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.

BBC Transgender Kids programme: the second salvo.

    After the BBC transgender kids documentary a few weeks ago I made a complaint, and received a standard cut-and-paste response that was breathtaking in its lack of saying anything other than they were blameless.
    Though it's likely to be a futile effort, I've made a response, which I've pasted below.

Your response to my earlier complaint did not even try to address the subject of the complaint, instead it was a content-free cut-and-paste form response full of meaningless platitudes and bogus half-truths.
You did not address my question as to why the programme failed completely to engage with the UK medical establishment. Perhaps it is because in the time since the broadcast the various medical bodies involved have come together and issued a statement condemning utterly the practices put forward in the programme, and you knew that they would not have supported the view you were trying to put forward.
You maintain the pretence that the programme presented a balanced argument, while in practice a simple analysis with a stopwatch reveals a huge time advantage to the views of Zucker and his supporters.
You justify the programme by saying that you had input from opponents of Zucker, and from families with transgender children. Why is it then that the activists and families involved are now saying that the producer of this programme misled them as to its content? Surely that is against whatever rules you are supposed to abide by.
Continuing to pretend that this programme was without fault is putting the BBC on the wrong side of history. Trying to ignore the objections of the transgender community will not make us go away and will not help you. We are the victims and survivors of abuse like that practiced by doctors such as the ones you featured, and we will not stand idly by and see it put onto a new generation. Transgender youth support organisations are already reporting an upsurge in hate incidents as a result of this programme, when the first young trans person has committed suicide because of it what are you going to say to the transgender community then? You can count on it, we won't let you get away with a cut-and-paste answer.

    These things are an exercise in postbag size and in capturing their resources. When they get a large number of complaints, they are forced to take notice, and the aim of our community was to make this one of the most complained about shows of the year. It is likely that my reply will be printed and filed, but will effectively go in the round file. However it's worth doing, because if enough of us follow suit it adds to that complaint volume figure and causes their complaints department to have to work extra hard. We'll see what the coming weeks and months bring on this front, the BBC can be rest assured they haven't seen the last of us.

The BBC respond to the transgender kids complaint

   I've had a response to my complaint over the trans kids documentary. Well, when I say "response", I really mean "Cut and paste a pretty meaningless response which says in effect 'we did nothing wrong'.".

Thanks for contacting us regarding ‘Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best?’ broadcast on the 12 January.

We understand you had concerns with the programme.

With a rise in the number of children being referred to gender clinics, this programme sensitively presented different views from experts and parents on gender dysphoria in children.
For more than thirty years Dr Kenneth Zucker ran Canada's biggest child gender clinic and was considered a recognised authority on childhood gender dysphoria until he lost his job. He believes he was fired for challenging the gender affirmative approach.

This documentary examined Zucker's methods, but it also included significant contributions from his critics and supporters of gender affirmation, including transgender activists in Canada and leading medical experts as well as parents with differing experiences of gender dysphoria and gender reassignment.

Thanks again for contacting us with your views.

Kind Regards

BBC Complaints Team

    I feel as though I'm repeating a trade union speech I gave at a Pride a couple of years ago when I say that we're the last minority they think they can legitimately have a go at. You can't take a pop at ethnic minorities any more, Jewish people are off limits, gay people can't be touched, and women are beyond reproach. But transgender people? Hey, yeah, come on and weigh in, nobody will touch you for that!

    It can't continue, we can't let it.

    Last Saturday I was lucky enough to see Helen Belcher from Trans Media Watch speak to Swindon Transgender Group. She covered several aspects of her work as both a trans campaigner and parliamentary candidate, but as you'd imagine the documentary occupied a significant proportion of the time. It's safe to say that the transgender community will not let this one rest at merely a meaningless email response, and that awkward questions will be asked and BBC executives will be held to account.

    When I say I may soon be spending an evening standing on a pavement in Central London, it's not what you think. Last time we had a demo on this theme, it got results.

Complaint to the BBC re Transgender Kids programme

    The BBC is a respected national broadcaster with a long record of balanced reporting and quality programming. If something comes up on the Beeb the chances are you can trust it, a reputation it has won over many decades of cherished independence from government through its unique trust status.

