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.