Journalism

Wanted: Someone To Hate

~ Cheryl

The ongoing fallout from #TransDocFail continues to generate blog posts. Mostly people are a bit bemused. Dru Marland notes that the sort of abuse documented in #TransDocFail should be investigated by crusading journalists. It won’t be. Those stories have already been relegated to the status of “alleged abuse”, the deranged fantasies of people who are widely regarded as insane.

On Twitter Christine Burns is asking why all of the journalists who are wringing their hands about the failure to believe the victims of the serial pedophile, Jimmy Savile, are not listening to the tales of trans people abused by doctors. It is a nice point, but nothing will happen.

Kat Gupta notes how professional contacts within the media have allowed Suzanne Moore to respond easily (and dishonestly) to the way her abusive comments about trans people have been received. Moore has plenty of friends in the media, while trans people do not.

Savile, of course, had plenty of friends in the media (and in politics, he was a close friend of Margaret Thatcher). And of course he was well loved by the public. All that made him untouchable while he was alive. Even though many people knew the truth, no one would speak out. Or, of they did, they would not be believed. The victims of child sex abuse are generally not believed when their abusers are celebrities, or other powerful people such as priests. But that’s not all there is to it.

Gupta, who is an academic specializing in gender and the media, also notes something interesting about the nature of existing trans coverage: it is all very personal. That is, journalists look for individuals whom they can write human interest stories about. This should give us a clue as to why #TransDocFail won’t get any further traction in the media.

You see, journalism is all about stories, and just as in traditional fiction you need compelling characters: heroes and/or villains. Richard Curtis makes a good villain because he’s a doctor in private practice with an office near Harley Street. I’m also self-employed, and my guess is that he earns a lot less money than the NHS consultants who are trying to put him out of business, but it is easy to spin a story that paints him as a rich private doctor who ruthlessly exploits the “mentally ill” (i.e. trans people).

Savile too, now that he’s dead, makes a good storybook villain. But #TransDocFail has no obvious heroes and villains. It is about large numbers of disgusting freaks ordinary people being routinely abused by large numbers of other ordinary people. That makes it bad story material. Without an obvious hero, victim or villain, the press won’t be interested.

Last night Helen Belcher was tweeting about what I assume is another case of trans abuse. “And then I come back to a story of repeated abuse in an NHS hospital which has left me completely stunned”, and “Every so often you stumble across a story of abuse that’s so bad, it takes your breath away”. It sounds awful, but Goddess help me I found myself wondering if this was the story we need to keep this issue in the news. I see that Jane Fae is on the case. Watch this space.

More #TransDocFail Links

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I know you are probably getting fed up with this stuff by now, but this story does illustrate very clearly just how manipulative the press can be if they want to be, openly spreading ideas that they must know to be false when there’s a minority group that they want to pillory. I noticed yesterday some discussion on Twitter about how applications from students from South Asia wishing to study in the UK were down sharply in the past year — a 25% drop from India, 13% down from Pakistan. This was blamed squarely on the Daily Malice stirring up hatred against foreign visitors and immigrants, which in turn leads the immigration service to impose ever more draconian policies.

I’ll bring this back to Leveson at the end, but first lets look at some of the press coverage.

First up, here’s Ed West in the Telegraph, claiming that there is no medical evidence that gender reassignment improves trans people’s lives for the better, and that academics who try to prove this are being hounded out of academia. On the face of it the article sounds quite sympathetic towards trans people, but anyone who knows a bit about the subject can quickly see that it is all founded on lies and distortions.

A key feature of West’s argument is the story of J. Michael Bailey and his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen. Bailey claims that there are only two types of trans people. There are “homosexual transsexuals”, by which he means trans women who are sexually attracted to men, and there are “autogynophiliacs”, by which he means trans women who are sexually attracted to women. Like most people who make a living from publicly abusing trans people, Bailey largely ignores the existence of trans men. They don’t rate anywhere near the same amount of column inches in the media. You’ll note also that Bailey’s terminology clearly implies that trans women are, and can only ever be, men.

According to Bailey’s theory, “homosexual transsexuals” change gender primarily so that they can have sex with as many men as possible. It’s not clear what evidence he has for this, but he notes, “Nearly all the homosexual transsexuals I know work as escorts after they have their surgery” and “Prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to”. It doesn’t occur to Bailey that these people might be working as prostitutes because they can’t get jobs thanks to endemic discrimination against trans people in the labor market. Instead he notes that they “might be especially suited to prostitution”. Remember, this is people like me that Bailey is talking about.

As for the autogynophiliacs, I’ve written about this strange, made-up condition before. Basically Bailey is suggesting that people change gender because they are sexually obsessed with the image of themselves when cross-dressed. It would be laughable if the idea wasn’t treated with such seriousness by the American Psychiatric Association.

The publication of Bailey’s book was accompanied by a publicity campaign trumpeting its challenging and ground-breaking science, and on the basis of that it was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. The Lammys, remember, are for books which promote LGBT people. There then followed an outbreak of outrage amongst the trans community, and several complaints against Bailey by people who had been his research subjects. Amongst other things, we learned that, as part of his research, Bailey had had sex with at least one of his subjects. Great devotion to science there!

West claims that Bailey was “effectively hounded out of academia”, but in fact his college ignored or dismissed all of the complaints against him. All that happened is that a book that vast numbers of trans people regarded as offensive and defamatory was dropped from the nominees list for an award intended to promote positive images of LGBT people. You can read more about the story from trans academics, Lynn Conway and Joan Roughgarden.

As to the absence of medical evidence for the efficacy of gender reassignment, well, I’ll admit that searching for academic papers can be hard, but I had a go. It took me about 10 minutes to find this. It is a review of NHS gender treatment produced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. It includes references to a number of academic studies looking at outcomes of treatment. Here are some of the results:

Charing Cross is a very large clinic with a long-standing reputation in the field; in twenty years of practice, they have only had three patients who reverted to their original gender – Shirzaker et al. (2006) Oxfordshire Priorities Forum – Minutes of Meeting 27/09/06

in over 80 qualitatively different case studies and reviews from 12 countries, it has been demonstrated during the last 30 years that the treatment that includes the whole process of gender reassignment is effective – Pfafflin & Junge. (1998) Sex Reassignment. Thirty Years of International Follow-up Studies After Sex Reassignment Surgery: A Comprehensive Review, 1961-1991; English Ed. by Jacobson & Meier

no patient was actually dissatisfied, 91.6 per cent were satisfied with their overall appearance and the remaining 8.4 per cent were neutral – Smith, YLS. Van Goozen, SHM. Kuiper, AJ & Cohen-Kettenis, PT. (2005) Sex reassignment: outcomes and predictors of treatment for adolescent and adult transsexuals, Psychological Medicine 35:88-99.

A survey in the UK also reported a high level of satisfaction of 98 per cent following genital surgery – Schonfield, S. (2008) Audit, Information and Analysis Unit: audit of patient satisfaction with transgender services.

