Unlike the first week of this trans media watch, which mostly centred around one story about JK Rowling, how she was the real victim of the Salman Rushdie stabbing and trans people the villains, as this week wore on, I wondered how I would tie things together this week.

While there was plenty of coverage of trans people, beyond generally just spreading hate, there seemed to be no unifying theme until later in the week.

The launch of a new GC fundraiser in the Sunday papers last week didn’t get the sustained attention I’m sure Cathy Boardman would have liked, although it had managed to raise £13,006 at the time of writing. It is certainly a story to keep an eye on, though, as it heads towards a tribunal.

In the original article, a spokesperson for the college said there were things being left out, which regularly seems to be the case with these things.

Speaking to someone with personal experience of the situation, they were quite clear. In their opinion, Boardman’s behaviour was “grotesque” and went beyond what she has stated publicly.

“She’s been long infamous for her grotesque views,” they told me. “Her presence made many of us uncomfortable and I, for one, am certainly glad she’s gone.”

The Times also picked up this story on Monday:

Monday also saw a trans woman playing golf make the headlines in the Daily Telegraph.

Judy Murray, famous for having a son who plays tennis, said it was ‘wrong’. Dame Laura Davies, the most successful British cis woman to ever play the sport professionally said Hailey Davidson should be allowed to compete

Later in the week, the Daily Record called Murray out for her comments:

The Scottish Daily Mail also called out Murray, and, along with the Irish Daily Mail this week, showed that it is the English version of the paper that is pure poison.

Despite the headline in the above piece, the overall article is a fair and balanced report that gives voice to actual concerns and does not platform nonsense in the search for ‘balance’.

Tuesday saw nothing about trans people in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph or Times. They made up for that on Wednesday, when the story of the week was starting to poke it’s head above the line.

But, in Scotland, Joanna Cherry had a big interview in the Scotsman where she claimed she has been erased by the SNP. The main article, which started on the front page, opened by describing this person who no longer exists as one of the SNP’s ‘most influential’ politicians.

I checked to see if Cherry has indeed been erased from SNP history, even as she talks in the present. But nope, there she was with 22 articles on their website, more than Alex Salmond, who was their leader for 20 years.

The Times, Telegraph and Mail all ran a version of the same story about exam chiefs supposedly considering a ‘non-binary category’. What they were actually considering was recording pupils as male, female and non-binary, something Maya Forstater said would distort statistics.

Forstater was quoted in the Mail, The Times and the Telegraph.

The Daily Telegraph also brought us a story from Scottish prisons and provided some useful figures in amongst their nonsense.

There are only 16 trans prisoners in the whole of Scotland out of a prison population of approximately 8,000. That’s around 0.2% of people, a much lower percentage than you find in the general population. What this, therefore, shows is that trans people are less likely to commit crime, not more likely as we are constantly told by the GCs.

It’s also worth noting that in the article below, the first column makes the claim that prisoners are placed into whatever prison matches the gender they ‘identify’ as but by the end of the article we learn that less than half of trans women are being held in women’s prisons, with the rest incarcerated with men.

Similarly, it shows that 75% of trans men are imprisoned with women.

The Telegraph then told us about how NHS bosses are spending money to ‘promote trans allyship’ and, once again, they quote Maya Forstater. They added in Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend for good measure.

Bizarrely, on Thursday, the Telegraph Sports section had a positive story on trans rugby players after the RFU blanket ban on trans players [you can read more about that here]. What was weird about the article was that they actually spoke to trans people and not anti-trans campaigners.

Friday saw the GCs turn their attention to the toilets of the Turing Centre, of all places, and, once again, Forstater was their go-to person for a quote. Helen Joyce also got a run out.

Saturday was relatively quiet with a few throwaway lines I’m not going to bother you with, including one from Julie Burchill in the Daily Mail as she moaned about the Rise of the New Puritans. Their inability to see themselves for who they truly are really is something.

To bookend the week, the Mail on Sunday, Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times all gave substantial space to JK Rowling to moan about a lot of stuff, some of which seems to not even be true.

Shocking, huh?

The Mail on Sunday also took the time out to platform a de-transtioner who accused the parents of a transgender child of suffering “Munchausen syndrome by proxy.” They also added, “It’s not the kids who are trans, it’s the parents who want them to be trans.”

The only qualification listed by the Mail on Sunday for this person is that they de-transitioned.

Finally, the Sunday Express, not usually a paper I check, reported on Get The L Out being removed from Cardiff Pride on Saturday. Ironically, the group, that wants to remove the L from LGBTQIA+, but still turned up to disrupt the parade in such a significant manner, was annoyed when they were asked to leave.

Of course, the Express don’t report that but they do quote Suzanne Moore and, for balance, some unknown Twitter randomer.

Other pieces that made the news

Is Maya Forstater the world’s foremost expert on trans issues?

No matter the subject, if trans people might be involved, Maya Forstater is turned to for comment. Surely she must have the most in-depth knowledge of trans people on the planet? Schools, prisons, hospitals, public buildings, bathroom habits, periods, campaigning, law, equality, there is nothing she is not ready to give her opinion on when called.

I actually think it is Forstater who contacts the Mail, Telegraph and Times to alert them to the items she feels are newsworthy, then gives comment or points the paper towards one of her GC pals.

Nobody is silenced in the UK quite like a transphobe.

You’d also think if their movement is as big as they want you to think it is, they’d have more than just a few people to wheel out for every article.

They’ll say that’s because people are afraid to speak out, but the reality is the majority of their movement is made up straight cis men. Few rational cis women want anything to do with them, no matter what LGB Alliance’s poll, that allowed voters to self-id, says.

Away from the papers

A new report was released that showed the rise of the right-wing extremism and hate groups in Ireland.

Twitter found that a particularly vile tweet from Baroness Nicholson breached their rules on hateful content. The Baroness insisted this wasn’t true and she could put it back if she wanted, but, like most things she tends to tweet when it comes to trans people, it was nonsense. This happened last week but I forgot to include it and feel it needs mentioned.

It also emerged that she sponsored a bill currently awaiting its second reading in the House of Lords that aims to reduce the abortion term limit to just 12 weeks.

What a feminist!

Finally, on Thursday, Scientific American dared tweet some actual science which, obviously annoyed the Terfs. They had the temerity to start a thread, saying “In the second episode of our documentary series “A Question of Sex,” we look at how people with sex variations are challenging longstanding notions of the sex binary in medicine.”

The tweet that annoyed Helen Joyce, said, “Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body.”

They had only discussed intersex people in the thread but Joyce tweeted that she was “sad to see this horrific destruction of once-great institutions.”

Previous roundups:

• The week in Trans 21 August 2022

Note

You might have noticed that I seem to focus mostly on the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Mail Online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. I added in the Times and Sunday Times this week.

That is for a few reasons:

• It’s impossible to keep on top of everything in every paper/website.
• The Mail titles are the largest in the country, their website one of the biggest on the planet and what they publish has real world impact.

This list was in no way meant to be definitive. Nobody has that much time on their hands, except, perhaps, GCs.

See you same time next week and if you want updates through the week, follow me on Twitter after my Alt after right-wingers got my main account shut down and, three months on, Twitter still haven’t dealt with my appeal!

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