I was contacted by the producer of the Stephen Nolan show on BBC Radio 5 Live to debate live on air with a very angry woman who I suspect is a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) about the story a gender-fluid non-binary person who was assigned male at birth. They lived most of their life as male and rose to a senior position in a bank. A few years ago, they came out as non-binary gender fluid and spend half their time as male and half as female. They have just been put on a list of the top 100 business women in the UK. They had the choice of going either the male or the female category, but as there wasn’t a category for non-binary, they had to choose one or the other and they went with the female option. I don’t have strong views on the subject either way, but I accepted the invitation to contribute. It was the first time I have clashed with a TERF and it was certainly a baptism of fire. She was a very angry lady indeed. Some of the points she made, I agreed with, but what I didn’t agree with was the fact that she didn’t accept that the person is gender-fluid and she kept referring to them as he, him and as a crossdresser. Although I am not gender-fluid, in the absence of a GF person I felt I had to defend their right to be accepted and respected for who they are. She also said that trans-women are not women and she just got hung-up about the sex-characteristics at birth. It was a really heated debate. I wasn’t prepared for how angry she was and it caught me off-guard to begin with. I think I pulled it back though and held my own though. She is a very experienced media debater with real attitude on her, so I felt a bit out of my depth. I don’t think it helped that I wound her up at the start after hearing her initial outburst by telling her that she had her knickers in a twist! I survived it OK, but it was certainly a baptism of fire! I will treat it as good training for any TERFS I encounter in the future.
To listen to the debate, CLICK HERE and fast-forward the show to hour 40 minutes.
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