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.