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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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