Open Letter about Trans Media Portrayal signed by lots

[CrazyToast]

This open letter (text is below, not linking to Pink News), tweeted by Sarah Champion MP and put out by Helen Belcher has got me despairing.

The total lies in this letter boggle my mind! How can legitimate professionals put their names to this without researching?

"This coverage has often conflated trans women and girls with sex offenders, implied that all trans women and girls are threats, and has usually been insufficiently challenged."

Don't they understand that no one things ALL trans people are threats? Just that male bodied people are potential threats and that we DONT KNOW who is dangerous and who isnt so we have to treat everyone with caution? Don't they understand that all women operate like this, it is anticipation of risk? Is this just wilful misinterpretation?

"The reality is that trans people are far more likely to be targets of violence than other women."

We all know this is false. Handful of trans women killed in UK in a decade vs two women a week.

The letter in full

We strongly condemn the way the British media has given significant coverage to small groups who wish to push organisations to break existing law with regards to trans people. The Equality Act protects trans people from discrimination and automatic exclusion from same sex spaces, yet over recent days, weeks and months, the media has given significant space to activists who wish to roll back trans people’s existing rights.

This coverage has often conflated trans women and girls with sex offenders, implied that all trans women and girls are threats, and has usually been insufficiently challenged. The reality is that trans people are far more likely to be targets of violence than other women. Isolated extreme and abhorrent cases cannot be extrapolated to infer the behaviour of all trans people. Those countries where gender recognition is operated on an administrative rather than a quasi-judicial process also do not provide any evidence to support the assertion that trans people are a threat or misuse the process to cause harm to others.

The relentlessness of the hostility across the media and the media’s inability to adequately challenge the false claims put forward have led to a significant decline in the mental health of many trans people. Reports of suicides of trans people are on the increase. Free speech does not give free reign to cause people harm.

We call on the British media to revise the way they cover trans stories, to look at the reality faced by trans people rather than focus on extreme theories which have no basis in fact, and to apologise for the significant emotional and mental stress they have caused to trans people over the past year.

Helen Belcher – Chair, LGBT Consortium
Baroness Barker
Dr MJ Barker
Michelle Brewer – Barrister, Garden Court Chambers
Baroness Brinton – President of the Liberal Democrats
Christine Burns MBE
Baroness Burt of Solihull – Women’s Spokesperson, Liberal Democrats
Lord Carlile of Berriew
Lord Cashman
Prof Brian Cathcart – School of Journalism, Kingston University
Dr Louise Chambers – Lecturer, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Sarah Champion MP – former Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities
Dominic Davies – Pink Therapy UK
Martha Dunkley – ClinicQ
Jane Fae
Fox and Owl Fisher – filmmakers, My Genderation
Kate Green MP – former Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
Susie Green – CEO, Mermaids UK
Dr Adrian Harrop
Prof Sally Hines – School of Sociology, Leeds University
Jennie Kermode – Chair, Trans Media Watch
Fiyaz Mughal – TellMama
Claire McCann – Barrister, Cloisters Chambers
Monty Moncrieff MBE – CEO, London Friend
Layla Moran MP
Prof Surya Munro – School of Human and Health Sciences, Huddersfield University
Nik Noone – CEO, Galop
Lord Paddick
Prof Julian Petley – Professor of Journalism, Brunel University
Tris Reid-Smith – Owner, Gay Star News
Linda Riley – Publisher, DIVA Magazine
Paul Roberts OBE – CEO, LGBT Consortium
Cat Smith MP – Shadow Secretary of State for Young People
Dame Caroline Spelman MP
Jay Stewart MBE – CEO, Gendered Intelligence
Jo Swinson MP – Deputy Leader, Liberal Democrats
Dr Damian Tambini FRSA – London School of Economics
Peter Tatchell
Dr Ben Vincent – Chair, GIRES
Dr Paul Wragg – School of Law, Leeds University
Dr Tray Yeadon-Lee – School of Human and Health Sciences, Huddersfield University

It's been confirmed that this letter was rejected for publication by the Guardian as well as by the Independent. www.libdemvoice.org/senior-lib-dems-call-on-media-to-apologise-to-transgender-people-over-hostile-coverage-58881.html

No surprise there then. I would have thought the Grauniad was their publication of choice. Pink News will print anything.

Starting a fight with MSM when the evidence is against you is probably a daft idea, but no change there

How does this list compare with attendees at Still here?

Just looking at the Libdem voice article. Are there actually ANY LGB people in the LibDems LGBT group or are they all T. They literally only campaign on one issue.