    Sadly though, even the BBC sometimes falls short of its usually impeccable standards. Yesterday they aired a programme: "Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best?", which presented a very one-sided view of the treatment of transgender young people drawing largely from the input of the discredited Canadian Dr. Kenneth Zucker. I was not going to watch it because I thought it might be too triggery, but I decided this morning I had to catch it on iPlayer because sticking one's head in the sand is never the best option.

    It does not, I am afraid to say, make inspiring viewing. I saw a very one-sided portrayal of transgender medicine for young people which presented Zucker as an expert beyond reproach and failed completely to feature the professionals who work with young transgender people here in the United Kingdom. The BBC has failed, and they have done so badly.

    For what good it will do, I have submitted a complaint, which you can find below. If you saw the programme and found it objectionable I suggest you do the same, and if you haven't seen it and live in the UK I suggest you find it on iPlayer and give it a look. it's too important to ignore. Handy details about making a complaint have been collated by UK Trans Info if you wish to complain as well, perhaps we can make this one of those shows with so many complaints that the BBC have to make amends.

Here's the text of my complaint. Write your own, don't copy mine word-for-word.

This programme relied heavily on the input of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a discredited doctor from Canada who was removed from his post due to his use of conversion therapy methods which caused untold damage to his patients. It presented him as a foremost expert in his field, which given that he has been so comprehensively discredited is hardly accurate today, and it glossed over the excesses of his clinic's work. 

It did not feature the providers of gender clinic services to trans children here in the UK such as the Tavistock Clinic, nor did it feature the work of support organisations who are active in the field such as Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, or GIRES. The majority of the example patients featured in it were not from the UK, and the view it gave of how youngsters with gender dysphoria should be treated was in sharp contrast to either that of the professional bodies in the field, WPATH, or the NHS. 

It treated adult activists in the transgender community as dangerous meddlers in the treatment of others when in fact they are the survivors of exactly the kind of abuse that doctors like Zucker practice, and which the programme promoted. 

This programme was nothing short of an outright attack on a vulnerable and marginalised minority, and in particular on members of that minority who are too young to speak for themselves. Transgender people have a significantly higher incidence of suicide than the general population, and because of attitudes like those presented as mainstream by the programme that suicide figure is increased. People kill themselves because of the views the BBC is promoting with programmes like this one. 

The BBC should present an abject apology for this dangerous and objectionable piece of programming, and immediately take steps to rectify it by presenting the views of real experts in the field from the United Kingdom, who do not have episodes like Zucker's in their pasts.

Edit: This isn't the first time...

The Year Of Teh Tranz

    2015, if you believe the Chattering Classes, has been the Year of Transgender.
    By which they mean, there are some famous and very gender-conforming people they can safely talk about without straying too far from of their comfort zone. From Caitlyn Jenner through a host of TV shows sporting token one-dimensional transgender characters to Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, the transgender narrative has been packaged up in Cellophane like a Barbie doll, something for daytime telly and newspaper colour supplements.
    The trouble is, it's a very synthetic transgender narrative. Transition is instantaneous and successful, and transgender people are achingly cisnormative. Nobody ever has problems accessing healthcare, and nobody faces discrimination in their employment or personal life. The transgender drinking game has never been played so often.
    It's not been all bad this year though. It's taken about four decades, but the world has finally realised that the ravings of radical feminism on the subject of transgender people are hate speech. Germaine Greer and her ilk have finally become persona non grata, and in particular her resorting to ever more hate speech upon receiving that news has propelled those views more firmly into the cold.
    Meanwhile though the reality of life for the unseen majority of transgender people who don't have their own reality TV show or write for the Guardian remains pretty bleak. Poverty, violence, employment discrimination, awful access to appropriate healthcare, the list goes on. If you happen to be a transgender person who isn't white-skinned it gets about ten times worse, the list of casualties read out on Transgender Day of Remembrance drives this point home.
    So while it's great that we are less often the target of Richard Littlejohn style tabloid hate speech or the butt of Little Britain style offencive comedy, don't make the mistake of thinking we've made it because we've moved to being daytime television sensations. There is still plenty of work to be done, and progress is not being aided by publicity-seeking starlets, celebrity transitioners or attention-grabbing journalists.

