Journalism

Saint Panti

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

If you follow anyone living in Ireland on Twitter you may have seen the hashtag #TeamPanti and wondered what it was all about. Well, here comes the explanation, courtesy of the most fabulous Panti Bliss herself.

As Panti says right up front, the problems of a gay white man being oppressed by straight white people in a relatively prosperous Western country are fairly minor in comparison to many other things. Nevertheless I think she does a great job of explaining how corrosive to live in a country where “respectable” people are forever commenting on how you should live your life. That applies to many more situations than hers.

I note in passing that Ireland has the worst record in the EU when it comes to transgender rights, according to this Amnesty International report issued last week.

Piers Morgan’s School For Gifted Pundits

~ Cheryl

On the margins of society there exists a little-known group known as cisgender people. Despite making up a mere 99% of the population, these unfortunates are continually subject to insults, discrimination, and to violent bullying on social media sites such as Twitter. One brave man has had enough, and is determined to fight back.

Professor Piers Morgan, a mild-mannered expert in media studies, has founded a secret school where he can take in especially gifted young pundits and train them to defend their fellow cisgenders. His pupils have extraordinary powers. Some have vast wealth; others have the backing of multi-national media conglomerates, huge fan bases, even their own television shows. It is rumoured that some have the backing of governments.

Together, these brave Cis-Men, as they are known, seek to fight back against the appalling persecution that they and their kind face on a daily basis. Although they are forced to operate in secret — even wearing masks that make them seem caring and compassionate — you can follow the activities of the Cis-Men if you know where to look. Just open any national newspaper, any day. The chances are you will find these brave freedom fighters at work.

The Other Side of the Dr. V. Story

~ Cheryl

Trans journalist, Jane Fae has been busy following up on the story of Dr. V., the trans woman whose suicide was made the focal point of a purported expose of her life by Caleb Hannan in Grantland. I know I have ranted rather a lot about this before, but Jane has discovered some new information which appears to cast yet more doubt on the self-justifying “apology” produced by Grantland.

This information comes in an article by Megan Finnerty published on the Arizona Central website. Finnerty has been talking to Gerri Jordan, a long-time friend and ex-lover of Dr. V., and she has a very different take on the story. In particular Ms. Jordan says that while Dr. V., in common with many trans people, had suicidal tendencies, she is convinced that Hannan’s investigations are what pushed her friend over the edge.

A key part of Bill Simmons’ defense of his journalist is as follows:

There was no hounding. There was no badgering. It just didn’t happen that way.

In contrast Finnerty’s article has this:

By May, Vanderbilt and Jordan believed Hannan was going to publish a story exposing her unverifiable MIT, Stealth Bomber and Wharton School resume, as well as details about her transition.

In early June, Vanderbilt was so nervous about being outed that she called at least one close friend — McCord, the CBS announcer — so he wouldn’t be surprised.

“I don’t know how many other people she had that conversation with,” Jordan said.

In that same month, Jordan said, Vanderbilt resigned as CEO of Yar Golf because of Hannan’s inquiries.

“She believed the story would die if she was no longer involved with the company,” Jordan said.

So, no hounding, eh, Mr. Simmons. Would that have been a lie?

Jane has much more detail, and is worth reading because she is magnificently angry about the whole thing.

Hannan is reportedly refusing to talk to journalists because he is busy working on a lengthy self-justification, for which he will doubtless be very well paid. I think we can guess what it will contain:

  • It will portray him as a hero for exposing a dangerous confidence trickster;
  • It will explain how Dr.V.’s suicide was a desperate attempt by a deranged lunatic to paint herself as a victim and get back at those seeking to expose her (except he’ll misgender her throughout);
  • He will quote at length from people like J. Michael Bailey as support for his assertion that trans people are all mentally unstable and inveterate liars; and
  • He will go on and on and on about how terrible the whole thing has been for him, and how he will never recover from the awful things that Dr. V. has done to him.

It would be nice to think that Hannan and Simmons will get to spend a long time in prison to reflect upon what they have done, but their complicity in Dr. V.’s death is unprovable and in any case no jury would convict. Instead I expect them to sweep up a bunch of awards for what will be described as their brilliant, incisive and socially relevant journalism.

