Generally speaking, the BBC deserves every plaudit for keeping a vigilant eye on any possible affront to diversity.
As a life-long champion of letting it all hang out, I applaud the corporation for its comprehensive diversity training programme. All staffers must attend and thus learn to be on the lookout for “170 different forms of unconscious bias”.
I wish I could attend that course because I can’t count so many on my own. I happen to know that one form of unconscious bias identified for BBC employees is based on their colleagues’ hobbies.
Not being privy to the specifics, I can only make a general admission that I too display a bias, both conscious and unconscious, against certain hobbies, such as putting live kittens into the microwave. However, if I were able to attend that course, I’m sure I’d be cured of my propensity to discriminate.
One way or another, when it comes to diversity, no amount of vigilance is excessive. For any lapse can have catastrophic consequences, scarring affected individuals for life.
That’s why the Corporation deserves a light rap on the knuckles for the diversity survey recently circulated to its staff. It was a multiple-choice questionnaire, yet some of the important choices were left out.
Specifically, the question “What is your sexual orientation?” featured some omissions that many BBC staffers may find inexplicable, if not deliberately offensive. The answer options included only “bi/bisexual”, “lesbian/gay woman”, “gay man”, “other sexual orientation” and “prefer not to say”.
The questionnaire drew thunderous criticism for its wilful omissions, and quite right too. Only three of the 101 known sexes… sorry, I mean genders, were listed. The remaining 98 were unceremoniously lumped together under the rubric ‘other’, which reduced those valid options to a marginal status.
What about BBC employees who are proud of being, say, endosex, cisgender or demi-flux? They are fully justified in feeling slighted at best, mortally offended at worst. And you know what happens to cisgender people who feel slighted or, God forbid, offended?
Well, neither do I. But it’s a safe bet they may go to pieces, thereby jeopardising the quality of the BBC’s output, of which all Britons are rightly proud. And don’t get me started on the hurt feelings of fa’afafine and bissu Beebers. They’d be within their rights to demand that the Board answer the question bursting out of their wounded hearts: “And what am I, chopped liver?”
I think the BBC should either not list any options, instead just offering an empty space to be filled by the recipients, or, better, list all 101 of them. That would make the document bulkier, but at least the danger of offending a member of a respected minority would be averted.
Let’s remind ourselves, and keep reminding, that the whole purpose of diversity training is to avoid even the slightest possibility of causing offence. My proposal would serve this purpose, whereas the BBC questionnaire, while definitely making a step in the right direction, falls just short of the destination.
That’s why so many people subjected our national institution to just criticism. I’m sure the critics singled out such neglected but valid options as FTM, hijra, kathoey…
Wait a minute, Penelope has just looked over my shoulder and told me to read the papers more diligently. Turns out I’ve got it woefully wrong (“yet again”, as she put it). The BBC indeed came under fire for omitting a certain option, but it was none of those I’ve mentioned.
The option left out was “heterosexual”, aka “straight”. Apparently, some BBC staffers still identify themselves in that quaint, anachronistic and decidedly uncool fashion. And they are the ones who have complained.
I for one don’t see what their problem is. The questionnaire did include the “other sexual orientation” rubric, didn’t it? All they had to do was scribble “straight” in and go back to sweeping the floor, or whatever such sticks-in-the-mud do at the BBC.
How long before straight people start lying about their ‘orientation’ to have any chance of getting a job at the BBC? This is a multiple-choice question, and the answer options are “soon”, “in the immediate future” and “faster than you can say Jack Robinson”.
Worse than the lunatics running the asylum, the deviants are running the world! No normal person (sorry, deviants, but we all know what is normal) would ever describe himself by his sexual actions, thus no normal person has called himself a heterosexual. At least, no one did prior to the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s work. Even then, if he did so it was to make clear that he is normal.
I can understand the introduction of some retronyms, such as “acoustic guitar” which came about after the invention of the electric guitar. But the fact that the deviants have come up with so many new words and phrases to refer to people who practice normal sexual behavior (that is, as all the parts were intended), and that reporters insist on using them, is disturbing.