What we learned from Woman’s Hour

Spoiler - it's not much

By Claire Loneragan

Finally!

Woman’s Hour have finally caught up with the question that has been causing so much trouble for women all over the country. Are men women if they say they are?

The Supreme Court ruled on 16 April 2025 that if it actually matters what sex someone is, then they are not. Men are never women for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. And any organisation or workplace that claims to be providing a service for women must ensure that it is for female people only.

The Woman’s Hour interviews have been very revealing – but perhaps not in the way the BBC intended. They’ve made a certain bias against women very evident. Take a bow, Nuala McGovern – or should that be Aunt Lydia? And it’s rarely been clearer that Gender Identity’s aims have been to remove women’s boundaries so that men – any and all men – can access women’s spaces and services if they want to.

It's not just that Nuala pointed out that Helen Joyce and Kate Barker’s (perfectly ordinary) views that men aren’t women will be “offensive” to some listeners, but didn’t feel the need to make the same claim about Robin White’s views that women must accept men as women if they say they are.

No – it goes much further than that.

That two men – Robin White (activist barrister) and Sacha Deshmukh (CEO Amnesty International UK) – were invited to make the case that women having our own sex-based protections infringed the human rights of some men was an interesting choice. Perhaps Woman’s Hour struggled to find women to talk for that side, or maybe they didn’t notice.

Whatever the reason, all five discussions so far have focussed on men who want to:

• Use women’s toilets

• Be called “trans women” and are upset at being called “men”

• Access women’s crisis centres (and why Refuge will continue to help men)

• Use women’s toilets (again)

• Not to be called “men” (again)

• Be called “lesbians”

  
  

Neither Nuala McGovern nor Anita Rani appeared interested in the impact of men in women’s sports, in women’s hospital wards or in women’s prisons. They had no interest in the corruption of data including the police recording male crimes as committed by women, or the importance of correctly sexing people seeking medical help.

And despite the surge in teenage girls identifying as boys, there was no discussion of how “transmen” will be impacted, nor the implications for schools. I guess that would have been a bit awkward.

Anita Rani even asked Sacha Deshmukh “What’s your advice to transwomen?” It’s bewildering how little regard anyone has for women – female people – in all this. No matter how they identify.

I’m sure Nuala in particular felt she had done well to hold Helen Joyce and Kate Barker to account, but through her focus on the “gotchas” she exposed the weakness of these men’s demands. And it was very telling.

Kate Barker turned Robin White’s argument back on him when she pointed out that if nobody had challenged this great hulking (obvious) bloke with his baritone voice in women’s toilets, they’d be unlikely to challenge women with short hair. She’s quite right, of course. But there is also the consideration that if the expectation is that women with short hair will start to be challenged for using the wrong facilities because we think they’re men, then clearly women do mind if men are using our facilities. We’re not perfectly relaxed about mixed sex toilets. That it isn’t OK for the men who “just want to pee” to have the choice of which facilities they use. That the only reason we didn’t do it before was because we’d been told we couldn’t.

No, Robin, it’s not because you “pass”. And we don’t care what pronouns you use.

Robin White was clear, though; despite being a barrister he won’t abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court. That would have been worth exploring in terms of a professional conflict of interest, but nothing doing from Nuala.

Neither Robin nor Sacha were asked for solutions. Only women are expected to find solutions for the problems caused by men wanting women’s stuff. Only Sex Matters and LGB Alliance were called “hate groups” and accused of having offensive opinions. Only Helen and Kate were asked why they wouldn’t use activist language. Robin and Sacha’s language and opinions were treated as if they were entirely reasonable throughout.

And the main reasons why men must be allowed to use women’s toilets?

• Some people are offended if we don’t pretend that some men are women (even though the law says women are placed at a detriment if we do)

• Nobody has complained so far (we have)

• The European Court for Human Rights says we must (it doesn’t)

• Lesbians won’t be able to use women’s toilets if men can’t (of course they will)

• Mothers won’t be able to take their little boys into the women’s unless all men are given free access (oh, for goodness’ sake!)

• Some men suffer domestic abuse (and women need to fix it)

• Nobody can tell the difference between a man and a woman anyway ….

Is this really what For Women Scotland and others have been dragged through the courts for? They’ve had decades to come up with something more compelling.