Thread by @Bernard_Lane

"This guide will help journalists understand the history of LGBTQ participation in sport & provide facts &
context to support accurate, respectful & inclusive coverage" A 20-page guide was given to journos at the women's weightlifting with NZ trans competitor Laurel Hubbard. 1/

Was distribution of these guidelines at the Tokyo Olympics -- guidelines which touch on polarised & emotive conflicts of rights & interests -- at odds with the claimed political neutrality of the games?

The content of the guide -- hosted by the US lobby GLAAD, which congratulates itself for "rewriting the script for LGBTQ acceptance" -- ranges from platitude to polemic & also manages to contradict itself. Is "gender identity" fixed & innate or does it change over time?

GLAAD is given top billing among the guide's authors. Like Stonewall in the UK or Australia's ACON, GLAAD used to be a gay rights outfit but now champions self-declared trans identity. That campaign can be at odds with media freedom & open debate.

In May, CBS 60 Minutes became the first high-profile American TV show to tell stories of "detransitioners" who regret medicalised gender change. The trans lobby "backlash" got going before the program went to air. Journo Glenn Greenwald, a free speech advocate, called out GLAAD.

So, journos could be advised to approach with caution any language policing guide that involves GLAAD. Especially a guide that wants journos to adopt its list of supposed *anti-trans groups* not to be trusted.

The guide lectures journos about accuracy, while offering tendentious pen portraits of groups which simply do not agree with the dogma that the self-ID trans project is all upside & involves no conflict of rights for others, notably women, girls & LGB people.

Any lobby is entitled to push its cause, but journos owe a duty of clarity to the public & should resist language policing which forestalls proper debate & scrutiny of the ideas on offer.

The full GLAAD guide is here glaad.org/sites/default/…