Being promoted by BBC Diversity *this week* in an all staff email👇
— SEEN in Journalism (@JournalismSEEN) November 9, 2025
This man is from Global Butterflies
BBC bias on sex and gender is not a historical mistake resolved by tonight’s resignations. It is wholesale capture.
Restoring impartiality is not ‘right wing’. It’s vital. pic.twitter.com/MwkKCRPaq1
Mick Hartley
Politics and Culture
-
After the two top BBC resignations, the problems are: first that it’s seen as all down to the Trump Panorama business when other issues seem to me to be more significant – in particular the long-term capture by gender ideology and the bias against Israel – and second, that after the ritual sacrifice, as it were, to appease the “right-wing critics”, it’ll be back to business as usual.
Sonia Sodha in the Times – What’s the point of the BBC if it can’t be impartial?
[T]he BBC’s coverage of gender ideology too often takes as fact the quasi-religious belief everyone has a gendered soul called a “gender identity” and that to dissent is bigoted.
This has led the BBC to ignore altogether important national stories about children’s healthcare, such as the young people who have detransitioned after irreversible hormone treatment. Other stories are grossly one-sided: for example, congratulatory tales of male athletes self-identifying into women’s competitions that don’t include any voices on legal issues raised, or mention the risks to fairness and safety in women’s sport.
Decisions of the BBC’s editorial complaints unit appear racked with bias. It has dismissed complaints from the public about the corporation obscuring the fact that male killers who identify as female are male, by referring to them as women and using female pronouns for them: partisan and misleading language.
But it found the presenters Justin Webb and Martine Croxall had broken impartiality guidelines, the former for clarifying that trans women are male, a critical fact to help listeners understand the story, and the latter for a facial expression it claimed gave the impression of personal opinion, as she corrected the ideological “pregnant people” in her script to the more neutral “pregnant women”.
BBC executives might argue this is just one issue, that feminist supporters of public service broadcasting like me should drop our obsession and rally behind a Beeb under bad-faith fire. This is to spectacularly miss the point.
There is an intellectually respectable argument against public service broadcasting that I do not support, and impartiality is key to countering it. If the publicly funded BBC proves as easily captured by partisan ideology as the next institution, the argument for it disintegrates.
Exactly so. Much of the anger directed at the BBC recently is because we all have to pay for it. We may grumble at the bias in particular newspapers, but then we can always stop buying and reading them. The BBC is different. Which is why, also, the recent “This is your BBC” ads are so annoying. No it isn’t: not any more.
It was right that Tim Davie and Deborah Turness stepped down, given their failure to grip the issue on impartiality. But their resignations are not in themselves a fix. Reading the BBC’s own news reports, you would be forgiven for thinking these scalps were claimed as a result of just one egregious error: the editing together of two parts of a Trump speech for a Panorama documentary in a way that made him appear to explicitly encourage the 2021 Capitol Hill riots.
As she resigned Turness asserted “recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.” This complacency is misplaced: the BBC’s output bias on a contested subject like sex and gender is not just the product of “mistakes” as she claimed, but of cultural and institutional capture. The BBC needs new leadership that toughens up its impartiality guidelines and makes clear that there is no place at the corporation for staff who try to undermine them, and therefore public trust in the whole BBC.
In assuming a bit part in the culture wars instead of rising above them, the BBC is risking its own demise. It is solely by ruthlessly examining what governance and editorial failures made it so vulnerable to unrepresentative groupthink that it can defeat its critics. Only the BBC can save itself.
It’s perhaps hard for those outside the UK to appreciate how central the BBC has been to British life since its founding. I still automatically go to their website for news, and they still produce some great TV. It’s just that they’ve become too stuck in their bubble, too smug, too partisan. They need a shake-up – and I’m not optimistic that we’re going to get one. There’ a huge “woke inertia” at the Beeb now, with all these bright progressive young graduates rising up the ranks, and it’s going to need more than some Tim Davie lookalike to stand up to it.
