Mick Hartley

Remember that BBC article last month about lesbians being pressured into relationships with men claiming to be women, under the threat of being branded transphobic, and genital fetishists? Apparently Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley lobbied the BBC – then still in Stonewall's Diversity Champions scheme – to cancel the piece beforehand. Jo Bartosch in the Mail on Sunday:

For many, it was a brave and long-overdue airing of an important and distressing subject: a painstaking investigation into claims that predatory trans women have been pressuring lesbians for sex, published on the BBC News website.

But a leaked email shows that the influential trans lobby group Stonewall attempted to suppress the investigation before it had even been published – and made the extraordinary claim that debating the issues was equivalent to ‘sexual racism’.

This latest move to try to stifle free speech will add to growing concerns about the influence of Stonewall, which is paid millions of pounds for advising public bodies – including Government departments, police forces and universities – plus a range of private companies…

The BBC won much praise for its investigation, which prompted some lesbians to express their anger at how they felt ostracised for wishing to form relationships only with women.

Campaigner Kat Howard wrote that she was ‘incredibly grateful to Caroline Lowbridge, and the BBC for this article’, adding: ‘We need help protecting young lesbians everywhere from an LGBT community that would rather see them silenced than stand up to the male perpetrators of assault.’

Yet now it has emerged that months before the article appeared Stonewall’s chief executive Nancy Kelley wrote to the editorial director of BBC News to denounce Lowbridge’s work in an apparent attempt to get her piece stopped.

In her email, Kelley suggested that the BBC article would end up being ‘transphobic’ because it represented trans women as ‘sexual predators’, which was a ‘central anti-trans argument’.

She further complained that the ‘highly toxic’ cotton ceiling issue was ‘analogous to issues like sexual racism’.

And although she acknowledged that in sexual relationships ‘consent is paramount and we all want who we want’, she added that ‘structural oppression can influence who we want’.

Which is to say that social bias, in this case against those who say they are trans, can affect even our most private thoughts.

It is understood that it took many months of editorial discussions before the article was published on October 26.

Stonewall has appeared to confirm that changes were made to the original piece, although it remains unclear whether this was as a direct result of the leaked email, sent in September 2020.

Nor is it known whether the editorial director of BBC News at the time, Kamal Ahmed, took any action based on the specific concerns raised by Kelley. He was made redundant in February….

The BBC’s experience with Stonewall is just one fascinating example of how a host of organisations – both public and private – are coming under intense pressure by a powerful lobby group that many fear is causing profound damage to the rights of women.

Fascinating is one way of putting it. Chilling, more like.