Is Jenni Murray right about transgender?

Penstemmon, nail on the head! It's the academic clique that talks about sex as a class and therefore cuts through all the "not all menisms." Thank god for the academic clique, they named the problem.

As for 50% representation, there is some research that shows that when people watch a film with 70/30 male to female actors they feel that women were equally represented, when a film shows 60/40 male to female actors people felt the film was biased towards women even though women were still under represented. Just look at all the grief the last two, rather excellent, Star Wars films had, just because they both had female leads.

We all live in a patriarchy and we all internalise that to some degree, can't be helped, it's the air we all breathe, but feminists recognise that the air is toxic.

LSP Someone did some research in classrooms quite a while ago about how much time the teachers were perceived to interact with boys and with girls. The pupils' perceptions largely coincided with the figures you give for the Star Wars films. I can't remember exactly when this research was done but I was quite a young woman at the time and am now quite an old woman – so decades.

That's fascinating, I'm going to dig up some of this, I feel a new hobby coming on!

Perception versus reality, confirmation bias.

Might have been Dale Spender's research. She did a lot of stuff about then absent

No! think it was Val Walkerdine! All part of my dissertation research for my Diploma at Roehampton! Gosh that was a brain search!

Well done Penstemmon. The research never had any particular relevance to anything I was doing; it just stayed in my mind.

This controversy is getting to me. My eye was caught yesterday by the dealer's sticker in my car's rear window: Trans City Autos, based in Walthamstow. I found myself wondering: if they opened a branch across the River Lea in Clapton, would it be called Cis City Autos? Or is it just a weary car salesman's description of trendy London E17?

Nice one grumppa

Just to correct some english, Transgenders isnt a word ;-) by the way...

Thank you for sharing that. But is it being used as a noun?
Perfectly acceptable adjective, like transalpine, transatlantic, transcontinental etc etc etc.

Like it grumppa always knew Walthamstow was where it's at.