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Each year, fashion magazine Vogue compiles a list of 25 women who "define – and redefine – Britain in 2023".
This year's list became the subject of debate on Friday's Breakfast with Stephen and Anne when the two hosts welcomed author Suzan Holder and co-founder of the Together Association, Alan Miller, onto the show.
Among the women who were honoured in the list - which included the likes of Penny Mordaunt, Naga Munchetty and Jodie Comer - was trans cyclist Emily Bridges.
Bridges transitioned in 2020 but has been banned from competing at the elite level in the women's sport by British Cycling.
When Diamond and Dixon brought up the headlines the list has now made, Holder weighed in: "If you're interested in that list I suggest you go look at it although I don't know why we're doing Vogue any favours because I don't think... when we've got so many female sporting heroes in this country -"
Diamond intervened: "Well that's why Vogue has done it! To get us talking about it."
"We are talking about it," Holder replied before she argued: "But I don't think it actually does the transgender women any good if that is the only person that they can put up."
Dixon appeared to be in agreement at first as he replied: "No, and knowing that sport and trans is a controversial issue at the best of times. They'd have been better off picking another trans (athlete)."
After Holder suggested it may have been a "cynical ploy by Vogue" to include Bridges, fellow guest Miller made a more broader point.
Miller suggested the magazine may "genuinely believe" Bridges deserved a spot on the list and that that in itself poses a "bigger problem".
"It's not about trans people, this is about activists that also want to cancel and prevent anyone that raises questions," he argued.
Miller then claimed Vogue's inclusion of Bridges wasn't for "press or PR" but rather that "people have bought into this" and that you're "presented beyond the pale" if you were to question it.
Dixon weighed in: "Well one of the biggest issues with this is a lot of people with the loudest voices are the people with the least understanding."
Miller then claimed activists have taken hold of power in the public domain without a vote or say from members of the public.
"Once the public's involved they think this is preposterous, but this isn't about being democratic and winning hearts and minds, they've attempted to capture institutions," he argued.
When Holder said she agreed with Miller and that women should speak out, Dixon turned his attention to her and asked: "Do you really?"
"I do, I think women need to start standing up to this," Holder replied. "Saying we need to protect female spaces and -"
"From what?" Dixon challenged as Holder argued: "From men being able to use all spaces that they want."
Dixon tried to interject but Holder continued: "And also having to define what a woman is all the time.
"Nobody ever asks a man what defines a man but we're constantly having to redefine ourselves," she said as Dixon continued to try and intervene.
But Holder continued to hit back: "I'm (called) a cis woman... I'm not a cis woman, I am a woman, I don't need another little prefix against my name to tell me who I am or tell anybody else who I am.
"And if people want to be transgender and live how they want, that's fine, but they can't impose different rules on everyone else.
"And it isn't safe for women to have men able to go into any space they want," Holder's rant concluded which prompted Dixon to address her claims.
The Breakfast host said: "Yes, but now the issue with that is it's not... trans women are not men.
"So you're talking about people who are pretending to be trans-" Dixon explained which prompted Holder to interrupt: "But that is the door you've opened!
"And why are we the ones to compromise on that?" she protested as Dixon hit back: "But you end up generating anti-trans feeling-"
Holder cut him off once again as she argued: "It isn't anti-trans, it's protecting women! You're redefining it as anti-trans, I think."
"I see what you mean, but I disagree," Dixon eventually said as he brought their clash to a close before Diamond redirected the conversation towards trans athletes in sport.
Dixon weighed back in to finish his point as he said: "I don't wanna harp on about this issue...
"I just think there's a huge... I don't know if misogyny is the right word - there's a huge issue with men becoming women or men who are perceived as being feminine or 'sissy' or 'pansy' or whatever.
"When it goes the other way around, there's no issue at all. Half the trans community are women who've become men, they're not in any of these stories because nobody cares!"
That last statement says it all. I heard some anti-trans stuff about this on the radio today.
The NHS should refer to 'birthing partners' instead of mothers in order to accommodate modern families, a controversial Labour MP has said. Lloyd Russell-Moyle said there could be circumstances in which two women were having a baby together, so the word mother could refer to either of them.
Nothing to do with trans but as usual trans women got the blame.
Like an idiot, I argued on Quora about the trans bathroom debate. Gave them the statistics for trans women being attacked in bathrooms. vs the other way around. They came back with one bloody example of a man going into a women's bathroom and attacking a woman.
So any man going into a woman's bathroom is automatically a trans woman?
Comments
Because misogyny runs strong in all of western culture.
Transwomen are the "whipping boy," as you put it, because so much of western culture is based on patriarchal standards of good/bad and right/wrong.
We live in a world that stereotypes men as strong and women as weak, men as brave and women as scared, men as providers and women as homemakers.
All of this is utter bullshit. It's not based in any real biological initiative (there's plenty of prehistoric evidence of female hunters, for example,) and a lot of it is built purely around justifying having power in one set of hands and not the other.
