THE new Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, made his first major speech yesterday. Focusing on the BBC, he said it currently provides ‘a narrow urban outlook’ and that it must start reflecting the views of the entire UK.
These were mild words for a dire situation. Nowhere is the BBC’s descent into narrow-minded and dangerous woke culture more evident than in how it reports on ‘gender identity’ or ‘trans’ issues.
One of the worst examples so far appeared on Tuesday. In advance of International Women’s Day, two town halls in the Merseyside borough of Sefton flew flags bearing the words ‘Woman, noun, adult human female’. This is the dictionary definition of a woman. The corporation reported that after complaints from two men the flags were removed and the authority apologised ‘profusely’ for any offence caused.
The BBC said that the slogan on the flags was ‘widely criticised on social media’ as ‘the recognised symbol of a transphobic hate group’. It gave prominence to the complaint from a trans-activist, Adrian Harrop, and reported the view of another ‘trans-woman’ who said that the term ‘adult human female’ is a ‘deliberately esoteric dog whistle aimed at undermining the confidence of trans people and a call to arms for anti-trans trolls and hate groups’. What?
On the other hand the BBC was silent about the women who took to social media about the issue. About their despair that the very meaning of ‘woman’ is being erased. Their anger when they learned that a council jumped when two men said jump. None of this was hard to find.
Then when the BBC presented the news that a trans-man (a biological woman) who had a baby wants to be recorded as the father on her child’s birth certificate, it described her as ‘assigned female at birth’ and ‘biologically able to get pregnant‘. Is this really how we are going to talk about people now? Is the BBC unaware that the scientific revolution has taken place, that we have two biological sexes, that sex is determined at conception, that women give birth? If it is willing to fall this low in terms of scientific literacy, if it is willing to jettison the English language as it is used by 99.9 per cent of the population, it is time for it to go.
Last week the BBC presented a story on a young woman with 36D breasts whose breast binders result in her saying: ‘I can’t run a lot. I can’t walk a lot . . . I can’t do a lot of exercise . . . It compresses my chest so much that I can’t breathe properly.’ Her friend says: ‘It will get to the point that we will be walking down the street and his ribs will move out of place and we will have to stop because he will just start crying.’ The response of the BBC presenter, ‘Dr Ronx’, a qualified doctor who who describes herself as a ‘queer, black, androgynous intersectional feminist’? To help the young person find more comfortable breast binders.
Here is some information about the damage caused by breast binding. Perhaps the BBC could also give young women lessons in foot-binding or chest-ironing.
In contrast was the case of a 23-year-old woman, Keira Bell, who is taking legal action against an NHS gender clinic which she says should have challenged her more over her decision to transition to a male as a teenager. A judge has given the go-ahead for a full hearing of the case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. When the BBC reported on this important case, suddenly it felt the need for balance! Not just cautious balance from knowledgeable medical practitioners. No, it gave prominent ‘balancing’ billing to the controversial Mermaids charity which promotes the concept of gender identity.
Here is the quality of Mermaids ‘gender identity’ scientific research. If you want to put on a pink balldress and walk around looking like Barbie, that makes you a real woman. Then when kids fall for it and believe they might be in the wrong body, Mermaid promotes an affirmative approach. These kids might be autistic spectrum, or gay, or vulnerable in terms of their home situation. But let’s put them on a track to a lifetime of medicalisation and potential sterilisation!
This is what the woke BBC sees as ‘balance’.
None of this ends well. None of this is good. If the BBC cannot see this, it has to go.
