etc etc …
It is time the other side of the argument is shared with the mainstream. For too long, Stonewall and Mermaids have been shouting over every other voice. Their arguments are taken as truths even though the data they choose to use tends to be from the USA. Or in smaller research projects than this one.
It is interesting that both Stonewall and Mermaids use very small data samples to prove their points re young people abd trans ideology, but have slated this research as being of no use since there were only 80 respondents.
When called out, Stonewall’s CEO went off on a rant that is nonsensical and quite frankly, childish. Tantrum alert!
Just a blip. It’s down now or unlinked. Provided this is a major issue in the US, that it continues to be part of the tribal distinction between progressive Democrats and the rest, the ideology will continue unless the democrats become sane again.
I’ve just looked on the “England” page of the BBC and it’s nowhere to be found.
You have to know the full url to get to it.
It’s still there. Here’s the url https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385.amp
The link provided by Mr Roberts still works; or at least it did for me a couple of minutes ago.
There are no “Progressive Democrats” and, with respect, I disagree with your use of the term. There are only fascist, would-be tyrants who want to take away our freedoms and destroy society.
“Progressive” is their term. It is not accurate, and is the opposite of what they really are. Like “anti-fa” being against fascism. They are fascists, and must not only be resisted, they must be defeated!
It sounds like your vocabulary is even more restricted and biased than theirs.
Ouch! I’ll try to do better, and thanks for spurring me on!
Well, it’s either shift those tectonic plates, or carry on to re-create the Salem Witch Trials.
To my friends across the pond, please don’t pay the license fee!
I understand that it is mandatory, but there must be a way to starve the beast. The BBC is a shadow of its former self, and is now the propaganda arm of the woke. Just today BBC played world famous Corona virus expert and groundbreaking immunologist Charlize Theron, who–seemingly–went against the science by saying the third jab is not needed, or selfish, when those in Africa have yet to have a first jab. She also strayed from her brief as a Corona expert to venture into business expertise, saying that patent waivers were needed and a good thing. Really? This is the BBC, giving this nutter a platform?
This article is insightful, but perhaps should have emphasized language a bit more. It implies, but does not actually state, that so-called “hate speech” has no definition (See, “two spirits”), but is generally used in two ways: 1. anything that the extreme, fascist, radical left disagrees with and/or 2. anything that could offend anyone at any time for any reason (See, ALL comedy), and Steve Hughes does an epic job covering this.
It’s not only about gay or trans issues. It’s about the society, the culture. BBC must be stopped!
Tut, Tut. Are encouraging us Brits to break the law? 🙂
I suppose I am. British law seems to severely limit free speech. Didn’t some chav go to prison recently for “hate speech?” I think it’s wrong, I wouldn’t do it, BUT I certainly believe that he should be able to say whatever he wants online (no threats of imminent violence), even if vulgar.
So, yes, break these illegitimate laws.
Yup, along with Nolan and Thompson’s magnificent investigative journalism about Stonewall (BBC Sounds Podcast) this may be signs that the worms are finally turning.
It’s inevitable really – internally contradictory and puritanical ideologies are always going to collapse eventually, like communism did, but it’s a surprise when the tide goes out to see the ‘illustrious’ being exposed – Stonewall, Labour MPs, The Guardian, JK Rowling’s so called actor friends who were so quick to betray her.
In a couple of years when the tide finally exposes them it’ll be great fun going through their pronouncements and tweets and seeing them acknowledged as pure bigotry.
I was first minded to say, “Don’t hold your breath”, and suggest that the ideologues would soon put the BBC back on the ‘right track’.
But I see from the other commenters that the article has now vanished. Didn’t take long!
I had no difficulty accessing it ! It does give me hope that the grip of the ideology is loosening.
Yes, if you have the url it is there. It’s not accessible, as far as I can see, elsewhere.
I wonder how much Nolan’s Stonewall podcast has shaken them.
Ah… don’t get your hopes up… leopard and spots etc. etc….
Looks like the BBC got into trouble after all.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbians-stand-trans-women-open-letter-dangerous-bbc-article-rcna3903
It’s not a change in direction. It’s the Remoaner TERFs who run the upper echelon defending their own vested interest in an exceptional case.
Please Unherd, not yet another piece about the woes of some sexual minority or other. No-one cares except a tiny minority of misfits.
If we knew why Stephan Nolan is paid so much money, we would also know why he was allowed to question BBC policy on transgender.
Ehm, so what is the change about? Do I need to read the BBC’s lengthy essay?
“Is a lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners – then shunned and even threatened for speaking out. Several have spoken to the BBC, along with trans women who are concerned about the issue too.“
Does this help?