Female heroes aren’t exempt from the BBC’S woke moralising
Gone but not forgotten. An icon who will live on in our hearts and minds. A steadfast beacon of hope in our most turbulent times. And guess what? Not four months later, the BBC has moved on.
The corporation has just published its list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world in 2022. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, our late great monarch who died in September after a lifetime’s service is nowhere to be seen.
Go and check if you want. I did, several times. After filling their schedules for two weeks solid, she is notably, glaringly absent. Seven decades on the throne and our national broadcaster sees no reason to include her because it wanted the focus to be on women with “international” and “grassroots” backgrounds. The duty and service of a female monarch apparently counts for nought compared with the Bolivian politician Eva Copa (shame on you for not knowing) or popstrel Billy Eilish who has written a song about climate change and spoken about her body image and depression. Which celebrity hasn’t?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not, by instinct, a BBC basher. I’m usually far too busy getting aerated about real life to embark on armchair Mccarthyite witch hunts against liberal bias on the box. By the time I get round to watching News at Ten, I’m so exhausted I would barely notice if it was presented by Ri Chun-hee, that terrifying gunfire-staccato North Korean news anchor, “the pink lady” who regularly shouts, laughs and cries on air as she brings word of nuclear tests or the death of a leader. Earlier this year, Kim Jong-un gave her a luxury house, which begs the question: why is she not in the BBC’S top 100 movers and shakers?
After all, the BBC found a berth for Erika Hilton, a transwoman who is an LGBTQ-PLUS activist and politician in Brazil. But despite her not inconsiderable achievements, many would argue she’s not a woman – she’s a transwoman.
My grasp of Portuguese is admittedly poor, but a swift Google would appear to suggest that Hilton has been reluctant to refer to herself as a woman. Still, the achingly woke BBC begs to assert itself on this extremely controversial matter. Of course it does. The same goes for Efrat Tilma, an Israeli transgender police volunteer.
It doesn’t make sense, you see, when Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who is a biological woman and has stuck up for women’s rights to safe spaces, is omitted.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, is in there too, even though we haven’t forgiven her bully-boy (or should that be bully-girl?) tactics when she threatened the supply of Covid-19 vaccines to Northern Ireland. But her bestie, the Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin nominated her, so she’s got to be a shoo-in.
No space, then, for the new Princess of Wales and future queen, whose charity work is tireless, or one of the triumphant Lionesses, inspiring girls across the UK?
The BBC is evidently eager to cover all bases and tick every diversity box in a scramble for new (aka young) audiences. But what about us, the people who pay for it? Do our values, our heroes not matter? It seems, rather like our late, great monarch, we have been quietly consigned to history.