Transphobia Is So Profitable

~ Cheryl

When Julie Burchill’s nasty rant about trans people in The Guardian last year caused a huge backlash, the paper withdrew it from their website. The Daily Telegraph couldn’t wait to re-publish it. Because, you know, being vile about trans people is just so much in the public interest. There may have been advertising revenue involved as well. And nice fat fees for Burchill and Toady Young for media interviews.

It does not surprise me, therefore, that a website called Real Clear Sports decided to reprint Caleb Hannan’s poisonous piece from Grantland.

But wait, you say, Grantland apologized. They were contrite. They said it was a mistake to run that article. And Hannan is reportedly traumatized by the whole thing and is, get this, asking for his privacy to be respected.

So, if Bill Simmons was approached by Real Clear Sports, do you think he said, “well, no, that was a real error of judgement on our part to run that, we’d like to see it forgotten”? Or do you think he said, “reprint fee please?”

And when Caleb Hannan was asked about it, do you think he said, “please, no, this has been an awful experience for me, I just want it to go away.” Or did he perhaps say, “wow, I never thought that outing trans people could be so profitable. SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!”

I think you know the answer to that.

Professed Ignorance Is No Excuse, Grantland

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday the editor of Grantland, Bill Simmons, produced an apology about the Dr.V. story. It hit Twitter just as I got back from the BristolCon Fringe event so I wasn’t up for much interaction at the time. I did notice a few people commenting on how the apology spent a lot of time praising the quality of Caleb Hannan’s journalism, but broadly the reaction I saw was of the form, “they’ve apologized, that’s good, trans stuff is so complicated and hopefully they’ll learn from this.”

This morning I read the “apology”, and I’m furious.

I do get that trans stuff is complicated. That’s why I am generally willing to talk about it, and will continue to do so. This story in today’s Bristol Post is awful in many ways, but it is clear that the journalist has no understanding of intersex conditions. That at least we can deal with.

The Grantland apology talks a lot about their lack of understanding of trans issues, but it also repeats some of the mistakes of the original article. I was particularly incensed by this:

When anyone criticizes the Dr. V feature for lacking empathy in the final few paragraphs, they’re right. Had we pushed Caleb to include a deeper perspective about his own feelings, and his own fears of culpability, that would have softened those criticisms.

Are you kidding me?

Simmons is saying that if the article had concentrated more on explaining how their journalist was the victim in all this, rather than the person who committed suicide, it would have made for a better story.

Besides, Hannan’s article wasn’t just ignorant about trans people, it was downright hostile. It used the fact that Dr.V. was trans as the lynchpin of his argument that she was a con artist. That’s saying that all trans people are lying about their feelings, in the same way that Faux News does. I find it impossible to believe that “between 13 and 15 people” read drafts of the article and did not see how hostile to trans people it was. If that was the main thrust of their article, the thing that made it worth running, no amount consulting with the trans community was going to change that.

I mean, what next? Nigel Farage admits that he had not spoken to any Romanians before accusing them of being scroungers? Rush Limbaugh expresses surprise that Muslims find his rants offensive? Would they get a free pass for lack of knowledge as well?

Besides, it so happens that Grantland had run a fairly positive story about the trans musician, Laura Jane Grace, the day before they ran the piece on Dr.V.. If they can do that, they are clearly not ignorant on trans issues.

So no, they do not get a free pass on transphobia by feigning ignorance, and by praising the quality of their own journalism. What they get from me, and they deserve from the rest of you, is utter contempt.

Prejudice Is Not An “Ethics Lapse”

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

If you are not a social media junkie, and don’t read newspapers, then you may not have heard the story of Grantland, Caleb Hannan and Dr.V.. A quick Google should put that right, because it has been all over my feeds. Hopefully what follows will be understandable regardless.

I have to admit that when the story first broke I shrugged. A trans woman is hounded by a journalist. She kills herself. It’s a common enough story. Could easily have happened to me. Had I not had Kevin around I might well have killed myself when I got publicly outed. It has that effect on you. I reckon to see at least one story like that a year. I’m not angry about such things any more; I’m burned out on it.