Transwomen get the short end of the stick treatment-wise because we question that dichotomy. We question the value of those sentiments. After all, if being male is "better," why would someone choose NOT to be male if they had the choice? Seeing it as a choice at ALL is problematic, but when you combine that with the perception that one is giving up something good for something inferior....
And it isn't just the male part of society that views it this way. A big part of the reason that TERFs are a thing is because, to many of those women, the idea of being "stuck" in a woman's cultural role is a bad thing (and, fair enough, they're not entirely wrong given how western society works.) Therefore, anyone who chooses to defect from the side they, themselves, see as having all the advantages (either culturally or otherwise) in life must be doing so for Questionable Reasons.
These are the same people who don't understand why someone wouldn't simply choose *not* to be gay.
The same people who won't vote for a woman for public office because, well, men are leaders, women aren't.
Quite frankly, hatred of transwomen as a whole is indicative of our overall culture's hatred of/war on women in general. It comes from the same place as governors who want to tell women they can't have periods (because they think women choose when to have them.) The same place as anti-choice laws. The same place as so many other nasty things.
Add on top of all that our culture's tendency to sexualize and commercialize women and femininity as a whole... and yeah. It's a bit of a shitstorm.
Transmen face their own challenges, though, often more silently than transwomen do. Ironically enough, that silence is in part due to the nature of BEING Transmen -- if they spoke out, well, complaining is something *women* do, and you're a man now. Suck it up, buttercup!
Melanie E.
Ignoring others, live your life.
Don't try to be part of LGBT culture or seek their approval. Quietly live your life. They only know how to be artificial not normal or common. No longer taking psychotropic medications, there is a new clarity.
Gwen
What qualifies as "normal/common?"
A lot of the west right now would argue that normal/common is being a racist, bigoted Christian. Personally, I'd rather hang out with the drag kings/queens and the "deviants."
You're right about not trying to seek anyone's approval but your own, though.
Melanie E.
“I’d rather laugh with the sinners . . .
. . . than cry with the saints. Only the good die young!”
Emma
Oooh!
Ooh-ooh, ooh-hoo
Ooh-ooh-hoo-hoo
Ooh-ooh, ooh-hoo
Ooh-ooh-hoo-hoo
Ooh-ooh, ooh-hoo
Ooh-ooh-hoo-hoo
Only the good die young
Only the good die young
Love, Andrea Lena
It also has to be noted
That there are so many serious problems that our elite politicians can't solve, so we make a nice distraction and can't fight back. It's a well-known ploy by bullies, which are usually Conservatives or Republicans, stir up a shitstorm and people are distracted. They are also misogynist so we tend to get it on both fronts. What they need to understand is, we are not men wanting to be women, we are women who want to be accepted as such.
Angharad
Yes, trans and those
Yes, trans and those murdering pregnant women. Perverts and murderers all.
Look at them,,, no don't look at the deal we are doing with oil companies, or the deal with the logging companies to tear down the forests. Yes that's right look at the perverts and murderers
Leeanna
Because we are an easy target
Many (not all, and probably not even most) men look down their noses at us and sneer at us because we are "traitors" or weak, failed men and therefore contemptible. Some women have similar attitudes, and the "deviant trying to get into women's toilets" is also an easy dig to make.
Funny thing, really. Some women that know me see me as incredibly strong for having transitioned despite other people's attitudes. One said that I was "the strongest person she knew". Those of us who have transitioned know only too well just how hard it was, particularly decades ago when there was little legal acceptance or protection.
The only thing that will really help is time, as it is - to some extent - a generational attitude, and will therefore improve as the dinosaurs die off.
We NEED advocates
If not for us, for our children!
Love, Andrea Lena
One reason
One reason transwomen are the "whipping boy" of LGBT is because the T doesn't really belong to the group. To spite the fact that Stonewall was about the powers that be coming down on the trans community the gay community latched onto to start the gay rights movement. Interestingly enough trans weren't originally included in that movement.
That's where mistakes were made. The gay rights movement was modeled after the black rights movement and since blacks were deemed to be about 10% of the population, the LGB crowd felt the need to swell the group they were representing and so included T.
They did us no favors. Historically when ever there were negotiations the T sub group was thrown under the bus. Ts being only a bargaining chip. Even among the group we were supposed to be part of we were second class citizens.
The real harm of us being allied with the LGB crowd is that the LGB are all about sexual practices or preference as the Cis world sees it. Whereas T is about self perception and has nothing to do with sexuality. In the view of the Cis world, since T is part of the LGB group, it too must me about sex.
As I heard one Transphobic speaker say, "Why else would a man put on a dress and go into women's restrooms or dressing room other than to get a look at partially dressed women or have access to them when they are vulnerable?" To him it was all about deviant sex.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
The "T" is there because so many of us are there anyway.
We might not always fit cleanly into the LGB part, but it is 100 percent accurate to include us under the Queer monicker simply due to how up for debate our place in the sexuality spectrum IS, due to our gender identities.
