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BBC AAW article in mental health section


Mercurial

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Hi folks,

 

Have people seen the article on the BBC site today? This one http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-41569900?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/814465c5-404b-4c88-889f-45907ba1f402/mental-health&link_location=live-reporting-story

 

It has AVENs details attached to it.

 

However, the BBC have decided to place the article in the mental health section of their site, instead of the LGBT section. Personally, I'm angry as hell that they have placed it in that section, as its creates a direct connection between asexuality and mental illness, as if it is an illness that can be cured. Here is the link to the page before the article, where you can clearly see it labelled as mental health (not to mention the awful click bait title they give it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/814465c5-404b-4c88-889f-45907ba1f402/mental-health

 

I have made a complaint to the BBC, and would sincerely urge others to do the same. To make that easy, here is a link to the complaints site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

 

And if people want to use the same complaint as I made, and maybe change it how you see fit, here it is (I really want people to complain, I'm making it as easy as possible):

 

The attached article is about life as an asexual person, this article has been placed into the mental health section of the website, when it should be in the LGBT section (which should be LGBTQIA+, otherwise its erasure of the other orientations etc the acronym holds). As an asexual person myself, I am disgusted that, especially this week, which is asexual awareness week, the BBC have run an article on asexuality and labelled it as an illness by placing it in the mental health section of the site. 

This action is stigmatising and detrimental to the very purpose of asexual awareness week, which is to bolster support and awareness of a valid sexual orientation, and is the same as when society used to class homosexuality as a mental illness. Society knows better about homosexuality now, and the BBC should damn well know better than to label any orientation as a mental health issue.

I am, quite frankly, apoplectic that neither the writers, nor editors at the BBC news site saw anything wrong about placing this article in the mental health section, and that they appear to not have considered the consequences of doing so, not just the consequence they get of receiving complaints, but the consequences to the asexual community, who already face bigotry and erasure from people who don't believe we exist, or who think that we need "fixing". I know asexuals who have been subjected to corrective rape, do you not think that labelling our orientation as an illness might lead to more of this? That people who think we can be "cured" will be bolstered by seeing the BBC tacitly confirm that it is an illness that can be cured?

I feel that you should move the article to the correct section, and append an apology to it.

Regards

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Hey,

Thanks for raising this. I contributed to the article. We weren't told anything about it being in mental health.

 

In fact, I'm not sure it is. As far as I can tell, the page you linked gives a collection of timestamped articles, thought to be of interest to mental health, but that doesn't make those articles in the Mental Health section. It seems more like a livefeed than a section. Maybe they shouldn't have linked it from there, given the confusion it could cause, but on the other hand asexuality might be of interest for people who are wondering if they have a mental health issue or something else.

 

As far as I can tell the article belongs to BBC Magazine and no other section. It is currently linked on the BBC front page as well.

 

(For what it's worth I'm not a fan of the title either...)

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1 hour ago, michaeld said:

Hey,

Thanks for raising this. I contributed to the article. We weren't told anything about it being in mental health.

 

In fact, I'm not sure it is. As far as I can tell, the page you linked gives a collection of timestamped articles, thought to be of interest to mental health, but that doesn't make those articles in the Mental Health section. It seems more like a livefeed than a section. Maybe they shouldn't have linked it from there, given the confusion it could cause, but on the other hand asexuality might be of interest for people who are wondering if they have a mental health issue or something else.

 

As far as I can tell the article belongs to BBC Magazine and no other section. It is currently linked on the BBC front page as well.

 

(For what it's worth I'm not a fan of the title either...)

This is the link to the article itself 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-41569900?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/814465c5-404b-4c88-889f-45907ba1f402/mental-health&link_location=live-reporting-story

 

As you can see, the words "mental health" are in there

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If you access the article directly from the BBC page, 'mental health' is listed as a 'related topic'.

 

Since the article's headline is about feeling isolated as an asexual person, mental health might be relevant - but the fact that diversity, LGBT+ or sexuality of some kind are not also listed as 'related topics' kind of worries me because while I don't think there were negative intentions to this, it does give the impression that this is a mental health issue only without more context.

 

The article itself is pretty well written, though I haven't had the chance to take a closer look at it - I just skimmed.

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This is a really great article - good job, everyone who contributed :)

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Music & Lyrics

Yeah the title is disgusting.

 

One of the links @Mercurial posted does clearly show that the article was in a list called 'Mental Health', which it shared with story after story about suicidal teens.

 

If you do complain though, please make sure you're not stigmatizing mental illness!  While asexuality is not a mental illness, and therefore it is wrong to present it as one, any disability is just as 'valid' as any orientation.  There's nothing shameful about being compared to the mentally ill.  Many of us on AVEN are both.

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ThinkNotVanilla

I personally like the title ("Feeling isolated as an asexual in a sexualised society") - it's exactly how I feel. I'd urge the community not to get so hung up on the detail and accept that the sexualised community are also on a journey to understand and may sometimes trip-up on the lingo.

As an asexual even I somehow manage to cause offence to the LGBTQA (etc etc) community by using the 'incorrect' terminology.

 

That said, *if* this is being classed as a mental health article then that clearly is overstepping the mark and needs correcting.