-
In 1978, at the age of 67, photographer Zofia Rydet set out on her “Sociological Record” project in the Polish countryside, aiming to record rural life as it was at the time, particularly in the regions of Podhale, Upper Silesia and the Suwałki area. She took nearly 20,000 pictures, many of which remained undeveloped when she died in 1997 at the age of 86. It may look like a grim catalogue of rural poverty, but there was nothing condescending about her approach: she relished her meetings with these people, telling them not to smile as it looked forced, but chiding and cajoling them as they grumbled or played along. “I knock on the door, I say ‘hello,’ and I shake hands.”
In exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery.
Rydet was always on the road, with a camera in her hand. For nearly three decades, she photographed people in their homes, still lives, building exteriors and landscapes. She also returned to the same houses several years after she first visited to document the transformation of rural Poland. The result – Sociological Record – is a monumental project and one of the most important achievements in 20th century Polish photography.
“I know some people think I’m hypocritical, self-serving, telling these people they’re beautiful. But I truly see something interesting, beautiful in every person, and I’m captivated by something worth preserving – especially the wonderful human stories I hear during these visits. Each person is a story in itself, some very interesting, some instructive, sometimes moving…”
-
Full story here:
The incident occurred on October 20 at the Tucker-Reid H. Cofer Library in Tucker, Georgia. On that day, Sasha Swinson, a man who identifies as a woman, was using the library’s female restroom. After exiting, a male police officer approached him and asked him to use the men’s facilities instead.
Speaking to local news, Swinson claims the officer then added: “You’re not a woman. That’s obvious,” speaking loudly enough for others nearby to hear. When Swinson asked whether he was speaking on behalf of the library, he says the officer replied: “This is a police matter. It’s a safety issue. There are women, little girls in there,” before threatening to arrest Swinson.
After leaving the library, Swinson contacted his pastor, Matt O’Rear of St. Luke Lutheran Church, who encouraged him to report the incident to the library. A library employee apologized to Swinson in writing and forwarded the complaint to leadership, who then relayed it to the police department.
Soon afterward, the DeKalb County Police Department’s Internal Affairs Unit contacted Swinson, confirming that an investigation had been opened into the officer who had asked him to use the male bathroom. A department spokesperson said the agency could not share additional details while the investigation is ongoing.
-
Is there more to say about the cancellation and rehabilitation of author Kate Clanchy? Yes there is. Hadley Freeman in today’s Sunday Times:
In 2021, when lockdown was driving people insane, Clanchy’s 2019 book about working with children, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, was suddenly derided on social media as racist, because she used physical descriptions like “chocolate-coloured skin”. The charge was led by three women: Monisha Rajesh, Sunny Singh and Chimene Suleyman, all middle-aged, middle-class writers, like Clanchy. Pan Macmillan, Clanchy’s publisher through its Picador imprint, abjectly apologised to them and parted ways with its writer. But apologies never satisfy witchfinder generals like Rajesh, Singh and Suleyman because, as one children’s author (who is still too scared to give her name) said to me last week, “They don’t want to fix problems, because their entire brand is outrage. That’s how they promote themselves.”
Anyone who was on Twitter in that weird period of 2018-23 will know how witchfinders operate, leaping on any perceived swerves from progressive orthodoxies by other writers with the enthusiasm of flies on excrement, demanding their banishment. I had to block Rajesh years ago because she sent me so much online abuse. When The Sunday Times interviewed Clanchy in 2022, Rajesh tweeted, “Jesus f***ing Christ. Picador have just emailed to let us know that @thesundaytimes will be running an interview with Kate Clanchy this weekend.” She then grossly insulted those responsible. Quite why Pan Macmillan felt the need to tell these bullies anything is one puzzle. Another is how on earth it became the norm for adults to behave like emotionally incontinent tyrants. When The Times ran an interview with Clanchy last week, Rajesh posted a video of herself weeping.
Which she deleted after it was ridiculed. After an old tweet of hers was found deriding Clanchy for her tears. {See here – ““Understand what they mean before crying about it”]
It would be comforting to believe that dark age was over — comforting and wrong. Last week a leaked memo confirmed the BBC was as complicit in spreading gender propaganda as the publishing industry, running endless puff pieces about drag queens while censoring stories about bullied women. I am thrilled that Clanchy has got some justice. But it is striking that, of all the cancelled authors, the BBC has focused on one who was attacked for reasons that weren’t speaking the truth about gender.