I am, however, becoming increasingly angry about the number of (mainly cis white) journalists who are writing anguished pieces making out that this was all a just a lapse of judgment by the journalist and magazine in question. That is, in my view, whitewashing what happened.

Obviously there is an issue that if you, as a journalist, are investigating someone, and that person then kills herself, it is perhaps not wise to run with a piece about how awful this person was, and how she has now upset you as well. Clearly that is an issue of journalistic ethics, and would apply in many cases, not just where trans people are concerned.

However, stories like this do still happen. Generally if the subject of the investigation is guilty of some heinous crime, the story still gets run. Often the journalist concerned gets celebrated for helping rid the world of a dangerous villain. My impression is that Grantland and Caleb Hannan believed that they were running this kind of story, and that they were acting highly ethically in exposing Dr.V.

Let me illustrate the point by showing how this story might have been treated, had different types of people been involved.

Someone invents a new miracle golf putter – Yawn, happens every week. Is the putter any good, that’s what I’m asking, otherwise no story.

Person who invented new miracle golf putter has lied about college background and qualifications – Dude, so what? Everyone does it, right? How else are you supposed to get on in life?

Person who invented new miracle golf putter is a good-looking woman – Ha! Bet it doesn’t really work. Let’s look into this and see if we can take her down.

Person who invented new miracle golf putter is a good-looking woman who has lied about college background and qualifications – See, told you! I knew she was a fraud. Let’s get her! Anyone got any topless photos of the bitch?

Person who invented new miracle golf putter is a trans woman – Whoa, man! I can’t believe that I thought that dude was hot. Good job I didn’t tell anyone. We gotta take him down before he cons anyone else. Hold the front page!

You see, what lies at the heart of this story is not the questionable ethics of hounding people who may or may not be behaving dishonestly (as Jane Fae has pointed out, we only have Hannan’s word that Dr.V. lied about her background, she could just have been trying to keep it secret). No, what this is all about is the poisonous idea that a trans woman is a “deceiver”, someone who is lying about who they “really” are with a view to luring innocent people into perverted sexual relationships. We know people have this view. Every year a couple hundred of trans get murdered because straight men think that looking like a sexually desirable woman while being trans is a crime deserving of capital punishment.

So please, when you are reporting on this story, don’t just focus on the journalistic ethics of writing about vulnerable people. Instead try to look at the underlying reasons why those people are vulnerable in the first place, and why anyone might think that exposing them is providing a public service. Otherwise you are not solving the problem, you are just brushing it under the carpet.

Laverne & Janet on HuffPostLive #GirlsLikeUs

~ Cheryl

I’ve just seen another excellent piece of coverage of trans issues. It features both Laverne Cox and Janet Mock live in the studio, having an intelligent and respectful discussion with the presenter and two cis male guests. It is about half an hour long, but here it is if you want to watch. The topic under a discussion is the case of a prominent hip-hop DJ called Mister Cee who has resigned from his job after being filmed having sex with a prostitute who is genderqueer in some way. Because, apparently, while people in hip-hop can do all sorts of things involving violence, drugs, straight sex and so on, being involved with genderqueer folks is completely unacceptable and harmful to kids who might be listening.

There is one point I need to make about this discussion. I’m not trying to blame or call out Laverne & Janet here; I know how hard it is get get all of your points across in a live discussion, but it does need to be said for clarity. Mr. Cee has confessed to having a sexual attraction for men dressed as women. That’s OK. There are plenty of men who dress as women with whom he can have fun. We don’t know how the sex worker he contracted with identifies. That person has, probably wisely, declined to talk to the media. However, “man dressed as a woman” and “trans woman” are not equivalent identities. If someone has sex with a trans woman, and objectifies her as a “man dressed as a woman”, that’s abuse, because it violates her identity.

Laverne and Janet are absolutely spot on in saying that there needs to be space for men who attracted to trans women to be able to do so without shame. That space has to exist for men like Mr. Cee, for men who are attracted to people who are genderqueer, and for straight men who are attracted to trans women as women.

