GenderQuake the Debate. Boys Will Be Boys and Will Be Treated like Boys.

The GenderQuake debate:

Channel 4 is doing a series of gender related programs, including a debate, which went out this week:

From http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/channel-4-confirms-panellists-for-genderquake-the-debate

Channel 4 is holding a studio discussion, Genderquake: The Debate where a wide-ranging panel of guests with a variety of views will look at what gender means in 2018. The debate, which is part of a wider season on gender, will discuss topics including: what defines our gender identity, how that affects our rights, should it be easier to change gender and does gender matter anyway?

 The debate will be hosted by Channel 4 News’ Cathy Newman and the panellists will include model and activist Munroe Bergdorf, leading feminist and academic Germaine Greer and US Television personality and Olympic gold medal winner Caitlyn Jenner. There will also be other panellists and speakers with a wide range of views.

Shaminder Nahal, Channel 4 Commissioning Editor said:

 “This debate will stimulate important and insightful discussion with a wide variety of views from the panel and audience. Issues around gender now have a prominent position in the national conversation, with strong feeling on all sides. Channel 4 is well known for exploring challenging and emotive issues in a fair and balanced way and with this programme we want to help audiences understand and engage in these multi-faceted issues.”

So C4 promised "Channel 4 is well known for exploring challenging and emotive issues in a fair and balanced way". Which surely should mean that people get an equal say, no one gets interrupted or get to interrupt others more or less because of their sex or gender or whatever.


The panel consisted of:

• Two trans identified men, or trans women (with a space, it is very important)
• Two trans identified women, or trans men
• Three plain old female women or cis women

No plain old men were represented. I suppose because its a 'women's issue' so real men don't care.

The rather wonderful @Gabcsika_Me on twitter tweeted about this here. She put a lot of work in.

Her data looked like this:

And is available here:

It certainly showed that Ms Jenner talked a lot as did Ms Greer and Ms Bergdorf. But how does the panels treatment and behaviour look when analysed by both the sex they were born as and the gender they identify as now.

So I put on my other hat as the bloke that hashes figures into some sort of sense for management to make some sense of. I copied Gabcsikas data into a new spreadsheet, available here and did a bit of faffing around in a sad spreadsheet nerd sort of way.

A World Viewed thru Gender

So if we look at what happens when we split things up by Gender, how people identify:

So it looks like in trans circles, people behave as paragons of non-sexism. The women get to to talk way more than the men. They interrupt more than men. And in genderland people treat men and women fairly equally, interrupting almost equally and interrupting men for longer.

Sadly the audience seemed quite sexist, heckling the women almost a third more than the men.

A World Viewed thru Sex

Let's do the same split but by Sex, how people were born.

Now sadly we are back in the bad old days with men talking, on average, twice as much as women, women getting interrupted twice as often and twice as long as men, with the men butting in twice as much.

The audience however are real man-haters heckling the chaps twice as much as the ladies.

A World Using Gender is a World Free of Sexism?

So can we solve the problems of sexism, by just referring to peoples gender instead of sex? After all , when we talk in terms of gender, everyone seems to much nicer to women and women seem to find it easier to stick up for themselves. We can make sexism, if not disappear, at least reverse for a while.

Well no, not really

Men Dominate, Whatever their Gender.

If we look at data with an understanding of sex and gender identity, we can see a more illuminating picture. 

We can see that the transmen hardly get a word in and don't interrupt. They behave as if they don't really have a right to exist. When they do talk they get interrupted more often while they are talking.

Women get to talk half as much as men, and get interrupted twice as often as men, and three times as long being interrupted while they are speaking. 

Summary

Men dominate, whatever their gender identity. Transition does not change behaviour or how people treat you.

P.S.

After I posted this a woman (of the real sort) posted here account of how she was lied to by the producers and then misquoted and suspended from the Green Party. You can read it here: The Genderquake debate fiasco and the McCarthyism that followed.