Response to BBC transphobia

Content warning: extreme transphobia, sexual assault, threats of violence (including sexual violence)

You don't have to let the TV License people inside.

Contact:

Text of my complaint:
An article published on the 26th of October titled 'We're being pressured into sex by some trans women' contains a factual error.

The author, Caroline Lowbridge, states that no 'high profile trans women who have either written or spoken about sex and relationships' wanted to speak to her in order to offer their views on the subject.

This is not true. The author interviewed Chelsea Poe for the article in September 2020. Chelsea Poe is a high-profile trans woman who has spoken extensively about sex and relationships in interviews in Slate, the Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and other media outlets.

"A BBC source has confirmed to PinkNews that Lowbridge interviewed Poe, and said that her contribution was judged not to be relevant to the story."

Given that Lowbridge interviewed Poe and chose not to include her in the article, the claim that no trans women who have written or spoken about sex and relationships wanted to talk to her is factually incorrect.

This inaccuracy must be amended.

[anasahmed]

Did Shaun just slightly raise his voice? I've never seen such violent rage from our favorite talking skull.

[justchuy]

When Shaun said that reporter doesn’t care about women being assaulted I got confused that he would state something so hard to prove so definitively. And then he proved it. 👏👏👏

[JDGamer]

What really annoys me is that the BBC said that the article “met their standards” which to me isn’t a defense of the article, it’s a damnation of their standards.

[KatBlaque]

I hate this discourse because my reality is... despite being very vocal of my lack of attraction to women, cis women are constantly hitting on me and I'm constantly rejecting them. There are plenty of cis women who would consider themselves exclusively attracted to women who've expressed attraction to me and tbh, I reject women so frequently that I honestly feel lowkey homophobic about it because I always have to politely say that I'm straight over and over and over again.

Like, whether transphobes like it or not, people are attracted to trans women and frankly, most of the trans women I know in relationships are in relationships with cis women. I'd go as far as to say that's probably an easier relationship than a trans woman and a cis man in this current environment.

I don't personally believe rejecting a trans person romantically or sexually is inherently transphobic, but it's very hard for me not to say that the way these people obsessively portray trans women as predatory because occasionally cis lesbians find themselves attracted to them is strange. It's also frustrating because i believe in having conversations about sexual assault, but these people transform existing as an assault and it's very frustrating. I'd be all about condemning a predator regardless of their gender, but that's not the point. These people would like to argue outright that all trans women are inherently predators and they could give a fuck about actual survivors of assault, as evident by the fact that they cited a woman who assaulted women.

[mnlg_yt]

BBC Tomorrow: "We are being pressured into amending articles by some floating skulls"

[Cerise]

Not fully related to the topic at hand, but just for background reference, Lily Cade also said in her murder manifesto that George Floyd was killed for, quote, "being an annoying piece of sh*t, " just for some context on what kind of person we're dealing with here.

[PedanticPig]

Worth noting that this article was also translated for a Brazilian audience, and I believe that was the only international version the BBC made. Brazil is the country with the highest murder rate for trans women in the world.

[tanasaky]

A transwoman: *Looks like a woman*
A very concerned citizen, who has no ulterior motives, we swear: "HOW DARE YOU!"

[beowyfe]

Honestly Lily Cade comes off like some transphobe caricature ContraPoints would make for a 10 second joke, only she got Pinocchio’d into a real person

[seban]

As a cis man, in high school I had long hair and sometimes people would misgender me. I suppose that means I violated all those people by having long hair, and I was a serial sexual assaulter unwittingly. To all of those poor victims, I have to say I am deeply sorry.

[LukeCorreia]

Glad to see this dumpster fire of an article dissected so thoroughly, and equally glad for your call to action. Here's what I wrote:

"Chelsea Poe, a high-profile media figure and trans woman, was interviewed for this article; a fact which was stated by the BBC in an article on PinkNews. This is in express contradiction with the statement made by author Caroline Lowbridge in the BBC's article, where she says "[no high-profile trans women] wanted to speak to me but my editors and I felt it was important to reflect some of their views in this piece". This is blatantly false.