A further study on outcomes in trans women shows that they function well on a physical, emotional, psychological and social level – Weyers, S. Elaut, E. De Sutter, P. Gerris, J. T’Sjoen, G. Heylens, G. De Cuypere, G. & Verstraelen, H. (2009) Long-term assessment of the physical, mental and sexual health among transsexual women, Journal of Sexual Medicine 6:752-760.

Now of course the Telegraph is the sort of publication that is likely to claim that there is no scientific evidence for climate change, evolution or heliocentrism, so I’m not surprised at West’s claims, but if you look the evidence for the value of gender treatments isn’t hard to find.

Gay Star News also covered the Richard Curtis story, and as you might expect it did a rather better job, but it also did it’s best to cover it’s backside by supplying what journalists euphemistically call “balance”. It notes a Facebook campaign in support of Dr. Curtis, and gives almost equal space to someone who has spoken out against it. Now of course there is an actual complaint from a real patient here, and that needs to be investigated. But it should not be “investigated” by means of articles in national newspapers that throw in a whole lot of spurious additional accusations of malpractice and attempt to cast doubt on the wisdom of providing anyone with treatment. Also there are currently 259 people in the Facebook group. I’ve only noticed two complaining. Journalists know that the amount of space you give to an opinion is critical in determining how much credence readers give to that opinion. By giving almost equal space to the contrary view, Gay Star News is suggesting that the trans community is equally divided on the issue. That’s not what I’m seeing at all.

They are very careful to describe the stories being related on the #TransDocFail hashtag as “alleged”. That’s often journalist code for “probably made up”. And the examples they pick to showcase are mainly name-calling. The much more serious incidents are ignored. You can get a much better idea of the level of abuse by looking at this useful list of lowlights from the hashtag.

The Guardian tried to add a little balance of their own by accepting this article by Jane Fae which does a pretty good job of covering the issue. Spectacularly it also makes a first appearance in The Guardian for my vagina. Not a picture, of course, but definitely a mention. I’m going to count that as an almost Amanda Palmer level of awesomeness, though I’m sure that Amanda herself has done far better.

Unfortunately The Guardian also chose yesterday to publish an article by Suzanne Moore in which she argued that trans women should put up with being abused and ridiculed by her because of the need for feminist solidarity. She also repeats the classic Janice Raymond and Julie Bindel line about trans people reinforcing the gender binary (and so are anti-feminist). You can find a more nuanced (by which I mean not written by Moore herself) view of the whole furor over at The F-Word.

Finally in this round-up of links I’d like to give credit again to Sarah Brown for starting the whole thing. Here she is talking about it. Her article also includes a link to a 5-minute slot on BBC Radio Cambridge in which she and Christine Burns discuss the issue with a very supportive interviewer.

Now, I promised you a link back to Leveson. Thanks to my pal Eugene Byrne, I discovered this blog post by the Met Office complaining about lies and distortions being spread about their service by the Daily Malice. Incredibly, the Malice article even contained a lie that had been the subject of a successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission when it first appeared in the Telegraph. So not only does the Malice feel free to print lies, it will do so even when another newspaper has already been censured for doing so. And this is not some despised minority we are talking about here, this is a matter of the accuracy of scientific work. So next time someone tells you that British newspapers can be trusted to self-regulate, I recommend asking for a balanced assessment.

A Meme That Won’t Die

~ Cheryl

Mainstream literary critics are always wringing their hands about something, it seems, and one of their favorite topics is the death of short fiction as an art form. This quarter, Mslexia has a feature on the subject. They did a survey of readers to find out the true state of the market. I helpfully filled it in, pointing at the huge amount of short fiction published in SF&F, and the wealth of talent that we have: Kelly Link, Kij Johnson, Liz Hand, Karin Tidbeck, and so on. Did any of this get into the article? No, of course not. The focus was all about how it is impossible to sell short fiction these days. You’d think that a feminist magazine would understand a bit about invisibility.

Still, they do have articles on SF&F these days. They make a point of mentioning them prominently on the cover. And when you look inside the promised article is hidden away at the back. This month, clearly taking its cue from last year’s fuss about how hard it is for women to get published in SF&F, there’s an article explaining how the field is a boom industry for women. It does quote a number of people, including Jaine Fenn and Trudi Canavan, though I somehow doubt that they were told about the general thrust of the article (ladies?).

Apparently, dear reader, we are just coming out of the Bad Times. The 1970s, as we all know, was a golden age for feminist SF. Then came the 1980s, and all that changed. What happened? Well cyberpunk obviously. Neuromancer hit the field like a freight train and women (Pat Cadigan being an honorable exception) seem to have had trouble getting on board. Mslexia, however, knows better. Here’s how Danuta Kean characterizes the science fiction of the 1980s.

… a slew of poorly-written and horribly packaged books by men that alienated a female audience — think busty space maidens with weaponry.

Yeah, that sounds like Gibson and Sterling doesn’t it? It’s OK, you can laugh, I did.

Don’t Believe What You Read

~ Cheryl

One of the well known features of modern journalism is that most of what gets into papers isn’t actually written by the journalists, it is just re-cycled press releases. Therefore, if you have done something bad and want to put a positive spin on it, what you do is put out a well-written press release that contains the message you want put in front of the public. The chances are that it will land on the desk of someone who knows nothing about your work, and who will be only to happy to recycle what you have given them.

This is how news sources this week have been full of stories about the positive things done for trans people by the American Psychiatric Association in the latest release of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V), which has just been published. Here’s The Guardian swallowing the Kool-Aid. Here’s Gay Star News doing the right thing and talking to trans activists but still missing half the story. And here’s Julia Serano having a rant.

As you may recall, the current revision of the DSM has been a massive exercise in political compromise between psychiatrists who are sympathetic to trans people, and those who think we are a bunch of disgusting and dangerous sex perverts. I blogged about this last year. So yes, the good guys have had their way, sort of. There is no longer such a thing as Gender Identity Disorder. It is now Gender Dysphoria, which has the benefit of being a term that most people are familiar with, though is probably still more negative than the Gender Incongruence that was originally proposed.

But, and this is a huge but, there is an entirely separate section of the DSM under which trans people can also be diagnosed. It is part of the section on “paraphilias”, which includes things like paedophilia and flashing alongside more consensual activities that conservative psychiatrists find freaky such as BDSM. Basically, if a trans person has an active sex life of any sort, then they can be diagnosed with Transvestic Fetishism because someone deems that they are sexually aroused by wearing clothing inappropriate to their “true” sex (and I used “sex” deliberately there as such people generally refuse to accept gender as a legitimate concept).

It used to be the case that we could laugh at this a bit because it applied only to people wearing women’s clothing, the so-called Autogynophilia. But in the final revisions of DSM V someone sneaked in a new “mental illness” called Autoandrophilia. Yes, it is now possible for women to be deemed crazy on the grounds that they are sexually aroused by wearing men’s clothing. What does this mean? Jeans? Shirts? “Boyfriend” sweaters?