That’s an excellent point. As Clanchy herself admits:
I agree with @HadleyFreeman . I am the witch that is easiest to talk about because, as a friend told me, ‘You’re only a racist, not a terf’.
From the comments, an interesting Sunny Singh quote:
“I get regular invites to debate on various platforms. I always say no. Because debate is an imperialist capitalist white supremacist cis heteropatriarchal technique that transforms a potential exchange of knowledge into a tool of exclusion & oppression.”
Phew. It’s all in there. So, no debate then – just the familiar postmodern academic jargon.
From her bio at London Metroplitan:
Singh is recognised as a pre-eminent decolonising public intellectual. By embracing a pathbreaking, compassionate and transgressive academic practice, she is today one of the UK’s leading champions for inclusion across all aspects of society.
Compassionate? For inclusion? Tell that to Kate Clanchy.
-
The Girl Guides – or Girlguiding as they are now – is one of the groups being advised by Gendered Intelligence on the delights of trans inclusivity, as noted by Jill Foster in her Telegraph article.
More here at the Times:
Girlguiding is facing legal action from a parent over its transgender policy which she claims discriminates against her seven-year-old daughter.
The claimant, who has asked to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s identity, has alleged in a pre-action letter to Girlguiding that the organisation’s policy “exposes girls to harassment”.
Under the policy, trans girls — boys who identify as girls — are allowed to join Girlguiding, and trans women — adult males who identify as female — are permitted to undertake volunteer roles previously reserved for women.
“It constitutes and encourages unwanted conduct which violates their [girls’] dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment,” the correspondence said.
“This includes, but is not limited to: sharing toilets, showers or changing facilities with boys, contact sports with boys, and sharing accommodation with boys, all without their prior knowledge or consent.”
The letter goes on to point out that Girlguiding operates “as a charity for the benefit of girls and young women”.
“For the benefit of girls and young women”. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a body more open to precisely the worst kind of infiltration by predatory men-who-claim-to-be-women, yet somehow the idiots who run Girlguiding are blinded to their clear responsibilty to these young girls by their obsession with inclusivity. In effect, being nice to men is more important to them than the protection of young girls.
The legal action by the mother is the latest episode in an ongoing dispute that dates back to 2017 when Girlguiding changed its single-sex rules by introducing the trans policy.
In one early incident, Helen Watts, a Girlguiding volunteer, was expelled from the organisation in 2018 after raising safeguarding concerns about the policy and setting up a private Facebook group to discuss her fears.
Watts said she was worried about males who identify as women being appointed leaders to supervise girls on trips away and new regulations that stipulated parents should not be told if a transgender person joins their Guiding group.
After a four-month investigation Girlguiding ruled that Watts had breached its code of conduct and social media policy.
And the final teeth-grinding spokesperson statement:
A spokesperson for Girlguiding said: “The safeguarding and wellbeing of our members is at the heart of everything we do in guiding. Following the Supreme Court ruling, we are working closely with external advisors to ensure our policies remain lawful. We remain firmly committed to treating everyone with dignity and respect throughout this time.
As we know, these external advisors are Gendered Intelligence, a trans advocacy group. And note the emphasis on “treating everyone with dignity and respect”. That’s trans inclusivity language, where the dignity of transified men is more important than the safety of young girls.
-
Ramillies Place, off Oxford Street.
-
Birmingham police have claimed that their decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the Aston Villa match last week was due “exclusively” to the fans’ reputation:
West Midland’s Police Chief Superintendent Tom Joyce, the commander for Birmingham policing, said in an interview that the force had learnt that a “sub-section” of Maccabi fans “engage in quite significant levels of hooliganism”, and it was this concern “exclusively” that led the force to bar all supporters of the Israeli side. This contrasted with earlier indications from the force that the ban had been imposed because Israeli fans could not be protected in the city.
Does anyone believe this nonsense? He’s clearly embarrassed – quite rightly – by the obvious capitulation to Muslim and hard-left extremists. Would they do the same to the supporters of any other football team? Of course not. They’re the police: they control the streets. Except when Jews are involved, and the Islamists decide to take control.
