On Monday a vigil will be held in memory of Lucy Meadows outside the offices of the Daily Mail in London. I won’t be there. Trips to London are time-consuming and expensive, and I have a busy week in the offing. Were I there, however, I might well be carrying a placard bearing the message above. It has been circulated to members of Trans Media Watch for use on the day. Were I to carry it, however, it would be a lie.

There may well be people at the vigil who are genuinely not afraid. A small number may be sufficiently financially secure, and have sufficient family support, not to be worried. Rather more will be so poor and lonely that they feel they have nothing to lose from being “monstered” in the press. Others I suspect, will be putting a brave face on things, and having nightmares about the possible consequences.

In my case, I don’t own my home, I rent. Were I to become a target of media interest, it would not be long before my lease was terminated. Rental companies are expert at finding excuses to get rid of unwanted tenants. And with a pack of paparazzi after me it would be difficult to find somewhere else to live. That, in turn, would make it difficult to work.

Worse still, however, would be the effect it had on those near and dear to me. The people who hounded Lucy Meadows didn’t just go after her, their besieged her family as well. Kevin might escape, being 5,000 miles away, but there are other people that I take care to protect. The thought of what would happen to them should I become a target of the tabloids worries me far more than what would happen to me.

And, of course, there would be no recourse. We have seen time and time again that the Press Complaints Commission will find convenient excuses to permit continued harassment of trans people. The new, post-Leveson arrangements may be better for some people, but I don’t expect them to make any difference to me. To have the protection of those in authority, you have to have the respect of those in authority, not be regarded as some sort of disgusting, sub-human freak.

I guess you are probably asking, “Is there anything we can do?” Some people have been pointing me to a petition to have Richard Littlejohn fired. I don’t see any point in that. The chances of it happening are ridiculously small, and even if he did go he would just be replaced by someone even worse. The Mail pays him very well for what he does, so clearly he’s important to their business. Besides, he doesn’t act in a vacuum. He gets direction from editors. Indeed, as I recall, when Julie Burchill first turned in her infamous Observer column, her editor sent it back and told her it wasn’t vicious enough. This recent blog post makes the point very well:

Above all, we need to recognise that papers like the Daily Mail exist because their brand of hatred is popular and people buy it. The same goes for Littlejohn, he has — and continues to have — a glittering career because editors see value in writing populist myths as fact and in attacking the disenfranchised.

What you can do, of course, is not buy the Mail, or any newspaper like it. And not support companies that advertise there. Remember also that every time you link to a Mail story in social media you bump up their web stats and make them a more attractive prospect for advertisers. Please don’t do it. If you must, take a screen shot of the article that has offended you and link to that instead.

More practically, there are things that can be done to help people like Lucy Meadows. This article in Pink News is by one of the authors of a study of the mental health of trans people conducted by a number of UK organizations. It surveyed 889 trans people in the UK and Ireland. This is the key finding:

The statistics on suicide amongst trans people are jaw-dropingly awful, yet no public health organization shows any interest in doing anything about them. The NHS certainly isn’t interested. After all, every time they try to do something for trans people, the tabloid newspapers run stories about it, fantastically inflating the cost, and complaining about the waste of money. So trans people and their allies have to organize and get things done themselves. Here you will find a fund-raiser set up by some of the authors of that survey. This is an excerpt from their project plan:

We want to build a repository of hope, so that we and our allies can tell others that they are not alone and that they are loved, and so that trans people who are feeling isolated can turn to them when the world feels like it’s all too much. We’ll have video messages, self-help guides and daily affirmations from some awesome people. This is being built with the principles of positive psychology in mind – that by re-focussing on community, connections and resillience we can help each other stay strong when it feels like the whole world is against us.

In time, I hope, social attitudes will change. The Richard Littlejohns of this world will grow old and retire. Those who replace them might be more like Laurie Penny. But until that time us trans folk need to look after our own. Your help would be gratefully appreciated.

Back in January The Observer published a “comment” piece by Julie Burchill which was basically one long piece of hate speech against trans people, full of inaccurate and abusive stereotyping. Many people were deeply offended by it. Over 800 people wrote to the Press Complaints Commission to say so. That includes some of you. I know, because you told me that you did. Personally I didn’t waste my time because, as Dru Marland’s fine cartoon states, the PCC is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Helen Belcher has an analysis of the judgement here, but the guts of it can be summarized in three simple points.