Autoandrophilia
This woman clearly suffers from autoandrophilia

My guess is that these diagnoses will be deployed mainly against trans people who are homosexual in their preferred gender, because the sort of psychiatrist who is going to persecute trans people is probably going to be homophobic too. But with an “illness” like this on the official register it isn’t too much of a stretch to see it being deployed against cis women whose attire is deemed insufficiently feminine. So remember girls, if you do wear pajamas in bed, make sure that they are pink.

Why We Need Leveson

~ Cheryl

This morning’s Sunday Malice contains a report quoting leading human rights activist, Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty, as saying that she believed that the proposals in the Leveson report are contrary to the Human Rights Act and would be illegal to implement. I’m not going to link to the Malice, but the BBC takes up the story here. They’ve substantially re-written their story since this morning, but have kept the shock headline that implementing Leveson would be “illegal”.

The official Liberty position is explained here. Far from being a an attack on Leveson, their comments refer only to a fairly minor point of the report, and indeed were included in it as a footnote.

The Malice has apparently agreed to print an apology, but they won’t do so until next Sunday (the original report was carefully reserved for their Sunday edition which they regard as a separate publication). In the meantime they hope that a large proportion of the public will be soaking up their deliberate distortion of Liberty’s position and will be deterred from supporting action. When the apology does come, it will doubtless be in tiny print at the bottom of an inside page. Other news services that have repeated the Malice story will probably never issue a correction.

Now imagine that this story was not a lie about Liberty and Ms. Chakrabarti, but a lie about you. And because you are a private citizen, without spending a fortune on lawyers you would not even be able to secure an apology. It is, of course, much more likely to happen to me, because I’m a member of a minority group that the Malice has a track record of persecuting. But it could happen to anyone. This is why we need action.

Anticipating probable objections, I quote from the Liberty statement:

Leveson does not recommend compulsory statutory regulation of the press and Liberty believes that he is right not to do so.

I agree with them. The most important things we need are to provide private citizens with a cheap and accessible means of making complaints about incorrect media coverage, and a body independent of both press and politicians to adjudicate such complaints.

There is a petition demanding that the government take action on Leveson here.

Leveson, Briefly

~ Cheryl

I suspect that most people in the UK are sick to death of coverage of the Leveson Inquiry today. And that’s probably what the media wants. Luckily for you, I don’t have anything to add to the TransMediaWatch press release. You can read the whole thing here (PDF). Here’s the highlight.

In his Report, Lord Justice Leveson refers to TMW’s submissions as evidence of “disturbing and intrusive reporting,” going on to say that “it is clear that there is a marked tendency in a section of the press to fail to treat members of the transgender and intersex communities with sufficient dignity and respect… parts of the tabloid press continue to seek to ‘out’ transgender people notwithstanding its prohibition in the Editors’ Code.”

Because there’s nothing that sells papers like finding some disadvantaged minority group and pillorying them. Trans people are by no means the only victims.

TMW Conference Report

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I spent most of today at a London conference organized by Trans Media Watch. It proved to be very useful for a number of reasons, and also quite interesting. Here are a few highlights.

The first panel got a bit derailed when Sky, the young person from the National Union of Students, mentioned gender-neutral toilets. Let me explain why this is a potentially contentious issue. I’m very much in favor of gender-neutral toilets being provided as a third option for people who don’t identify as either male or female for whatever reason, or who lack the confidence to use bathrooms provided for their preferred gender. I’m also mostly happy with gender-neutral toilets being the only option in most cases (as indeed is commonly the case in cafes, trains, aircraft and private homes), though I appreciate the need for women-only spaces as places of refuge in venues such as pubs and clubs where drunk men may behave badly. Where it gets problematic is if the provision of gender-neutral toilets suddenly results in all trans people being told that they must use them, even if, like Roz and myself, we’ve been happily using the bathrooms provided for our preferred gender for decades. I spoke to Sky during the coffee break, and they assured me that there was no intention of forcing anyone to use gender-neutral toilets against their wishes. In those circumstances I have no objection to people continuing to press for their provision.

The second panel was about the situation in Europe. I was delighted to see delegates present from Germany, Switzerland and Italy (and possibly a few other countries as well), alongside the usual crowd from Britain and Ireland. Thanks in particular to Alecs from TGEU for providing suggestions as to how I might contact trans activists in Ukraine so that I can make an informed decision regarding whether to attend next year’s Eurocon.

Finally we had a panel on regulation of the media featuring lawyer-journalist David Allen Green and Guy Parker of the Advertising Standards Authority. Generally speaking it is very hard to regulate the media, especially if you wish to maintain freedom of speech, and given the ease of publication afforded by the Internet. However, I suggested to the panel that a useful option might be to make newspapers responsible for the content of comment threads on their websites. To my delight, David agreed with me. Personally I think that one of the most useful things that the Leveson Inquiry could do is make the likes of the Daily Malice moderate their comments for hate speech, because that would mean they would no longer have a reason to post “news” that is nothing more than troll bait (for example this).

How Newspapers Work

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Some of you living in the UK may have seen a story doing the rounds last week about an ex-pat Brit who was up on a murder charge in Turkey for having killed his wife “after” discovering that she was trans. Though of course, they’ll never admit it, the whole point of this exercise is to encourage people to vent in comments about how killing the deceitful bitch was absolutely the right thing to do, and the poor guy should be let off. There’s nothing like pandering to bigotry for selling newspapers. However, you may have noticed the use of scare quotes above and suspect that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Jane Fae has been investigating. In case you can’t be bothered to click through, here’s a summary.

1. The story is not new. The murder happened in December 2010. So this is pretty clearly manufactured “news”.

2. No one in the UK media seems to have checked with the Turkish authorities to see if the deceased’s alleged transness was indeed a factor in the crime, or even true.

3. The primary evidence for the deceased being trans is an online comment by the murderer which was made in 2006 and in which he also claims to have purchased his wife.

So if we believe that comment then technically it is true that the murder took place “after” the murderer discovered his wife was trans. But that’s after by a period of 4 years, with the additional possibility that he knew she was trans when he “bought” her. As crimes of passion go, this is not terribly instantaneous.

And the point of all this? If this is how our newspapers report on stories about trans people, why would you believe anything else that they say?

Big In Manitoba

~ Cheryl

My Google Alerts (for Worldcon, I don’t have one for myself) have just delivered a link to this article from The Manitoban, “The Students’ Newspaper of the University of Manitoba”. It is about the Hugo Ceremony streaming fiasco, and it quotes one “organizer and Hugo-winning editor Cheryl Morgan” as its primary source. I’m guessing that author, Tom Ingram is a journalism student, as he has carefully taken things I presented as conjecture and turned them into statements of fact, just like a professional newspaper would. However, he’s got the message spot on. “Ultimately, this is the price of free services on the Internet.”. Well said Tom, and thank you.

Facts Are Not Opinions

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today SF Signal has a new Mind Meld post up discussing the lack of non-Anglo writers in the Hugo Awards. This is a subject dear to my heart. Indeed, one of the many reasons I suggested setting up the Translation Awards was to encourage fans to read more translated fiction so that it might stand a better chance in the Hugos. If people don’t know about books, they are not going to vote for them. I was delighted to see the success this year of Ken Liu and E. Lily Yu, together with the Translation Award wins for Chinese writers Chen Qiufan and Huang Fan. I was also very sad to see that Hannu Rajaniemi’s wonderful The Quantum Thief missed getting on the Best Novel ballot by just one vote. Personally I also wanted to see Lavie Tidhar’s Osama on the ballot, but I seem to be in more of a minority there.