Lord Walney rejected this new claim outright, saying it “does not fit with the clear evidence of sustained pressure from individuals and organisations driven by hatred of Israel and Jews”, and that the decision to ban Maccabi fans had brought “shame” on the UK.
“The disgusting antisemitic rhetoric outside Villa Park yesterday proved that this was never about Maccabi Tel Aviv – it is driven by an unhinged hatred of the Jewish State,” he said.
“West Midlands Police’s new assertion that the Maccabi fans were banned solely because of the threat of hooliganism does not fit with the clear evidence of sustained pressure from individuals and organisations driven by hatred of Israel and Jews.
“The force’s eleventh-hour attempt to pin the blame on the Israeli fans themselves smacks of victim blaming and leaves officers with serious questions to answer.
“West Midlands Police must comply with the Home Affairs Committee’s demand to submit all evidence related to this lamentable decision that has brought shame on the country.”…
Nadhim Zahawi, who served in ministerial roles under four Conservative prime ministers from 2018 to 2023, also hit out the force, saying: “I think the words of West Midlands Police are weasel words. This is antisemitic. It is not just anti-Israeli – it is anti-Jewish.”
He continued: “I find this utterly disgraceful. The police presence tonight tells you everything because they’re worried about the Maccabi team being attacked, that’s why they’re there, and I think they need to apologise to British Jews [and] to Israelis, because this would not happen if this team was not supported by Israelis and Jewish people.”
Anti-Israel activists plotted to hunt down players from Maccabi Tel Aviv’s football team during their visit to Birmingham, leaked WhatsApp messages seen by the JC reveal.
The Israeli side, in the UK for a European fixture, became the target of a coordinated plan involving hotel stakeouts and surveillance by protesters determined to track the team and have the match cancelled.
The fixture on Thursday went ahead as planned, without any Maccabi fans present in the stadium. Protests outside the game resulted in 11 arrests.
Chants of “death to the IDF” and “intifada revolution” were shouted by a crowd of Gaza protesters, while a smaller group of pro-Israel counter-protesters were confined to a caged basketball court by police.
Of course they were.
-
With the decline of Stonewall, there’s a gap in the market for trans advocacy. Step forward Gendered Intelligence. Jill Foster in the Telegraph:
Now, as most government departments and other public bodies – including the BBC, Channel 4 and Ofcom – distance themselves from Stonewall’s controversial Diversity Champions Scheme, it seems there is a gap to fill for organisations seeking to show that their workplaces are sufficiently diverse and equal. And Gendered Intelligence appears to be stepping into the breach.
The work is clearly proving lucrative. The organisation – which gained charity status in 2019 – charges up to £2,215 for a full-day trans and non-binary inclusion course for up to a maximum of 15 people. It also charges up to £1,515 per three-and-a-half hour “awareness” session, which helped raise over £251,500 from training in 2023-24, compared with £194,000 in 2022-23 and £166,000 in 2021-22.
Money has also been pouring in from other sources. Last year, it secured nearly £1m in grants and looks set to beat that figure this year. In the past 12 months alone, it has already received a £300,000 grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, one of the UK’s largest grant-giving charities, £275,000 from Three Guineas Trust, one of the Sainsbury family’s charitable trusts, and £550,000 from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which has received more than £1m in government funding. The group’s gross income has soared from just over £842,000 in 2019-20 to over £1.4m last year, including more than £158,000 in government contracts.
Nice work if you can get it. The demand for “inclusivity training” continues, from institutions that haven’t read the writing on the wall.
“The fingerprints of Gendered Intelligence are all over sports policies that claimed trans-identifying men should be allowed into women’s categories”, says Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at sex-based rights charity Sex Matters. “Sport England paid Gendered Intelligence to develop changing rooms guidance as late as 2020. The harmful notion that men who said they were women were entitled to be in women’s changing rooms was spread, funded by public money and with official endorsement. Women’s needs were not considered.”
Former Olympian marathon runner and women’s rights campaigner, Mara Yamauchi, agrees. “Gendered Intelligence have had an appalling influence on fair and safe sport for females,” she says. “They have promoted the participation of males in the female category. By downplaying the massive physical advantages males have over females, they have misled people about scientific facts. And they have received large amounts of public money – which must stop.”
Mick Hartley 