Furthermore, the study only relied on 80 respondents, an extremely small sample. Just 56% said they had been “pressured or coerced to accept a trans woman as a female partner,” according to the BBC.
The article goes on to name drop other hate groups, such as the U.K.-based LGB Alliance and the New Zealand-based Speak Up for Women, both of which seek to exclude trans women from the LGBTQ+ community, to put it as lightly as possible. While the BBC reporter interviewed some trans people for the story, very few humanizing viewpoints are included. That may also be because trans people and allies (understandably) may not have wanted to take part in an article with this premise.
LGBTQ+ advocates have been sounding alarms about rampant transphobia in British media since at least 2018, but the issue has come to a head in recent years, as transphobia — and specifically violent transmisogyny — has sharply risen on a global scale. Writer and researcher Shon Faye recently told CNN that Britain’s largest newspapers, The Times and the Sunday Times, published over 300 articles about trans people in 2020. All were negative.
This isn’t the first suspect research study the BBC has given a platform to this year. In April, the media company published an article claiming that evidence of the usage of puberty blockers was “very low,” according to a study commissioned by England’s National Health Service (NHS), which has a documented anti-trans bias. That’s evident when you read the actual study, which attempted to undermine the plethora of studies in support of puberty blockers by simply dismissing them as “not reliable” without further clarification.
But the NHS study itself only addresses whether or not puberty blockers are effective compared to other non-medical interventions, such as psychotherapy or social transition. In other words, the study does not answer the question of whether or not puberty blockers increase trans children’s mental health outcomes in and of themselves. Contrary to its claims, there is plenty of evidence for that.
The legitimization of transmisogynist rhetoric by British media and other public figures — such as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling — have led to tangible, terrifying consequences for trans people. The U.K. government has threatened to defund trans-inclusive organizations and actually did deny children access to puberty blockers for almost a full year, all of which lines up with what theorist Judith Butler has claimed is “encouraging state powers to intervene” with trans people’s autonomy.
All in all, we can safely add the BBC’s latest to the ever-growing pile of evidence pointing to the fact that anti-trans movements are, indeed, fascist.
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