It is not just us, either. If a man dates a woman who is disabled, who is large-bodied, who is of a different ethnic group to him, or anyone who doesn’t conform to current cultural norms of “beauty”, he risks being accused of being a fetishist, because it is assumed that no “normal” man would be attracted to such a person. The world would be a much nicer and safer place if it was OK for men to be attracted to women, regardless of their background and appearance.

The other thing that struck me about this coverage, and the previous interview with Laverne that I linked to the other day, is how good the coverage of trans issues is in US media aimed at people of color. I can add that last week I exchanged a number of tweets with a reporter from Al Jazeera who was researching a program on trans issues. I haven’t been able to see it, but from the respectful way he interacted with me and other trans people online I have high hopes that it went well. In addition, of course, I was able to do a whole half hour on trans issues last week on Ujima, a radio station aimed at an Afro-Caribbean community in the UK.

In stark contrast, coverage of trans issues on mainstream TV and radio (by which I mean cis white people’s TV and radio) remains poor. Programs like My Transsexual Summer have done a lot of good raising awareness, but they still tend to be strongly voyeuristic. If that HuffPost show had been on the BBC it would have been deemed necessary to have some religious fundamentalist commentator on the show, and that person would have proceeded to insult Laverne and Janet in disgusting terms. Or if such a person was not available, the presenter would have had to mouth those insults himself as a “of course some people say…” comment. All of this would have been defended by appeal to the need for “balance”.

What is that tag line from Fox News again? Oh yes, “fair and balanced”.

There is no balance for trans people in most radio and TV. Indeed, it seems that there isn’t a single “light entertainment” program that can be made that doesn’t have to denigrate trans people at some point during its run. If we complain, we’ll be told that we have no sense of humor, and that because no cis folk complained the number of complaints was vanishingly small so clearly any offense was all in our minds.

And yet, as soon as serious news coverage is required, this need for “balance” turns up.

I’m guessing that the reason trans folk are getting such respectful treatment in media aimed at people of color (other than Laverne and Janet being totally awesome people) is that the folk running those media outlets have had the “balance” thing done to them, and know it for the hogwash it is.

Sometimes people from minority cultural groups deserve an opportunity to talk about themselves and their issues quietly and respectfully. It is not always necessary to have someone from the majority cultural group on with them to put them down.

In The Guardian Again

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

In the wake of yesterday’s #DiversityInSFF campaign on Twitter, David Barnett rushed an article into The Guardian. He quoted from one of my recent blog posts about Worldcon.

The article didn’t go down that well. Mary Robinette Kowal was upset that David hadn’t talked to any women writers. This turned out to be a practical issue. David didn’t actually talk to anyone, he just quoted from what other people had said online. Sometimes you have to do that because the only way to get an article accepted is to deliver it in a tearing hurry while the issue is still hot. David has taken Mary’s complaint on the chin and promised to try to do better.

I spent most of the day doing stuff in Bristol and Bath, and haven’t had much of a chance to study the article until now. I’m pleased that David has managed to get the issue aired, but my impression is that the article was probably accepted because it appeared to paint the SF&F community in a bad light. As usual, there wasn’t nearly enough space to examine the nuances and subtleties of the issue.

Which reminds me of a point I’ll be making at the “bloggers have destroyed criticism” panel at WFC. One of the interesting things about the Internet is that there are no practical space restrictions. You can write very long and tightly argued posts. Some people do. It is the mainstream newspapers, and websites that emulate them, that hold to the “everything we publish online must be very short and simple because our readers have no attention span” philosophy.

Your Newspapers At Work

~ Cheryl

Some of you may remember that the coroner who dealt with the Lucy Meadows case was somewhat scathing about how Lucy was treated by the press in the weeks leading up to her suicide. Well it turns out that some journalists had the cheek to issue a complaint about his words. I guess they think they were being unfairly pilloried. You know, due to being white, straight, cis and probably male. And now they are reporting that the poor coroner has been formally reprimanded for his awful behavior towards them. I’ll link to Gay Star News, because they are simply reporting what other papers are saying.

