Yesterday was something of an important day for trans people in the UK, for it saw Trans Media Watch's submission to the Leveson enquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press. (If you fancy watching it, it's here, about an hour in)
Important because it offered a rare chance to lay bare the outrageous language and attitudes unleashed against us in front of the wider world, and in an arena in which such a submission will be listened to and it is likely, acted upon. Helen from TMW did an excellent job of explaining the concerns of the trans community with respect to the media as well as highlighting some of the more blatant examples.
It was rather unexpected to receive a request from TMW for my corpus of trans news stories a week or two ago after I wrote a blog post about it. I hope it was of help in producing their submission. I only wish I'd started collecting it earlier and had more data to offer.
I've been a little absent from here these last few days. Partly because of a busy work schedule and partly because I've caught the coding bug again. My visualisation tool for trans-news-derived data is slowly taking shape.
Who knows what the media's reaction will be? They seem to be a law unto themselves. Well I hope the enquiry and subsequent proposals are taken seriously. I thank those who have spent time submitting input to the enquiry and hope their efforts are justly rewarded for all our sakes
ReplyDeleteShirley Anne
Judging by the current pregnant trans man story it's not very encouraging, is it.
ReplyDelete