Care is needed
BBC presenters have been told to challenge guests who accuse others of transphobia after the broadcaster admitted that news items on J.K. Rowling fell short of its editorial standards. In an internal briefing note, BBC journalists and production teams were advised that “care is needed” when people are labeled “transphobic” and the term should be interrogated during on-air debate. The advice featured in a nine-page document on “reporting sex and gender” circulated to the BBC newsroom late last year.
Better yet they could just stop using the word at all. The whole point of it is to convince everyone that it’s both evil and irrational to be aware that men are not women. That’s a ludicrous place to start from. It’s not a phobia to know that men like India Willoughby and Frieda Wallace are not women and are in fact virulently misogynist. The raging phobes in this conflict are generally not on Team Women.
But it’s a start, anyway.
The guidance follows the BBC apologizing to Rowling twice last year. The Harry Potter author was accused of transphobia by trans rights advocates, but the claim was not properly challenged by presenters, including Radio 4’s Evan Davis.
Meaning he simply repeated it, yeah? Thanks, bro.
It added that “careful and accurate use of language” is important and thought should be given to terms that some audience members may find problematic. “Some of the terms used, for example ‘cis-gender’ to identify a person who has the same sex and gender identity, are not familiar to many of our audience and may be considered offensive by some,” the briefing said.
They damn well are considered extremely offensive by many. Having sneering men in lipstick shout at us for our “cis” privilege is more than annoying, yes.
Davie gave evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee this week amid concern over a BBC complaint unit ruling against Radio 4 Today show presenter Justin Webb last month. Webb was deemed to have broken editorial rules when he said “trans women, in other words males” during an item discussing whether biological males have an advantage in chess.
Davie said BBC journalists are “doing a very good job” in difficult circumstances, but argued that Webb was guilty of “foot fault” in his language during the August 2023 broadcast. Davie downplayed a report in The Daily Telegraph this week, which claimed that BBC employees had written to him “in their droves to express dismay” at the way Webb had been treated.
What, just because the BBC is punishing its journalists for mentioning that men are not women? Picky picky, right?
Come on Beeb. Maintain a grip on the truth and on the balance of power between men and women.
H/t What a Maroon
This is what happens when the accusation is simply repeated without challenge. It becomes taken for granted in a smoke/fire sort of way, that Rowling must be transphobic if all these people are accusing her of being so. By assuming they are acting in good faith, (or at least pretending they are) they fail to check whether or not her statements are “transphobic” at all. In bypassing this crucial step, they short circuit their fact-checking process and uncritically take on board as accurate the aggrieved parties’ particular, peculiar definition of what is transhobic, which, as we have seen, activists are quick to apply to bland statements of what would normally be considered uncontroversial fact. This results in organizations like the BBC acting as political operatives for trans activism, employing activist language and talking points, passing off their now partisan stance as “neutrality.” Their unwillingness or reluctance to admit to capture (when it’s so obvious to everyone else) is even more infuriating, and simply further erodes their credibility.
Yes, like calling trans identified males “transwomen” when they are not women of any kind at all. Ditto with using incorrect, female-specific pronouns to refer to them. Is there any other group for which the BBC uses novel, idiosyncratic redefinitions of common terms at the behest of activists with a vested interest?
And it’s not just a matter of clarity, comprehension, or even offence, it’s a matter of accuracy as well. The concept of “gender identity” and its “alignment” or lack thereof with a given individual’s material, biological body is essentially a religious one. The BBC has accepted what amounts to a particular theological concept with little or no connection with reality, and is viewing the world through the lens of this concept in its reporting on aspects of reality over which this religious stance claims authority and special knowledge. It’s big of the BBC condescending to inform us in this notification what “cis-gender” means, when there’s likely no such thing as “gender identity” at all. It’s a misplaced confidence in knowledge they think is real. Why must we become “familiar” with fictional, delusional ideas in order to understand a BBC show? Telling us what the concepts mean doesn’t make them any more real. We’re not confused or misinformed, we’re not believers. It’s ironic that the BBC and other news outlets continue to refer to the everyday understanding of the reality of the immutable, binary nature of sex as a “belief,” (as if they were some obscure bit of improbable doctrine adhered to by a small sect who must be, begrudgingly, placated) when it is “gender identity” itself that is the obscure belief that pretends not just to orthodoxy, but to reality.
The BBC has decided that the “consecrated” wine and bread really are the Body and Blood of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and suggest that anyone who claims that they’re just bread and wine is not only misinformed and ignorant, but bigoted and hateful.
For those in the are not familiar to the term, a “foot fault” i(in tennis, squash, and similar games) an infringement of the rules made by incorrect placement of the feet when serving.
But tell us where he was factually incorrect. “Trans women” are males. That is a neutral statement of fact. To say that saying this out loud breaks some kind of rule shows just how far Davie and the BBC have internalized gender ideology, and how poorly they understand the very concept of “neutrality.” He is expecting everyone in the Beeb’s employ to toe the genderist line and self-sensor accordingly. Davie might want to consider rethinking policy, and issuing Webb his own apology, before continuing down the path he has chosen, for the corporation which will result, inevitably, in the need for even more apologies to Rowling in the future.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Care is […]
Agreeing with everything but the idea that they should stop using the word ‘transphobia’ at all. There ARE actual transphobes, though I certainly agree that the Beeb has gotten the wrong end of the stick about who they are. The GOP, the Proud Boys, and others of that ilk are absolutely motivated by hatred for, and deliberately stirring up fear against, not merely the trans movement, but also individual trans individuals, no matter their position on the whole competing rights issue.
What the Beeb needs to do is come out with an actual, coherent definition of transphobia (and other, similar terms), and then operate under that definition, and demand that both guests and pundits alike be able to defend using the term under that definition.
If they can’t, well, then, they’re not likely to do anything good with their reporting, even if the word is stricken from their vocabularies.
Between the histories of the terms ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘transphobia’, I will assume that anyone who accuses someone else of being X-phobic is an intellectually dishonest witch-hunter, with the contrary something to be demonstrated.
I have a fear response to cults and cultists, and that fear is not due to some concern for my direct physical safety. Rather, it is born from the reasonable association between cultists and unpredictable, irrational, potentially dangerous behavior. I have a fear response to the idea of cultists in control of government bodies, of cultists in positions of authority over children, of cultists in jobs on which my well-being depends. Maybe it’s just that I was a child during the Cold War and watched Dr. Strangelove too many times, but the thought of a doomsday cultist with his finger on a nuclear launch button terrifies me. Is this fear irrational?
Genderism is a cult. Not only is it a cult, it’s a cult that exalts horrifying body modification. It’s a cult that preys on the mentally ill and children. It’s a cult with members (as well as believers and mere supporters) in control of government bodies, in positions of authority over children, in jobs on which my well-being depends.
That’s a very good point.