The BBC has upheld a ludicrous complaint against the Today programme’s Justin Webb. Back in August, Webb told listeners that trans women were ‘in other words, males’. This basic truth should not be controversial. We transwomen are male. It is a necessary criterion – women cannot be transwomen because women are female.
The background, incidentally, was a decision last summer by the International Chess Federation to ban those transwomen from competitions reserved for females. Webb was on the radio discussing the news item with Dominic Lawson. Webb’s point was timely and appropriate. Not everyone is up to date with the transgender debate and there is confusion – understandably – over specialist terminology. Indeed only a few weeks beforehand, it had been widely reported that more than a third of UK residents did not know that ‘transgender women’ were biologically male. Webb was simply carrying out his professional duty to explain and inform.
This is not the first time that Webb has found himself in hot water
But someone complained. They protested that Webb was giving his personal view on a controversial matter. Please! It is only a controversial matter because feelings have been prioritised over facts. Nevertheless, six months later, the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit determined that Webb’s comment breached the BBC standards of impartiality. The ECU concluded that:
It could only be understood by listeners as meaning that trans women remain male, without qualification as to gender or biological sex, and that, even if unintentional, it gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial area.
This is on a par with the suggestion that journalists should not point out that the earth is an oblate spheroid without someone else making the case that it is flat. Biological sex is only controversial because an activist lobby has found political advantage in making it controversial. In doing so that group has wielded extraordinary powers over what other people are allowed to say, certainly it seems at the BBC.
The BBC News style guide is not much help. To Auntie’s credit, it does admit that a ‘a transgender woman’ is a person ‘born male’, but then muddies the waters with the concept of living ‘as a female’. Are women – females – supposed to live in a certain way? But since sex is innate and immutable – certainly in human beings – then it’s hard to see how Webb fell foul of the style guide.
This is not the first time that Webb has found himself in hot water over transgender issues. In 2022 he was admonished after pointing out that Kathleen Stock had been ‘abused by students who accuse her, falsely, of transphobia.’ The BBC huffed and puffed over that, claiming that the ‘validity or otherwise of the accusation of transphobia are the heart of the controversy’. Meanwhile Webb’s description summed up the extraordinary scenes at the university that eventually resulted in Stock leaving her job. I know who is serving the listeners.
The BBC has a problem. The public is not well served when impartiality is used to prevent specialist terminology being explained in the context of biological sex – something that is widely understood. As a result of this latest (partly upheld) complaint, the BBC discussed the finding ‘with Justin Webb and the Today team’.
I hope Webb and his team responded by pointing out the facts to the BBC – somebody needs to.
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