Define “hate”

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Ophelia Benson

in

The BBC is mad at us. Livid, in fact. The BBC won’t have it. The BBC is taking names. The BBC will report us to the relevant authorities. It replies to its own tweet about “reluctant history maker” Laurel Hubbard:

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8 responses to “Define “hate””

  1. Sastra Avatar
    Sastra

    We will work to make our accounts kind and respectful places.

    There is no amount of kindness, no quantity of respect, no volume of gentle hesitations, fulsome praise, or delicate deference on our part which will allow those who are insisting that Trans-Women-Are-Women to entertain the arguments or presence of those of us who don’t think so. On their side, they see our skepticism as equivalent to a religious conservative saying homosexuality is wicked and disgusting and should be forcibly prevented.

    On our side, we see our skepticism as equivalent to saying men are not women.

    We don’t have to go too far for an analogy.

  2. Me Avatar
    Me

    What’s a “woman”?

    A: “Can’t define it.”

    What is “gender”?

    A: “A vague sense of being ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine.’”

    What does “masculine” or “feminine” mean?

    A. “When you feel ‘male’ or ‘female.’”

    What is “sex”?

    A: “A social construct.”

    What is “hate”?

    A: Anything that questions the very clear, coherent, scientific statements above.

  3. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    “…on the basis of race, colour, gender, nationality, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexuality, sex, age or class…”

    But we all know which one this is really supporting, given that this came out right as Hubbard openly cheated.

    #BiologyIsntHate

  4. Brian M Avatar
    Brian M

    Me: That is awesome and so very, very definitive!

  5. latsot Avatar
    latsot

    The BBC ran a piece on Hubbard yesterday, which I overheard from another room. NOTE: distance from source does not mute rage. They were doing the usual dance around all of this to avoid screaming, wide-eyed into the camera “IT’S A BLOKE!!!! WE CAN ALL SEE IT’S A BLOKE!!!!! IT’S OBVIOUSLY A GADGIE!!!* HE’S JUST CHEATING!!!!!”

    Then they seemed to change the subject and had a correspondent phoning in to talk about something else and they asked him what they thought of the whole men cheating in women’s sports thing. The correspondent was very careful to explain that he didn’t know anything about the subject and couldn’t possibly comment but that inclusion is good.

    I won’t go into everything wrong with that statement, preaching to the choir. But the BBC knew that he wasn’t going to say something like “well, I don’t think women should be forced to compete against men, because that’s obviously grossly unfair.”

    It was a setup, in other words, deliberately constructed to make it look as though some supposedly independent sport expert agreed with their pretend-neutral attitude.

    This is what we get for the license fee that so many women are in prison for not paying, probably because their male partners insist the women have their names on the register but won’t cough up their fair share of the bills so the women have to make tough decisions about whether to let their kids go hungry or go to jail, where there’s a chance they will be raped by a man who says he’s a woman.

    That license fee.

    * Geordie for “man”.

  6. Guest post: What we get for the license fee – Butterflies and Wheels

    […] a comment by latsot on Define […]

  7. Dave Ricks Avatar
    Dave Ricks

    BBC Sport’s tweet prompted The Critic to post The shame of BBC Sport. My parsing of it:

    First, the context. On Sunday, the BBC Sport website published one of the longest, most uncritical profiles of a sportsperson that we can remember seeing. Running to over 3,000 words and headlined Laurel Hubbard: The reluctant history-maker at the centre of sport’s transgender debate, the article is a masterpiece of mistruth and equivocation.

    Unsurprisingly, the article did not go down well on social media. At the time of writing, over 1,200 people have replied to the BBC’s original tweet, seemingly all of them critical…

    And here’s where things get really sinister. Instead of acknowledging the criticism, the BBC replied to its own tweet, saying: “We will block people bringing hate to our comments section. We will report the most serious cases to the relevant authorities.”

    Framing your opponents as hateful is the politics of the kindergarten. Those of us involved in the debate are used to this tactic from teenage transactivists; [but] to see our public national broadcaster enforce gender ideology by threatening police action is, however, quite astounding. Not only is this a gross abuse of its nationwide platform and a grotesque insult to all those pointing out inaccuracies in the BBC’s reporting; it is also entirely deaf to a conversation that has for the last few years been taking place across the UK, Europe, the world — and even on the BBC itself.

    But in threatening to report this perceived “hate” to the police, the BBC should be aware of the gravity of what it is doing: smearing women for expressing disgust at the loss of their sports, and threatening them with criminalisation for having the temerity to say, truthfully, that Laurel Hubbard is a man. If Auntie is bent on making an enemy of its own audience, its end — surely and sadly — cannot be far away.

    I don’t know about the end of Auntie Beeb, but I’m glad this incident shows more people what is going on.

  8. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Framing your opponents as hateful is the politics of the kindergarten. Those of us involved in the debate are used to this tactic from teenage transactivists; [but] to see our public national broadcaster enforce gender ideology by threatening police action is, however, quite astounding.

    My thought exactly. WHAT is the BBC doing acting like kindergarten children???

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