Of course one of the reasons why the Hugos are dominated by works in English, mainly works by Americans, is because English speakers, mainly Americans, make up the vast majority of the electorate. The Voter Packet and cheaper Supporting Memberships will hopefully help change that, as will outreach to European fans by the London Worldcon. But another good reason why certain works don’t do well is that people simply don’t know they can vote for them. I have gone on at length before about the people who choose not to vote because they have deemed themselves unworthy of having a vote. It is also true that people don’t vote for works because they think they are not eligible, when in fact they are. I was therefore deeply disappointed to find one of the Mind Meld contributors, Canadian writer Chris Galvin Nguyen, say the following:

Also, at present, for a work to be eligible, it must be from the US or must be a foreign work that was first translated or made available in the US within the previous year (even if it was published earlier in another country). Maybe it’s time to widen the field of eligibility as well. [Her emphasis]

That’s so far from the truth that even Paul Ryan might blush while saying it.

I have no idea how Nguyen came to think that was true. She has clearly been reading the Hugo Awards website, and what she says there is directly contradicted by something she quotes from that website. But equally I find it hard to blame her. To start with I wrote most of that website, and clearly didn’t explain well enough for her (see this great post by Justine Larbalestier on authors and being misunderstood). Also the idea that the Hugos are limited to Americans, or books published in America, is something I see crop up time and time again, despite all of my efforts to counter it. Sadly now I’m going to get people pointing to SF Signal as proof that I don’t know what I am talking about when it comes to the Hugo rules.

Where I do think this should have been stopped is at the editorial level. Kevin and I have spent enough time doing podcasts with John DeNardo about the Hugo rules. People at SF Signal should have that what Nguyen wrote was untrue. I know that the Mind Meld is supposed to be for people to give their opinions, but allowing people to say things that are completely false just to generate controversy is not, in my opinion, good journalism. I’m disappointed that, so soon after winning their first Hugo, SF Signal should publish something that is so badly wrong, and so damaging to the reputation of the Awards.

For the record, works are eligible for the Hugos as follows:

1. On first publication, no matter where in the world they are published, or what language they are published in. It also doesn’t matter whether the work is published professionally or self-published; whether publication is on paper or electronic; and you don’t have to submit your work, or pay a fee, in order for it to be considered.

2. On first publication in English. So if your work was first published in a language other than English, and then published in translation in a later year, you get two years of eligibility.

3. If the Eligibility Extension rule is in place, a work can also get a third year of eligibility on first US publication if all previous publications were outside of the US.

So works first written in languages other than English and published outside of the US are not only eligible, they can get up to three years of eligibility.

Nguyen also asked why the Eligibility Extension is renewed each year rather than being a fixed part of the WSFS Constitution. That’s a good question. The reason is that the Extension is presumed to be there to help non-US works in years when the majority of voters are American. The assumption is that when Worldcon takes place outside of the USA the majority of voters will not be American and the Extension may not be needed. From memory, the only time that the Business Meeting decided not to approve the Extension was for 2005 when Worldcon was in Glasgow. For Yokohama, Montreal and Melbourne the Extension was approved even though Worldcon was outside of the USA.

Update: Gender corrected for Chris Galvin Nguyen with profuse apologies from me and huge thanks to Aliette de Bodard for catching my mistake so quickly.

A Fresh Volley

~ Cheryl

My friends at Trans Media Watch should be back in front of the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics soon with a new submission. As I have noted over the past few days, ever since TMW first gave evidence, the tabloid press has ramped up its campaign of harassment against trans people. As Pink News reports, in the fortnight since the Leveson appearance, 34 articles on trans people have been published in the British press, 14 of them in the Daily Malice and its subsidiaries. They are almost entirely hostile (using terms like “freakish” and “revolting”). Some follow the practice of presenting an article as an interview when in fact they just stole quotes from other online sources. And some are almost laughably inaccurate. According to one Malice article, trans people didn’t exist 20 years ago. Well it is good to know that I can’t be any older than 20.

A rather better account of trans history, in this case black trans history, can be found in this fine article by Monica Roberts in Ebony. The first known African American trans person was born in 1886.

Meanwhile the Huffington Post has asked someone who actually works with trans kids to counter some of the lies and distortions being spread by the tabloids. It is an excellent piece, and in particular shows clearly how, under the excuse of providing “balance”, the media privilege the views of people with loud opinions but no actual knowledge above those who work in the area in question.

Dispatches

~ Cheryl

The Daily Malice article that I mentioned on Monday did manage to finger one organization that does good work on behalf of trans people. That was GIRES (the Gender Identity Research and Education Society). It is a registered charity, and a quick browse of the website will show you just how valuable it is. The Malice thinks it is a waste of taxpayers’ money. But how much of a waste?

Well, just about everyone in the UK who can’t afford expensive accountants and offshore tax havens is a taxpayer. Even kids may pay some VAT out of their pocket money. But to give the Malice a fair chance I’m going assume that by “taxpayer” they mean individuals who pay things like income tax. (That accounts for some 55% of tax revenue.) There are currently around 29.9 million such people in the UK. That means that on average each UK taxpayer “wastes” 0.12 pence every year on GIRES. Outrageous, eh?

Meanwhile ITV has been getting in on the act. I’ve blogged before about 10-year-old Livvy James when she appeared on the BBC’s breakfast show. The BBC invited my pal Paris Lees from Trans Media Watch to be the resident expert that day. Not to be out done, ITV decided to ask Livvy on their show too. And for their resident “expert” on trans issues they invited Anne Atkins, someone so homophobic that even the Press Complaints Commission was moved to censure her. Atkins is also a leading figure behind True Freedom Trust, an organization that promotes “reparative therapy” (i.e. torturing people until they agree to behave they way that you want them to) for LGBT people.

As I said to someone on Twitter, at least Paddy Power only targeted adults. It takes a special kind of scum to bring in a notorious professional hate-monger to try to bully and humiliate a 10-year-old girl. Stay classy, ITV.

Finally, a bit of health news. As most of you probably know, the current medical thinking is that transition to the preferred gender is by far the best way to treat transsexuals. Post-transition, the only medical intervention they should need is regular supplies of hormones, and occasional blood tests to make sure the dosage is correct. There’s an issue here with testosterone because of the danger of mis-use by athletes, but oestrogen is regularly prescribed by GPs for contraception and HRT. Trans women ought to be able to get it easily.

What’s more, synthetic oestrogen is cheap. The NHS has a minimum prescription charge that most patients have to pay, and they make a profit on any oestrogen that they supply.