Thanks Annandale for telling me about fell running. But I still can't see anywhere that this will be affected by the GRA thing going on at the moment? The Equality Act is a completely separate piece of legislation and government keeps saying that it has no plans to revise that? So this GRA thing seems just to be about admin procedures and saving money. I do feel that if fell running is unfair then the body that controls it needs lobbying, like any other sport. But at risk of BigotedWoman calling me a silly woman and telling me to go back to my knitting again, I can't make sense of this whole mad angst over the GRA!

The GRA moving to self ID will make it as easy to change your legal sex as it is to change your name. If anyone can fill in a form and become a woman, how can the EA continue to protect women in the way it was designed to do (ie, by allowing women penis-free spaces)?

Lauren Jeska transitioned from male to female and obtained a GRC. They then ran as a female in women's fell running. Increasingly sports are anticipating self-id and dealing with the fact that countries handle this issue differently, and saying that any individual stating they are female and with testosterone levels at the lower end of the male range can compete as women. Rather than lobbying each sport individually, i prefer to campaign against legal changes which alter the definition of who is considered a woman, as the basis for a range of changes.

Brian Paddick has decided where he is on the debate, then. Did he actually meet with women's groups, as he said he was going to do? Or did the LDLGBT+ mafia get him good and proper?

I'm actually surprised there aren't more academics on the list of signatories. I think quite a few people are now deciding not to publicly ally with this group.

Thank you Annandale and BettyDuMonde for explaining. I'm pretty sure - well, I've checked on the government websites - and having a GRC doesn't give anyone automatic entry to single-sex areas, because the EA sets out how that is decided. Which I suppose is why I haven't come across this being a problem anywhere. But I can see your thinking now and thank you for explaining. I couldn't myself, you know, act against a whole group of people because they were different - at least, not for something as abstract as fell running. It makes me think of all those poor children with Downes and autism, and their mothers, who were rounded up and gassed, gay people too - maybe even transgender people? - and the awfulness of that whole terrible time. I won't post here again.

FFS. Yes. Wanting to retain EA protections for women is just like the Nazis gassing disabled and gay people.

All rationality has been expunged from modern thought and we are all going to be reduced to gibbering automatons pointing at people and calling them Genocidal maniacs for not agreeing to give up their rights.

Wtf indeed Floral.

Also I know you said you weren't coming back Halka but to be fair I didn't say that, I said that you were saying we were overreacting and now that you'd come and told us we silly women would just shut up and get back to our knitting. But it seems you have a pattern of reading one thing and taking it to mean something completely different so I won't get involved again.

Reports of suicides of trans people are on the increase.

That's an interesting way of putting it - that there are more reports about suicide. These reports are due to transactivists talking about suicides of trans people every time they talk to the media, whether or not any actual suicides have taken place.

It doesn't mean that actual suicides are increasing, of course.

LibDem voice is just thoroughly depressing these days. Caron Lindsay extended a warm welcome and a bog spot to Aimee Challenor to wax lyrical about Mermaids. No-one with a modicum of good taste or sensitivity would have done that.

It makes me think of all those poor children with Downes and autism, and their mothers, who were rounded up and gassed, gay people too - maybe even transgender people? - and the awfulness of that whole terrible time. I won't post here again.

I can’t speak for the entire autistic community but it’s a big Fuck Off from me.

The striking thing is the lack of supporting evidence for the assertions made in the letter.

If you remember the Letter to the Guardian, there was a catalogue of FACTS that weren't in dispute. There was a list of examples.

The writer left out the names of supporters who may feel 'monstered' by the press - Harrop, Edward Lord, Jesse Bradley, Aimee Challoner, the Mayor of Liverpool et al - all of whom have been mentioned in dispatches from the Times and Spectator after rigorous journalistic enquiries and checks on factual accuracy.

Need to do better if they hope to recover some credibility.

Yup well Halka its a problem to me that women's sport is being trampled underfoot, right now with the GRA as it currently stands and with significant 'mission creep' as part of the same movement that came up with the proposed GRA reforms. The EA means nothing in these circumstances it seems unless someone is willing to enforce it. Competing against other women has changed and improved my life in ways that would not have happened if those born male could join the same competition. Fell running may be abstract to you; what a dismissive attitude. Women doing things that are important only to women just doesn't mean very much apparently. I mean, i knew that, but it still hurts whenever it's confirmed.

I am one of those lesbians who has always been concerned about media bias towards anyone from the Gay community

One of the names on this list however I rememeber as being in favour of Clause 28 , and campained for its introduction

Layla Moran is a let-down.