1. The Burchill article was not offensive because it talked generally about a class of people, not an individual, so on one was actually demeaned by it.

2. The article could not be regarded as misleading because was presented as Ms. Burchill’s personal opinion.

3. Newspapers could not be seen as harassing trans people because the complaints were only about a single article.

That may seem like a pile of dishonest weaseling to you, and you would be absolutely right. Take the first point, for example. Back in December the tabloid newspapers, led as usual by the Daily Malice, picked upon an individual Manchester trans woman who worked as a primary school teacher. Richard Littlejohn, as usual, was particularly obnoxious and demeaning. I’m sure some people will have complained about what Littlejohn wrote, and I’m equally sure that the PCC would have defended it as being in the “public interest”.

That teacher’s name was Lucy Meadows. On Tuesday, the day before the PCC ruling on the Burchill case was released, Lucy was found dead at her home. The police say that there are no suspicious circumstances. Friends say that she had talked of contemplating suicide.

As soon as the news broke, concerned members of the media took to the Internet to ask how this could have happened and how further tragedies could be prevented… Wait, no, that was David Allen Green. He’s a lawyer. Concerned members of the media took to the Internet to remind us that we could not know how Ms. Meadows had died, nor was there any obvious connection between her death and what they had done. Don’t people know that wearing dresses while male causes cancer? She could even have been abducted by aliens. In any case, it is far more likely that she would have been distressed by the actions of her neighbors, or parents at the school. None of those people are likely to have decided that she was a disgusting, dangerous freak from reading the Daily Mail, are they?

And the decision of the Mail to remove the offending article from their website was not in any way an admission of possible culpability. They just wanted to give Toby Young an opportunity to re-publish it so that the discussion could be moved on to outrage about how the press is being hounded and censored by a powerful cabal of trans people.

Then they all went off to a well earned lobster and Bollinger dinner and started work on articles for today’s papers in which they could further demean and insult Lucy because, after all, now she’s dead she can’t complain, right?

Sarah Brown said on Twitter today that she’s often asked how she managed to survive being trans. She said she points out that she’s white, middle class, Cambridge educated and well off, which helps a lot. Some of the ways in which privilege works in the UK work for people like her and me. But then again, Lucy Meadows was white, middle class, was well educated and had a full-time job that pays more than I earned in my last tax return. That didn’t help her.

Being outed publicly clearly doesn’t do you any good. What happened to me was very public, but equally far less so than what happened to Lucy. Had I not had Kevin to comfort me, I would have been in a dreadful state. Somehow, I got through it.

For Lucy, as David Allen Green noted, the problem will have been exacerbated by having it happen while she was starting transition. When you first start taking estrogen it messes you up mentally. It’s like having to go through all of the angst of puberty, except as an adult. It would be good if there was a way to protect people during that vulnerable time, but the press much prefers to target people who are just starting transition because that’s when they look most like the he-she stereotype. After a year or two, when the hormones have done their work, trans people are much less interesting to photograph.

I have no idea what was going on in Lucy’s mind, or what persecution she experienced. I can only speak for myself. What I find is that the low level danger is survivable. You get used to the idea that strangers may come up to you in the street and ask intrusive questions, or yell abuse at you. You get used to the fact that you may be randomly mis-gendered or refused service in a shop or restaurant. What gets to you is not the fact that some people are arseholes, because some people will always be arseholes. What gets to you is the idea that you probably have no recourse, because no one cares.

So, for example, when a marriage equality bill is put before Parliament, it is just a bill for lesbians and gays. Amendments to address the problems it will cause for trans people get thrown out without explanation or excuse. And when trans people are vilified in the media nothing will be done, because vilifying trans people makes money, and is fun for the journalists doing it.

Helen Belcher noted on Twitter yesterday that if we ever do get freedom from the press we need to make sure that it isn’t at the expense of another minority group. She’s right, but sadly it is probably the only way it will happen. Trans people may disappear from the front pages for a day or so, because the news coming out of Parliament at the moment is that it is time to stop hating on the queers, and to stop hating on supposed “benefit scroungers”, and start hating on brown people instead.

