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[dopajoda]

Anti-Trans Reporting and JK R

I was going to do a post trying to touch on everything around the misinformation about LGBT issues, but since things are picking up, I’m going to just jump in where we are. Yesterday provided examples of news propaganda as well as another dodgy JK Rowling effort. In response to the UK Government’s u-turn on the conversion therapy ban (which was promised by Theresa May when she was PM and more recently endorsed by Johnson) then subsequent u-turn where they said they would ban it except for trans people, there were protests in London, Belfast and Dublin. The screenshots of BBC and ITV tweets show a stark contrast in reporting. The BBC reports hundreds of protestors attended in London but ITV say thousands. Organisers estimate there were 3,000 in attendance. I was pleasantly surprised to see the ITV tweet and the replies from trans people thanking them are quite telling about what they’ve come to expect from the media. 

The pictures chosen are also quite enlightening. While ITV chose a picture featuring a diverse crowd, with no individual as the focus, in front of a banner, the BBC chose to centre a drag queen in theirs. Drag queens were there and of course welcome as a longstanding feature of LGBT culture. However, I feel that the BBC focusing attention on a drag queen contributes to the idea that trans women are just men dressing up as caricatures of women, which they’re not. Drag queens are men who dress up as women but they do it for entertainment purposes and it’s not their identity. 

I’ll come back to the BBC in a bit but JK Rowling was also at an event in London at the same time. Previously, in response to criticism of her comments about trans issues, she tweeted, ‘I would march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans.’ This was her first chance to do that. Trans people have literally just been discriminated against for being trans by the UK Government who described conversion therapy as ‘abhorrent’ have decided to ban it for everyone but trans people. Rowling chose instead to intend a much smaller gathering for lunch with a fringe lesbian group called Get the L Out, plus a few straight people who have become high profile because of their Gender Critical (GC - the more polite way of referring to people who are actively anti-trans). The group included MPs Rosie Duffield (Labour) and Joanna Cherry (SNP), a lawyer suing Stonewall and a couple of columnists who used to write for the Guardian but now regularly write anti-trans pieces for the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. Some of the attendees are also supportive of LGB Alliance (a group set up two years ago purporting to be about supporting LGB rights but whose sole focus is anti-trans policy) including the two MPs. Get the L Out’s founding principle was to have a separate group for lesbians away from men. That sounds absolutely fine but several of the people at the lunch are also supportive of LGB Alliance - the only thing they have in common is being anti-trans. 

While LGB Alliance are relatively new, Get the L Out have been going longer. I remember seeing them appear on the news because they gatecrashed a London Pride Parade, which I’ve just found was in 2018. They’ve failed to gain much traction though, with most lesbians interested in any sort of activism being trans-inclusive. JK Rowling, Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry’s meeting with them gives them a sense of legitimacy and recognition they previously couldn’t hope to achieve. This is a group who have claimed that trans women existing is rape of women and that they want to eliminate ‘transgenderism’ (a propagand term along the same lines as ‘the gay agenda). 

While still small and insignificant in reality, Get the L Out have made contributions to anti-trans misinformation which have been amplified. One example is what brings me back to the BBC. In October 2021, they published an article headlined: We're being pressured into sex by some trans women. The article had some vague comments from anonymous sources that referred to things such as trans women just being on a dating website as coercion. The only named source turned out to be someone herself accused of several instances of sexual assault, which she admitted to. The same person also published a rant about exterminating trans women on her blog after the BBC article was published. The BBC subsequently removed her contribution from their article. The other evidence was from a poll which was conducted by Get the L Out and had only 80 respondents, with just over half of them suggesting they agreed. The writer for the BBC took that along with the testimony of a sex offender as the basis for an article portraying trans women as predators. 

I know none of this has gone into the actual subject matter of trans issues but I just wanted to highlight how things are being so casually misrepresented, as well as how high profile people like JK Rowling making seemingly innocent comments and appearances can be so harmful.

[dopajoda]

This is exactly the kind of misinformation I was referring to in my last post. Here's ITV News political correspondent Libby Wiener parroting Boris Johnson's completely nonsensical (and brand new) justification for keeping conversion therapy legal, rather than analysing it critically. Bear in mind this is in the context of next-to-zero sympathetic or even neutral press on the issue and you'll understand why I'm so concerned that people less informed (I imagine most people who aren't actually affected) might be taken in by it. 

Here's what's wrong with what Wiener says:

‘Backlash…[against his decision]’

- This is all we hear in terms of those opposed to the decision. We don’t hear the justification for the backlash, which includes not only his own MPs but also every LGBT organisation in the UK with the sole exception of the LGB Alliance (set up solely to push trans-exclusionary policies). 

