Why the blacklist?

There’s nothing as coarse as an official blacklist at the BBC. Our national broadcaster doesn’t ban people, it doesn’t forbid words or phrases, and it doesn’t proscribe certain stories.

It’s just that some words and phrases are never used, some stories never see the light of day — and some people never, ever get the call. This is true for domestic coverage at least, which is what I know about.

This struck me when the BBC on a single day interviewed not one, but three men whose behaviour has ranged from dubious to deplorable — Philip Schofield, TikTok star Mizzy and the misogynist Andrew Tate. The activities and views of these men didn’t prevent them from getting the opportunity to explain and defend themselves.

But what activities and views do prevent the BBC from inviting you for a chat? Feminist ones. Like –

Helen Joyce, former staff journalist at the Economist, including as International, Finance and Britain Editor, author of the book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality and the Director of Advocacy at the campaigning organisation Sex Matters. She used to appear on the BBC fairly routinely, as a guest on the papers review, and commentator on economic issues and UK politics.

Then she became interested in the feminist approach to sex and gender, took a sabbatical from the Economist, wrote Trans and has never been on BBC radio or TV since. 

Why? Why is Andrew Tate good radio and tv while Helen Joyce is not? What is it about the trans religion that causes this? I guess it must be to do with the frantic claims about fragility and phobia and whatnot, but that just rewords the question. Feminist women point out the ways trans ideology is harmful to women but that doesn’t result in everyone rushing to have them on the BBC so what is it about transism that is so much more potent that way than feminism is or has ever been? Why are self-obsessed men so much more convincing than feminist women?

How does this happen? No, there’s no blacklist. There are unspoken mores, born in a miasma of fear, confusion and occasional activism, that seem to function as a brake on allowing a certain kind of convincing gender critical feminist to have much of a platform at the BBC.

But Andrew Tate is worth talking to.

Helen Joyce says the interest in her dried up instantly after an interview on Woman’s Hour in 2020, before her book was published, when she said what she describes as “all the sorts of things you aren’t allowed to say on the BBC” about biological sex. She understands that higher representations have been made internally, in an attempt to end the blackout, but to no avail. The Woman’s Hour Twitter account has at times been inundated with requests to bid Helen on the issue of women’s sex-based rights. People want to hear about it, and they want to hear from Helen. The call never comes.

It’s not a question of resources. The resources were there, for example, when the trans activist academic Grace Lavery was interviewed on Woman’s Hour after he pulled out of a public debate with Helen. It’s a question of picking up the phone.

Woman’s Hour will talk to horrible “Grace” Lavery but not to Helen. Woman’s Hour. Why is this?

The BBC was asked to comment for this article and replied: “There is no “blacklist”, a range of views are regularly heard across BBC outlets.”

Then why isn’t Helen Joyce one of them?