Why is the BBC so obsessed with Munroe Bergdorf?

Spectator

6 days ago

Can the BBC do anything right? Just days before it messed up spectacularly by failing to cut away from Bob Vylan's offensive performance at Glastonbury, it released a podcast in which activist Munroe Bergdorf told listeners 'how transitioning allowed her to discover love'. The BBC, the former broadcaster that's now a HR department with some channels attached, is increasingly ladling up such tatty 'content'. But this podcast episode – part of the 'How To Be In Love' series – marks a new, desperate low.
'We are constantly told that trans people are an abomination,' says Bergdorf. Really?
Hosted by the amiable and intelligent Rylan Clark, whose wit and charm are, frankly, being frittered away on such rubbish, Bergdorf – who was born a man but has now 'transitioned' – appears to claim to be a lesbian, on the basis of having fallen in love with another man who also claims to be a woman. Yes, you read that right.
'I never thought I would fall in love with another woman,' Bergdorf tells Rylan, who listens with an admirably straight face that is a picture to behold. Why are we paying for this?
Bergdorf goes on. And on. And on. 'We are constantly told that trans people are an abomination, that we shouldn't even be friends with trans people, that you shouldn't employ trans people,' Bergdorf says, speaking from an alternative universe where that is actually happening.
Who exactly is 'constantly telling' us this? Who is saying we shouldn't be friends with trans people? And which companies have said they won't give them a job? There aren't any, because if there were, they'd soon find themselves in court. As Debbie Hayton has pointed out in The Spectator repeatedly, trans people are not being routinely persecuted in Britain. The Equality Act protects these individuals from discrimination based on their gender.
Yet claims about trans people being persecuted have become louder in the wake of the Supreme Court's verdict earlier this year, when judges said that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. That decision finally restored some much-needed common sense to the gender debate. I've been stewed like a prune in this discussion for nigh on a decade, and all I've seen is women demanding their basic, sex-based rights and safeguards from men – and being given the cold shoulder. Finally, those brave women have been backed up by the judges. But, despite what some might like to suggest, it didn't lead to a pogrom of trans people.
Yet the fact that the BBC was willing to broadcast Bergdorf's rant – coming hot on the heels of the the Corporation allowing a woman to appear on its gay dating show I Kissed A Boy – shows that it has some catching up to do. No special dispensations have been removed from trans people in Britain. But the BBC loves a victim, and at the sight of a picturesque character like Bergdorf, the bigwigs down at Broadcasting House's tails start wagging like the clappers.
Bergdorf looks like a gay man's idea of a glamorous lady that straight men would desire. But we shouldn't forget that Bergdorf – a former Labour advisor, of course – once claimed that 'the white race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth'; called a Twitter follower a 'hairy barren lesbian; and spoke of wanting to 'gay bash' a television star. What's all that about? And why does the BBC think anyone cares what Bergdorf thinks after saying those things?
Bergdorf's book, Transitional, was marketed as a 'landmark manifesto from the pioneering activist and model'. I've had the misfortune of having read it, and let me tell you this: there's nothing 'landmark' about this book. Although it is admirably frank, I'll give Bergdorf that – it was more disturbing than I expected. What emerges is a picture of Bergdorf that also comes across in the interview with Clark: nobody loves Bergdorf more than Bergdorf, and nobody hates Bergdorf more than Bergdorf. Certainly, nobody else is anywhere near as interested in Bergdorf as Bergdorf. And this is who the BBC is turning to for advice on relationships? Do yourself a favour and read the horoscopes: you'll find more wisdom there.
The BBC has not afforded anything like the same welcome to the detractors of the LGBTQ+ movement as it has done to the likes of Bergdorf. Why aren't Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock or the authors of The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht being invited regularly on Woman's Hour? I'd happily pay my licence fee if they did. Instead, they think giving a platform to Bergdorf is a better investment of our cash.
This gender gibberish is, fingers crossed, coming to an end, but the BBC – another thing hopefully nearing its demise – is still rolling along with it. Let them go down together.