Finally listening

    Every now and then as you observe the trans community's path through the world, you become aware that a watershed moment has been passed. A few years ago we had one when we held a vigil outside the offices of the Daily Mail following the death of Lucy Meadowes, bashing us in the way they had became something tabloids couldn't do without censure.
    And the last few weeks. The Parliamentary Women & Equalities Committee holding a wide-ranging enquiry into transgender affairs, and the noted feminist Germaine Greer facing the threat of a no-platforming at Cardiff University over her views on trans people. When she angrily pulled out of the event and launched an astonishing hate-speech diatribe on the matter there was none of the chorus of defence from feminist worthies we've come to expect, instead she finds herself a pariah, damaged goods.

    It's almost as though a switch has been flipped, and people are finally listening.

    Of course, it's not all plain sailing. One of the absurdities of the gender recognition system is laid bare as a trans woman sentenced to twelve weeks for assault finds herself heading for a male prison because she doesn't have a gender recognition certificate. After tens of thousands of signatures on a petition the latest news is that she's likely to be granted an appeal. The word is that she may escape a custodial sentence and have some form of community punishment instead. The Ministry of Justice is so anxious to dodge the prospect of a trans woman in a female jail without a gender recognition certificate that they're prepared to forgo the sentence altogether. Good news for her, but isn't the point of equality that we should be treated the same in all situations as anyone else? Shouldn't she just serve the time in a women's jail? I'm not sure "Embarrass the MoJ as a trans woman criminal, get let off" is a message I want to come out of this.

    Still, at least people are expressing outrage. A decade ago they'd have been a metaphorical pitchfork waving mob yelling "Burn her!".

    I await the Women & Equalities report with interest. I'm not holding too much hope though, as a friend once said to me: "Politicians take our rights away, we get them back in the courts".

Blood on their hands

    Another week, another set of Media Trans Sensations. In the USA it's Bruce Jenner, over here it's more froth from the ever-self-publicising Paris Lees. Jenner has come out in a media frenzy to publicise the inevitable TV series about his (he has for the moment retained the male pronoun) transition, while Lees is further ensconsed in her role as the UK media's Pet Transgender Person.
    The general public now knows all about transition y'see. It's a sanitised version in which there are no impediments on your way to any treatment, nobody suffers any consequences, nobody has depression, and of course you come out of it looking like a dolly-bird. It seems now that the media can no longer pick on us they are choosing to smother us in Human Interest.
    A week ago an inquest was held into the death of a transgender person who had been hit by a train last November. You might have heard of her: the Scrabble champion Mikki Nicholson.
    Mikki committed suicide after suffering much public harassment for being transgender. Her case is sadly nothing unusual, I am sure readers will be aware of many others.
    So I'm afraid that Jenner, Lees, Maloney et al are tainted for me. The media who are patting themselves on the back for being so inclusive and sensitive have blood on their hands. They are the same scum who fomented an atmosphere in which it was acceptable to push people like Lucy Meadowes and Mikki Nicholson to suicide, and now they're acting as though none of that happened and they're the Transgender Person's Best friend.

     Screw 'em I say, and screw anyone whose desire for self-publicity is so strong they're prepared to forget all that and get into bed with them. They don't speak for me, and never will.

