The BBC has been captured by the sinister trans lobby, a new report being pushed by the right-wing press claims. The report, by Michael Prescott, provides no convincing evidence of that – because of course it isn’t true. The BBC is one of the main vectors of anti-trans propaganda, taking its cue (and many of its contributors) from the right-wing press. And it’s been doing it for years, laundering the bigotry of genital-obsessed weirdos as “reasonable concerns”, publishing and then defending groundless stories such as claims by sexual predators and anti-trans activists that trans women are rapists, and adopting the language and dog-whistles of the genital-obsessed weirdo brigade, such as “biological women” and “sex-based rights”. The brief window when trans people could get a fair hearing or accurate, informed coverage from the BBC closed a long time ago.

Prescott’s view of trans people and the wider LGBTQ+ community is clear from his report: he reports as fact unsubstantiated and frankly ridiculous claims that there’s a rogue unit of LGBTQ+ people censoring the BBC’s news output; a feature about a trans wrestler is described as “gushing”; he claims there are too many stories featuring drag queens; and he is irate that the BBC dared to include a trans woman in a discussion about the Cass Review. He says that “too many of its staff have never considered the idea of “gender identity” to be either spurious or offensive to many people.” Those “many people”, of course, are the genital-obsessed weirdos.

It’s not a report, it’s a whinge by someone who believes the BBC simply isn’t vicious enough towards marginalised people. And it’s being used as part of a culture war campaign to push the BBC even further to the right.