Naturally the good folks at Trans Media Watch were a little concerned about this. Could it really be the case that mercilessly hounding a trans person, day and night, is perfectly OK, but saying that this sort of treatment of a private individual is outrageous is not? What sort of strange world do we live in? So they made official approaches, and posted two new tweets.

So the story about an official complaint having been made and upheld is, in fact, a barefaced lie. Why am I not surprised?

Well, That’s Us Put In Our Place

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The Trans Pride event in Brighton over the weekend had the full support of the City Council and Sussex Police. Representatives of the Greens, Conservatives and Labour Party were on hand to give speeches, and the Police had a stall at the event. So naturally the local media covered the event. But The Argus couldn’t resist sending a message about just what they thought of such an event. So they reported it as a footnote to an article about a dog show.

Brighton Argus report of Trans Pride

So now we know. Trans people are not just less than human. They are below dogs in the pecking order as well.

Sarah has written them a letter.

Update: The Argus has posted an apology and proper report on their website. Well done all round.

This Would Be A Lie

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I am not afraid

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:

Statistics on suicide

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.

Freedom From The Press

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

'Chocolate teapot' by Dru MarlandBack 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.

The Finkbeiner Test and Default Status Characters

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the more interesting things I found online this week was the Finkbeiner Test. Inspired by the Bechdel Test, this is aimed at journalists who cover women scientists. It’s very nice for women to have articles written about their scientific achievements, but all too often such articles spend a few sentences on what they have actually done, and whole paragraphs on how amazing it is that a woman could have done this. So Christie Aschwanden proposes the Finkbeiner Test for stories about women scientists. To pass the test, the story cannot mention:

  • The fact that she’s a woman
  • Her husband’s job
  • Her child care arrangements
  • How she nurtures her underlings
  • How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field
  • How she’s such a role model for other women
  • How she’s the “first woman to…”

This got me thinking about the way in which minority characters are used in fiction. It is all very well having characters who are representatives of minority groups, but all too often they only get in because their minority status is the focus of their story, if not of the whole story. We’ve all heard tales of how an agent, editor or reviewer has said something along the lines of, “Why does that character have to be female/black/gay/etc., it doesn’t add to the story in any way.” That’s because so often the assumed default of all characters in all stories is straight, cis, able, white male. If a character doesn’t fit that template then it must be remarked upon, in the same way that Chekov’s legendary gun on the mantlepiece has to be fired.

Obviously an equivalent of the Finkbeiner Test for fictional characters would be different for each minority group you can think of. Nor would such a thing be a hard and fast rule. Sometimes the story is about that character’s problems. But I think it is a useful start in trying to catch ways in which a minority character that you have created might be getting used in a tokenistic way.

Female Invisibility – Some Numbers

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s tweet stream was full of this article by Alison Flood at The Guardian, which is based on the 2012 data from VIDA regarding male domination of literary review magazines. I wish I could say I’m surprised that no progress has been made in the three years VIDA has been collecting this data, but I’m not.

I’m also rather more interested in this article from Forbes which looks at the gender of people asked to give their opinions in the American media during last year’s Presidential election. The article focuses on data from National Public Radio which clearly demonstrates the problem. Overall men were quoted 68% of the time and women 23% of the time (the remainder being quotes from corporations and the like, not gender-free persons). However, looking at gendered persons only, female journalists only quoted men 52% of the time, and women 48% of the time. Male journalists, on the other hand, quoted men 80% of the time and women 20% of the time.

So, do male journalists mostly talk only to other men, or do they think women’s opinions are much less interesting? I guess it is a combination. I can only speak for myself, but I’m pretty sure that most trans women will be able to report, from personal experience, that being brought up male means you are taught to discount women’s opinions. Until we stop that, the data reported by VIDA will not change.

Julie and Hilary

~ Cheryl

Let’s see now…

Julie Burchill wrote something about trans people that vast numbers of readers thought was a nasty and unjustified piece of bullying. For days afterwards our papers were full of stories about how a secretive gang of powerful trans activists was mercilessly bullying poor Ms. Burchill.

