Mick Hartley

Nicole Jones at The Critic – The trans fairy tale:

Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, has just announced the launch of a new series on Snapchat, Pure Trans Joy, described as “dedicated to sharing stories of Trans happiness from PinkNews”. The first episode is titled “What Is Trans Surgery Like For Trans Guys?”, featuring transgender influencers making a hard sell for double masectomies. There is little information on the specifics; instead, the show obfuscates and focuses on the positive, transformative outcomes that cosmetic surgery (which will set you back a mere £6000-£7000) can have on the lives of dissatisfied young women. 

The demographics for Snapchat suit Cohen's plans perfectly. Young and gullible:

Profiles on Snapchat for businesses emphasise the platform’s younger demographic, in which 84 per cent are under the age of 34 (50 per cent of users are under 25, and 23 per cent have not yet graduated from high school), and how “Snapchatters” are 60 per cent more likely to make an impulse purchase. For Pink News, these purchases include: colourful mugs, stickers, bags, t-shirts and phone cases with gender pronouns and feel-good phrases like “gender is a social construct”, “trans women are women”, “trans men are men”, “bi people are real”; as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, omnisexual, ace, trans, non-binary and pansexual rainbow designs. Cohen has also spoken about another Snapchat show, Retold, a proposed six-part series aimed at retelling fairytales with an LGBT twist, said to “generate interest, and new product opportunities if the characters and stories prove popular enough with Cohen hinting it may venture into print storybooks and character dolls”.

And of course a chance to push those lovely double mastectomies!

Benjamin Cohen describes the first episode of Pure Trans Joy as one that “demystifies top surgery in an accessible style for audiences discovering their place in the world”. In other words, children and young adults. Given that around 12 per cent of Snapchat users are aged 35 to 54, it’s safe to assume that most parents aren’t on the platform, and many won’t be monitoring their children’s usage — a job made even harder by the transient format of the app, in which messages eventually self-destruct.

Given the impressionable age group of Snapchat’s user demographic, material dealing with complex medical procedures ought to be informative, responsible and balanced. Instead, we are presented with trans “influencers” who emphasise the “joy”, “freedom” and “euphoria” of the experience, with little on the nitty gritty. This experience — a subcutaneous double mastectomy — is casually referred to throughout by its cutesy colloquialism, “top surgery”, and not once is it mentioned by its actual title. Nor is the growing phenomenon of transition regret ever mentioned. Rather than “demystifying”, it’s obfuscating, choosing to sell the trans fairytale to an audience who might not know better than to think they can “sculpt” their way to a happy ending.

Graham Linehan did a piece on this last week – Snapchat and Ben Cohen is a marriage made in hell – which is well worth reading.

Nasty nasty stuff. Pink News, once an important voice in the fight for gay lib, has joined Stonewall down the trans rabbit hole. But encouraging troubled young people to mutilate their bodies – that shows just an astonishing level of cynicism.