I suspect when the dust settles on the current BBC crisis things will be worse for the Gender Critical (GC) vs Trans Rights Activism (TRA) agenda.
It’s apparent from my social media timelines that after all the opportunistic left<>right political agendas, the Trump & Palestine, Antisemitism & Islamophobia “bias” agendas – extremist / activist driven “campaigning against” the BBC generally without needing to be any actual conspiracy – that the people still screaming passionately against the BBC are the primary-issue GC people. And rightly so.
[The TRA people on the other hand are mostly keeping their heads down, save for responding to the likes of Graeme “@Glinner” Linehan – who is also on the right side of this, but never missing a campaigning opportunity to troll the guilty and ignorant. Not always the most progressive behaviour, but someone’s gotta do the job of the court-jester I guess. #PartOfTheProblem]
It’s no coincidence that the TRA vs GC debate has become my specific exemplar of an issue where the systemic and epistemic complexity of facts & caring vs rights & risks – a “culture war” since before I read (the reason I read) Alice Dreger back in 2015 – of a general underlying metacrisis in knowledge and understanding.
My only defence of the BBC (on this score) is that the Trans-Activism capture is so much deeper and wider than just the BBC – so many organisations and governments who should know better, are conned by this one. It’s just that we – me included – expected (hoped) the mighty, public, benevolent, Auntie BBC might be the kind of organisation to get this one right, set an example and lead the rest of lesser organisations out of the mess, especially since the legal position has been properly and repeatedly confirmed. A “wicked” problem as they say.
Hopefully, the BBC crisis will be ended by some significant management and (organisational)-reporting changes, whilst maintaining its essentially “public-but-not-state” funding and accountability (Not that the existing management and journalism individuals were particularly incompetent, quite the opposite, just in a bit of a bind once the board conflicts were reported and leaked.) The problem for the GC agenda is that amidst the ideological morass of issues in this crisis, the TRA vs GC agenda will not be the highest priority amongst those jockeying for management influence.
It suffers from a paradox, between the “minority” of actual TQ+ individuals in any population – a minority obviously fully respected in terms of their human rights – and the complexity of the consequences for a “majority” of Women and LGB in the same populations. The simplicity of minority rights wins out (Dysmemically) over the true complexity of responsibilities in relation to the majority position. A classic “Tyranny of the Minority”.
Sadly, I’m predicting the BBC changes in response to the current “polycrisis” will not resolve this important “metacrisis”. No one issue can be the highest priority, when the priority is meta. The GC position will remain or be further reinforced by the TRA tyranny.
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PS – Sueing the BBC? – the orange fuckwit can go fuck himself.
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