Yesterday Nottingham Primary Care Trust put all medication for trans people, pre- or post-op, on their “red list”, meaning that it can only be prescribed under the instructions of a qualified specialist. While many GPs do still refuse to treat trans people, this is a significant departure for an NHS management body, and it is probably illegal. It is also expensive, because now all trans people in the Nottingham area will have to go to a specialist gender clinic to get their regular prescriptions. It is, in fact, a dreadful waste of taxpayers’ money.

But, as we have seen, tabloid newspapers are not very good at sums. They can’t work out what is a waste of money and what isn’t. All they care about is whether or not people they hate are getting treated on the NHS. And all that Nottingham PCT appears to care about is not appearing in a newspaper article being accused of wasting taxpayers’ money by treating trans people. So they have passed the buck. Our newspapers, it seems, are able to set health policy regarding who gets treated and who does not. As a taxpayer, I do not like this idea.

The Truth About The Gender Industry

~ Cheryl ~ 14 Comments

Yesterday’s Daily Malice contained a lengthy article purporting to expose the evils of Britain’s “Gender Industry”. Unfortunately, as is common for the Malice, their journalists knew very little about the subject and got much of it wrong. In particular they fingered the Portman and Tavistock Clinics as leaders of this industry, when in trans communities this organization is known as deeply conservative and often acting in ways directly opposed to the interests of trans people. For an example, in 2002 a group of their staff wrote to the Daily Telegraph as follows:

The recent judgment in the European Court of Human Rights, in which a post-operative transsexual person was granted permission to marry in his adopted gender role, is a victory of fantasy over reality.

If there is someone that these people deem worthy of treatment, you can bet that the case is very clear cut.

The reality of care for trans people is very different. There are probably a few surgeons who make good money, though I’m guessing less than they could get in more glamorous specializations. Organizations that care for trans people are often heavily dependent on charity, which in turn relies on actual trans people for donations, and they are chronically underemployed. Medical professionals are constantly at risk of being hit with malpractice suits from conservative colleagues should they be deemed guilty of treating trans people with compassion and respect.

Of course the British people, and indeed concerned persons all around the world, do need to know more about this clandestine and hugely profitable gender industry. I have therefore taken it upon myself to indulge in a little investigative journalism. Here is the awful truth of how cunning trans people have made fortunes by replacing “real” men and women with “fakes” in work that does not conform to traditional gender stereotypes.

One of the first gender entrepreneurs in the UK was Roz Kaveney. A struggling journalist and aspiring writer, Kaveney was introduced by her friend, Neil Gaiman, to an equally ambitious American screenwriter called Joss Whedon. Whedon had a plan to create a TV series based around the cult movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, he was unable to persuade any Hollywood actresses to star in the series. They felt that taking the role of a kick-ass, vampire-killing heroine would be damaging to their public images, and to their long-term careers. Whedon therefore asked Kaveney to supply a group of trans women to act in the series.

When Buffy became a surprise hit, Kaveney was suddenly in great demand in Hollywood. Every studio wanted a similar series, and Kaveney’s company, Trans R Us, was the leading supplier of suitable actresses. Kaveney’s products later went on to star in TV series such as Alias, and in movies such as the Underworld and Resident Evil series.

Her commercial success allowed Kaveney to return to her first love, writing. Realizing that no self-respecting “real” woman would write romance novels featuring kick-ass, monster-killing heroines, she began to write novels featuring characters similar to Buffy. The idea took off, and soon Kaveney found books by her pen names, including Laurell K. Hamilton, Carrie Vaughn and Kim Harrison were becoming best-sellers. Pretty much all of the early output of the paranormal romance and urban fantasy genres was penned by Kaveney herself. However, despite her success, women writers were willing to follow her example for fear of a public backlash, or being blacklisted by published who deemed their work insufficiently feminine. Unable to find suitable talent within the trans community, Kaveney hired a number of male ghost writers to write her books for her. Successful authors such as Tim Pratt, Daniel Abrahams, Ian McDonald, Sean Williams and John Scalzi all got their start ghost writing for Kaveney.

Although Kaveney is believed to be the first British trans woman to become a millionaire through her business interests, her wealth and fame is far eclipsed by that of the health industry mogul, Christine Burns. Around 2004 the Blair government began to run into problems recruiting staff for the National Health Service. Their program of gender equality in education had been so successful that all young women studying medicine now wanted to be doctors rather than nurses. Unfortunately a high profile study by the Royal College of Psychiatry had proved conclusively that male hospital patients are unlikely to recover successfully unless they have pretty young women to look after them. The shortage of female nurses looked set to result in a major health crisis.

Some of the shortage was made up through immigration, but Burns approached the government with the idea of transforming aspiring young male nurses into women. The idea proved very effective in solving the nurse shortage, and Burns was awarded an MBE for her services to the NHS. Indeed, so successful has she become that other companies in the UK health sector poured millions of pounds into Conservative Party coffers in the hope that they could win an election and put a stop to Burns. The NHS reforms championed by Andrew Lansley are the end result of this campaign. NHS staff, many of whom owe their jobs to Burns, are vociferously opposing the reforms. It remains to be seen whether Burns’ commercial empire will survive the assault.

Gender entrepreneurs have been successful in many other walks of British life. For example, the entertainment industry has long held that women simply aren’t funny. In any case, feminists have no sense of humor so there would be no sense in catering to them by providing women comedians. However, the general trend in society towards equal rights did require at least a semblance of balance. As a consequence, Bethany Black has built a substantial business out of supplying trans women comics, including Ellen De Generes, French & Saunders, and Jo Brand. You didn’t think they could be that funny if they were “real” women, did you, people?

The gender industry has been much slower on the uptake when it came to trans men, but one notable business has been built in sports. Back in 2006, Delia Smith was worried about the poor performance of her Norwich City football club. An internal enquiry had identified that a major problem was the team’s yellow shirts. They were deemed “too girly”, and as a consequence top flight players were unwilling to join the club. The enquiry recommended a change of strip, but Smith is a committed traditionalist who was unwilling to abandon not only the club’s colors, but also their nickname of The Canaries. Even the club badge would have to be changed. She turned instead to gender entrepreneur, Juliet Jacques, herself a life-long Norwich fan, and asked her if she could turn top quality female players into men.

The project took a long time to bear fruit. Amongst the teething problems was the fact that large doses of testosterone made trans men prone to fits of anger and violence. Some early models such as Robbie Savage and Joey Barton have become notorious for their poor disciplinary records. Eventually, however, the years of research paid off and Norwich is once again back near the top of the Premiership.

Meanwhile, determined to make the best of her initial failures, Jacques tried selling some of her early models to rugby clubs. This proved ideal, and although rugby is a much less wealthy sport it provided a healthy income for Jacques and her company. At one point she supplied the entire squad of the top Parisian team, Stade Français. This deal came to an end thanks to events in Italy.

In 2010 a newspaper owned by a rival media company exposed the fact that all of the prostitutes at one of Prime Minister Berlusconi’s famous orgies were actually trans women supplied by wealthy Italian gender entrepreneur, Vladimir Luxuria. As part of the fall-out from this, it was revealed that the Italian rugby captain, Sergio Parisse, a Stade Français player, was actually a trans man. The scandal spread back to France, and the Parisian club ended their deal with Jacques. The team has languished in the lower reaches of the French league ever since.

