More on Hecklers/ "I keep on trying to find a way out but it's ok you don't lock the door anymore"

Firstly, I have to say that I think the premise of Hecklers, someone says something controversial, four people argue with them, is rather dumb. It’s like admitting that people don’t really care about the throwing around of ideas and the structured back-and-forth of proper debate which actually allows people to both develop and explain an argument, while also forcing them to think on their feet when the audience gets to take part. The other problem is that, because the audience is not allowed to either heckle or question any of the participants directly, it renders them unable to take part.

The audience was mainly comprised of transpeople and their allies. There was a row of people, around ten to a dozen, who seemed to be there to support Julie Bindel but the vast majority of those present were there to disagree with what Julie said. An unscientific straw poll afterwards was about ‘eighty-twenty’ against the proposition.

What follows are my notes. Not being used to taking notes and not knowing shorthand I restricted myself mainly to just getting the main parts of Julie’s arguments. The structure of the show was that there would be three sections, Julie would be given two minutes to speak uninterrupted, after which she would have to stop every time one of the panellists wanted to say something. In effect this meant Julie spent two minutes talking, five minutes arguing with the panel and then the panel would spend five minutes arguing with the chair Evan Davis as he tried to get them to agree to some minor point that Julie made. I wasn’t quick enough to be able to get their interruptions down so left them out but on the whole you can guess what they would object to. The panel were Peter Tatchell, Professor Stephen Whittle, Michelle Bridgman and Kevan Wylie. In most cases I’m paraphrasing what was said but I don’t believe I’m misrepresenting what was said.

( Part One )

( Part Two )

( Part Three )

( Summing Up )

In my opinion it was useful only in that I found out exactly WHY Bindel has been slamming transsexuals for the last couple of years while doing so much to try and help women-born-women. The obvious problem is that she clearly believes she's not transphobic because she's got what she thinks are valid reasons not to like the trans community, my impression is that she would believe that someone is only phobic if they haven't thought about why they hate. The theorybitches amongst you will be able to help me with whether the type of things she says above are typical or not of feminists of her era.

This is probably where the listen again feature will be for this show after it is initially broadcast on the 1st of August. I'll be listening to hear whether it's edited to try and make it sound like Julie won any argument, she did not and I'm saying that as what I believe to be the truth, regardless of the fact that I disagree with her. She was laughed at for some of her more outrageous statements and the vote on the motion at the end was, as I said before, overwhelmingly against her proposal, whichever one it was that she was proposing.

Now all we can do is wait for the show. It was nice to see slightlyfoxed and thornbushrosy, even if I get to sneer at them for not having the mental fortitude to withstand a FULL HOUR OF BINDEL!