Taking a Critical Eye to Transphobic Headlines- Why anti-trans language is front and center:

 Taking a Critical Eye to Transphobic Headlines- Why anti-trans language is front and center:

Originally written 16th June 2021

Many of us (trans people in the UK) are fed up with headline after headline announcing hatred for trans people, with a seemingly simultaneous endless love for transphobes. I for one, check the news frequently enough to notice things that perhaps those who haven’t been glued to each headline won't do– that being a very interesting trend of journalism standard pattern breaking that betrays the BBC's innermost policy on trans news articles.

The BBC is a very interesting media outlet to look at- especially because it is supposed to have an unbiased look upon the world. Realistically, we all know that completely unbiased reporting is nigh on impossible for any person- it’s part of the human experience that we tend to slip benign and malignant views into our work- be it written, visual or otherwise intended for wide audiences.

Now, I’m no prescriptivist. I’d rather be caught dead than to critique every minor aspect of language as to whether it is ‘proper’ or not. Most of us know the best way to describe language is to view it as having a ‘standard’ – the way in which you’d write for utmost clarity and purpose- and a ‘non-standard’- the way in which you’d write for most other uses, like texting people you know well or communicating in written form your accent or dialect. However, once you know the standard, the non-standard sticks out- especially if its use is to malign a vulnerable group of people. What I mean exactly is this: the BBC and other news outlets have standard patterns of language and article presentation that both conform to their own journalistic standards, as well as, in the case of legal matters, conform to the language standards of certain institutions, like courts.

The recent article by the BBC titled “Woman wins tribunal appeal over transgender tweets” as appears on mobile and article previews - is something that goes against typical reporting and legal conventions in terms of journalism of court cases by the BBC. Most other cases are titled, by court convention as ‘Surname- information about case- Institution/Person/Etc.’ by the BBC and other news outlets. A recent article titled “Alexei Navalny: Moscow court outlaws 'extremist' organisations” appears in full on both the BBC mobile app and desktop as of the 16th of June 2021. While the former article about Forstater does not appear as such unless you click on the full article- only then do you see the name of the transphobe defended by JK Rowling next to her efforts to undermine trans safety in this country.

The former positioning, as ‘woman wins... over transgender [people]’ sets up a direct conflict between women and trans people (of which many trans people are women- the transfeminine community is a good third of the trans community) as inherently opposing sides is a very subtle but insidious way to get readers of the headline to begin to assign women’s struggle and trans struggle as being against each other and in conflict in their heads. Whereas with the Navalny headline, this is an example of positioning a conflict correctly. The Forstater headline in essence, is the latest in a long line of misleading, misrepresenting and deliberately disunderstanding headlines that use the ‘conflict’ format of reporting to describe a conflict that does not exist. Trans people and women both overlap and are not mutually exclusive- what’s more, the vast majority of activists for women’s rights are actually very much in favour of trans people. The vast majority of trans people work closely either with women or as women who happen to be trans for better equality across the board for all marginalised folk. It’s akin to making articles that position people who like hats against people who like playing the piano – both definitely have overlap for sure and can definitely live in peace with one another. Many piano players have friends who wear hats. Some hat wearers like piano music. And some piano players wear hats! Or in other words- it’s absurd to make something out to be one group of people versus another when that is not materially the case.

The headline echoes an earlier one “Woman loses tribunal over transgender tweets” from 2019 when Forstater first had her contract unrenewed. Her case itself the first time, had a judge declare that she can say her views, there is freedom of speech. But not freedom from consequence. If her employer doesn’t want someone who is transphobic, they are quite within their rights to express their right not to employ her any more. This most recent headline flips that. This time the judge declared that her views are protected (which they were anyway, it’s just that that protection to say whatever you like doesn’t extend to private businesses or citizens who decide that they don’t want to be around bigoted people) and that they were against her contract not being renewed. Which is reflective of a growing bias and pushback against trans people- both from Forstater and the various legal and legislative institutions of this country.