I might have had my troubles with the US immigration people, but that’s nothing to what the UK Border Agency is doing these days. Students who applied for visas and had them legitimately granted are being told that those visas are being summarily cancelled mid-term because the UKBA no longer approves of the college that supported the visa applications. I’m sure that somewhere in London a concerned journalist is having a lobster and Bollinger lunch with a UKBA press officer and being also fed a shock story that can be used to justify this.

Update: Jane Fae has a wonderful article at the New Statesman. She has been given access to emails that Lucy wrote to a friend over the past few months. This comment is particularly pertinent:

Lucy writes of how parents themselves complained that their attempts to provide positive comments about her were rebuffed. The press gang, it seems, were only interested in one story: the outrage, the view from the bigots. The stench of money hangs around – it’s widely believed among those connected with the case that money was being offered for these stories.

It is not often that I will post a link to a British tabloid newspaper, but today the Daily Mirror ran an article about what it called the “Ugly Face of UKIP”. For US readers, UKIP is a right wing minority party previously best known for its hatred of the European Union which is now trying to rebrand itself as Libertarian. Last week they sacked the leader of their youth wing because he supports marriage equality. Nevertheless they try to claim respectability. So someone (presumably an insider) leaked a few choice comments from UKIP’s internal web forums. Here are some extracts from the article:

On the forum, senior UKIP member Dr Julia Gasper branded gay rights a “lunatic’s charter” and claimed some homosexuals prefer sex with animals. She added: “As for the links between homosexuality and paedophilia, there is so much evidence that even a full-length book could hardly do justice to the ­subject.”

and:

Another member complained about the impact of immigration on the NHS, writing: “I am informed by past media that Black Caribbean and not Black African have a higher instance of schizophrenia.

“I wonder if this is due to inbreeding on these small islands in slave times or is it due to ­smoking grass.”

which pretty much confirms my opinion of the sort of people who join UKIP.

Meanwhile, over at the Observer, Julie Buchill takes up arms on behalf of Suzanne Moore, managing to produce one of those rare articles in which the comment thread is far more civilized than the main text. You probably don’t want to read the whole thing as it is one long exercise in ignorant stereotyping and throwing insults. The final paragraph will do:

Shims, shemales, whatever you’re calling yourselves these days – don’t threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we’ve experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You really won’t like us when we’re angry.

A lot of people are asking how such mindless, frothing hatred can be published in the Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian). Sadly it doesn’t surprise me. The fact that Guardian staff are willing to publish such rot goes a long way towards explaining why they are willing to publish the far more dangerous clever lies of people like David Batty. Burchill represents the reality of what many Guardian staff and their friends think about trans people.

I’ve also seem people saying, “I bet they wouldn’t have published that if it had been about [some other minority group]”. But an Afro-Caribbean friend of mine challenged this, claiming that his people too get this treatment and, just like trans folks, get accused of political correctness if they complain. Here’s Burchill, from the same piece:

The reaction of the trans lobby reminded me very much of those wretched inner-city kids who shoot another inner-city kid dead in a fast-food shop for not showing them enough “respect”.

I wonder which sort of people she’s stereotyping there.

The one thing that has cheered me about the whole affair is the number of cis people who have expressed their horror at Burchill’s article. Many of them have been people from the science fiction community (who I guess also know a bit about being stereotyped in the press). One of the best pieces was this one on LGBT.co.uk. It is by Jane Carnall. I don’t know how many trans people she knows, but I’m one of them. I once seconded a motion that she put before the WSFS Business Meeting. Small world.

By the way, if any of you feel like making a complaint about Burchill, the Press Complaints Commission website is here. However, a quick scan of the comment thread on the article suggests that the PCC regards “comment pieces” as outside of their purview, and will therefore ignore any complaints. Self-regulation my arse.

Update: The Independent is cheekily running a poll to gauge reactions to Burchill’s article. You can vote here. I see that the trans cabal have been deploying their PhDs to good effect, as someone must have hacked the poll to have it running 9:1 against poor Julie.

Update 2: Have corrected spelling of Burchill’s name. Sorry folks. Tired and emotional today.