Nutmeg's week

It's a drag, drag, drag, drag world on the BBC

The BBC didn’t exactly cover itself in glory last week. It started with the release of a report that found that many of its stars and managers ‘behave unacceptably’ at work, and bosses often fail to tackle them. The BBC said the report drew a ‘line in the sand’, only for the week to end with one of those stars getting charged with terror offences. Yet it was probably what happened in between that was even worse.

Thursday (May 1)

The BBC World Service news programme BBC OS covered the breaking story that, from June 1, men will no longer be allowed to play in women’s football in England, even if they pretend they are women.

The programme devoted 13 minutes of discussion to this topic about women’s sport. This consisted entirely of a male presenter, an LGBT activist who recently bought a baby, speaking to two men. Both of them vehemently opposed the ruling.

Despite this total lack of balance, the presenter, instead of asking any probing questions, failed to challenge a single lie he was told and even used trans activist language, describing women as ‘cis women’. One of the two men interviewed was a cross-dressing man, and all the questions to him were leading, typically about how sad he must be feeling about the ruling.

BBC Radio Scotland also decided to cover the story and showed a little more balance, interviewing first a cross-dressing man ‘Jasmine’, and then Olympian woman, Susan Egelstaff.

However, the interview with the man was the same as the above: Trans activist language and lies were not challenged, and the interview ended up being simply Jasmine - a man with a history of making sexually inappropriate comments about women - talking about how upset he was. Comments like “Trans men, trans women and cis women all have really similar physical performance, only cis men outcompete the rest” went unchallenged.

Every single question to Susan was about Jasmine’s feelings.

BBC One’s The One Show chose some couples, seemingly off the street, to watch comedies to see if they laugh together.

One of the couples, of course, included a man who pretends he’s a woman and dresses the same as his wife.

Friday (May 2)

Perhaps embarrassed at how biased BBC OS was the day before, or due to an online backlash, the show decided to cover the story again on the Friday, but this time allow some women on.

But it didn’t quite work out like that because, before former Olympians Sharron Davies and Mara Yamauchi were allowed to speak, BBC OS decided, for no apparent reason, to interview another cross-dressing man. Like the two from the day before, he talked about how sad he was that he can now only play with other men (while sounding delighted). Even this wasn’t sufficient: It was followed by one of the transvestite men from the day before having part of his interview replayed.

Finally the two women were allowed to speak. Whereas the day before, no lies were challenged and there was no concern for women, all of a sudden, everything was challenged. Both Sharron and Mara were asked to provide evidence, which they had, to back their claims, and were effectively told off for not prioritising men’s feelings.

Mara Yamauchi tweeted that during the interview she explained why third spaces do not work in sport (men who say they are women do not accept them, something Jasmine himself stated on BBC Radio Scotland the day before), and that ‘trans women’ are male and ‘cis’ is a slur. However, this was all cut by the BBC.

Saturday (May 3)

It was a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK and with media talk about the ramifications of the Supreme Court ruling taking a break for a few days, BBC coverage just focused on entertainment.

BBC One primetime show Blankety Blank had ‘Amir’ on as a contestant, in which he talked about his drag queen persona (Lady Bushra).

It wasn’t mentioned that his persona has been profiled by the BBC at least five times in the last three years.

The programme was immediately followed by Pointless Celebrities. Which didn’t have a drag queen on it. It had two.

Sunday (May 4)

BBC Sounds released a documentary that details what life in Taiwan is like - through the mind of a Taiwanese drag queen.

With the 80th anniversary of VE Day approaching, the BBC couldn’t shoehorn a cross-dressing man into any of the coverage of that, would they?

It turned out they could.

In a special episode of Antiques Roadshow, the trans activist lawyer, Robin Moira White, a man who describes himself as ‘female’, was invited on to talk about a pistol his grandfather owned.

Monday (May 5)

The Bank Holiday Monday ended with a programme called The Late Show being broadcast across all BBC local radio stations simultaneously. The episode was devoted to the story of a man who had to battle ‘living with gender dysphoria’ until he bravely ‘came out’ as a woman.

Tuesday (May 6)

Mark Kermode spent nearly 45 minutes on Radio 4 promoting prostitution. This seems to be part of some other BBC agenda in which ‘sex work’ is portrayed as a noble profession, as, at the same time, a TV documentary came out that says ‘sex workers’ are keeping children safe in Bristol.

Back on Radio 4, the presenters promoted The Stroll, a film about how empowering ‘sex work’ has been for ‘transgender women’ in New York. Even though it came out two years ago, BBC Screenshot still spent nearly 10 minutes promoting it, along with the concept that ‘trans women’ are all victims.

Wednesday (May 7)

A quiet way to end a busy week of gender propaganda. BBC Dorset led with the story that some drag queens will be performing in the market town of Sherborne this summer.