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Music & Lyrics
6 minutes ago, ThinkNotVanilla said:

I personally like the title ("Feeling isolated as an asexual in a sexualised society")

I like that title :) I meant the one above it - 'I was relieved when my husband had affairs'

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ThinkNotVanilla
9 minutes ago, Music & Lyrics said:

I like that title :) I meant the one above it - 'I was relieved when my husband had affairs'

Yeah, that's a stupid title. Makes us appear weak, vulnerable and second-class, nor would I be happy with my partner having sexual relationships with other people. Besides, isn't that a one-sided polyamorous relationship - a totally different thing :D

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MightyProphet

It's a bit of a theme, unfortunately, on the BBC. I spotted another headline there recently along the lines of 'I dumped my boyfriend because he had depression,' which of course I clicked on expecting something horrendous (having had a long history of depression myself) and it was actually a surprisingly empathetic and engaging article. I hadn't even realised where the AAW article had been filed, and just read it; it put into words a lot of what I had been feeling recently and I almost immediately shared it with my mum. @michaeld I thought your bit was really good, as were so many of the other stories!

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10 hours ago, Mercurial said:

 

Actually the link to the article is simply http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-41569900

 

The longer url you posted is a convoluted redirection link, signifying the redirection has come from the mental health page.

 

You could equally easily get to AVEN itself from the link

http://www.asexuality.org/?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/814465c5-404b-4c88-889f-45907ba1f402/mental-health&link_location=live-reporting-story

 

That doesn't make AVEN in the mental health section of the BBC site!

 

8 hours ago, Music & Lyrics said:

Yeah the title is disgusting.

 

One of the links @Mercurial posted does clearly show that the article was in a list called 'Mental Health', which it shared with story after story about suicidal teens.

 

If you do complain though, please make sure you're not stigmatizing mental illness!  While asexuality is not a mental illness, and therefore it is wrong to present it as one, any disability is just as 'valid' as any orientation.  There's nothing shameful about being compared to the mentally ill.  Many of us on AVEN are both.

 

The article was undoubtedly linked from the mental health section, but it is *not* part of the mental health section.

 

I agree about not stigmatising mental illness. And although asexuality and mental illness are two very different things, a lot of the ace community does suffer from mental illness (not because asexuality is the illness but more likely because of living in a society in which asexuality is a minority). We would like to consider mental health advocates as our allies, at the very least.

 

6 hours ago, MightyProphet said:

It's a bit of a theme, unfortunately, on the BBC. I spotted another headline there recently along the lines of 'I dumped my boyfriend because he had depression,' which of course I clicked on expecting something horrendous (having had a long history of depression myself) and it was actually a surprisingly empathetic and engaging article. I hadn't even realised where the AAW article had been filed, and just read it; it put into words a lot of what I had been feeling recently and I almost immediately shared it with my mum. @michaeld I thought your bit was really good, as were so many of the other stories!

Thanks!

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Thank you for the links! :)

 

I'm glad that they included older asexuals' stories in the articles; even though I'm young myself, I kind of thought they were mostly left out during the recent BBC radio interviews about asexuals' lives, which mainly only interviewed younger asexuals. Interviewing them about their lives helps dispel the myth that some sexual people have about asexuals, that it's only a recent phenomena amongst young people.

 

2 hours ago, michaeld said:

...I agree about not stigmatising mental illness. And although asexuality and mental illness are two very different things, a lot of the ace community does suffer from mental illness (not because asexuality is the illness but more likely because of living in a society in which asexuality is a minority). We would like to consider mental health advocates as our allies, at the very least...

Yes. Maybe they intended for other people who may be suffering and looking for mental health information to find it and discover they've been asexual all along and not mentally ill.

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Hey all,
 

I submitted an "error correction" email to BBC regarding this exact topic. I've posted my email and the BBC response below:

 

---

To whom it may concern,

Please change the "where to get help" message at the end of this recent asexuality article. Asexuality is not something people need "help" for, any more than people need help for being gay. The "mental health" tag for this story was also extremely offensive and incorrect.

As someone who is asexual, after what was an interesting article, reading that was a punch in the guts. Please correct these inaccuracies.

Regards,

-----

 

Dear ----,

Thanks for your email. These are good points, so the piece has been amended accordingly. The mental health tag still appears to be showing up, but hopefully it will disappear in due course. I have removed it from the story template in the content production system.

Best wishes,

Stephen Mulvey

BBC Stories

 

---

Win! The mental health tag has been removed, and the "where to get help" has been changed to "where to make contacts". Super fast turn-around too, it was responded to in less than an hour.
Thanks BBC :)

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Hi,

 

I'm new here, just created my account.

I found the article on my BBC feed widget on my phone and read it until I found this websites link at the very bottom of the article.

So even if the tag is wrong, it helped me find this community.

So, thank you BBC

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Thanks for sending that DreamingOne! And yes, it's good the BBC acted so quickly.

 

Welcome Cryofex - and of course anyone else who just joined! :cake:

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Is anyone else almost relieved there isn't a comments section on the page on the BBC website?

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On 24 October 2017 at 7:14 PM, Cryofex said:

Hi,

 

I'm new here, just created my account.

I found the article on my BBC feed widget on my phone and read it until I found this websites link at the very bottom of the article.

So even if the tag is wrong, it helped me find this community.

So, thank you BBC

I also found my way here from the bbc article. And in the process discovered I wasn't alone/broken/dysfunctional which is pretty bloody amazing. So maybe they could've done it better, but they did it, and that's what matters to me right now. Off to say hello in new members lounge...

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WinterWanderer

I just read this article on the BBC website, and then came over to see if anyone had posted it. I really like it. It's a great piece of visibility. Hearing that the BBC changed a few things to make it more accepting was a nice surprise, too. :)

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BBC does cover asexuality regularly with some good articles.

 

I didn't mind their tagging but that's because I'm used to BBC's tagging.

Also BBC regulars, used to BBC tagging, won't link asexuality to mental illness because of the tagging.

 

Anyway,

it was corrected on their part so thumbs up to everyone involved incl the article itself. :cake:

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