December 3, 2024 - 3:45pm
You’ve probably never heard of Brigitte Baptiste, but the BBC certainly has. As the corporation proved last year, no list of women is complete these days without at least one man, and Baptiste ticks all the right boxes. The self-styled “queer ecologist” is on the corporation’s list of “100 inspiring women”, appearing beside Nadia Murad and Gisèle Pelicot. Both women are survivors of the worst examples of male violence, but the BBC evidently has no qualms about placing them on a par with a trans-identified male.
No single-sex spaces here: two of the world’s bravest rape survivors have to rub shoulders with a man who denies the most fundamental tenets of biology. First, and most obviously, Baptiste believes that human beings can change sex. Now 61, he was called Luis Guillermo until the age of 35, when he “transitioned” and took the first name Brigitte after Brigitte Bardot. Choosing the name of the Sixties icon speaks volumes, and it should come as no surprise that Baptiste has turned himself into a hyper-sexualised caricature of a woman.
A couple of years ago, an admiring profile in the Guardian (where else?) described him arriving at work at Bogotá’s Ean University “in a plunging dress, knee-high cheetah-print boots and a silvery wig”. Baptiste rarely appears in an outfit that doesn’t show off his enormous plastic breasts, a parodic version of femininity. The whole business is made even more bizarre by the fact that Baptiste trained as a biologist, and is now regarded as one of Colombia’s leading conservationists.
His views on “green capitalism” — that the free market has a role to play in sustainable development — are contested. But his views on “queer biodiversity” get a free pass in an atmosphere where “queering” anything and everything, from Roman emperors to beetles, is met with uncritical applause. “There’s nothing more queer than nature,” he has said.
This brand of gobbledegook was evidently music to the ears of the people at the BBC tasked with identifying the year’s most inspirational women. It doesn’t seems to have occurred to them that it’s an insult to survivors of sexual violence to nominate them alongside someone so committed to gender ideology that he once claimed scientists had discovered a “transsexual” palm tree.
When Nadia Murad was abducted by Islamic State in Iraq, she couldn’t “identify” as a man and escape being repeatedly raped. In France, Gisèle Pelicot’s vile husband invited men to rape his drugged wife, not someone who had decided to identify as a woman. Biological sex is central to the experiences of these heroic women, as it is to every woman who has been raped or sexually assaulted. Theories about an innate “gender identity” ignore such inconvenient facts, brushing them aside in favour of impractically idealistic notions about someone’s “inner feelings”.
You would think that the BBC, currently embroiled in yet another scandal about alleged bad behaviour by a male presenter, would understand the importance of sex by now. But its annual list of “99 inspiring women and a bloke” suggests otherwise.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeQueer theory is not “This brand of gobbledegook”.
What is it with Unherd writers? Can’t they put an argument together?
There are very good arguments why Queer Theory should not be taught in schools and why it should be rejected.
But all we get from Unherd, (a stupid title if ever there was one, given both Feminist Theory is unheard of, along with any criticism of it) is complaining.
We never hear anything about the details of Feminist Theory or from anyone who could present the counter-argument.
All we get is interminable complaining about Gender Theory and Trans Theory and Queer Theory from feminist writers who all ignore the elephant in the room that they are all creations of Feminism.
“We never hear anything about the details of Feminist Theory or from anyone who could present the counter-argument.”
Pretty sure you could post it in the comments if you wanted to.
I do, bit by bit. But I would much prefer to set out the whole story. Or read someone else doing it.
Spinifex Press has published some books critiquing the postmodern version of things. For example, the press has republished “Nothing Ma(t)ters A Feminist Critique of Postmodernity” by Somer Brodribb. You could also look at books written by Sheila Jeffreys.
Agree that this explosion of trans issues is directly caused by Feminism. New word: TRANSPLOSION.
Boy, you sure have some issues with women.
He may have problems with women, but that doesn’t mean women don’t have problems with those areas of human activity into which they are pushed for the sake of “equality” and which they successfully destroy.
I think you have a point, Richard. So..
how about making a pitch to Unherd for a piece of your own?
My pitches are always rejected, but you may have better luck.
Yes. I have tried as well.
And in other places. The problem, I Imagine, is any pitch goes straight to one of the writers on gender, one of the feminist writers…
Feminists create bad theories and then complain about them, endlessly. The way things are going this will still be happening in twenty years time. The only way to stop bad ideas is to criticise them. But no one is allowed to criticise Feminism in Unherd.
This has zero to do with feminists.
So Butler who pretty much single-handedly invented Queer Theory, and certainly propelled it on its way, is not a feminist????
Are you supposing that all feminists welcome the intrusion of Butler into our space?
She has intruded into ‘your’ space. But you won’t know that from reading Unherd.
Wokery is the deformed brain-child of feminism, which is now having sex with Islamism. To see the fruits of this union, have a look at the recent debate on Israel at the Oxford Union.
It’s simple: call people whatever they want so long as it does not facilitate anything illegal or immoral. But stop indulging fantasies about human’s ability to change sex. If the person in question is worthy of being in a top 100 of women then presumably they must be worthy of consideration for a top 100 men. Or, how about a top 200 people chosen purely on merit? without consideration of their sex, gender, orientation, colour, race, age, health, shoe size, fashion sense or whatever other bizarre distinctions the loony lobby can invent.
Richard, you are as polemical as Joan Smith. “Feminists create bad theories” which lead to the ideological mishmash of gender and gender identities.
