You may have had the misfortune of seeing the BBC 100 Women campaign plastered all over the BBC website recently. These scheme is another form of feminist activism by the supposedly impartial BBC, where they select 100 “inspirational” women in “a unique celebration of female talent”.

BBC 100 women has run for several years now and they even continued writing articles for it on November 19th, International Men’s Day, in the context of toilets for women on what is also World Toilet Day. While the BBC did cover the International Men’s Day debate in Parliament five days earlier, it again failed to mark the actual event in any way on the day itself. Thus, the BBC preferences commemoration of World Toilet Day ahead of International Men’s Day. Such a tactic is a sick and worn out sexist joke which the United Nations also enjoys playing on men across the globe.

We’ve no idea as to the activities and merits of a lot of the names on the BBC 100 Women, but one name did stick out amongst all the rest, that of radical feminist Liz Kelly. In addition to regarding Kelly as “inspirational”, the BBC describes her as “one of the world’s leading sociologists on violence against women”. In fact the BBC loves Kelly so much that its BBC 100 Women press release features her as the 17 names highlighted out of the 100, so in other words they regard as being not simply one of the 100 most “inspirational” women in the world, but even in their top 17!

The reason we knew of Kelly’s name is primary due to some famous quotes she’s known for. In her publication “The Hidden Gender of Law”, Kelly argues

“there is no clear distinction between consensual sex and rape, but a continuum of pressure, threat, coercion and force”…

This line of thinking is worryingly close to the most extremist line of feminist “thought” in that they believe all heterosexual sex is rape albit ot quite all the way there. However, Kelly reinforces such an idea on the following page of the same book, suggesting that all women experience sexual violence at some points in their lives. So, for Kelly, her views are so extreme that even manufactured and exaggerated statistics on rape and abuse are insufficiently alarmist, and the true figure is 100% of women, or 1 in 1. Furthermore, though not stated explicitly, the clear inference to be taken from her arguments that all women experience sexual violence, is of course that all, or at least the overwhelming majority, of men are rapists or sexual abusers. And yes, we’re supposed to be celebrating this kind of hateful thinking!

Kelly’s further works include equally disturbing and harmful ideas. Her publication “Surviving Sexual Violence” defines sexual violence as including:

“any physical, visual, verbal or sexual act that is experienced by the woman or girl, at the time or later, as a threat, invasion or assault, that has the effect of hurting her or degrading her and/or takes away her ability to control“

So, firstly Kelly is so sexist that she thinks only women and girls can be a victim of sexual violence, thus throwing all male victims under the bus. Secondly, she thinks these women and girls should be able to withdraw consent retrospectively. Wendy McElroy also criticised Kelly’s definition, describing it as “disastrously subjective” noting “regret is not a benchmark of consent”

So what are the real world consequences of Kelly’s lines of thoughts?:

Kelly’s demonisation of men is obviously unpleasant, but the bigger thrust of her definitions is to infantilise women as helpless victims, which has consequences for how young or impressionable women might view themselves and how those who subscribe to Kelly’s nonsense view women too. The deliberate marginalisation/elimination of the huge number of male victims makes it incredibly difficult for even male victims raped by other men to be recognised. As for the even greater number of men raped by women, they’re eliminated twice over firstly in her definition, but also via the implied men as rapists / women as victims line of thought. In denying their existence she further discourages them from coming forward, a group already incredibly reluctant to do so. Kelly can’t even bring herself to define sexual abuse as something that happens to males, and thus the idea of a female perpetrator is even more alien still. Thus her rhetoric makes the already very difficult task of bringing female perpetrators to justice even harder still. Perhaps above all else. Kelly seeks to create confusion around issues of consent, and her dangerous idea that regret is rape can only lead to false allegations and innocent men being put on trial and ultimately inprison or having their lives ruined.

You may well be thinking that Kelly’s theories are just that, and her wider work is separate to any writing and thus perhaps worth “celebrating”. Alternatively, seeing as the quotes in question are from the late 1980s, perhaps there’s a chance Kelly has turned over a new leaf or at least become less misandrist as she as aged? Well, regular readers may well remember one of our most high-profile campaigns which was to try to gain recognition for male victims of domestic violence from Northumbria Police in a campaign against their misleading and sexist posters which only mentioned female victims and male abusers.

Vera Baird’s office and other taxpayer-funded radical feminists organised to try to support sexism, and in particular sought to rig a newspaper poll in order to give the misleading impression that the public thought it was ok to discriminate against male victims of domestic violence. Our campaigning helped to secure a huge victory with the posters withdrawn due to the outcry, and of course the final poll result noted the poster were sexist too.

So how does Kelly fit in here? Well, consistent with her previous writing and discrimination against male victims of sexual abuse, she wanted to see the discrimination against male victims of domestic violence continue too and we caught her campaigning on Twitter for people to vote in favour of marginalising male victims. So in other words, Kelly is someone who has directly opposed own very own pro-equality work and thus is just as sexist as ever and works to marginalise male victims.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong in the BBC mentioning some of Kelly’s work and any achievements, but they’re required to be impartial and should therefore tell both sides of the story. They’ll happily describe anyone remotely right-wing as “controversial”, even when their ideas and proposals are anything but, yet there’s not a hint of any such language in describing Kelly let alone any detail of her extreme ideas.

The entire problem with BBC 100 Women is that it’s politically partisan because, like almost all the rest of the BBC, it’s unashamedly pro-feminist in terms of its politics. In fact, BBC 100 Women is nothing more than a feminist campaign in itself. Selecting mainly from the 8% of the population who still call themselves feminists is a bad idea to begin with, but it’s not even a fair examination of said 8% and clearly a celebration which will seek out the positive aspects of an individual whilst hiding any darker side. This perhaps isn’t an issue for less extreme figures, but once they start white-washing the careers of those who have hatred for the opposite sex then its an extraordinary breach of BBC impartiality rules.

Why not celebrate some of the more wonderful women out there in the world who aren’t left wing feminists and don’t hate men? Erin Pizzey, Christina Hoff Sommers, the increasingly influential writers at Conservative Woman, or Nadine O’Connor who now has run Fathers4Justice for some time now? What about those fighting for equality for the thousands of raped girls in Rotherham and Rochdale? Furthermore, why can’t we honour men who fight for gender equality? Even going back 100 years plus there were male figures far more effective in gaining the vote for women (and men) than many Suffragettes.

Looking at the issues more broadly, the main problem with BBC 100 women is that yet again, the BBC misleadingly transforms the fight for gender equality into the fight for women’s rights (by women), thus leaving no space for anyone interested in equality for all, regardless of gender. Without a doubt Cassie Jaye would easily make any list of the top 100 women campaigning for gender equality in 2017, in fact she’d make the top ten, yet of course she’s a woman who wants equality for everyone rather than just special treatment for women and that’s simply not allowed at the BBC. Thus, thanks to BBC sexism and bias, Jaye doesn’t make the cut and misandrists who hate half the planet becasue of their gender take her place instead. How’s that for “inspirational”?