Watershed

    It's not often that you have the feeling of having been present at a watershed moment. Of course, such moments are usually something you only realise were watershed moments after the event.
    But looking back from the end of a rather busy year I think I was privileged to witness such a moment, though it certainly didn't seem like it at the time. On a rather dull day at the end of March I was among several hundred people who stood on a West London pavement for a couple of hours outside the offices of the Daily Mail. We had gathered to hold a vigil for a woman called Lucy Meadows who had committed suicide shortly after the Mail had published an extremely vicious piece by columnist Richard Littlejohn questioning her suitability as a trans woman to work as a teacher.
    We stood there in the gloom, held a silence, listened to a few speeches and were glowered at by a few Mail hacks leaving the building Then we dispersed - I went to the pub with an ex-boss who I was pleased to find was also there, I'd always harboured suspicions that she might be like me but was never able to ask.
    At the time, it seemed a futile gesture. Leveson had delivered his report a few months before and precious little had happened, then Julie Burchill had penned a disgraceful piece about us for the Observer which despite a storm of protest from our community seemed to result in very little censure.
    And indeed, it seemed to have little effect on the Mail. Same editor, same star columnist. Same bile, currently directed at immigrants from Romania. Why did we bother!
    We were never going to change the Mail through standing on a pavement. But it's only in the last few months that I've come to the conclusion that the Lucy Meadows vigil was a watershed moment. In itself it was a minor step, however while before that moment it was considered acceptable to publish pieces like Littlejohn's or Burchill's, afterwards it most definitely was not. I sense the atmosphere changed after that chilly evening on a West London pavement, the momentum changed ever so slightly in our favour. It would be foolish to say that there will be no more Lucy Meadows moments or unfortunate advertising campaigns, but there is the sense that henceforth they will be fewer and we will no longer have to work to persuade people that they're in bad taste.
    Maybe this has been our year, the year everything changed. It would be nice to think so, however I guess we'll only truly know in a decade's time.
   

You're Never More than a Minute from the Nazis

    My wife once described British TV to her mother as having an obsession with the war. Sitting in their smart North American kitchen I leapt to the defence of our broadcasters.
    On our return to these shores our first evening had (in those days of 5 channel TV) two different war documentaries and an episode of Dad's Army on the telly. Well that told me then, didn't it. She was right.
    I find it to be rather unhealthy. It is not necessary to recycle in tiniest detail the events of nearly 70 years ago when the rest of the world has moved on. Of course it's important to preserve the memory of the war's victims, but the incessant rehashing risks devaluing everything.
    There's one aspect I find particularly disturbing though, casting German actions in terms of theatrical evil while lionising exactly the same things done by the Allies.
    It's very easy to do.  The Nazis were evil, right? The Holocaust. Received Opinion at its most fundamental. But what about the Germans who were just ordinary people fighting a war in the same fashion as their opponents? Just like the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Americans, Russians and countless more. Your dad, your granddad, your uncle. Germans doing the same things as them, because they were German and their country was at war. No war crimes, just the horror of conflict. Still evil? No more than your granddad.
    Unfortunately not in the eyes of documentary makers. A couple of ones I've seen recently spring to mind: one about air defences in which Dad's Army style Home Guard anti-aircraft gunners were described in those terms, and one about the German plans to bomb America. That last one had plenty of justifiably nasty stuff to talk about in the underground slave labour factory making rockets, but then they started talking in the same terms about Luftwaffe pilots planning near-suicidal missions using long range seaplanes as bombers, or even the team of spies sent to plant bombs in New York. At the same time as we were pulverising their cities with thousand bomber raids and sending teams of SOE spies - or in modern parlance, terrorists - in to plant bombs in German targets. Still theatrical evil? Time to look in the mirror. And then perhaps time to read for a moment about the bombing of Dresden.
    I believe it is the power of television that has done most to keep us largely at peace over the last 60 years or so. The horror of what is being and has been done on their name can no longer be completely concealed from the populace when high definition colour video lands on their screens the next day. The Americans learned this in Vietnam, a war lost as much in the living rooms of Middle America as in the jungles of Indo-China.
    I feel something's been lost though in the way British television deals with the Second World War. We're presented a nauseous pantomime of recycled horror that is as formulaic as a real pantomime, something that significantly cheapens the very important message. It's important to never forget, but we have to move on from this.

