Monday 17 April 2017

Complaining: it works sometimes.

   A few weeks ago I made a complaint to the BBC, after a regrettable Radio 4 report about a trans woman prisoner in which she was repeatedly misgendered. I received a reply, which I missed at the time because it went into my spam folder.
Many thanks for contacting us about PM, as broadcast on 21 March 2017.
Thanks for raising with us the pronoun we used during the item on a transgender prisoner being moved to a women's prison - we took this to the editor and those involved in the story.
You're right about the pronoun use during the item. We always seek to use the correct wording, but unfortunately that didn't happen here.
It was an oversight, for which we apologise.
We value the time you've taken to point this out and do seek to use the correct wording.
   So there we are, a straight apology. Most likely not just because of me, but because Trans Media Watch got on their case about it. But without a load of people complaining, we wouldn't be there.

   So keep complaining when you see or hear this kind of rubbish. Sometimes, it works.