So, GB News messaged me today.
Last night I was hanging out, watching some TV, and enjoying a drink while chatting to people on cam when I received a message, out of the blue, from a person I didn’t know. It said, simply, “You are a man. FACT.” I blocked the user, deleted the message, and reported them for harassment (although I’m pretty sure it won’t wind up going anywhere). This is not an uncommon thing.
I’m not sure why the so-called ‘Gender Critics’ feel the need to do this, but here we are. It doesn’t bother me, really — at least, not on the level they think it does. I don’t really care when I get called a man, pronouns are just, well… they’re just polite. Nor do I particularly care anymore when someone tells me to kill myself, or if I get told I’m mutilating my body or that I’m a ‘groomer’ or whatever, it’s water off a duck’s back. What bothers me is that I have to go through the effort of blocking them. It’s just sort of mildly irritating. And I suspect at some point along the line I became desensitized to this kind of thing, because, well… like I said, it’s not uncommon.
When you view these people’s profiles you very quickly start to see a pattern. They’re all more or less identical. They repeat the same talking points; they push the same long-debunked misinformation; they post the same memes; they share the same videos; they follow the same people. For as effective as it has been, the anti-trans sentiment that has swept its way across the UK actually seems to come from a very small collection of the same places, and one of the most prominent among those would be GB News.
Launched in June of 2021, GB News is a right-wing editorial ‘news’ channel that specializes in sensationalizing and punching down. Despite its title, Ofcom doesn’t recognize it as a news outlet, and that makes sense because, well, it’s not. What it is, in my opinion at least, is a platform for dangerous and harmful right-wing propaganda of the kind that spews out buzzwords like ‘woke’ in place of any actual facts or evidence to back up its often bizarre and nasty claims. Is there any surprise that a channel that has spent a good portion of its existence deliberately stoking the flames of the ‘trans-debate’ shaped culture war fire constantly reappears on the timelines of the same people who feel such a seething hatred toward trans people that they message me, an internet nobody with a follower-count of roughly six hundred, telling me to die? No. No, it’s not.
And this, to me, makes the irony of going to bed having received one of these typically spiteful messages from a GB News viewer, and then waking up to find a message from GB News themselves sitting in my inbox especially amusing.
So, for context: I recently tweeted (are we still calling it that?) about Kevin Lister, the maths teacher who refused to use a student’s preferred pronouns and chosen name because of his ‘Gender Critical’ beliefs and was subsequently fired from his position and barred from teaching. In his tribunal hearing, Lister admitted to having not read the appropriate policy before his being let go, and also admitted to continuing to misgender and deadname the student while they were crying because of him. He admitted to pointing at the student instead of saying their name, writing their deadname on the whiteboard in front of the entire class, likening their transition to a suicide, attempting to dissuade them from seeking NHS support, and outright telling another student that he was doing all of this on purpose.
Let’s be clear about this upfront, Kevin Lister was fired from his position because he created a hostile and uncomfortable environment not just for the student in question, but for all the other students in his class as well, and for deliberately and consciously discriminating against a student because he believes that his personal opinion — that trans people are not valid or, indeed, even real — trumps everything. He has had multiple complaints placed against him, from teachers as well as students, and even had a run-in with a similar issue in a prior job. He was, in short, a bad teacher, and that is why he lost his job.
The tweet the friendly GB News producer refers to in their message above is, I believe, the following one:
Now, as funny as it is, I’m going to brush over the fact that in their message the producer misspells the word ‘pronouns’ because, honestly, that’s probably the least troubling part of all this (although it tells you a lot about the care and thought they put into covering these kinds of stories). What I want to focus on, to begin with, is what they’ve chosen to take from my post.
They refer to it as being a tweet “explaining that [Lister] not using the student’s [pronouns] would have felt dehumanizing for the student.” This is wrong. That’s not what I said, as you can see from the screenshot of the tweet above. I didn’t mention pronouns, and although I can’t speak for the student themselves, if they’re anything like me, I would imagine that Lister’s inability to bother referring to a person how they feel most comfortable is likely at the bottom of the pile in terms of what he did that dehumanized them.
If I had to guess, I would imagine it was the constant singling out that was the real issue — him pointing at them instead of just saying their name, for example (y’know, like you would for something not human… so, dehumanizing), and his complete and utter ignorance of how his actions and behaviors were impacting their thoughts, feelings, and autonomy not just as a student but as a human being. Lister held a position of authority and he abused that position, going out of his way to make a student under his care feel like their own personal sense of self — who they are — was worth less than his willingness to change the word ‘she’ to the word ‘he’. This is not about how “not using the student’s [pronouns] would have felt dehumanizing…”
But for GB News it is, because they’ve already settled on their angle. That message from the producer inadvertently gives the game away; they’re not looking to find an actual insight from a trans person, they’re looking for someone to present an argument no one is even having to begin with. And they do this because it’s the only way they can manufacture their outrage. Kevin Lister losing his job because of ‘pronouns’ sounds ridiculous, but it’s also a deliberate warping of the reality of what happened.
They’re not interested in hearing from me “about how important pronouns can be to a trans individual,” they’re just looking for a trans person they can parade about in front of their audience to make look like an idiot. And it’s worth reminding you all at this point that the audience in question is made up of people who send me and plenty of other trans people messages telling us to kill ourselves. Going on GB News isn’t going to be a friendly chat about a topic I wasn’t talking about anyway, it’s stepping into the sights of a fucking sniper.
And this brings me to the question I’ve been asking myself all day: why me? Why did this producer message me, of all people? I mean, who the fuck am I? I’m not an expert in the inner workings of the education system. I’m not someone who knows about safeguarding processes and the like. I’m not a spokesperson for the trans community, and I don’t have a degree in “how important pronouns can be to a trans individual.” I’m a nobody, my tweet only got 843 views. And it occurs to me that that’s kinda the point, isn’t it?
Put me on TV and have me attempt to debate a complex and emotive situation with professionally trained media people and watch me crumble. That’s why me. GB News could have sought out literally anyone to have that conversation, but they didn’t go with an expert or a professional, or even an activist. They went with me. And I’m not falling for it.
This is the level of their ‘news’ coverage; find a rando and strap a target to their back. Because GB News is gross, and it’s dangerous, and it’s operated by people who seem to think it’s acceptable to send messages asking for insight to the very people they’ve been encouraging their viewers to harass, abuse, and harm for years. Well, I don’t know if the producer in question (who I’ve kept anonymous out of politeness here) will ever read this, but if they do, here’s my response: fuck off. I’m not interested, and I suggest you go have a long hard think about the real-world impact your bullshit has on people like me. Thanks.