Vigil part two

    Last night I joined the vigil for Lucy Meadows outside the offices of the Daily Mail in Kensington. There were several hundred of us from the non-trans and the trans communities, and both MtF and FtM among the latter. There were addresses, a two-minute silence, and a moment of chanting from some idiots who hadn't got the message that this was a vigil not a demo.
    Some Socialist Workers were trying to hand out placards, they'll try to hijack any cause. I remarked that I'd rather be seen with a copy of the Mail than something with their logo on it, if their recent rape scandal wasn't enough I remember their tactics from my student days. No thanks.
    A couple of amiable police officers were on hand to keep order, not that we caused them much trouble save for their needing to remind us not to stand in the road. Various sour-faced Mail hacks gave us a glance as they left the building.
    As a dignified show of solidarity I think we made our point. A couple of MPs were in attendance, as were quite a few journalists and a cameraman. We won't feature prominently in today's paper, but that wasn't the point of the exercise.
    When papers like the Mail and their political allies rail against people they don't like, they are very fond of saying that along with rights come responsibilities. A defence of their conduct I've heard over the last week has been one of freedom of speech, somehow a free press means that columns like the Littlejohn one on Lucy Meadows must be acceptable.
    To which defence I'd repeat their line: along with the right of free speech comes the responsibility for its judicious use. I hope in a small way last night we helped remind them of that.

Vigil

   By now most of you should have read about Lucy Meadows. A teacher early in her transition, outed by a local newspaper and subjected to a viciously transphobic Daily Mail piece, now dead presumably by her own hand. And even in death it didn't stop, she was misgendered continuously in the reporting of the aftermath.
    I sincerely hope the Mail is brought to account for what they did. There are petitions circling calling for the removal of the worst offender, but I feel that even in the unlikely event that they claim their scalp they will not cause a change of culture. I  am pinning more hope on a campaign called "Don't buy transphobia", targeting the Mail's larger advertisers. It won't change their bottom lines much but it stands a chance of achieving its aim because it holds the promise of bad publicity that I can say from first hand experience is something that brand owners hold in chronic fear.
    There is a vigil for Lucy Meadows outside the Mail offices in Kensington, tomorrow evening at 6:30. I'll be there as will many others like me, standing up and being counted. Thinking of Lucy, of those who went before her, and those who will come after her if this is allowed to continue unchallenged.
    A chilly West London pavement might seem an inauspicious place from which to challenge the culture of an entire industry. But with a strong wind of change blowing through what used to be known collectively as Fleet Street, perhaps it's time for our community to catch a little bit of it in our sails. God knows, we've waited long enough!

They look after their own

    What a lovely morning, I wake up to an email from the press complaints commission with their judgement on that Julie Burchill Observer piece.
    Tl;dr: the PCC feels none of their rules were broken. Unsurprising really, on several levels. As an organisation they are famous for their uselessness, and this is simply a last gasp of incompetence from an organisation in its final hours.
    There's also a nasty whiff about it. It's a tired refrain and often the last resort of scoundrels: "If you said that about (insert politically correct minority here) you'd be locked up, why do you think you can say it about me?", but it contains some truth. Had Burchill penned a piece targeting some groups other than transgender people, would she have had such an easy ride?
    Above all though there is a sense of the Press establishment looking after one of their own. The reason Burchill's piece was published in the first place is that she had reached the point of being beyond reproach, as one of the grandees of journalism the editors did not apparently subject her work to the same scrutiny they would have given to a less prominent writer. I can't quite shake the feeling that the PCC have something of the same about them, and that conclusion does not reflect well on them.
    Before we get too upset about the PCC it is however very important to understand that their decision is irrelevant. The fuss that surrounded the publication of the piece was a watershed moment. Pre-Burchill the Guardian/Observer group and other so-called quality newspapers would happily publish hate speech from radical feminists like her because they followed the logic that "she's a Feminist, she must be OK", now those days are firmly over. They have lost an unquestioning mouthpiece for their more toxic views, and the world is a better place for it.

Complaining to the PCC over Julie Burchill's Guardian piece

    Lovely day here in the UK. Bright, cold, sunny. Frost on the ground, ice on the puddles. And a deeply offensive piece concerning the UK transgender community on the Guardian website from the feminist writer Julie Burchill. I won't link to it here because I feel it doesn't need to generate any more advert income, but if you really want to read it then Google is probably your friend.
    In my mind, it crosses the line from journalism or comment into outright hate speech. And as such I feel it should not be allowed to stand.
    Fortunately there is somewhere I can complain, the Press Complaints Commission. it's something of a toothless tiger, but it's all we've got and if they receive a big pile of complaints about an article they have to take a look. I'd urge you all to consider complaining too if the Burchill piece has offended you.
    The text of my complaint is reproduced below:

The Guardian (web site)
13/01/2013
"Transsexuals should cut it out"

Please explain how you believe the Code of Practice has been breached
                 
I believe the Code of Practice has been breached because of the use of prejudicial and pejorative language with reference to the transgender community. As a gender dysphoria patient I feel that this article is likely to result in increased likelihood of my exposure to hate crimes as it perpetuates an environment in which such language is deemed acceptable and thus incites further attacks against people like me.

