Thread by @BadWritingTakes

BBC vs LGBTQ+

A thread on the BBC's escalating institutional bigotry against the LGBTQ+ community.

That we really wish we didn't have to write.

We've shared a fair bit of awful journalism on this account, much of which targeted minorities.

But so far, we haven't catalogued the increasing amount of anti-LGBTQ+ and especially anti-trans bigotry that has been coming from the BBC, the UK's supposed-to-be-neutral broadcaster

There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, the BBC is a mainly visual broadcaster and we are BadWritingTakes.

Secondly, the moderation team of this account is queer and we didn't want to focus on LGBTQ+ issues over other awful writing gaffs.

But.

Things are getting bad.

No, not the BBC trying to ban it's LGBTQ+ staff from attending Pride - that happened months ago.

Following a string of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks over the last year, on 26th October, the BBC published an article solely devoted to a small group claiming that trans people are rapists.

If you already think it sounds horrifically biased to publish an article demonising a minority as rapists, well...

Yes. Obviously.

But it gets so much worse than that.

Let's dive into an article that would be a resignation-level scandal from any genuinely impartial broadcaster

The article is centred around around a common claim from transphobes that trans women are "pressuring" cis women into sex.

Even the article's writer, Caroline Lowbridge, is forced to admit she cannot verify if this "huge problem" is actually real.

She wrote the article anyway.

The "one survey" that the article relies so heavily upon was conducted by "Get The L Out", a notorious and very, very small anti-trans hate group who have previously crashed a Pride parade.

And by "conducted" we mean the survey was put on their social media page.

In an article about the BBC's article, and the critical backlash it received from lesbians and the rest of the queer community, NBC notes that including the social media survey was a violation of the BBC's own guidelines.

The BBC has so far been reluctant to comment on this.

A far more in-depth analysis of 'Get The L Out' and their survey can be found in this thread:

It's also not the only example of Caroline Lowbridge trying to lean her extreme claims on extremely flimsy evidence.

Another part of the article quotes someone who claims their cis girlfriend tried to pressure them into sex with a trans woman.

Not the trans woman. A cis woman.

But none of that is even close to the worst part.

[Content Warning: Sexually assault, rape]

One of the cis women quoted in the BBC's "are trans women predators?" article, Lily Cade, is a serial sexual abuser who has assaulted women in bathrooms.

[Content Warning: extreme transphobia, violent threats, calls for murder.]

Lily Cade followed up being platformed by the BBC to go on a tirade against trans people - including calling for their mass murder.

Please do not read on if you do not feel ready to.

[Content Warning: extreme transphobia, violent threats, calls for murder]

Below are more screenshots from Lily Cade's website, including once where she denounces gay marriage. They are horrific. Once again, please do not read them unless you truly feel you are prepared.

[Content Warning: extreme transphobia, violent threats, calls for murder]

A final collection of screenshots from Lily Cade's website. Once again, the content is highly distressing. Please do not read them if it does not feel safe to do so.

As of today, the article in question remains on the BBC's website with Lily Cade platformed entirely uncritically within it.

This is despite numerous complaints and an open letter sent to the BBC by LGBTQ+ people and their supporters.

This is the BBC's response to one complaint

This thread by @DJFLevesley provides an excellent evaluation of the BBC's response and the extremely frightening lack of impartiality that allowed this article to be published.

In case there was any confusion over whether the BBC knew of Lily Cade's sexual assaults against women before platforming her and whether they knowing left that information out of the article...

Yes. They did.

None of this was quite enough for BBC journalist John McManus however, who took to Twitter to compare LGBTQ+ people to paedophile Jimmy Saville for complaining about the article's bigotry and lack of journalistic standards.

Yes. Really.

McManus's behaviour is only one of many examples of the BBC's abandonment of neutrality when it comes to LGBTQ+ people.

"Impartiality" has become a one way excuse for their attacks on queer people.

It is used to shut down supporters of LGBTQ+ rights, but never its opponents.

UPDATE:

So it turns out that this thread isn't anywhere near done.

We had thought we had covered pretty much everything but when it comes the UK media on queer rights there are always new depths to sink to.

First up more from BBC platformed transphobic serial abuser Lily Cade:

Pardon us - BBC platformed *and BBC defended.

Since the start of our thread, the BBC has apparently started replying to complaints about how they allowed a sexual abuser to be quoted in an article defaming trans people as sexual abusers without that context by saying...

Nuh uh.

It's also worth noting that Lily Cade's inclusion in the article does nothing to support its headline's claim that trans people are pressuring lesbians into sex.

Her story is that she didn't want to do a porn scene with a trans woman, so she didn't, and nothing at all happened.

The article includes a quote from a trans twitter user which Caroline Lowbridge describes "in support of lesbian women who feel pressured by trans activists".

The problem?

The comment was actually made in response to a hoax created by transphobes... (continued below)

'Genital Preferences Are Transphobic' was a sticker created as a part of a "false flag" campaign to demonise trans people by the TERF/"Gender Critical" movement.

The tweet quoted in the article was in response to the sticker being (badly) stuck over a Uni of Liverpool poster.

So to recap, out of three people cited to argue that trans women are pressuring lesbians into sex:

• One only claims to have been pressured by her cis girlfriend
• One is a sexual abuser who didn't want to have sex with a trans woman - and didn't
• One is replying to a hoax

We have already mentioned that the article's author, Caroline Lowbridge, was warned about Lily Cade's history of sexual assaults and ignored it.

We previously failed to flag up that the article actively lies, claiming that no other "high profile trans women" spoke with her.

Chelsea Poe (@ChelseaPoe666) has kept a record of her unpublished involvement with the article, which can be found here.

UPDATE:

It has been discovered that the BBC's transphobic article has been promoted by the Brazilian BBC Twitter account - and major Brazilian media.

Brazil is notoriously a country where trans women are are at extreme threat of violence and murder.

UPDATE:

Lily Cade's inclusion in the BBC's anti-trans article has been removed, and this small note added.

It is really, really, really bad.

And it will take multiple tweets to cover all of the reasons it is so disheartening to the LGBTQ+ community under attack from the BBC.

Firstly, and most obviously, the article that platformed a murderous, genocidal, transphobic sexual abuser to testify that trans women were sexual abusers is still proudly up on the BBC website.

There is no acknowledgement of bias.

There is not even an apology for citing her.

Secondly, the BBC seems to have gone to great pains to obscure the true nature of Lily Cane's behaviour.

It describes her tirade - in which she called for the mass murder of trans people, including several specifically named persons - merely as "comments".

It also describes an extensive history of sexual assault allegations simply as "inappropriate behaviour".

Sexual assault seems rather a strange thing to attempt to downplay in an article that is, lest we forget, supposedly about how trans women are pressuring lesbians into sex.

Thirdly, and most easy to miss, the BBC have essentially confirmed here that they *still* think it was appropriate to cite a known sexual abuser in an article defaming trans people as sexual abusers.

It removed her only because of her calls to lynch trans people.

And yes, the BBC have now admitted that they were indeed made aware of Lily Cade's collection of sexual assault allegations before the article was published.

And decided that they were "not [...] relevant".

In an article that, once again, is supposedly *about* sexual assaults.

As @LaurakBuzz points out, this means that the BBC has essentially admitted that Caroline Lowbridge's claim in the article that no high profile trans people "wanted to speak with [her]" was a lie.

Despite this, the claim has not been removed from the article nor apologised for.

A good thread by Laura Kate Dale, analysing the coverage of the BBC scandal by the UK Guardian (an ostensibly left wing newspaper that has become extremely hateful towards the LGBTQ+ community) can be found below: