Trans activists are still taking the p*ss

‘Please, please, please listen to James O’Brien today.’

The email came from a woman listening to LBC’s coverage of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) code on single-sex spaces, which came into force this week in the UK. She had no journalism training, but she instinctively understood what was missing from O’Brien’s programme. ‘He had not one woman on to discuss the impact on women’s rights’, she wrote to me.

The EHRC code followed last year’s Supreme Court ruling, which clarified that the words ‘woman’ and ‘female’ refer to biological sex in equality law. In practice, this means service providers may lawfully exclude men from women’s toilets, changing rooms and other intimate spaces, regardless of how they identify.

But there were no guests on O’Brien’s show making the case for women’s sex-based spaces. Every caller I heard advanced one of the familiar pro-trans arguments: the code is unworkable, this is devastating for trans people, they’re being excluded from public life.

At one point, a trans-identifying caller talked about wetting himself outside a public toilet. The implication was that the new EHRC code left trans people with nowhere to go – and no option but to piss their pants in the street.

The reality is rather more mundane: they can use the facilities corresponding to their biological sex or, where available, a gender-neutral toilet.

As for O’Brien himself, he said he was a ‘cis man’, stated that women cannot have penises biologically but perhaps might ‘socially’, and even managed to link gender-critical views with Donald Trump. So it was hardly surprising that, instead of asking the question any self-respecting journalist would ask – why would people urinate on themselves when they didn’t need to? – he simply made sympathetic noises and allowed a frankly ridiculous claim to stand.

He wasn’t alone. The coverage of the guidance offered a sobering reminder that journalists can be remarkably cowardly when reporting on sex and gender.

On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, EHRC chair Mary-Ann Stephenson was given time to explain the law. But the introduction framed the subject as an ‘angry debate’ between women’s rights and ‘trans rights’. Lambeth councillor Natalie Kane claimed the code could deter LGBT people from accessing ‘life-saving’ services – another questionable claim that went unchallenged.

Channel 4 interviewed a man who identifies as a woman who described feeling unsafe in men’s toilets but having ‘lovely chats with women’ in female facilities. Nobody asked whether any women objected to his presence, or why his discomfort in the mens’ should outweigh women’s in having a man in the ladies’.

LBC’s Shelagh Fogarty did better. When Chay Brown of TransActual insisted that ‘trans women are not men’, she replied: ‘I think trans women are biologically male… some facts are just facts.’

But there was no equivalent 12-minute interview presenting the women’s rights perspective. When a caller named Monica said that any man who enters a woman’s space knowing it will make her uncomfortable is not a good man, Fogarty characterised her position as ‘zero tolerance’. ‘What other approach is there?’, Monica asked, exasperated.

Jeremy Vine began the discussion on his Channel 5 show by explaining that single-sex toilets and changing rooms should be used according to biological sex. So far, so good.

When a caller expressed concern that her daughter, who identifies as male, would have to use the girls’ toilets, Vine’s trans-identifying guest, Stephanie Lynnette, appeared to suggest that she wouldn’t have to – citing the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the Equality Act. But this does not give someone the right to use opposite-sex facilities. Nor was this the only inaccurate statement that was allowed to stand.

Vine did challenge Lynnette at points, while his other guest, Carole Malone, was given space to defend single-sex provision. But none of the phone-in guests put forward a pro-women’s rights position. Instead, they largely focussed on the supposedly devastating impact of the code on trans people.

As the discussion drew to a close, Vine asked whether the solution was simply to ‘muddle through’ – apparently meaning that Stephanie could use ‘whichever loo she wants to’. This directly contradicted the legal position he had set out at the beginning of the segment.

Be careful what you wish for, Jeremy. Afterwards, Lynnette posted photographs from inside Channel 5’s women’s toilets, announcing: ‘Today a trans+ woman pissed in your bathroom and guess what? Absolutely nothing happened.’ This was not someone reluctantly using the only available facility. It was a deliberate act of defiance, photographed and publicised to make a political point.

So why do otherwise fierce interviewers like O’Brien and Vine appear to lose their nerve whenever the subject turns to trans people? Perhaps they fear that asking reasonable questions will make them appear unkind – or leave them open to accusations of transphobia. Perhaps editors and producers set the agenda. Who knows?

Trans-identifying contributors are often treated as possessing special authority, with their testimony accepted as ‘lived experience’ rather than subjected to normal scrutiny. Women, meanwhile, are expected to defend their position – often against what feels like hostile attack. They are asked whether they understand how upsetting excluding men might be, why they object to using female pronouns for males, or whether the real problem is male violence rather than trans people (while ignoring that transwomen are in fact male).

When I was interviewed for TalkTV on Wednesday afternoon, it was therefore something of a surprise when Mark Dolan asked me: ‘Janet, can you explain to me why single-sex spaces are so important to women?’ It was a question I hadn’t heard asked all day.

Dolan broadly agrees with me, but that is beside the point. On the day a new statutory code affecting women’s sex-based rights and spaces came into force, every journalist covering it should have asked that question – and wanted to understand the answer.

Trans people – and those speaking on their behalf – should not be handled with kid gloves or automatically given more airtime. Their claims should be scrutinised like anyone else’s, while others affected by the issues must also be heard.

Compassion must not be confused with credulity. If journalists are too afraid of being called transphobic to ask reasonable questions, they are not helping audiences understand contested issues. They’re behaving like activists, not journalists – privileging one perspective, shielding it from scrutiny and denying audiences the full story.

Janet Murray is a freelance journalist and director of SEEN in Journalism