In particular the following language used in the article is problematic:

1. "dicks in chicks' clothing", using offensive language to imply that transwomen are in fact men. This amounts to incitement to commit hate crimes, as transwomen are often attacked for using female spaces such as ladies lavatories.
2. "women – real and imagined", yet again implying that transwomen are not real women.
3. "having one's nuts taken off" and "To have your cock cut off". Repeating the damaging fallacy that the only concern of gender dysphoria patients it to have their genitals modified, something very far indeed from the medical truth. This causes great distress to those of us who are going through the medical process of gender dysphoria treatment.
4. "trannies". As a language specialist by trade I have researched this word extensively. It is used in both offensive and non-offensive settings but this article is definitely trying to use it in a pejorative sense.
5. "shemales" and "shims". These two words are unambiguously offensive when used in relation to the transgender community and this article repeats them in a manner that can only be seen as pejorative.

Please add the clause(s) you believe to have been breached
                 
Section 12 (i) "The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability."

Dodgy docs and fail hashtags

    I can't say the last few days have been good for the cause of transgender medicine here in the UK. You see, the papers have picked up a story that's been rumbling along quietly for a while now, that of the General Medical Council investigating Dr. Richard Curtis, prominent trans man as well as the go-to doctor for private treatment of our condition. As I understand it there's the usual crowd of regretters claiming that they never wanted to transition really, and blaming their doctor.
    The news coverage has been predictably depressing. Short on news but long on sensationalism and outright transphobia, it's as though the Leveson Inquiry never happened. The trans community, seeing the whole debacle as something of a witch hunt against one of their own and reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding the departure of Dr. Russell Reid a decade ago, have reacted with anger. There's a hashtag on Twitter, #TransDocFail, which is full of the staggering ineptitudes and failures of duty of care felt daily by transgender people in the medical system here in the UK. It's depressing stuff, but it needs to be said as a response to the rather obvious misinformation on the subject.
    The trouble is, I'm not entirely comfortable with the battle lines here. I think there are serious shortcomings with the way transgender people receive medical help here in the UK and I've been happy to write about them here ad infinitum over the last few years, but my personal experience of the GIC system has been mostly pretty good. I've been unimpressed a couple of times by psychiatrists modifying their responses to me because of my background and occupation, but the fact is my course through the system has been exactly as advertised. And on the other side, I'm not entirely at ease with the haste with which some people I know have passed through the private system. The screwed-up ones in my experience tend overwhelmingly to have transitioned very quickly through the private route, and I can't help thinking less than eighteen months from hairy panty wearer to post-op is just a little irresponsible on the part of an attending doctor.
    So rather than black-and-white I see grey on both sides. Overwhelmingly though I see the most fault in the relative scarcity of professionals involved in our field and their concentration in a fairly small number of places. I can't help thinking that the best way to fix the #TransDocFail would be not to go after individual doctors or clinics but to broaden the availability of treatment over many more centres.
    Transgender medicine is not rocket science, surely it can't be that difficult to make it better!

Leveson delivers his report

    Yesterday's big news: the publication of the Leveson inquiry report into the culture, practice and ethics of the press. The stories in the public mind involve tapping into the phone messages of murdered children and other similarly criminal activities, but the remit of the inquiry covered all abuses committed.
    Good news for vulnerable and marginalised minorities like us in the transgender community. Trans Media Watch made a very well received submission which was mentioned by Leveson in several places through the report.
    The most significant quote is mentioned in TMW's response to the report(PDF).

“it is clear that there is a marked tendency in a section of the press to fail to treat members of the transgender and intersex communities with sufficient dignity and respect... parts of the tabloid press continue to seek to 'out' transgender people notwithstanding its prohibition in the Editors' Code.”