The gender industry is by no means confined to Europe. Indeed, it is currently playing a major role in US Politics. Back in 1998, Newt Gingrich was scouring Hollywood for a rugged, right-wing actor who could be groomed to be the next Ronald Reagan. Arnold Schwarzenegger was ineligible due to being foreign-born, and Gingrich found the majority of male Hollywood stars — people like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio — to be a bunch of effeminate metrosexuals entirely unsuited for political office. Then he met up with gender entrepreneur, Calpernia Addams, and American politics changed forever.

The project was put on a back burner during the Shrub Presidency, and when it was revived early attempts to produce potential female candidates from right-wing males proved disastrous. The subjects were unable to successfully integrate their new female identities with the level of misogyny required of them. Projects such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were notable failures. However, Addams then came up with a new idea. Combining the successful work of Juliet Jacques on trans men with the assistance of top quality Hollywood cosmetic surgeons and make-up artists, she began to develop a series of trans male replicants. These could take the place of under-performing Republican politicians and push the party line that Gingrich wanted. Products such as Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have proved very successful with Republican voters in recent months.

Unusually Gingrich, who had tired of the hurly-burly of political life, also opted to have himself replaced by a replicant. His new career as mild-mannered investment consultant, “Bernie Madoff”, went very well until his business ran into trouble during the recent financial crisis. The real Gingrich has therefore been forced to watch from jail as his trans replicant hits the presidential campaign trail.

The hot young talent in the gender industry is Paris Lees. Tall and slender herself, Lees quickly realized that the standard shape for catwalk models doesn’t work for women. They simply don’t have, well, shape. So Lees began a modelling agency for trans women. Her initial products, Lea T and Andrej Pejić, have been hugely successful. Given Lees’ energy and business acumen, it seems likely that she’ll be the major supplier of catwalk models for years to come.

There have long been rumors in fandom that I am fantastically wealthy, and I can now reveal that much of my income has come from a burgeoning business in gender derivatives. The idea is deceptively simple. Rich couples are able to take out an option on the gender of future children. If a pregnancy turns out to be for a child different from what they wanted, the option pays out and they can afford gender reassignment surgery. Some of my customers have instead opted to have the unwanted child adopted, and to choose a new child of their own. This has led me to become close friends with prominent people in the celebrity adoption industry such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie. Many of my best clients come from European royal families. Indeed, Kevin and I will be attending the Monaco Grand Prix in style this year. Look out for us in the Royal Box during the trophy presentation.

Thanks to my interests in the gender industry, I am now financially secure and able to indulge in a little philanthropy. I have decided to help out the campaign for gender equality in the science fiction and fantasy community. It is well known that no “real” man would ever give up his place on a panel in favor of a woman. However, by licensing the trans replicant technology from Calpernia Addams, and severely toning down the testosterone doses, my staff have managed to create a range of male writer replicants with an interest in gender equality. As you might have guessed, one of our first products is Paul Cornell.

Unfortunately the real Paul Cornell didn’t take kindly to being replaced. He has converted to Catholicism and is currently studying at a remote monastery in the Calabrian Mountains in Southern Italy. He is a member of a new militant order of Catholic monks founded by Pope Ratty and financed by Berlusconi and prominent Mafia leaders. Penis Dei is devoted to saving the world from the Transgender Menace by hunting down trans people and selling their stories to British tabloid newspapers. Their headquarters are believed to be in Ireland, where they disguise themselves as mild-mannered, fun-loving bookmakers.

I would like to thank Julie Bindel and her tireless colleagues at the pressure group, Trans Empire Watch, for their help in preparing this article.

The management accepts that certain details presented in this article may be somewhat less than entirely factual, but they have been retained for artistic effect. We assert that the Truthiness quotient of this article is no less than that of some articles about trans people published by the Daily Malice. Furthermore we assert that, in the world of the UK’s tabloid newspapers, the concept of “truth” is entirely fungible and often used to indicate that the material in question is entirely made up.

War Bulletin

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

This is an update on my weekend post about the developing war between the UK media and trans people. As I noted, the tabloids will be looking for people on whom to wreak their revenge. For the past couple of days they have been full of stories about a 5-year-old child who has currently chosen to live as girl despite being assigned male at birth. I know that sounds young, but if I’d been given the same choice at the same age I’d have made the same decision. What’s important is that the kid then gets a chance to get on with her life. Unfortunately her name and photo are all over the papers. She and her parents have already received death threats. The newspaper reports contain sufficient information to find her home.

Meanwhile the Paddy Power story goes from bad to worse. Remember that they claimed to have consulted a “leading UK transgender association” in advance. Well they did. They spoke to the Beaumont Society. That’s an old, established organization that caters mainly to cross-dressers. They do try to help other types of trans people as well, but they are not always very good at it, this being a case in point. And of course the script of the ad changed significantly between between approved by the Beaumont Society and being broadcast. Journalists and advertisers, you can’t trust them an inch.

The good news is that the Advertising Standards Authority has agreed to investigate the ad. This means that complaining will help. You can do so here. The important points to note are: a) that you are not trans (assuming you are not, but it is non-trans people that will get listened to); b) that the main victims at the race day will be cis women who are deemed insufficiently pretty (trans people mostly can’t afford to go to the races); c) that in the meantime making a “sport” out of “tr*nny spotting” is going to lead to innocent trans women all over the UK (and insufficiently pretty cis women as well) being hounded and probably beaten up.

I’m also pleased to report that ESPN has decided to stop showing the ad. That’s remarkably encouraging. Unfortunately Channel 4 and Sky have refused to follow suit. For them the ad revenue is much more important than any harm the ad might cause.

So tomorrow I will be phoning Sky and cancelling my Sky Sports subscription. I’ll make it clear to them that I’ll sign up again if they stop showing the ad and apologize for the distress and danger that they have caused.

The whole mess has been further complicated by the emergency of technology that purports to determine your gender using face recognition technology. A children’s charity called Plan UK is in the news because they’ve come up with a cunning wheeze to highlight discrimination against women by making an ad that can only be seen by women. It will be on display at a bus stop in Oxford Street, London. When you stand in front of it, it will display the ad if it thinks you are female, and will be blank otherwise. There’s a BBC report here.

Of course this is going to catch quite a lot of trans people. If you transitioned late in life, and you couldn’t afford cosmetic surgery, then your features probably won’t be very feminine. But also the technique isn’t very precise. According to the BBC 10% of women will be wrongly identified as men. And yes, you guessed it, they will be women who are insufficiently young and pretty for white male tastes. It isn’t terribly precise either. I found an iPhone app that claims to use the same technology. Results for photos of me range from 18% female to 63% female. So ladies, be careful around bus stops in London in future. Because there might just be some drunk idiot playing the Paddy Power “stop the tr*nny” game who is using such ads as an aid. Your chances of being outed are quite high, regardless of whether you are trans or not.

Oh, and guys, you are not safe either. You know what idiots will say if the ad shows for you.

