On Wednesday 25 June, an estimated 900 trans people and allies descended on Westminster in what was the largest LGBTQIA+ mass lobby in UK history.
Yet, if you relied on the national press to know it happened, you’d be forgiven for not having a clue.
Organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance, the event was bigger than even the famous Section 28 lobby of the 1980s. Parliamentary staff reportedly commented that it was one of the largest mass lobbies they’d seen in over a decade of working there. But, despite the scale, and significance, the vast majority of the British press responded, as usual, with a wall of silence.
It wasn’t because they didn’t know, media outlets were contacted well in advance.
The only major news outlet to acknowledge the event from those I checked was ITV.com, who ran the headline “Hundreds of trans activists descend on Parliament to oppose ‘bathroom ban’.”
That’s it.
No BBC News. Nothing in The Guardian. Not a line in The Times, The Independent, Metro, London Standard, The Mirror, Daily Mail, or Telegraph. Head over to Northern Ireland and it was the same with the Belfast Telegraph and News Letter. In Scotland, The National, The Scotsman and The Herald were all similarly silent, although The Scotsman did find space to attack the BMA because of their support for trans people.
The Telegraph, of course, found plenty of space to attack trans people:
Michael Deacon in Features, decrying The Guardian for using the word “people” in relation to cervical cancer screenings.
A report on Police Scotland’s supposed “half and half” strip searches, with the ‘half and half’ being a trans women who haven’t had lower surgery.
Another panic piece about doctors daring to affirm trans patients’ identities at the BMA.
The Times, not to be left out, ran Eleanor Hayward’s Page 2 attempt to stir yet more anger at doctors under the headline “‘Abysmal’ BMA fails to produce gender critique.” And while the Daily Mail, like the others, didn’t cover the lobby at all, the Express dedicated its front page, shown above, to anti-trans activists continuing to attack a colleague who happens to be trans.
There’s a lazy myth, peddled by right-wing commentators and regurgitated by an all-too-compliant and eager press, that the so-called Trans Lobby wields undue power in British politics. Yet, just days before this event was due to take place, authorities on the Parliamentary estate banned trans members of the public from using appropriate toilets, despite there being no legal requirement to do so and the EHRC walking back their update. They did this because two anti-trans activists complained that a trans woman used a toilet she was allowed to use and has used for decades.
We know that if a handful of anti-trans protestors had shown up outside Westminster, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall, because we’ve seen it repeatedly.
The ‘Trans Lobby’ can only dream of having that sort of power.
If you’ve ever doubted that trans people are only considered newsworthy in this country when they can be made the villains of a tabloid smear campaign, this should settle it.