    In gathering a corpus of transgender related news stories I've seen ample evidence of this in action and I'm sure I stand with the rest of our community in particularly welcoming this mention of the problem in the Leveson report. TMW asked me for a copy of the corpus before delivering the submission, I hope it was of use to them.
    There seems to be some confusion on the part of the politicians over what sort of legislation is required to implement Leveson's recommendations. It is very clear that they must do something, let's hope it doesn't turn into a "Something must be done".

Everything I've worked to avoid

    This morning's hot link in the world of trans people, in the UK at least, is this: "My Husband's Sex Change". A piece in the Guardian from the ex-wife of a now-transitioned transwoman about the process of change from the husband and father she once knew to the transitioner from whom she separated.
    Some of the language isn't what I'd prefer to see - "Sex change", how delightfully 1970s - but the Guardian lives up to its reputation for serious journalism by not sensationlising the story and using the words of the woman herself.
    It makes rather depressing reading to be honest. Of course it's only the partner's view, but she does not come across as quite so vitriolic as many I have encountered in her situation and it is possible to read between the lines.
    And I'm afraid her husband - "Tom" as he is described in the piece - comes across as a bit of a selfish arse. Read the piece and judge for yourselves, but I came away from it both angry and sad. Sad for her and her children, and angry that we have yet another depiction of us as selfish to contend with.
    Sometimes I have people within this sphere expressing bewilderment at my path. Reading the piece, maybe they'll understand. Not hiding anything and making sure my wife knows the trans community as I do means that while our relationship still has its turbulent moments we're still together and there is no deceit.
   One of the saddest parts of the trans experience is meeting people crippled by what they have lost. If that ever happens to me I never want to feel I didn't do my utmost to avoid that loss.

Fashionable diagnosis

    You can pick your friends, so the saying goes, but not your family.

    I have two elder sisters. Both have at times been wonderful, but at other times can be extremely pig-headed, opinionated, and annoying as hell. The eldest I've been out to for ages, in fact I went shopping with her in Manchester when I met her at Sparkle last year. My other sister has been estranged for a decade, it's a long story but some very welcome family reconciliation is under way.
    Elder sis decided now was the time to tell middle sis about me. I asked her not to because I wanted to pick my time to tell all. In practice that was going to be in the summer sometime, middle sis's youngsters are coming to stay with our parents for a while. My protestations were not accepted, and despite my getting rather annoyed and suggesting that our relationship would be inevitably compromised by such a going against my wishes, she insisted she was going to do it anyway when she visited middle sis at Easter.
    So I did the only thing I could, I asked my mother to tell middle sis on my terms, as she has an open communication channel and I don't. My mother wrote a very well-crafted email, and off it went.
    Earlier today my mother read middle sis's reply to me. Better than expected, she came across as understanding rather than hostile. A paragraph about how surprising it was because I was such a boy when I was younger. I guess the idea of my trying to conform to expectations hadn't occurred to her, 'cos I sure as hell didn't really want to be a boy at the time.
    As expected though, something upsetting. Middle sis is something of a Daily Mail reader. Really, at one time she even had it delivered. So the line in which she questioned the diagnosis was not entirely unexpected. But I found the wording she used to be slightly upsetting, questioning whether a second opinion had been sought for such a "fashionable diagnosis".
    Sigh. I am not blaming my sister for this, I'm sure she'll take on board my explanation of the reality. That a GD diagnosis is not easy to get, you have to convince not one but three psychiatrists, one locally and two at the GIC, and the diagnosis process happens over at least a year for NHS patients. And that far from being fashionable, it's one of the most deeply unfashionable branches of NHS medicine. She's not stupid, even though at times I have despaired at her actions.
    What I find upsetting is that a lifetime of veering to the right of the political spectrum and consuming the media from that quadrant has conditioned her to believe that when her brother comes to her with a medical condition that is life-changing in every way possible, she should question whether it is the fad of a bunch of fashionable trendy quacks.
     Her politics are not the issue though. Both dangerous idiots and good people come equally from left, right, and centre of the political spectrum. Believing what she reads in the papers isn't really her fault and isn't the issue either. I guess my annoyance as always comes down to the awful quality of the information presented through those channels. If you want a small example of how the drip,drip,drip of transphobic stories in the media affect real trans people, here's mine.
    It could have been a lot worse. I can work with that, explain it to her a bit better. If she'd gone off the deep end things would have been a lot messier and my mother would have been rather upset, as it is there's hope. My relations with elder sis have grown decidedly frostier, but it looks as though this might have broken some ice with middle sis, which can only be a good thing.
    There's something. A lot of coming out stories end with an ostracism, it might just work out that I get a reconciliation from this one. Which I'd say could be a result, wouldn't you?

