Journal tags: rights

I just filled out this form on the BBC website. Here’s what I wrote, based on this open letter to the BCC Upper Management and Editorial Staff.

What is your complaint about?

BBC website or apps

Which website or app is your complaint about?

BBC News website

Please give the URL, or name of the app

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385

Are you contacting us about a previous complaint?

No

Select the best category to describe your complaint

Standards of interviewing/presenting

What is the subject of your complaint?

Innacurate reporting and unreliable source

Please enter your complaint

The article is based on a single self selected study of 80 individuals sourced from Get The L Out, a group who, prior to the survey, were already united by anti-trans views.

This study breaks the BBC’s own guidelines about using surveys as sources for claims in coverage, as it is self-selected, with a small sample size and a clear bias held by those self-selected to respond.

The article dangerously frames this as a widespread issue, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that there is no actual evidence to that effect outside of isolated claims and cherry picked individual cases.

The article routinely implies that transgender women are not women, uncritically quoting people who call transgender women men without at any point clarifying that this is ignoring their legal status as women in the UK.

• From: [email protected]
• To: [email protected]

Hello,

My name is Jeremy and I’ve been a paid subscriber to The Guardian for a few years now. But I’m considering cancelling my account after reading this editorial.

On the face of it, the headline of the article sound reasonable and hard to disagree with. But the substance of the article downplays anti-trans views as simply being “gender critical.” This is akin to describing segregationist views as “integration critical.”

This line is particularly egregious:

As a society, we need to resolve the question of how to protect the privacy, dignity and rights of trans women while also respecting the privacy, dignity and rights of those born female.

Setting up these positions as though one in any way invalidates the other gives oxygen to those who wish to paint someone’s identity as a threat. I’m very disappointed to see this viewpoint expressed in an editorial on The Guardian website.

Yours,

Jeremy Keith

I’ve been watching The Right Stuff on Disney Plus. It’s a modern remake of the ’80s film of the ’70s Tom Wolfe book of ’60s events.

It’s okay. The main challenge, as a viewer, is keeping track of which of the seven homogenous white guys is which. It’s like Merry, Pippin, Ant, Dec, and then some.

It’s kind of fun watching it after watching For All Mankind which has some of the same characters following a different counterfactual history.

The story being told is interesting enough (although Tom has pointed out that removing the Chuck Yeager angle really diminishes the narrative). But ultimately the tension is manufactured around a single event—the launch of Freedom 7—that was very much in the shadow of Gargarin’s historic Vostok 1 flight.

There are juicier stories to be told, but those stories come from Russia.

Some of these stories have been told in film. The Spacewalker told the amazing story of Alexei Leonov’s mission, though it messes with the truth about what happened with the landing and recovery—a real shame, considering that the true story is remarkable enough.

Imagine an alternative to The Right Stuff that relayed the drama of Soyuz 1—it’s got everything: friendship, rivalries, politics, tragedy…

I’d watch the heck out of that.

Yesterday Ireland held a referendum to amend its constitution in order to provide equal rights to gay couples who want to get married. Today it’s clear that the “yes” vote is going to carry the day.

This is amazing.

I left Ireland in the early ’90s. When I told people abroad about the medieval legal situation in Ireland on contraception, divorce, and homosexuality …well, people just wouldn’t believe me. Combined with the nationalistic political situation, I got used to a sort of permanent miasma of embarrassment towards the country I came from.

But today I feel a swell of pride.

I’m Irish (well, half-Irish anyway). Most of the time, that’s something I can be proud of. Lately though, I’m feeling downright ashamed of my country.

ISPs in Ireland are facing legal threats by the recording industry trying to strong-arm them into cutting off internet access at their say-so …’cause, y’know, that worked out so well for New Zealand. Eircom have willingly rolled over. Other ISPs are resisting. A New Zealand-stlye blackout campaign is being organised.

While the recording industry tries to push through a policy of guilt by association, the Irish government is trying to revive an older form of guilt. Would you believe that, in Ireland, it might soon be possible to be found guilty of blasphemy? The supreme court says such a law is unenforceable, common decency says it flies in the face of separation of church and state, but the Irish justice minister says gimme that ol’ time religion.

Ah, Ireland. You’ve got the best music and the nicest people …but outdated business models and outdated superstitions make you the laughing stock of Europe.

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.