India Willoughby: British media’s vicious persecution of trans people has to stop – or more will die
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By India Willoughby (Twitter: @IndiaWilloughby)
For the first time that I can remember in three years, the trans community have not woken up to be a barrage of stories calling us deluded and dangerous – a threat to society. Predators. Groomers. What a shame it’s taken the murder of an innocent teenage girl to briefly bring a momentary pause from our pursuers.
Brianna Ghey was that girl. Fresh-faced and 16-years-old. An innocent who just happened to be born trans – who was leading a normal life, with normal friends, and normal interests. Her whole life ahead of her. No threat to anyone.
The motive for Brianna’s senseless murder in a park last week remains unknown as I write this, though the Police say it may have been a hate crime.
But if you ask the trans community, there is no doubt about why Brianna is no longer with us.
“It’s common place to see studio debates about us on tv and radio, with nobody trans invited. Double-page spreads with everyone giving their views – except for us.”
We knew something like this was going to happen. We could feel it.
There are endless stories every month in the UK on trans people. Almost exclusively negative. Written by non trans people, because there are no trans columnists, presenters or reporters within our mainstream media (at least, none I am aware of which have been public about their transgender background).
It’s common place to see studio debates about us on tv and radio, with nobody trans invited. Double-page spreads with everyone giving their views – except for us.
Even though it’s us they are talking about.
Throw in a Tory Government who are also waging war on us on multiple fronts, and it’s a pretty miserable time.
There’s so much I could tell you. But because this is for Hacked Off I want to concentrate on the media – and what can be done about their role in all this.
Clearly, they are the biggest driver of this hostility towards people like me, and they should be brought to book. But – as countless other minorities have found out – the press watchdog IPSO is utterly useless.
“If IPSO were confronted with the most explicit racism targeted at people of colour, Jewish people, or any other group, they could do nothing about it”
Only once, to my knowledge, have they ever found a single newspaper to have written anything transphobic. Which is just ludicrous given the things that are being said.
But that’s down to their definition of what counts as transphobic. Under their rules, as long as you are not talking about a named individual, anything goes. You can monster an entire demographic of society, and providing you don’t say it’s about John Smith or Jenny Brown, it’s perfectly fine.
To put this into context, if IPSO were confronted with the most explicit racism targeted at people of colour, Jewish people, or any other group, they could do nothing about it – so long as nobody is named. And complaints about factual inaccuracies are often just dismissed as opinion.
Ludicrous.
The respect shown to trans people in how stories are written about us over the last four years has also deteriorated rapidly. Following the death of a trans teacher called Lucy Meadows on the back of a vicious article by Richard Littlejohn, newspapers made an effort to educate themselves. They promised not to ‘deadname’ – the act of revealing a trans person’s old identity. They promised not to mention a person was trans, or publish information about their former life, unless it was pertinent to the story.
But, as the hysteria has taken hold, those fairly meagre concessions to respecting trans people have fallen away.
Deadnaming has returned. If someone is trans, it’s often a prominent part of the article. The inference being that the bad person – because they only ever do ‘bad’ trans people stories – is iffy because they are trans.
This week, IPSO announced it was reviewing its guidance on reporting trans stories to editors. Any fair person looking at the three year blitzkreig we’ve been enduring every single day would see how unfair it’s been, and how it’s leading to our safety being put at risk.
The evidence is all there. If you drew two corresponding graphs of trans hate crime in the UK since 2017 and the number of trans articles published over the same period, they would inevitably soar in tandem.
That’s what happens when you demonise a group. Idiots think it’s ok to physically attack you.
The same papers who have suddenly dropped all of their trans coverage for the first time in three years following Brianna Ghey’s murder are fooling nobody. It’s a guilty silence.
Last week, they would have been calling Brianna deluded. A danger to other kids. A boy.
When she was most definitely a girl. A beloved daughter. And a beautiful sister.
India Willoughby is a broadcaster and the world’s first trans newsreader.
Twitter: @IndiaWilloughby