Once is unfortunate...

    Oh dear. For the Beaumont Society to mess up once in a week by breaking the story of the pregnant British trans bloke is unfortunate. For them to mess up twice by apparently giving their blessing to a deeply offensive advertising campaign is downright unforgivable.
    I've met the current Beaumont Society president on several occasions, and I consider her to be pretty sound. I've never met either of the two officials named as sources for these two incidents, but I have to question their competence after showing such a conspicuous lack of basic common sense in the face of external enquiry.
    I'm reminded of my days at university, of student societies. Students love titles and positions, they look good on the CV. It's pretty easy to get yourself in the position of public relations officer for the University Tiddlywinks Society, you just have to show willingness for the job and it's yours.
    But there's the thing, nobody gives a toss about the Tiddlywinks Soc. You can say what you like, and it'll never matter. No newspaper is ever going to solicit your opinion so the "I'll do it!" school of recruitment is fine in that arena.
    Unfortunately though the Beaumont Society operates on a wider stage than a university students union. It seems as one of our better-known national trans organisations they've become the go-to destination for journalists and others looking for a Quotable Tranny. A press contact for such an organisations has a very simple task when faced with a question: say the right thing, or say nothing. Which usually means "Say the right thing if you know what you're doing, or if you don't know what you're doing then shut the f**k up!".
    I mean, come on! It's corporate employee 101: never say anything without ensuring it's on-message first!The only recruitment model for a public relations job with an organisation like the Beaumont Society should be one based on merit, if you don't know what you're doing you should never be allowed the job just because you say "I'll do it!", no matter how long you've been 'on the scene'!

    A few days ago I defended them as a Beaumont Society member against some of their harsher critics and I still stand by that defence as far as it went. By all means knock them for their inept media handling I said, but don't knock them for supporting all facets of our community at the grass roots level.
    I'm afraid I can't defend their inept officialdom though. I won't be canceling my membership because I still believe they can be a force for good in our community, but for what the voice of one member is worth I expect  from within to see both a cull of the inept and a significant change in their public relations strategy from one of rent-a-quote to one of saying the right thing or nothing at all.
    It's not easy, defending an organisation that seems to have a knack for becoming ever more indefensible.

Crunch crunch, saw saw, code code

    All the clichés of the British media have been wheeled out, it's been a snowy weekend hereabouts! Pretty cold as it happens, we had a -14 celcius frost a few nights ago.
    I spent most of the weekend at my parents place. Watched our resident fox nosing around in the field, threw him an apple. And spent a load of time in the orchard, pruning apple trees. As always a restful occupation, this time with the added fun of drawing large patterns in the snow dragging branches across the field. The harvest seems a long way away, but in eight weeks it'll be nearly blossom time. I should have finished the pruning earlier.
    So that's the crunch crunch and the saw saw part. The coding came later, I returned to my trans news analysis. Yet again looking at the sources, this time breaking them out by month. The image below shows a colourful graph that should be an abstract bedspread design rather than a representation of media data. Click on it to see it at its full size. It's even more obvious which outlets have an obsession with us, and how constant it all is. I should point out here that one UK paper is missing: the Times hides its content behind a paywall so doesn't appear in Google News.
    Next I'll be looking at language rather than source. You can never tell until the results are in, but I hope there'll be a few stories to tell there, too.
    Just a thought, given current UK news I might add "pregnant man" to my search terms. They can't resist a new angle, can they!

Trans news, in the news

    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.