Guardian reporting on Scarlet Blake

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/26/cat-killer-sentenced-to-life-for-oxford-as-part-of-sexual-fantasy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Is this a shift?

The paper is now making it (a little) clearer that Scarlet is transgender. It's still not totally clear that he is male.

It seems a bit like when Nicola Sturgeon was asked four times in an interview if she agreed the transwoman rapist Bryson was a woman - as nationalist politicians insisted - and she would not answer but just kept saying he was ‘a rapist’.

Now we have the answer as to whether a murdering transwoman is a woman: ‘a cat killer’.

@AncientQuercus my jaw was dropping at the BBC News report just now, though I was mostly shouting "he" at the telly.

I can't fathom why the BBC has to indulge in fiction.

nauticant · Today 20:43
Also other people have pointed out, in the way Isla Bryson became "rapist gender", Blake is "cat killer gender".

I apologise as I posted without having read what you had already said more succinctly and eloquently.

I’m bloody furious with the BBC over this. I’ve just written a long complaint via their complaints website and urge you all to the same
I watched the bbc lunchtime news at 1pm where I heard about this heinous viscous murder of a vulnerable young man and torture killing of a cat and all through it was reported as a woman. I said to my partner I’ll bet that is a trans man. When I heard the name Scarlett Blake and saw his mug shot it was obviously a man.
I saw ITV news at 10pm and they reported the same murder was committed by a trans woman. Good to see a move towards a bit of clarity but “a man “ would have been truthful.
I have written to express my disgust at the reporting by the BBC and I will
let you know what sort of reply I get 🤬😡😡🤬

Yes.

And murder can be a lot of things. It can be part of some kind of escalation of a conflict, a cold blooded hit for money, someone desperate to hide a secret, someone losing their temper. Those are the more common kinds of murder and they have motives we can kind of understand, even if they are evil.

In this case it's basically a crazy person from a psycho film, or at least that's how people feel about it, and the cat killer bit is the thing that demonstrates that. Most people don't understand this motivation at all, it seems alien and even demonic. So it gets a lot of attention.

Has this been explicitly said?

@Zonder yes it has.

Absolutely- that poor man and his family
RIP Jorge

I think part of the problem is that the Guardian/BBC are forcing readers to engage in mental gymnastics that go against our linguistic assumptions to figure out the sex of the murderer. They refer to him throughout as ‘she’, describe him as a ‘trans woman’ which many people understand as being a born female who identifies as transgender, and also say he was previously known as Alice - reinforcing the idea that his pre-transition identity was female. That’s really perverse.

GRCs do not trump actual sex where inheritance of a nobility title or associated property is concerned (so men cannot lose their inherited title or assets to an older sister if she were to come out as trans man). Yet it seems you don’t even need a GRC to trump actual sex in criminal reports. That is so plainly wrong and one sided, it absolutely points to sex discrimination on a systemic level.

Sky News have just had the same on their rolling text at the bottom of the screen, I was reading it whilst the TV was muted, saw the word "woman" then did a double take as I saw the photo of Blake on screen. Why on earth are they not at the very least putting "trans-woman" on the screen?!

What I find so boggling is - as others have said - that, sex descriptions aside (and I agree with the views about proper designation of sex), the Guardian reported this in the headline and the opening sentence of the article as a cat killing case. WTF? A person has been murdered. This isn’t just some weirdo doing nasty things to cats. It’s a fucking murderer.

What is the Guardian playing at?

They pretty much all misled on Blake's sex. Including the Telegraph https://archive.is/1dooR

Seems they've updated overnight. Originals remain accessible.

Absolutely right on all points here @SheRasBra agreed

That's good. I just couldn't find reference to which prison when I was looking.

"Cat killer" in the opening sentence is just a bizarre flailing panic about how to refer to Blake. Not sure why they can't say 'person' there. Another illustration of how bruised their brains have become by the mental gymnastics.

One thing that makes me particularly angry is that the journalists who write this sort of stuff feel like they are the ones being cornered into making the person's trans identity salient (by describing the person as a 'transgender woman'). As if all of us who objected to the person being called a woman were focused on the person's transness and wanted to feature that as the essence of their violent criminal identity (like a racist who wanted to gratuitously mention the colour of a criminal). No. We are focused on their maleness, because it is overwhelmingly men who rape and murder, and because obscuring that fact will eventually put women at greater risk.
Journalists wouldn't even have to mention the person's trans identity if they weren't so obsessed with lying about the person's sex. It isn't the sex realists who are causing the person's gender identity to become the centre of the story. All we care about is the truthful presentation of a criminal's sex.

It sickens me that this man's 'feelz' are deemed more important than fact. We really have gone mad over this matter, blind to justice and truth and still it goes on. A pp said surely someone can do something to stop these lies but no, it comes under 'be kind' and I am f...cking sick of it. There is being kind and there is being naive, captured and dangerous. What will we be asked to be kind about next? Well done Louise and blessings to Jorge and his family.

Thanks for linking this. I hope Louise receives a response as clear and measured as her complaint. “Sex matters in all reporting” - absolutely.

Have just read Louise Tickle's wonderful complaint letter. I have written complaints to both the Guardian and the BBC in the past, on this subject. The Guardian didn't reply at all and the BBC just sent a generic reply that failed to address the particular points that I had raised.
I'm afraid I concluded that it wasn't worth continuing to complain, and I imagine that others have similarly bowed out. So these publications' non-responses and bad faith responses have the effect of suppressing the continuing expression of shock and bewilderment at their dishonesty.
I hope that this highly articulate letter from someone whose profile makes it harder for the Guardian to ignore will cause them to actually listen to reasoned complaints instead of (presumably ) filing them under 'hate' in the way that the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre did when confronted with rape victims who wanted to know the sex of their counselling staff.

The Guardian are not only being untruthful, but also shady as fuck. The Louise Tickle letter points out they're not even applying their standard practice of highlighting any amendments at the end of the article, with the date amended. WHY?

Yesterday I read a Guardian article that saw fit to announce it had ammended the plural of pastel de nata. Most important. But obviously in the world of trans new rules apply and the truth is what they say it is.

One of the complaints I made to the guardian was about their failure to be transparent about an update. I have noticed this a couple of times and I agree that it is a really important failure. I'm glad Tickle has drawn attention to it.

Yes. Another gaslighting tactic.

I thought the same thing, how is killing a cat more headlineworthy than killing a human being? This is insulting to the murdered man and his grieving family.
RIP Jorge Martin Carreno.

I have just been talking with an elderly friend about this. He had no idea the offender is male and gets confused about "which way round" a transwoman is. There will be many more people duped by the media.

What struck me as odd right from the start of the trial is I am local and know the roads, paths and riverbank. I could not imagine a woman taking an unknown man there in the middle of the night. That is not something a woman would do.

This is a male crime.

The 'cat killer' taking priority over the murder of an actual human being, a much loved brother, son and friend is just wrong. I expect it's being used to avoid having to say man or woman and to distinguish this particular murderer from all the others. But it's wrong. I love cats, I expect Starlet was a much loved pet and suffered terribly but ffs priorities!

Also, by deliberately giving the impression that Jorge was overpowered by a much bigger woman!? It just seems disrespectful to him.

I complained to Times Radio last night when their news report described SB as a woman. I just asked them to use trans woman instead - obviously biological man would be better, but TW is such an easy change and at least plants the seed that this is a male crime. No answer but they changed it to murderer, still using she pronouns. That is just as unclear
What woman can murder a young man in that way?
And don’t even start on on the poor cat.