'he doesn't believe the ban should extend to people who want to change gender'

- it's not about 'people who want to change gender' it's about trans people. Being trans is no more a choice than being gay is. Gay conversion isn't for 'people who WANT to be gay' so why is it phrased this way for trans conversion therapy? This phrasing implies a casual decision, which surely people would not need 'abhorrent' (BJ's own description) conversion therapy to be persuaded against.

‘Changing gender involves irreversible treatment: hormone treatment, breast removal’

- Nothing but moral panic fodder. ‘Changing gender’ is a much more complex concept than simply undergoing hormone therapy or surgery. A person can go through neither and still be trans. The Equality Act (2010) has ‘gender reassignment’ as a protected characteristic that applies at any point in a person’s ‘transition’ which could be restricted to what’s called ‘social transition’. The reference to ‘breast removal’ is particularly emotive and we have to be really clear: conversion therapy isn’t about stopping people getting their breasts removed (or taking hormones), it’s about trying to stop them *being trans*, just as gay coversion therapy is about stopping us *being gay*. Trans people wait years just to see a gender reassignment specialist for the first time and people aren’t just turning up and getting hormones and surgery just because they ask for it, no matter how much tabloid reporting is suggesting otherwise. 

- Looking at it another way, this phrasing is drawing our attention to trans people’s rights to healthcare more generally, which it looks like will be next to be cut back. If you want to discuss that more, get in touch and I'm happy to clarify things. 

‘He doesn’t believe people should be allowed to go ahead and undergo such treatments without consulting at least their parents.’ 

- Difficult to know where to start with this one. She presents his belief about going ahead with such treatments as if what his belief is based on is correct (it’s not). Then there’s the ludicrous comment about consulting ‘at least their parents.’ A person undergoing such treatment has had to consult more people than just their parents (see point above about trans people waiting years for a first appointment at a gender clinic).  Then there’s the problem that the potential ages of these subjects is not even mentioned. Are we to presume that people in their 40s, 50s and 60s should consult their parents or that we’re being led to believe this is all about children? The former is obviously ridiculous, the latter less obviously so - children don’t get gender reassignment in this country at all, let alone ‘without consulting at least their parents.’ 

Nothing about Wiener’s commentary on Johnson’s justification for keeping conversion therapy legal is relevant to conversion therapy. This is how things are going now. Look at Texas where a recent law change has led to parents of trans children being under investigation or Florida with its ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. The attack on LGBT+ rights is real and it’s picking up momentum here in Scotland and the UK where a vocal minority seem to be successful in steering us back towards a section-28 era. 

Sorry this was so long. I know who my audience is and have no delusions of having legions of followers - I’m talking to my friends and family, as well as some former colleagues and uni classmates, who I find it easier to share these thoughts with in writing. If you’re reading this it’s aimed at you, not some acquaintances of mine you don’t really know, but please feel free to share it if you think it will help other people understand. 

Might be fair to warn that it looks like this may be an LGBT rights account for the foreseeable future with the way things are going. If you don’t want to see it, you can feel free to ‘unfriend’ because I know it can be tedious seeing lots of something that doesn’t affect you. I’m just really concerned and this is what I can think to do about it at the moment. 

I've also got over my anxiety about people thinking I'm paranoid because this is actually where we are now and LGBT orgs having been warning about it for years.

[dopajoda]

It's an increasingly worrying time to be LGBT in Scotland and the UK. There's loads of misinformation, especially on transgender issues, without much in the way of actual information from our media or governments. This has allowed anti-LGBT propaganda to develop and take hold to the extent that I had it parroted back at me by another teacher at a local union meeting when I raised concern about increasing hate crimes and discrimination. We're going to need our friends and family to stand up for us much more and to contradict these lies and misconceptions when they're encountered in the wild. I'm going to write a post explaining some myths and am interested to hear what people understand at the moment and what you'd want to know. At the moment I'm planning to include: *Why are LGBT people saying JK Rowling is transphobic/anti-LGBT? (I don't care if you still love Harry Potter or whatever, as long as you understand why we're concerned by her actions). * Misconceptions around the Gender Recognition Act and proposed reforms (how they are nothing to do with access to women's spaces). * Why the UK government's latest double U-turn on their conversion therapy ban. * Trans people in sport (not much but just a bit on my understanding of how it's not as simple as it seems). * Myths about treatment of trans children. * AstroTurf groups purporting to be about 'defending women' or 'fighting for same-sex attracted people' (LGB Alliance) which are really just about peddling transphobic propaganda. * Academics who have supposedly been cancelled 'just for saying sex is real' (they're not cancelled and they didn't just say that). Anything else you have heard about and thought it sounded a bit dodgy/made you think the GRA, trans healthcare, LGBT groups in schools are dangerous? You can ask me anonymously here and I'll include an answer to it in my post: https://dopajoda.tumblr.com/ask Be as open and honest as you can and I promise not to be offended!