Mick Hartley

Jenni Murray – Dame Jenni Murray – has just stepped down as Woman's Hour presenter after some 32 years. 

Murray was joined live down the line by four eminent friends from the same generation to discuss how things have changed for women over the last three decades. Harriet Harman, Jackie Kay, Jude Kelly and Helena Kennedy created a festive valedictory atmosphere, combining real affection and admiration for Murray with a gimlet eye for how things have improved for women, and what still needs to be done.

And then finally, for her closing remarks, Murray chose to give a subtle nod to perhaps the most divisive issue in contemporary feminism: the interaction between sex and gender identity.

“If you do a programme like Woman’s Hour,” she said, “you have to consistently remind yourself that women are a vast range. There are many, many, many different stereotypes that fit our gender. So there is no one stereotypical woman. But our sex, we share.” 

This was a careful and clever choice of words. It’s rumoured that one of the reasons Murray finally decided to leave the programme was that she had been muzzled from talking about the debate over the relationship between sex and gender identity. 

Murray has not presented a programme tackling gender identity since 2017, when she wrote a long and meticulously argued article for The Times, outlining her belief in the crucial difference between gender identity and biological sex. In it, Murray firmly differentiated trans women from, in her words, “real women”. 

For that, there was an outcry and calls for her to be no-platformed, and since then, whenever the subject has been raised on Woman’s Hour, it has been Jane Garvey, and not Jenni Murray, who has always been the presenter to navigate the choppy waters of gender identity. With that silence in mind, we can draw our own conclusions about the significance of Murray’s final remark. Was it the sound of a feminist putting her foot down? 

Well yes it was. Murray has now written about why she left:

I was not leaving, contrary to popular rumour, as a result of ageism on the part of the BBC. I made the decision a year ago when it became clear to me that it was time to move on and be free of the leash which, in recent years, had caused me to be what I can only describe as ‘cancelled’.

First came the furore concerning an article I had written in which I acknowledged that I was entering the most controversial and, at times, vicious, vulgar and threatening debate of our day.

I made clear that I was not transphobic or anti-trans. Indeed, I emphasised my belief that everyone — whether transgender or those of us who hold to the sex assigned to us at birth — should be treated with respect and protected from the bullying and violence that so many like me have suffered.

I merely asked the trans activists to acknowledge the difference between sex and gender, a trans woman and a woman, respect our right to safe single-sex spaces and abandon the nonsensical idea that we should be known as ‘cis women’.

We are women. No need for further definition. I begged trans activists to understand feminism and the struggle we had experienced in fighting for our right to be viewed as equals to men.

I reminded them that feminism had fought against sexual stereotyping, and that it was ridiculous to assume a girl who liked cars and trousers really wanted to be a boy, or a boy who loved dolls was ‘born in the wrong body’ and needed to be a girl.

Of course, I was branded a TERF — a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist — on social media and threatened with all kinds of violence. But what shocked me most was the BBC’s response.

I was roundly ticked off publicly and informed that I would not be allowed to chair any discussions on the trans question or the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. I had lots of emails and tweets asking me why I had not been involved in this debate, as it was so important to Woman’s Hour listeners. You have the answer. 

You'd think a formidable and experienced Woman's Hour presenter would be free to state the blindingly obvious – that women for all their differences are united by one thing: their sex. But no. That is not encouraged. That is transphobic.