BBC Woman’s Hour is receiving backlash after host Emma Barnett invited a trans-identified male academic to the program to discuss whether or not women have penises.
Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California in Berkeley, was invited to speak about his autobiographical book, Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis and his comments wishing the Queen would die from COVID-19, which resulted in his permanent suspension from Twitter.
When asked about his book, Lavery stated that his goal “was to focus on… the question of a trans woman’s penis,” and went on to state that “the question of whether a woman can have a penis… implies that there is a woman who is asking for a penis, rather than the question of whether or not the category of ‘woman’ includes the subcategory of people who have penises.”
Lavery further suggested that he believes the word ‘woman’ refers to “a political category whose meaning can change over time”. He also heavily implied that he believed women who rejected the belief that their sex class could include men are “on the side of patriarchy.”
When questioned on the moment Lavery “first said aloud” that he wanted to be a woman, he responded with a story about being in a hot tub and “felt those words leaving my body,” saying that the assertion “didn’t feel like something I was choosing to say.” He described the moment as “spiritual” and compared it to an out-of-body experience.
Lavery, who transitioned in 2018, further stated that “it is possible to change sex” by taking the hormones of the opposite sex, continuing: “One is changing secondary sexual organs… [for example] breasts rather than genitals.”
“The notion of sex-based rights is a very recent phenomenon that hasn’t existed for more than a few years,” Lavery claimed after being presented with a quote from his book which declared that “women’s rights are not, have never been, and must never be sex-based.”
Netizens were quick to point out that Lavery’s interview came right on the heels of a story about failings in maternity care at an NHS trust that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of women and babies that could have been avoided had medical staff not discounted women’s experiences. Sky News has called it “the most damning maternity scandal in the history of the NHS.”
Others pointed out the hypocrisy of featuring Lavery on Woman’s Hour when notable women have been neglected by the program or treated in a hostile manner by presenters for rejecting gender identity ideology.
When pressed on whether he had any regrets about his tweet wishing death on the Queen – for which he was suspended from Twitter – Lavery stated not only that he did not regret expressing the sentiment but argued that during the French Revolution “regicide was very much on the table.” At the time of his post, the Queen had been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Before his suspension, Lavery was known for his inflammatory behavior on the social media platform, where he made such assertions as, “Kids aren’t innocent; innocence is a myth promulgated to dominate young people’s bodies,” and “A woman is a person who is, or has been, presumed to adopt a passive role in sexual intercourse and a reproductive role in economic life.”
In February, Lavery said, “I don’t think anything should be a crime. I think prisons should be opened, everyone set free, and cops abolished. I don’t think the criminalization of harm helps anyone heal, and I don’t think it can produce anything like justice.”
In 2019, Lavery wrote an article for ‘Queer’ outlet Them, in which he said: “There’s something about being treated like shit by men that feels like affirmation itself, like a cry of delight from the deepest cavern of my breast… To be the victim of honest, undisguised sexism possesses an exhilarating vitality.”
According to a curriculum which Lavery had himself posted online, he has used PornHub in his syllabus at UC Berkeley and recommended his students watch “sissy porn,” a genre of pornography wherein men are ostensibly forced into women’s clothing in order to humiliate them for sexual purposes.
Andrea Long Chu, another American trans-identified male academic, shared a platform with Lavery at UC Berkeley in 2018. Chu had been invited to give a presentation titled “Nonconsensual Desire, or, Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans?” Chu, whose views Lavery has supported, has said that “pornography is the quintessential expression of femaleness”, “getting f*cked makes you female because f*cked is what a female is”, and “sissy porn did make me trans.”
Lavery was set to debate feminist writer Helen Joyce in February on issues related to gender ideology, but abruptly withdrew from the event, citing pressure from fellow trans activists that it would “do more harm than good.”
Reduxx is a newly-launched independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% reader-funded! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.