Hilary Mantel wrote something castigating the dreadful way in which the UK media covers the royal family, especially those who marry into it (see Nick Harkaway for a good digest). Suddenly the papers are full of stories about how Ms. Mantel has been mercilessly bullying poor Princess Kate.

Do I detect a pattern emerging here? I think I do.

Burchill, Free Speech and Radio

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I have spent today in Bristol. The main reason for going (despite the hideous cold) was a 2-hour Women’s Outlook show on Ujima devoted entirely to LGBT issues. I need to listen to it again just in case I said anything stupid, but I think it went OK and should have links up tomorrow.

The reason I’m blogging now is an incident that happened early on in the show. The subject of Julie Burchill’s Observer rant came up, and Paulette, the host of the show, quoted briefly from what Burchill had written. Shortly thereafter, Donald, the station manager, came in and told us we had to apologize for the words we had used, which we duly did. Our first thought was that some listener had phoned in to complain about Burchill, which would have been awesome. However, it turns out that the short extract the Paulette had quoted contained something that was in breach of Ofcom’s broadcasting code, and Ujima would have been liable for a £2,000 fine had we not apologized immediately.

So, freedom of speech, eh? I wonder how many of the journalists loudly defending Burchill’s right to say what she wanted about trans people knew that her article could not have been broadcast on UK radio. I suspect rather a lot of them.

For the record, I’m one of those people who wanted the article to stay up. I make the comments above to illustrate how complicated this “free speech” issue is, and how dishonest and cynical I suspect the commentariat of having been on the issue.

Couldn’t Make It Up

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

I’m sorry to keep coming back to this story, but it is a fine illustration of the depths to which the British media will sink when they think that they have a defenseless minority that they can persecute at will. Let’s have a brief recap.

It all started when Suzanne Moore said something mildly insensitive (possibly out of ignorance) in an article, and was questioned about it on Twitter. Instead of engaging with her critic, she flung off a series of insults about trans people, got the predictable response, then left Twitter in a huff claiming that she had been driven away.

Then Julie Burchill leapt to her friend’s defense with an article that was basically a whole string of insults about trans people all gathered into one place and held together with protestations of Ms. Burchill’s poor, working class nature, as compared to the wealthy and highly educated trans community. The Observer got a lot of stick for publishing this, so they withdrew it, probably to escape the embarrassment of the huge amount of criticism they were getting on their website. Burchill immediately re-sold the piece to her old working class buddy, Toby Young (the son of Baron Young of Dartington), who published it in the Telegraph, where it remains online to this day.

We have since been treated to a succession of articles by concerned journalists explaining how bad it is that Ms. Burchill should be treated in this way, because getting paid twice for a piece of writing that is currently available to be read all over the world means that she has been subjected to censorship thanks to the lobbying of the evil and powerful trans cabal.

Yesterday Roz Kaveney was summoned onto BBC Radio 4’s Media Show to discuss the issue with Mr. Young (who, by the way, goes by @toadmeister on Twitter). You can listen to it here. You may notice, as I did, that Roz’s comments have been clumsily edited so that she’s cut off in mid flow several times. Toadmeister, on the other hand, is allowed to talk freely. Roz explains what happened here.

The irony of someone being accused of censorship of an article that is freely available worldwide having her words edited out of a debate on the subject is presumably lost on the commentariat. However, I was chatting with Roz on the phone earlier today and we both agreed that the BBC probably didn’t intend any malice. It is just that they had a debate between a member of the nobility on one hand, and on the other a representative of a minority group, all of whom the World Health Organization and the NHS regards as mentally ill, and they gave prominence to those speakers accordingly.

Meanwhile Suzanne Moore has taken to the Guardian to explain how belief in freedom is incompatible with equality, so equality has to go. She reports her recent experiences thus: “The wrath of the transgender community has been insane.” Well of course. As we are all mentally ill, what does she expect? But of course you will all have seen the vile and vicious way in which I have attacked Ms. Moore here. (Julie Burchill must be sick with envy of me.) And there’s more. If you really want to see how leading members of the trans community have poured hatred and bile on poor Ms. Moore’s head I recommend that you read Christine Burns and Paris Lees.

