Mick Hartley

Six years ago Conrad Roeber was asked by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), the press watchdog, to report on the trans issue, then just raising its head, and see if the issue was being treated fairly by the press. So, not knowing much about the subject, he started to do some research:

Part of my reason for wanting to find out the facts was that I was aware there was much I didn’t know about the core issues in the trans debate. If that were true of me, a gay man, it was likely to be true of many on the Ipso board.

I wasn’t even sure why the label LGBTQ+ had been adopted. When the T was added to the LGB by Stonewall back in 2015, I was puzzled by the combination. While being gay is about accepting your sex and your sexuality, being transsexual is about rejecting at least one of those. My thoughts went no further though, and this project for Ipso just four years later was the true beginning of my journey of discovery.

What I found baffling was, as I produced draft after draft of the report, using analysis based on quantitative and qualitative research, Ipso kept coming back with feedback effectively saying that ‘this is a highly contentious area and the report needs to balance the two sides of the argument’. It reflected the view that there are somehow two equally valid opinions in any argument about trans issues. I disagreed. It became clear to me that on one side was an unscientific and quasi-spiritual trans ideology (which should be treated by the media in the same way they treat religious beliefs), and on the other side, science and common sense….

For those who promote this ideology, a useful aspect of ‘gender identity’ is its name; it sounds technical, scientific almost. But the ‘gender identity’ of trans ideology is actually a quasi-spiritual, ghost-like entity, residing within each of us, and which has more importance than our observable sex. The ghost can be ‘male’, ‘female’ or something else, independent of the sex of the body it haunts. Because no male can know, apart from by observation and guesswork, what it is to be female (and vice versa), gender identity is the necessary foundational myth for trans ideology underpinning the axioms of the debate: that you can be ‘born in the wrong body’; that it is OK to ‘correct’ your body; that even a child can be trans and should have its gender reassigned; that males should have access to female spaces and sports; and, cannily, that your pronouns should refer to your gender identity, rather than your sex. The seemingly neutral act of calling a male ‘she’ – something actively encouraged by Ipso’s guidance – indicates acceptance of this ideology.

An excellent point: "gender identity is the necessary foundational myth for trans ideology".

Ipso’s adherence to this position became more apparent in the edits I was instructed to make to my report. One case that stood out was that of Karen White, a male rapist who started ‘identifying’ as female after being remanded into custody. White was housed in a women’s prison, where he went on to assault inmates. The case raised an important point: when does the media have a responsibility to tell the truth about the sex of a person involved in a crime? Even though most editors I spoke to found it absurd to refer to White as ‘she’, some news reports included the surreal and scientifically inaccurate phrase ‘her penis’. How does that align with the accuracy Ipso claimed to prioritise? But when I tried to address this in my report, Ipso insisted I refer to White as ‘she’. I had no choice but to comply.

It became clear that Ipso wasn’t making these decisions in a vacuum and had been influenced by trans lobby groups, which were pushing to have ‘gender identity’ normalised in the media. At the time, groups such as Stonewall, Mermaids and On Road Media (now known as Heard) were lobbying hard to promote their narrative. Like many other institutions, Ipso seemed afraid of ‘getting it wrong’.

I saw how close Ipso’s relationship with these advocacy groups had become, and in particular, the tight relationship Ipso had with Mermaids. My client contact at Ipso and Mermaids’ CEO, Susie Green, had a warm, almost cosy tone to their exchanges. It felt less like neutral arbitration and more like an ideological alignment.

Yes, they bought into the whole trans ideology – as did the overwhelming majority of organisations across the UK.

And behold, two months ago Ipso upheld a complaint against The Spectator for referring to Juno Dawson, a transgender author, as ‘a man who claims to be a woman’.

In further exciting news, Dawson has just joined the Dr Who writing team at the BBC.