Thread by @charlesworth102

I went to the BBC today for the afternoon session of a day of talks to launch the BBC's Top 100 Women of 2019. I nearly didn't make it as what I thought was my ticket wasn't a ticket but merely a promise that I might get a ticket.
Always read the small print/1
#100Women

Someone thought I might be on the VIP list (please don't) and I was ushered in. The VIP people checked, no, not on the list, but you can go in anyway. So I got a silver armband not a plebby sticker and got to sit at the front.
This was all a mixup not a conspiracy/2
#100Women

I saw one of the co-hosts was Sofie Hagen and thought great it is the lovely Danish actor from The Killing. Luckily I kept this to myself, as it turned out to be a Danish stand-up @SofieHagen
#100Women /3

First up was Jung Chang, who wrote Wild Swans, a devastating expose of living under Maoism. She was talking about "writing real women" an odd box to put her in. But she pointed out it was a pre-revolutionary woman ruler who ended foot-binding. Hey, Peter Tatchell!/4
#100Women

Next, Lisa Campo-Engelstein talking about her research into the male pill. It seems it is some sort of reverse sexism or gender stereotyping that has prevented this being made rather than women, once they could, thinking fantastic I can control when I get pregnant/5
#100Women

She thinks more sex ed would help make the idea of a male pill more acceptable. More LGBTQ+ sex ed. Though quite how this would change how babies are made she didn't elaborate. Also said men do get side effects when women get pregnant in case you didn't know. I didn't/6
#100Women

Then Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman an urban anthropologist. Cities are made by men & not good for women. Literally everything has been made by men until now, this minute, 2019. Her ideas only made sense if you imagined she'd thought them up while drunk, reading Engels/7
#100Women

A break and then more Sofie doing a bit of an intro to the gender talk. Got the humorous take on "sex isn't binary and the 100s of genders, as many as there are in the audience possibly". A bit about men, vaginas, women and penises not being what we thought/8
#100Women

Then writers Owl Fisher and Sharan Dhaliwal talking about the future of gender identities (I was hoping GIs wouldn't have much of a future but kept that to myself) Owl said there was a terrible backlash against LGBTetc and the UK is the most extreme/9
#100Women

Sharan - she's cis - said we are on a cliff edge on the issue of marginalisation in the UK. Her bgd is Indian so lots of talk about colonialism and how the Raj criminalised homosexuality. India must have been like Old Compton St before that. Who knew?/10
#100Women

I asked if either were worried about the rapid rise in girls saying they are trans. They looked a bit put out at someone questioning the trans narrative. Owl said it was a medical matter and not for them. Strange, as Owl has written a book for trans teens/11
#100Women

There was a bit of talk about international pronoun day. Someone in the audience asked if the curriculum would be changed in schools to teach this new language. This was not a joke question. It was answered seriously by our panel/12
#100Women

Joy, good next speaker a Kuwaiti woman who spoke about Arab women and politics. Alanoud Alsharekh. She spoke about actual women in the real world. Her take was possibly more upbeat that you would imagine if you look at Saudi but it was interesting. Big clap from me/13
#100Women

Last speaker was brilliant, Dr Veronique Thouvenot who heads a big UN backed campaign Zero Women Die.
zeromothersdie.org
The campaign is doing real work to help women who don't have access to good maternity care.Via mobile phones. Not a pregnant person in sight/14
#100Women

I read this brilliant new post from @Transgendertrd on my way home. Real words in a real order making real sense in the real world and #100Women bar the last two speakers didn't seem very significant at all.
transgendertrend.com/health-researc…
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