The original fuss, of course, was caused by Moore’s unfortunate use of “Brazilian transsexual” as a punchline. Well Pink News discovered that a Brazilian trans woman was murdered this very week. That’s not actually very surprising as the murder rate for Brazilian trans women is currently running at between 2 and 3 every week. But hey, they had a picture of the unfortunate woman in a skimpy costume, and as nothing says Important News Story more loudly than big boobies they ran with it to help explain why some trans people were so upset with Moore.

Moore threatened them with legal action.

Because, you know, freedom of speech.

This morning Moore is claiming that her threat was just a joke. I guess you can interpret that in two ways. On the one hand she may still be in desperate need of lessons on how to use social media [Hint: 😉 is good for indicating a joke]. But it is also possible that she has learned very quickly how to troll for outrage so that she can then continue to paint herself as a victim.

There is one aspect of the whole thing that I find troubling. Some trans people are saying things like, “It would never happen if I was black/disabled/Jewish/Muslim/etc.” Ironically these are some of the same people extolling the virtues of intersectionality. There is no greasy totem poll of oppression, people. This sort of highlighting of the actions of a few extremists in order to smear the bulk of a despised group gets done to many different groups, not just us.

Still, I have learned from this how a proper journalist is supposed to behave, and now I am going to put it into practice. You see, SFWA has just issued the 200th edition of its magazine, the SFWA Bulletin. The cover is graced by a picture of a good looking red-haired woman (see below). Inside Mike Resnick has an article about sexy women editors. In true journalistic tradition, I am assuming that this is All About Me, and will sue.

Firstly there’s breach of copyright. SFWA has clearly used my picture on the cover of their magazine without permission. (And by the way, people, that’s scale armor I’m wearing, not a chain mail bikini. Even I’m not that stupid.) Secondly, if Mike has failed to list me amongst his list of the totally hawtest women editors in the community, I shall sue for defamation.

As a well-known and outspoken feminist writer, I am sure that I can rely on the support of the UK media in my quest for fair treatment.

SFWA Bulletin #200

And see here for some alternative versions, given that Jim Hines and John Scalzi are not available to model.

Picking Your Fights

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The row about Julie Burchill’s Observer article continues to rumble on in the UK media, becoming more and more meta by the day. The current situation is that everyone is up in arms about how a journalist who decided to vilify and threaten an oppressed minority because she said they were bullying her friend is now apparently being bullied in turn by that same evil minority group. Given that Burchill is such a shy and retiring individual herself, all of her friends are queuing up to defend her from awful people like me. My heart bleeds for the poor dear, it really does.

Sadly, however, I can’t fight on behalf of all oppressed minorities, so I’ll have to leave defending poor Julie to the rest of the Bolly and Lobster consuming commentariat. I have other things to do. Most of yesterday was actually spent working on the day job, but in the evening I headed off to Bristol to talk to Freedom Youth, a local LGBT Youth group. My colleague, Andy Foyle, and I were there to encourage them to get involved in the LGBT History Exhibition. It was a really fun evening, and I think I came over quite well thanks to my knowledge of superheroes, Buffy, Xena and so on.

Today I was in Bristol again for an appearance on Ujima Radio. This was for the launch of Paulette’s new Women’s Outlook show. We had a great half hour on women in literature, in which I got to talk about Tolkien, Eowyn and the forthcoming Kij Johnson lecture. That’s the first part of this podcast (and yes, the Ujima website has got the name of the show wrong). The second half hour of that podcast has women from three local feminist groups as guests. I was delighted to hear Anna Brown of the Bristol Feminist Network talking about their inclusive policy (and her colleague, Sian Norris, has been very supportive over the Burchill debacle).

Talking of Sian, there will be a Women’s Literature Festival in Bristol in March. Stella Duffy will be there, and therefore so will I.

I also got a couple of slots in the second hour of the show. It begins with a slightly silly session on public toilets, in which I argue the merits of gender-neutral bathrooms. The final half hour is devoted to discussion of Female Genital Mutilation. Paulette kindly let me get a mention in right at the end for Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death. Hopefully that will get Nnedi a few more sales.