Chelsea Poe has also stated that she had warned Caroline Lowbridge about Lily Cade, a contributor to this article, who has since been removed from the article following her blog posts calling for the murder and sexual assault of trans women. This is alongside Lily Cade's prior history of sexually assaulting women, which she has admitted to doing long before this article was published.

Given the harm that has been directly caused by platforming and legitimizing Lily Cade on BBC, alongside the flagrant disregard for the author or the editors to do their due diligence in checking the backgrounds of their contributors, the article should be amended if not outright removed.

The article should, at the bare minimum, be changed to explicitly state that Chelsea Poe had been interviewed, and that Caroline Lowbridge and the BBC at large decided to omit her interview while lying about Chelsea Poe's involvement.

If you care about journalistic integrity, honesty, and the safety of sexual assault survivors as much as your editing team currently pretends they do, the article should be removed entirely and followed up with a public apology for allowing such blatant hate and bigotry to have a platform through one of the largest news publications in the world."

UPDATE: Entirely unsurprised, but they got back to me and said they don't care. It's the same boilerplate message that everyone else has gotten. Give it a bit for the hateclicks to die down and they'll probably issue a very quiet retraction. Until then, the official stance from the BBC is "we did nothing wrong and don't plan on changing anything".

[MasterofSpiders]

8:29 - "Trans people's contributions are not relevant to stories about trans people."
Really sums the British media's attitude to trans issues at the moment.

[trefen]

"Note the lack of apology for platforming a rapist who writes serial killer manifestos." A perfect sentence.

[Nevri.]

You didn't even mention that in their update they specifically avoided calling Lily Cade by name, so people who didn't see article before, won't even know who they're talking about, to further avoid any more problems.

[SBelawski]

I remember a couple years ago when I realized the BBC had a specific agenda.
I don't remember the exact context, but I think it was either an anniversary of the first Matrix film or maybe the announcement of the 4th... but anyway it was well after BOTH writers/directors came out as trans women and the review would not use their first names, would not use the phrase "wachowski sisters" and it was definitely after they said the film was filled with metaphors for transition.
The review was titled something like "Matrix movie is just a male power fantasy"
After reading that it was really really clear that BBC has an anti trans agenda.

(Just did a quick google to make sure I got my facts right. Article was by Nicholas Barber from March 26 2019)

[oliviap.]

If a trans person passes its "deception" but if they don't then they're just a "man in a dress" or "woman in a suit". Can society PLEASE leave trans people alone? 👏

[EZOnTheEyes]

To make light of this, I love the memes us trans folk have made with the headline. One of my favorites is "We're being pressured into *coding* by some trans women".

[charltinion]

As a cis guy who’s been groomed by a cis black women, (which yes, was traumatising, I still have panic attacks over it to this day), I still don’t discriminate against black people or women. As opposed to terfs, I’m mature enough to understand that an isolated incident does not mean I get a free pass on being a bigot.

[disposable]

One really important part about the BBC's complaints progress - when you get a response, it will initially be a cookie cutter template response from some poor mimimum wage person, usually in Belfast where the BBC have outsourced a load of their jobs to Captia.

It's really important to follow up that complaint by replying that that initial response, saying the response is inadiquate (because it will be). Only then does the complaint get forwarded on to the actual people who made the damned article.

If you don't do this, your response will still be counted in statistics concerning how complained about the article was, but otherwise your complaints will basically be ignored
:edit:
Someone asked an excelent question, which is: 'what do you have to do when you reply to the form response?'
So, apparently you need to counter what they say in the form response. I haven't received mine yet but I anticipate they'll say something about needing to be impartial. How you respond to that particular bullshirt is up to you :)

Another point my spouse made was - I was a little inaccurate up there when I Said the complaint would be ignored. Technically speaking, the people who make the decisions at the BBC always have access to complaints relevant to them. That said, there's very little chance of the sort of producer who would let such an article be put out would be interested in dissenting opinion.

[Charlie-uphy]

So for those who may missed it, a "gold star lesbian" is a lesbian who has only slept with women. Which is not only invalidating for lesbians who needed time to discover themselves or just wanted to explore their sexuality, is also awful in regards to bi and pan (and other mspec) people. It does have the advantage that if I see someone using it for themselves I already now they're not someone I want to interact with.