How many transwomen stay married to wives after transitioning, making them lesbians? How many of us who prefer men get called gay no matter where we are in our transitions? And a lot of us even before transition tend to harbor at least a degree of bisexual attraction (with the hormonal transition being known to make that more pronounced, both for transwomen and transmen.)
Yeah, the "just" LGB part of the contingent HAS thrown us under a bus here and there (usually as part of misguided attempts to curate favor among religious or right-wing groups,) but the argument for uniting in order to have better bargaining power isn't a bad one, and ultimately if we weren't part of that group, I think you'd find our rights even further behind/marginalized than they are.
Quite frankly, the only argument i can see for NOT keeping the T in is if humanity as a whole were to get off their asses and admit that equality, safety, and support were paramount for everyone, and that everyone had the right to be their own person, since then the need to recognize the LGBT community at all would be moot.
(I would also like to point out that those who boot the T from LGBT often themselves end up ostracized from the LGBT community as a whole: we are all stronger for our unity than any part of said band is when they try and boot the rest. Add to that the number of unlisted alphabet soup groups that tend to fall into the same alliance for reasons similar to transfolk -- furries, asexuals, demisexuals, pansexuals, nonbinary, intersex, transhuman, etc. -- and LGBT hasn't been about sexuality alone in a long, long time, if it ever could be claimed it was.)
Melanie E.
I of course respectfully disagree
For me it's all about how the rest of the world sees us. Being trans is independent of being L,G, B or any of the others you mention. While I sympathize with the idea of "Pride" I don't go to "Pride" events because those I see in the parade I see as an embarrassment to the community. They turn up in the most God awful get ups, sometimes pushing the limits of decency as if to say, IN YOU FACE CIS PEOPLE. They go for the shock value.
If you truly want to convince people that, aside from your sexual desires, you're really like everyone else, then why at "Pride" events do you show up looking as different than everyone else as you can? No, I don't want to be associated with the "IN YOU FACE" crowd.
Perhaps my thinking is colored because I live in liberal Oregon and have never had any issues with how people treat me, even in my church (a mainstream charismatic church) other than a couple of time I felt I was under close scrutiny.
Just today I was at the grocery store, dressed in a white culottes and a yellow blouse that is thin enough to plainly show my bra through it. I'm not the most passable trans person, too many years of testosterone poisoning. Yet while waiting in the check out line, (Oregon has banned the use of single use plastic bags for grocery store and forces the stores to charge us for what they can use.) The lady in front of me noticed the kind of bags I brought with me to avoid paying for what would become single use bags. They are plastic lined heavy duty canvas bags with a sturdy handle. She told me she liked them and I told her where I got them and explained my reasoning for getting that particular kind. That led to an on going discussion about the merits of the law in general.
I get that kind of response all the time and have since the first time I ventured out dressed. So it is possible I don't see the problem clearly.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
I used "whipping boy" as
I used "whipping boy" as there des not seem to be a female equivalent. Were there "whipping girls" ?
Trans gets lumped in with any form of crossdressing. That is the problem. "Sissies" often dress as they seem to think it demeans them. They like feeling "less". A man who just wants to dress for a sexual thrill and go to a woman's "bathroom" (there is no bath in there is there? I'm from the UK and should say toilet or loo)
That crossdresser is a dirty trans pervert, according to the press. Often these men are caught and will scream they are trans to get out of it. This is where a lot of the misconception comes from.
If a woman dresses as a man she is seen as making a fashion statement or possibly being a lesbian. If a man dresses as a women he often gets called trans, unless he can come up with a good explanation.
Leeanna
The problem with bathrooms isn't the "wrong" people using them.
Like, for real, you want to fix public restrooms? It's simple:
No stalls like we have. Instead, individual small rooms/booths with floor-to-ceiling walls and locking doors. Inside is the toilet. Sinks are out in an open, accessible area and used by both men and women.
Menstruation products available in every stall.
Voila! Problem solved. More flexible bathroom access across the board, making sinks and single-occupant stall doors visible from a security camera helps to reduce risk of assault on anyone by anyone, etc.
Also, I would like to request that, regardless of anyones' gender identity, we try to avoid demeaning the value of other members of our community here at BC: crossdressers, regardless of their sexuality or kinks, are as welcome here as transwomen, transmen, cis folks, et al.
Melanie E.
What I was getting at with
What I was getting at with "That crossdresser is a dirty trans pervert," is the view that anti-trans take. There is a huge difference between a crossdresser and someone who just goes into a woman's toilet and just says " I identify as a woman". They are all lumped in together so the lowest common denominator = trans. When I grew up in the 70's all gay men were thought to be pedophiles.
I myself am a crossdresser. I have too much baggage to live in my preferred gender, so my only option is crossdressing.
I have argued with people that they have probably shared toilets with trans women and crossdresseres many times. They just did not know it. All I get back is that they would know. There is a growing problem now of masculine looking women getting challenged when using toilets.
Leeanna
Trans not pediophile
My own daughter ignorantly puts T folk with pediophiles. This is really hurtful.
Gwen