Finally, while we are on the subject of follow-up, remember my post about video games, in which I talked (mainly in the comment thread) about how I stopped playing them because I could never get past the action sequences? Well it seems to me that if you have a really good story then it would make sense to allow kultzes like me to skip those sections, but apparently if a well-known game designer suggests such a thing then its a crime worthy of a death sentence, and of course a sustained troll attack. More details here.

Notes from the Battlefront

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Earlier this month I blogged about how trans people are becoming far more visible in British society, even appearing as respected political activists on the BBC. The downside of such visibility, of course, is that the minute you poke your head above the parapet you become a target. That has consequences.

Last week the British police arrested a number of prominent News International journalists who work on The Sun on suspicion of bribing both police and government officials. Tweaking the tabloids’ tails is dangerous. One of the main reasons why they have held such sway over British public life for decades is that people are rightly afraid of them. Tabloid journalists can be vicious bullies who can and will exact revenge on people who speak out against them. And if they can’t get at specific individuals they may take their anger out on any vulnerable minority they happen to notice.

There was a certain amount of irony, therefore, that at the same time as complaining bitterly about a “witch hunt” against their staff, The Sun was offering a reward for anyone who could give them the identity of a trans man in the UK who had given birth. Challenged on the issue, The Sun‘s editor claimed that the story was in the public interest because the man concerned might also be a serial killer. Presumably they were also planning a story about how men giving birth was disgusting and perverted, and perhaps demanding that the child be taken into care to prevent it being raised into a life of depravity. However, I understand that the Daily Mail may have beaten them to it on that one.

Meanwhile trans men in Britain have been living in fear of being outed to The Sun by people hoping for a reward. As Jane Fae reports in the post I linked to above:

In a separate development today, a spokeswoman for leading trans action group, Trans Panthers UK revealed how a trans man whose sister had recently given birth was today hounded out of his workplace by fellow workers threatening to “out” him in return for the reward offered by the Sun newspaper.

It is a war. There will be casualties. Some of them will be innocent bystanders.

Of course journalists are not the only people wanting to take advantage of the current notoriety of trans people. Step forward, therefore, Paddy Power. For those of you not based in the UK or Ireland, these people are bookmakers. That means that they are already potentially in the business of exploiting the vulnerable. I understand that gambling is a fun pastime enjoyed by many people. Kevin gets a lot of value out of playing blackjack. And I used to work in a bookmaker’s during vacations when I was at college; I know that there are people who are real experts on horses who quite often do very well as a result. However, I also saw that the bookmakers make their profits from those who are less able: the drunks, the desperate, and those simply not smart enough to figure the odds, but who keep hoping that their luck will turn. Responsible bookmakers know this and take care of their customers, irresponsible ones exploit it.

Paddy Power are no strangers to controversy either. They like being out on the edge as far as their advertising goes. They’ve done some ads poking fun at hipsters with smart phones that I found quite funny. They were also responsible for one of the most complained about ads of 2011, in which a blind footballer is shown mistaking a cat with a bell on its collar for the ball (blind people, apparently, play football using a ball that makes a noise when it moves). The Advertising Standards Authority cleared the ad, and the controversy got a lot of publicity for Paddy Power, a lesson I am sure they took to heart.

This year they have just started running an ad for the Cheltenham Festival, a horse racing event. The idea behind the ad is that on Ladies’ Day punters should play the game of “spot the tr*nny”.

Yes, you did read that right.

My guess is that the main effect of this, as far as Cheltenham is concerned, will be a great deal of harassment of female race-goers at the event itself. There will be plenty of drunk people on the lookout for any woman that they deem insufficiently pretty, or trying overly hard to be glamorous, and accusing them of being “really men”. Women planning to attend Ladies’ Day at Cheltenham this year will need to be prepared to have their breasts prodded by drunken louts asking, “are they real?”

For trans women, of course, the reality will be rather different. Most of them can’t afford to go to the races. They won’t be there to be outed. But in the meantime they will have to live through a time when anyone who watches TV where the Paddy Power ad airs will be encouraged to play “spot the tr*nny”. That, inevitably, will lead to people being abused and chased through the streets, and being beaten up. It may lead to them being hounded out of their jobs and homes. A fairly recent survey found that around 34% of UK trans people have attempted suicide. I confidently predict that number will rise this year.

None of this will affect Paddy Power or the Cheltenham Festival. It won’t be their friends or relatives that are affected. And it is pretty clear from the way that they are going about this that the whole point of the ad campaign is to generate controversy. Cheltenham even posted the ad on their Facebook page with an exhortation to their fans to have their say on whether it is offensive or not. Last I looked the comments thread was full of complaints from trans people, but I suspect that by the end of Monday it will have filled up with the usual sort of comments you get on tabloid newspaper stories about trans people.

So no, Paddy Power and Cheltenham Festival will not suffer. They will happily bask in the column inches that they gain from this, and the extra money that they expect to make as a result.

That, however, is not the end of the story. Challenged on the issue, Paddy Power revealed that they had cast actual trans people in the ad, and that they had, “sought approval for the commercial from a leading UK transgender association”. Note that they did not say that they got approval. Nor is it clear whether the people recruited knew how their appearances would be used. Given that the trans umbrella is fairly broad, it is possible that the people involved are all drag queens and part-time cross dressers who live most of their lives as males. Whatever, it is causing a great deal of finger pointing and recriminations. The point here, however, is that there is money on offer, and when you are trying to victimize members of a despised minority community there will always be someone amongst them desperate enough to take your money.

There’s a war being fought, and the gloves are off. There are no rules.

Trans On TV

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Many years ago, when the only places trans people could go to for support were transvestite clubs, I remember there being a series of light-hearted cartoons with the title of “What’s on the TV Tonight”. I think they were drawn by Janett Scott. The joke, of course, revolves around the use of TV as an abbreviation for both transvestite and television. No one would have believed, in the last few years of the 20th Century, that transsexuals would ever appear on television as respected public figures.

Oh how times have changed.

This morning Paris Lees of Trans Media Watch appeared twice on BBC Breakfast. I’ll talk later about why exactly she was there, but the simple version is that she was on as a representative of a respectable pressure group, much as they might use someone from Stonewall, Greenpeace, or an arts charity.

That was live, broadcast TV, but the BBC also does a lot of Internet broadcasting these days, in particular through their Democracy Live website, which streams content from Parliament and other venues for public debate. Today Helen Belcher, also of Trans Media Watch, was giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

For those of you not resident in the UK, or who hide away from all current affairs stories, Leveson was set up in the wake of the phone and email hacking scandals at the News of the World and other prominent UK newspapers. The inquiry has fairly broad terms of reference and is looking at a wide range of different areas of concern. That it should accept evidence from a trans pressure group, however, is remarkable, and a testament to how hard Paris, Helen and their colleagues have worked over the past year or so.

The TMW evidence was largely concerned with the way in which trans people are systematically mis-represented, pilloried and abused by the national press. Local media is often much more honest in its handling of trans stories, but the national press may then take those stories, plagiarize the content, print photographs without permission, and falsely present the story as if the subject had agreed to be interviewed. They routinely mis-gender trans people, even when the correct pronouns have been used in the articles they are plagiarizing. It is also standard practice to mock the appearance of trans people, and make juvenile jokes about their genitals.

