A columnist for The Times has complained to the BBC after its airing of a Radio 4 interview with a 10-year-old girl who identifies as 'gender non-binary', and her mother.
Janice Turner said this is the "first time" she has ever complained to the BBC, for the way it portrayed the story, and failed to challenge the girl’s mother.
'Gender non-binary'
The interview discussed the story of 10-year-old ‘Leo’. Leo said she wasn’t "feeling quite right" as a girl, yet after choosing to identify as a boy, she did not feel comfortable with that either.
Leo’s mother did some research and came across the term ‘gender non-binary’, and asked her daughter which male name she would like to adopt.
The mother had apparently spotted "signs" that Leo was not a girl from a young age, because she had preferred action figures over Barbie dolls, and pirates over princesses.
'Pernicious ideology'
Janice Turner said that with interviewer Jennifer Tracey’s refusing to challenge Leo’s mother, the BBC "is allowing to enter the mainstream, unquestioned, a pernicious ideology that demands parents patrol their children for gender crimes — boys who like dolls, girls who climb trees — and then seek a label and treatment."
"Jennifer Tracey did not once challenge this mother," said Janice Turner.
"Not whether asking every day ‘are you a boy or a girl?’ was good for her daughter’s mental health. Not whether it was appropriate to ask your ten-year-old ‘if you were a man would you be gay or straight’? Not whether posing her periods as ‘problematic’ or talking about puberty-blocking hormones was driving a still-developing child towards a lifetime of sterility-creating drugs and surgery."
Janice Turner concluded by saying: "Expert advice is that such a young child’s identity is still evolving: gender doubts are natural and usually outgrown."
Last week, Christian Concern’s Communications Officer, Camilla Olim, discussed the promotion of stories like Leo's, in this article.
"Up until recently, the media's primary narrative seemed to be based around the simple idea of 'being yourself'. Now, the narrative has shifted. Being yourself is no longer sufficient (and how could it be when people don't truly know who they are?). 'Define yourself' is society's new mantra," she said.
Liberal bias
The BBC has been criticised previously for its liberal bias, by its own staff.
In 2006, Andrew Marr, the BBC’s former political editor, said: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly-funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people.
"It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
In 2011 a former BBC news anchor, Peter Sissons, said "left-wing bias is at the core of the BBC, in its very DNA".
Related Links:
Girls, you don’t need to be pink princesses (Times £)
Transgender: The New Normal?
What does the Bible say about Transgenderism? by Kevin DeYoung
Boarding schools told to refer to transgender pupils as 'zie'