BBC quits Stonewall Diversity Scheme

Ah yes, the EB interview on Woman's Hour.

Not the same thing as the podcasts at all, although it was very good, I thought.

posted too soon...... for them to leave Stonewall.

Do you mean the short interview with Emma Barton on Woman's Hour?
No BBC person would be interviewed by Nolan, they just sent trite statements and refusal to answer FOI requests. Not in the least suspicious grin Please can you link to the costings for the new company trisher? Who has criticised Nolan for bias (apart from Stonewall and their allies)? If you only accept the Stonewall line and won't look at other evidence then the worth of your opinion is reduced. Are you in agreement with Stonewall that homosexuality is people of either sex being attracted to people of the same gender and nothing to do with sexed bodies? This thread is very relevant, it was a huge thing for th

I don't know how you can say that without having heard the whole thing.

As for 'being criticised for bias' - how does that put you off the BBC but not Stonewall??

To be fair to the BBC, very few media organisations are not criticised for bias, and if the criticism comes from both 'sides' it is usually a sign that they are doing something right. But also, it is in the interests of the government that we think the BBC is biased, as it is free of pressure from advertisers so is the nearest thing to a free press that we have left. I always wonder at the motives behind people criticising the BBC, and question the validity of their research.

No I listened to the dscusion about why the BBC left. I'm reluctant to liten to a whole load of stuff from someone who has been criicised for bias. I might. have listened to more but discovered although the publicity for leaving Stonewall has been huge there has been little publicity about the new signing, which has cost more, is with a private company and one which has only 8 years experience but much the same views as Stonewall. Which means that pretty much this entire thread is irrelevant.

Have you listened to all of them? That was quick - there is a series of them and it takes hours to get through them all.

It would be good to see minorities represented, of course - nobody is saying otherwise, are they?

So this is the organisation they have signed up to www.involvepeople.org/solutions/
Hopefully as it is an organisation which works across the whole fiield of diversity it will improve all the BBC areas where minorities are under represented.

Well I listened to the podcast about why the BBC left and was surprised to find out that they have actually signed up to another provider, a private organisation which cost moreand has the same aiims and ethos as Stonewall which makes you wonder what is really happening and what the point of this thread really is.

No, trisher.

The BBC left for a number of reasons - one of which was the influence of Stonewall on the BBC Style Guide, which has nothing to do with the pronoun use on the biography in your link to the Stonewall page. I'm 100% sure that the inclusion of a female pronoun would have been deliberate, but equally I'm 100% unsure as to what it has to do with the subject under discussion.

In any case, what I said in my OP is that the Stonewall Diversity Scheme has led to employers imposing 'initiatives such as compelling staff to declare preferred pronouns on their email signatures, on pain of having the award withdrawn and being accused of transphobia.' Which it has.

As you are well aware, the scheme has led to people thinking that they are 'not allowed' to do perfectly reasonable things, in the way that people used to think that schools were 'not allowed' to have blackboards because of race relations. This has come up on several threads on the subject. I remember mentioning people including pronouns with their Zoom names against their will, and you saying that you hadn't come across this - maybe if you had a broader experience of the workplace you would be better aware of the way in which these initiatives have spread, particularly into organisations that employ large numbers of people.

Arguing the toss about whether someone on the Stonewall website has declared a pronoun or not proves nothing, and the fact that the BBC may be 'mostly run by white privileged men' (which may or may not be true - I don't know) is diverting the conversation from the fact that it has left the scheme, and that it is not the first major player to have done so.

If you listen to the podcasts or the recording of Woman's Hour you will have more facts at your disposal.

As to why they have left I very much doubt if it is something to be applauded.
If you were to listen to the podcasts I linked to up thread you'd learn a great deal, which having been exposed may shed some light on why the BBC have left Stonewall.

Well she may not have written it someone else could have written it for her. You have no evidence either way. What is obvious is that she has not, unlike other trustees and directors chosen to state her preferred pronoun separately which casts doubt on the whole stated assertion that Stonewall compels anyone to declare a preferred pronoun, because if trustees don't have to do it how can it possibly be their policy ?
Which pretty much blows a huge hole in the idea that the BBC have left Stonewall because they were being forced to comply.
As to why they have left I very much doubt if it is something to be applauded. An organisation run mostly by white privileged men is unlikely to suddenly become more diverse.

No need to be patronising - it's really water off a duck's back - but perhaps you don't understand that she will have written her own biog for the website? It is standard practice.

If she didn't, someone did, and that someone used a female pronoun. Anyway, in this context, using and declaring are the same thing, whichever dictionary definition you resort to to prove otherwise.

I'm honestly not sure of the importance of this, though. My point was about the BBC style guide, not Stonewall.