An important part of Helen’s evidence was the many ways in which newspaper editors and their stooges in the Press Complaints Commission get around complaints. For example, the PCC declined to specifically include gender identity as a protected characteristic in their code of practice, claiming that this was already covered by the word “gender”, but then when complaints are made they may excuse the newspaper by saying that “gender” does not include gender identity. Where innuendo is used to mock people, they refuse to acknowledge any meaning for words other than precise dictionary definitions. Newspapers will also pick up sensationalist stories from press agencies without checking them, and then wash their hands of any responsibility when those stories prove inaccurate or offensive.

Most damagingly, attacks on trans people by newspapers most often occur when those people are beginning to transition. This is bad in many different ways. Firstly, of course, transition is a very stressful time for trans people, and unwanted attention from the media can make things much worse, for example by making previously supportive family and employers back away. In addition, transition is also the time when trans people look least convincing in their preferred gender, and are therefore most easily mocked. Newspaper behavior is often akin to taking a picture of someone with a leg in plaster and on crutches, and then making jokes about their inability to walk, implying that they will never be able to do so again.

The key issue, however, and probably the one that newspaper editors are most concerned with, is legality. Deliberately outing a trans person who has completed transition and acquired a Gender Recognition Certificate is a criminal offense. But you can’t get a GRC until you have completed transition. Newspapers therefore target trans people when they are still vulnerable and not protected by law. They will also go after people who, for various reasons, are unable to acquire a GRC, most obviously children.

A common question in all of these cases is whether there is any “public interest” in these stories. That is, does the public have a need to know. As Helen noted, newspapers often have difficulty distinguishing between what is in the public interest, and what the public might be interested in. Even that, however, is too subtle for Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Malice, which runs six times as many stories about trans people as any other UK newspaper. In his evidence to the inquiry he claimed that it was necessary to run stories of this type in order to expose immoral behavior, thereby indicating that he thinks simply being trans is something immoral that he and his newspaper have a duty to stamp out.

It is also worth noting that the PCC will currently only accept complaints from people actually featured in stories. One of the possible changes that Lord Justice Leveson is considering is a change to procedure to allow organizations like Trans Media Watch to complain on behalf of the victims. This is important, both because most trans people have very little money, and because after having been attacked in the press they may not have the emotional strength left to launch a complaint by themselves. The Trans Media Watch submission to the inquiry included many examples of innocent people whose lives were blighted by newspaper stories over the years. Not one of them was willing to have their name attached to their evidence, for fear that doing so would only result in their stories being recycled by the press as an act of revenge.

Helen’s evidence will probably be available on replay at the Democracy Live website’s Leveson page from tomorrow.

Back then, to Paris on the BBC. It appears that the Breakfast TV show is not available for replay on iPlayer, and as yet no one has uploaded the material to YouTube. However, the story that Paris was on to talk about has been widely covered elsewhere. Also on the show was 10-year-old Livvy James who is currently transitioning while at school. Livvy, being so young, has no protection under the law. Her mother says the school has been doing its best, but there is little they can do when other parents are actively encouraging their children to bully Livvy.

Interestingly, despite what is being reported in newspapers, Livvy said she has had less bullying since she came out as trans. Prior to this she had been living as a girl at home, and going to school as a boy, and people found this hard to understand. This may indicate that the message about trans people is getting through to the public.

Also Livvy’s mum said that her daughter’s school performance had improved dramatically since she went full time female. I can relate to this. I spent a lot of time off school sick when I was a kid, and I was often trotted in front of the educational psychologist because my teachers felt there must be something wrong. I knew exactly what was wrong, but in those days it would have been so much worse for me had I said anything, so I became very adept at making excuses.

While the behavior of other parents is deeply regrettable, Livvy and her mother are in no doubt where the real blame lies. They point firmly at national newspaper articles about trans people, which are almost always negative and encourage readers to think the worst of trans people. Livvy’s mum has started an online petition asking the Press Association to put a stop to these attacks. It is doing rather better then the one that was launched last year during the airing of My Transsexual Summer. If you’d like to sign up, you can find it here. You may also wish to show your support for Livvy at her Facebook page.

And finally, if you want to learn more about trans kids and the problems they face, there is a new book, Transitions of the Heart, due out in May in which the mothers of trans children tell their stories. I understand that it has an introduction from Kim Pearson of TYFA, so it should be good.

Bloody English

~ Cheryl

Here is how the BBC is reporting the state of the Six Nations table after the first weekend’s matches.

Six Nations Table

Of course it could just be incompetence. How else are they going to explain this (from the same page)?

Illiterate

Couldn’t follow Sam Warburton’s thick Welsh accent, perhaps?

Why They Get Away With It

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday in my TDOR post I mentioned this petition, which is intended to get the UK media to give a bit more respect to trans people, at least on one day a year. I know Sunday is a bad day to publicize anything online, and I know the petition probably won’t have much effect, even if thousands of people sign it. But right now the total number of signatures is 124. A substantial number of those are from outside of the UK, which is very nice to see, but will be discounted by the targets of the petition.

So on the basis of that evidence, less than 100 people in the UK care about how our media treats trans people. Doubtless it will grow a bit with time, but not substantially. And next time that TransMediaWatch complains about some repulsive nonsense in a newspaper, the Daily Malice folks (because it will almost certainly be them) will be able to turn round and say (in not quite these words), “Look, if it had been badgers or foxes there would be a million signatures on that petition. No one give a shit about you freaks, why should we?”

Hopefully it will get a boost during the next episode of My Transsexual Summer. That will actually be good evidence for the value of the show. But I’ll be out tomorrow night (AGM of the Bristol LGBT Forum) so someone else will need to boost it on Twitter.

Transgender Day of Remembrance #TDOR

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

TDOR 2011Today is the 13th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, they day on which we remember people who have been murdered simply for trying to be themselves. To mark the day I have written an article about the idea of living “in stealth” — why the idea started, why it gets trans people into trouble with the Left, why is causes divisions in the trans community, why it is still very necessary for some, and why I believe that it is fast becoming impossible. As the article is rather long, and contains mention of a particularly horrific murder, I have put it on a separate page. If you don’t read it, at least take away one piece of data: globally the average lifespan of a trans person is just 23 years.

While I am on the subject, I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to all of the non-trans people who have supported the day by making their own posts, or re-tweeting those of trans people. Special thanks to Anne Lyle who changed her Twitter avatar for the day. If you do want to express support, one of the best things you can do is sign this petition, which calls for the UK media to respect TDOR.

American papers such as the Miami Herald and Seattle Post Intelligencier have run stories in support of the day. Even the US Department of Justice has got in on the act. This far in the UK, the only recognition outside of the LGBT community that I have seen has been in The Guardian. What is said about us in the media makes a huge difference to how we are treated by the general public. Please help by asking the UK media to give us a little respect, at least on this one day of the year.