Tomorrow night I’ll be on ShoutOut with a couple of other trans people talking about #TransDocFail, which I happen to think is far more important than Miss Stroppy Pants Burchill.

And next week on Ujima we have a whole hour devoted to LBT issues, so I’ll have lots more of me to link to after that.

Missing The Point

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, yesterday was “interesting”, and might have been more productively spent. The outpouring of support for trans people, however, was amazingly heartwarming. More people spent more time defending the rights of trans people than I think they did in the whole of the past year. I haven’t seen that much support since the My Transsexual Summer TV series. And indeed I’d like to publicly thank the MTS7 for putting themselves out there so bravely and educating people. Had they not done so, I am sure that Julie Burchill would have got much more support.

Inevitably some of the commentary missed the point. I’ve seen people saying what a horrible person Julie Burchill is, and others saying that we should ignore the whole things because it is only Julie Burchill doing what she always does. This is true. Burchill has been busily offending people for as long as she has been a journalist, but it is also not particularly important. What matters is that staff at the Observer saw fit to publish her rant. I see that they have now removed the evidence, which conveniently also removes all of the comments complaining about the piece.

There has been some right of reply. The Guardian commissioned Roz Kaveney to pen something, and she’s been brilliant as ever. Laurie Penny also has something in the works (after having insisted that an actual trans person get the first right of reply). Brooke Magnanti has a nice piece in the Telegraph pointing out that sex workers get the same sort of treatment from Burchill, Bindel, et al. And the New Statesman is running an entire week of trans-related stories. However, neither Roz nor Laurie’s piece will appear in print editions (Burchill’s did), and I imagine that by next Sunday the Observer will be assuming that everyone has forgotten about the story.

Elsewhere some of the “support” has been a little less than helpful. We’ve had the usual outrage trolls searching Twitter for people who are being supportive but can be attacked for doing it in the wrong way, or who can be misinterpreted as supporting Burchill. And we’ve had the finger waggers lecturing at length on what people are allowed to say. Last night I saw a cis woman telling her readers that “transsexual” was a bad word and that we are not to use it. I guess she got that from some ardent transgender activist. I’ve also seen a supportive cis person being told off on the grounds that she has no right to speak on behalf of trans people. This sort of thing is not helpful. Last night I was in danger of having my own Suzanne Moore moment, so I gave up and went to bed with a book.

Which brings me back to the other area where people are missing the point. There’s no question that some people were extremely mean to Suzanne Moore on Twitter. Some of them were undoubtedly trans people. Others were cis people. Probably some of them had PhDs in gender theory. I say this because I’ve been told off for “doing trans wrong” by such people before. But in the telling this story has become one of Moore being attacked solely by trans people as a monolithic whole (or the “trans cabal” as Julie Bindel would have it); then her and Burchill responding by attacking all trans people (which they inevitably caricature as comprising only trans women). As ever, when large numbers of people are involved, it is easier to demonize a group as a whole, rather than respond to the actual people behaving badly. It makes a simpler, and therefore better, story. As a result, even though we got all that support, the dominant media narrative is quickly becoming one of trans people as a unified and vicious group of social media harpies. As we have no influence on the media, we can’t do much to challenge that.

I worry about where we go from here. On the one hand it is good that the message is occasionally getting out. On the other I’m sure that the campaign to shut down all health care for trans people will continue, and that more articles like David Batty’s will appear. In the meantime, someone has to try to turn things around. Firstly we need evidence. Things that can’t be dismissed as the “alleged” complaints of deranged people. One of Christine Burns’ colleagues has produced this helpful blog post detailing how GPs in the North West of England responded to attempts to find out how trans patients are being served, and to provide trans awareness posters for waiting rooms. It includes such gems as, “Another refused to use the poster on the grounds that ‘women and children come in here'” and “There aren’t many around here in Cumbria because they’d stick out like a sore thumb”.

Meanwhile I spent the morning talking to a friend who has done Equality & Diversity training for the NHS in Somerset about how we might continue to offer such training throughout the South West. And I’ll be doing a slot on ShoutOut about TransDocFail on Thursday evening. I also need to get on with running my various businesses.

By Their Words Shall Ye Know Them

~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

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.