Sure, there have been some ‘bad’ (weak) theories. Would one expect otherwise during over a 100 years of intellectual and political activism that included diverse threads of feminist critiques of society? But to lay the blame entirely on feminist theories?
Certainly, feminism has been part of philosophical and ideological thinking that together have contributed to a derived contemporary ‘theory’ which says that virtually everything can be explained in terms of power relations and simply via categories such victimizer/victim or oppressor/oppressed. But that does not set feminist theory in stone.
Better, I think, to consider why the concept of gender can be a useful concept. One founding question of feminists was: Does one’s sex have to dictate one’s role and status in society? I am thinking here of the C20th context in the UK (e.g . the suffragette movement; two world wars during which many women worked in the fields and in factories; the massive technological developments, changing economic conditions and social attitudes that provided ‘push and pull’ incentives for women to become formally employed). Hence, the answer to the question was ‘No’ and the concept of gender became a useful concept to distinguish socially determined roles from biologically determined roles.
Likewise, better to recognize that advances in the human bio-physical and bio-chemical sciences, including evolutionary biology and psychology, seem to be on the way to assist feminist theoretical thinking to leave the gender identity ideologues behind by supporting the gender/sex distinction; but on an expanded base of better understanding of the inter-play and differences between socially and biologically determined characteristics of life for men and women.
What you have described as ‘socially determined roles’ is a perfectly good idea and is historically applicable. But that is not ‘gender’.
Gender and sex separated, in Feminist theory, during the 1990s. I have never seen this explained in newspapers. It led to the Radical Feminists (TERFS) being defeated by a larger group, made up of supporters of Queer Theory and Trans Ideology. This was when the concept of being a woman was expanded to include men. Do you know why?
There is total silence in the mainstream media on the arguments used by each side.
You won’t read detailed critiques of Queer Theory/Gender Identity in the mainstream media which have been completely ‘captured’ as they say. Perhaps you could try Quillette? Or any of the books published and launched online by Spinifex Press? If you want to know “why” men are claiming to be women, I suggest you read Jennifer Bilek’s “Transsexual, Transgender, Transhuman: Dispatches from the 11th Hour” published by Spinifex. Recording of launch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3wugiRwi1I&t=5s
The defeat of radical feminists has been more far-reaching than many realise. It also involved the ending of Women’s Studies in universities worldwide. Instead, we now have Gender Studies which of course includes men, and has spawned much of Queer Theory.
Professors of Women’s Studies who had been teaching radical feminism were forced out of academia. Some still teach webinars by donation through Women’s Declaration International, which can be viewed on YouTube.
A further consequence is that students simply never encounter sex realist ideas at all these days, instead being utterly soaked in gender ideology and Queer Theory.
One despairs for this generation.
And is it any wonder that the only kind of feminism acceptable in universities these days is the kind that centers men? It was never the case that liberal feminism offered a sounder analysis than radical feminism.
For those blaming all feminists for this mess, you can look back as far as Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire, published in the 1970s, for a firm critique of transsexualism. Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffries also firmly criticised and rejected transsexualism, from the early 1980s on.
The author is still wedded to an idea of the BBC which started dying circa 2000 and has been a brain-eating zombie since 2014. I would say to the author, give it up – the BBC is no longer the entity you think it is, and there is no need to take anything it does and says seriously. The organisation has no element of the benign left to it, it is now entirely malignant. Had I the option, I would say, burn it down. Now.
Indeed what is the point of any list let alone devoted ostensibly to one category but including another.
Thank you for illustrating the article with a photo of the guy. I didn’t need to read any further.
I am waiting for 100 inspirational Black women including Rachel Dolezal. 100 inspirational men including Mickey Mouse. A simple category error anyone could make if you work for the state broadcaster Confused.com. Or is that another understandable category error?
… soon to be followed by a list of top 100 inspirational mice… containing 0 mice and 100 men… thereby erasing the Mickey, Jerry, and Reepicheep.
My preference would be for an UnHerd list of Top 100 BBC journalists, that includes Rupert Murdoch, Lord Beaverbrook, Robert Maxwell, William Randolph Hearst, Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.
“There’s nothing more queer than nature” – eh?
That single statement is the the biggest repudiation of reason I have ever seen, in an age when all kinds of idiotic tropes run amok.
If being unnatural is the opposite of nature, then to say nature is queer is to say that the unnatural is straight. At this point you’re trolling language itself.
That photo is more reminiscent of Barry the Baptist from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels than Brigitte Bardot.
Feminism robbed women of their rightful place at the heart of a loving family. Turned them into tax slaves. And made them think it was their choice and a positive for them and society. Quite remarkable. Oh and it also led to the disastrous immigration levels as they also stopped their primary function (also males primary function) of reproducing. A twofer. Oh and it hit the kids exposed to Govt propaganda from the age of 2 in nurseries. Or the ones with abandonment issues after being dumped in daycare at 9 months old. A real boon.
He or she looks like another of those types who declare they are the opposite sex but don’t have any reassignment surgery.
They are just part of the Left’s Queer movement and have little to do with the transsexuals of bygone days.
Maybe Countryfile could do a spot on cocks’ eggs and bulls’ cheese.
I would love to state what I really think about this person. But as a UK citizen I fear that I might be the swift focus of a Non Crime Hate Incident investigation by the Police; or worse, to be charged with a hate crime and criminally convicted, probably with a prison sentence.
That’s the UK today …