This is disgusting.

The Yorkshire Evening Post:

Robber carried out ‘humiliating’ sex assault on victim after discovering he had targeted transgender victim

Awful, right? It’s something most trans women live in fear of: the violence of straight men who discover we’re trans, the subject of so many “trans panic” defences in courts. But while the crime is despicable, my disgust is also about the way this has been reported in the linked article.

Here’s the subheading.

A violent street robber sexually assaulted a student after discovering his victim was a man who identifies as a woman.

We’re not even into the article and it’s already called the victim a man.

First paragraph:

Luke Anderson was jailed for more than four years after a court heard he humiliated and taunted the victim when he realised he had targeted a male dressed in women’s clothing.

So let’s humiliate the victim again by calling her “a male”.

Anti-LGBT+ activists try very hard to censor anything they disapprove of. So of course, they’ve complained en masse about a same-sex kiss in a BBC programme.

Gay Times:

In their statement, the BBC dismissed accusations that the kiss was inappropriate, saying: “The decision to include this moment, as part of a longer storyline throughout series 7 which has been tracking the development of a romantic relationship between two of the characters, Jude and Cleo, was taken very carefully and with much consideration, and came about after CBBC and Boatrocker (the production company who make the show) acknowledged that the series could and should do more to reflect the lives of LGBTQ+ young people.

“This is an important part of our mission to make sure that every child feels like they belong, that they are safe, and that they can be who they want to be.”

Which is, of course, the correct response. So it’s all the more puzzling that when similar vexatious complaints were made about linking to charities that offer information to help trans people, the BBC pulled the links.

PinkNews:

The heads of Britain’s biggest LGBT+ groups have united to demand the BBC reinstate trans-support charities onto its Action Line website and explain why they were removed.

All trans-specific charities for England, Scotland and Wales have been removed from the BBC’s Action Line page, which the leading LGBT+ groups slammed as “deeply troubling”.

…This move, which members of the BBC’s internal LGBT+ Pride network were told this week was because of “audience complaints”, has already seen the public-service broadcaster condemned for “bowing down to deliberate and orchestrated hate campaigns” against trans people.

Imagine the outcry if the BBC removed links to charities offering advice on abortion or contraception because of audience complaints from forced birthers.

The BBC in this context means the BBC in England. But of course many of its programmes, and services such as Action Line, are provided to the whole of the UK, so if there’s something rotten in the English operation it has an effect nationally.

Here’s journalist Jane Fae:

A couple of years back, anti-trans campaigners tried to set up a group within the BBC. Their aim was to roll back what they perceived as “too much trans rights”.

Since then there have been numerous instances of what looks like an active network of staff members intervening to skew reporting of stories relating to trans people.

I’m not privy to the inner workings of the BBC in England; I just talk about technology once a week as a guest of BBC Radio Scotland. But the picture emerging from the English operation is deeply worrying.