Women's Hour, 1975 edition

    Just when you think things are getting better, back it all slides.

    On Radio 4 Women's Hour this morning they were looking at women's issues facing people in ethnic minorities. They're very passionate about balance and free speech on Radio 4, so in the studio they had a black feminist to talk about her experiences and a pasty white bloke from the Far Right party who was there to tell the audience about the Jewish Plot, and how everyone not like him should be Sent Home.

    Sounds pretty implausible, doesn't it. And you're right, I just made it up. The BBC would no more have a member of any far-right party on Women's Hour than they would have a two-hour retrospective on all the good works of Jimmy Savile, with special emphasis on his work with children. Oh, wait...

    Unfortunately though this morning's Wonen's Hour did have a piece on the reported rise in British children seeking help with their gender identity issues. So who did they have on, perhaps a child psychologist speaking as an expert on the medical aspects of dealing with young gender identity patients?

    Nope. Not a chance. Instead they had a radical feminist in the studio, and turned the whole thing into an unsubtle go at non-cis gender identities and at gender identity help for children.

    Sadly for them they had rather put their foot in it before a second of audio had hit the airwaves, by trying to get a non-binary activist to come on to prop up their anti-trans agenda. Perhaps that should serve as a bit of a sign that you're going astray, when you're trying to put together a programme and the people you approach won't touch you with a bargepole? Not if you're the Women's Hour team it seems.

    Women's Hour has always seen itself as an institution at the heart of feminism. It has often produced very interesting and good quality radio. My spoof about the fascist talking on an ethnic minority piece was a spoof only in the fascist, they have been unafraid to tackle issues which other programmes would prefer to push under the carpet.

    But you can only remain at the heart of something if you stay in touch with it. It is pretty obvious that the Women's Hour producers' hearts lie in their youth in the 1970s and 80s rather than the second decade of the twenty first century, and that they have sadly lost touch.

    I probably share several definitions with my spoof fascist above. I'm white, British, middle class. But I would not take him at face value for a radio show just because I share that with him. It's a lesson the Women's Hour producers should take to heart: just because someone defines themselves as a feminist doesn't mean they're someone you'd want to be seen associating with.