The week also started with the presenter of the Guilty Feminist podcast, Deborah Frances-White, telling women that any objection they may have to men identifying as women and gaining access to women’s spaces is due to their fear of the unknown.

She was appearing on the Triggernometry podcast to plug her ‘book of ideas’ and educate hosts Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, whose video now has well over a million views on YouTube. Asked about her chapter on the ‘trans issue’, she insinuated that a lack of tolerance for ‘gender nonconformity’ due to ignorance was to blame. She put forward a ‘thought experiment’ which concluded that seeing a bus driver dressed as a clown would be a remarkable incident, but if 30 percent of bus drivers dressed as clowns for a year, it would become normalised.

As clowns are both terrifying and not known for their driving skills, this experiment fell rather flat. After much meandering, she arrived at the conclusion that white colonisers invented the binary model of sex and forced it on indigenous people. Apparently we simply need to rediscover the lost knowledge that biological sex is ‘a piano scale’ and the best way to do that is to be exposed to men in dresses as much as possible.

It appears this is the ideology driving BBC content at the moment.

You probably have a terrible MP

UK MPs voted this week on a Conservative amendment to a Data Bill on whether sex data should be recorded on a biological basis on identification documents. Incredibly, just 97 MPs voted for this, with 363 voting against. Those opposed used the argument that it’s acceptable to lie on, for example, official digital ID, if it makes cross-dressing men happy.

No Labour or Lib Dem MP voted for the law to recognise biological reality. Ex Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who voted for the amendment, noted that even Labour MPs who have said for years that they are ‘gender critical’, failed to vote for it. Labour said they will not be asking this question again. Here’s the 97 MPs who voted yes and here’s the 363 MPs who voted no.

Lord works in mysterious ways

The famous Hampstead Heath Ponds became the focus of attention again after the City of London Corporation (CLC), which runs them, appeared to dismiss the Supreme Court ruling. The CLC and the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond Association (KLPA) have resolutely refused all attempts to keep the ladies’ pond free of men in the past by introducing its own ‘gender identity policy.’

Now the law has been clarified beyond doubt and the gender identity policy is seemingly on the wrong side of it, the CLC has still not backed down. Perhaps this is due to the dubious advice it took on board in order to become a ‘Stonewall Diversity Champion’. Or perhaps it’s the influence of Edward Lord, a trans activist man who identifies as non-binary and is an elected member of the CLC.

Despite having a mixed sex pond to which it can direct male invaders, the CLC asserts that its own (almost certainly unlawful) policy ‘remains in effect at this time.’ A notice to staff at the men’s pond encouraged them to report any ‘issues’ or ‘inappropriate behaviour’ relating to the judgement to management. The comment about inappropriate behaviour undoubtedly refers to ‘TERFs’ questioning the policy or protesting at the ponds, rather than dodgy men insisting on entering a women’s single sex space where women will be in swimming costumes.

The brilliant women behind Man Friday quickly sprang back into action. They are a group of women who famously protested men being allowed into the Ladies’ Pond by identifying as men and swimming in the Men’s Pond in 2018. At the time they were escorted from the pond by police officers who politely informed them they were contravening a byelaw concerning single sex facilities.

This time, the Let Women Swim protest, led by Amy Desir, Hannah Clarke and Venice Allan, arrived dressed as men and accessed the men’s pond. The protest was attended by ‘the sweetest, funniest copper in the whole force’ who radioed for assistance in managing ‘his lordships, sirs and men’. Hannah discussed the protest on Talk TV.

Press coverage echoed the tone of the protest, celebrating its exuberance while also amplifying the important message. As Jo Bartosch wrote, ‘even with the law behind us, the fight to reclaim those spaces is only just beginning’.

Minds so open their brains fell out

Were you one of many who were sent an open letter by ‘non-trans feminist’ academics objecting to the ‘essentialist and patriarchal’ EHRC interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling? (A similar one was sent in the arts). It was often sent by direct message to individuals with the expectation that the recipient will sign and the implication that there will be consequences if they don’t. In the aftermath of the ruling, it seems inconceivable that people who don’t believe in gender identity, or actively object to the ideology, are still living in fear for their careers in certain industries.

And finally

Trans activist David Tennant has a new gameshow on ITV, which was co-designed by an AGP man who is in a polycule with the Only Connect troons. ITV was so confident that this was going to be a success that it pumped £2.5 million into just 10 episodes, and put it on twice a week in primetime slots.

After just one week, episodes were pulled from the schedule. Its third episode, which was broadcast this week, attracted just 739,000 viewers - at 9pm on a Wednesday - securing less than six percent of the terrestrial TV audience for that timeslot. It’s already being described as the channel’s ‘most expensive flop in years’.

See you next week!