It is worth noting, that the headlines are often written by someone else other than the journalist who wrote the article- though the subheading before the main text of the article can be reasonably assumed to be the journalist’s own addition. Especially since the 2021 article and the 2019 article have an incredibly similar writing style- a writing idiolect one might say- and have almost exactly the same wording. The 2019 article subheading reads: “ A woman who lost her job after saying that people cannot change their biological sex has lost an employment tribunal”. An interesting choice of wording, especially since we know that she didn’t lose her job, her employer didn’t renew her contract- which they could have done to her at any time anyway, if they decided they no longer required her services. The 2021 subheading reads: “A woman who lost her job after saying that people cannot change their biological sex has won an appeal against an employment tribunal”. Note the very subtle inclusion of the preposition ‘against’, reinforcing that theme of conflict the BBC is trying to embed into the thoughts and opinions of its readers as an inherently ‘trans against women’ message.

The actual content of the articles themselves show some more interesting nuggets of subtle language in order to create this sense of humanising and dehumanising. Both articles humanise Forstater to the extreme, despite the headlines omitting her name in the first instance- instead using her gender as a pawn for conflict, while dehumanising transgender people as a homogenous bloc, not even recognised as the target of abuse in the headlines, relegated to the distant topic of ‘transgender’, echoing decades of antagonistic reference to the community as ‘transgendereds’.

2019’s article declares in its first and second sentences that “Maya Forstater, 45, did not have her contract renewed after posting a series of tweets questioning government plans to let people declare their own gender. Ms Forstater believes trans women holding certificates that recognise their transgender identity cannot describe themselves as women.” The quiet irony of such transphobic media often confused at how to use singular they using it perfectly in this sentence is overshadowed by the theme of humanisation and dehumanisation at play. The framing of trans women’s genders and by extension, all trans people’s genders as being a ‘transgender identity’ and not a ‘female identity’ or ‘male identity’ or ‘nonbinary identity’ betray that the author, Forstater and a great many more implicity transphobic individuals do not think of trans people as being worthy of their genders- it must be framed as an identity, something you could frame as impermanent, or in this case, a homogenous gender of trans. In the case of trans women, the author does not mention their female genders, thus dehumanising trans women to just a seemingly unified 3rd gender called ‘trans’. The opting for a homogenous ‘trans identity’ makes it easy for people to paint transphobes as being up against this big, uniform transgender force and thus create sympathy for them. This is done excessively in these articles. Forstater receives no end of humanisation and sympathy, while trans people receive dehumanisation and animosity.

2021’s article starts out similarly, declaring in its first and second sentences that “Maya Forstater, 47, did not have her contract renewed after posting tweets on gender recognition. She lost her original case at a tribunal in 2019, but a High Court judge ruled her "gender-critical" beliefs fell under the Equalities Act.” This time the theme is undoubtedly evident. The humanisation with name and age is present again, as is the dehumanisation of trans people, which have now been relegated to the concept of ‘gender recognition’. Not only are trans people referred to as one big lobby, now trans people are framed as being responsible for this one specific legal concept of gender recognition.  Her beliefs as being ‘gender-critical’ are a well known dogwhistle for radical feminists and trans exclusionary radical feminists (terfs) – something that a fair and unbiased journalist could google in five minutes and also explain what that means. But it is left unexplained to the reader, who, if they have sympathy with Forstater, may then have sympathy with gender-critical beliefs and by extension, begin to espouse those ideas and expose trans people in their lives to their underlying transphobia.

It may be said however, a very marginal improvement over the 2019 article is that the 2021 article includes a very short sentence from the trans charity Mermaids at the very end of the article, reading “We, as trans people, are protected by equality law and this decision in the Maya Forstater case does not give anyone the right to unlawfully harass, intimidate, abuse or discriminate against us because we are trans.” The former article doesn’t include the voices of trans people at all- only marginally in the latter. But just with the subtle transphobic language, the subtle support for trans people is growing and will outgrow any attempts to roll back trans rights in this country.

 

-Luke A. B. 16/6/2021