Doodledog

*One of their Trustees gives no pronouns!*

Cat started her professional career in private practice as a solicitor, at Eversheds Sutherland and was an Officer in the British Army. . .

She does.

But if that's the best you can do to pick holes in (a) my OP, and (b) the whole premise of the thread, then you really are clutching at straws.

And you were all excited too, with your exclamation mark ?

Actually she doesn't, using a pronoun in a sentence is not declaring your pronoun it's using it, but I realise that that might be a bit difficult to accept when you are so against an organisation. It just seems a bit pathetic to me to base your whole belief system on a falsehood.
As I said before (and an exclamation mark is no indication of excitement- An exclamation mark is used to show when something is surprising or forceful. It helps make the meaning of the sentence clear. ) One of their Trustees gives no (chosen) pronouns!
Others do www.stonewall.org.uk/people/mo-wiltshire
It would be so much better if you researched things first.

I can thoroughly recommend the Stephen Nolan podcasts on BBC Sounds for an investigation into Stonewall's influence on policy making in public institutions.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09yjmph/episodes/player
Having worked my way through all the episodes it really is quite disturbing and I hope their demise is imminent. There are other institutions campaigning for human rights and equality.

One of their Trustees gives no pronouns!

Cat started her professional career in private practice as a solicitor, at Eversheds Sutherland and was an Officer in the British Army. . .

She does.

But if that's the best you can do to pick holes in (a) my OP, and (b) the whole premise of the thread, then you really are clutching at straws.

And you were all excited too, with your exclamation mark ?

I was asked why I hadn't been on this thread and so I found it and read it. The OP once again presents a complete falsehood. It says
It has also led to the imposition of initiatives such as compelling staff to declare preferred pronouns on their email signatures, on pain of having the award withdrawn and being accused of transphobia. The act of declaring pronouns indicates buying into the idea that gender-identification is optional and that gender and sex are the same thing, which is a viewpoint that is in no way shared by everyone.

I wanted to know more about Stonewall, and if the above is their policy then they themselves are in breech of it One of their Trustees gives no pronouns!
www.stonewall.org.uk/people/catherine-dixon

It would be nice if a thread could actually begin with realities.

George was me hero and role model. Shorts or trews (had to be a feminised name for girls trousers), off exploring and adventuring, who wouldn’t wast to be George.
Like Jo in Little Women. Striking out for independence.

Thanks Doodledog and Chewbacca. ?
Sadly some people or any number of people will argue about that too.

Chewbacca

That's the one?

Ah yes Doodledog, George and her dog Timmy! Always fiercely independent and wanting to be seen as good as Dick and Julian, whilst poor old Ann was left to "make house" in their various caves. George would now have to be whisked off to Lush to have her budding breasts tied down,
attend the Tavistock for gender reassignment surgery, be "supported" by Mermaids to get over her trauma and given a badge so that she could have her pronoun on it. She'd be better off staying put on Kirrin Island and enjoy her childhood.

Remember George from the Famous Five who wanted to be a boy? That is the sort of stage that a lot of girls go through, and what used to be called 'tomboy'.

It was very common, and IMO happened when girls started to realise that boys got listened to more, and didn't have to do as many chores as girls, or got to do woodwork instead of cookery - that sort of thing. When people talk about tomboys they always mention climbing trees for some reason, as though that is a naturally 'male' thing to do.

It was seen as a phase, and in most cases it was just that. Girls aren't called 'tomboys' now, as it is recognised that climbing trees is not a gender-specific activity, and that neither are 'nurturing' role plays, such as playing with dolls. Maybe girls don't now see as much overt sexism as older generations did; but they may see women derided for being fat, for not looking 'perfect' or whatever (and goodness knows what impact porn has on them?), so decide to 'be' boys for those reasons - not quite the same as the George-type 'tomboys', but not wildly different, really.

Rather than say that yes, they are in the wrong body, I agree with Iam that it would be better to look at the reasons behind their feeling this way.

I think the difference is wafer thin. I am not sure in a previous age (I was born in the early 1940s) that a child would think in terms of 'being a boy'. Nor would anything they said about preferring to be with boys or doing male activities, be picked up on, nor would supportive remarks be made to them to encourage them to explore these options.

With the best will in the world, and for the best intentions a child can be encouraged to identify as male or female, simply by adults trying to be open in their response to the idea.

Well put Pammie1

varian

There is a huge difference between a tomboy and a child designated female who knows without doubt that she is a boy.

Missing the point completely. ‘Tomboy’ or not, the point is that it seems to be acceptable to encourage/facilitate young people - children actually - to consider themselves as transgender before they even have a chance to get to grips with the gender they were born into.