Media Storm - S4E7 Pride Month under attack: rainbow-washing, queerbaiting, and fears of "gender ideology"

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Quite a lot to NOT be proud of this Pride Month, with corporations creeping away cowardly as ultra-Conservatives boycott their rainbow campaigns. Meanwhile, much of the mainstream media refuses to report on rising threats to LGBT+ equality. Luckily, there’s also lots to laugh about! From hilariously hopeless Pride ads to everything that comes out of Olga Koch’s mouth - and lots to gossip about too, with celebrity “queerbaiting” up on the agenda. We pick our way through Pride’s best and worst reporting, including vital LGBTQIA+ investigations that went under the radar - with QueerAF editor Jamie Wareham, and comedian Olga Koch. This week’s lived experience comes from teachers and trans youth, who share firsthand insights on headlines about “gender ideology”, as both the Conservatives and Labour pledge to rigidly censor gender-related education ahead of the general election. Plus, your round-up of the headlines through a Media Storm lens, including debunking myths of a Labour "supermajority", Just Stop Oil's stonehenge protest, and Rwanda refugee watch. And finally… GETTING READY FOR GLASTONBURY?! Find out how Traveller culture has shaped modern-day music festivals, and how you can celebrate them as you celebrate Glastonbury. Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Support Media Storm on Patreon  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, media stormers and guess who's back? Hi! Oh my God, Matilda's in the studio. Where have you been? I have been to places that I can't and won't tell you because I have total respect for all of the confidentiality clauses of everything I signed, don't I, Helena? Yes, totally. I have no idea where in the world you have been. No idea. I have seen a lot. I have learned a lot. And there will be a time when I can spill all the beans and Media Storm will obviously be the place. Oh, okay, so can you share any early learnings with us for now?

Yeah, something I learned is that I use journalistic language in a way that actually can astrange some people, some listeners, probably estranged, wouldn't have passed the test of some of the people who were giving me this feedback. Yeah, and it did make me think about media storm and journalism in general and the language that we use and the audiences that we have in mind. I mean, something that tabloid papers have tapped into is a way of speaking to most people in the UK in a language that they get. I think that they've exploited that power to sort of, you know, peddle shit. But maybe that is a lesson that the rest of us could take on board. Maybe it's about not always having your journalist head on. Maybe it's about having your person head on. Yeah, no, it's true.

And in a podcast studio, we do have that luxury. to actually just chill out and be people. That was my learning. But for now, on to the show. This week in the world, tensions escalate between Israel and Hezbollah with warnings of a coming Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Gunmen attacks in Dagestan in Russia have left 19 dead. And WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange,

is walking free with a plea deal after five years in prison. Also happening, Tory insiders appear to have been cashing in before going down by betting on the UK's election date. Trump's presidential campaign pledges now include migrants fighting for entertainment and one man's foiled plot to murder Holly Willoughby made every single front page on Tuesday. But this is Media Storm, the show where you hear what's not being said in your everyday news and which holds that news to account. So what Media Storm stories have caught your eye?

Apparently we have to vote next week. So I've been desperately catching up on general election news, but it all sounds a bit scary. The mail and the express tell me, I have just days to save Britain from a Labour supermajority that will destroy the fabric of our democracy. Ah, yes. Welcome to the New Britain.

Suddenly on the brink of democratic disaster because the Tory party, which, by the way, gave us two unelected leaders in less than two months, maybe democratically replaced by a different party. Panic. Oh my God. Yeah, you know what?

It does slightly take the excitement out of the race when the party that has literally been in power my entire voting life can now only bring themselves to ask voters to please not super annihilate them on election day, just like maybe slightly annihilate them. I've also been seeing that term super majority everywhere. The Defence Secretary Grant Shaps was chatting about it on Channel 4,

Tory peer William Haig was writing about it in The Times. But like, what even is a supermajority and why have we not heard this term until now? Good question, because it's not like we haven't seen massive majorities before. Labor won a majority of 179 seats in the 90s. It's looking like they might outstrip that this year. But even in the last election, the conservative majority of 80 seats was a huge victory. The fact that it's nearly halved in size in the last five years, if anything, shows. that winning a huge majority doesn't mean you keep it.

But why weren't those majorities cast as super majorities? Oh, because super majorities in this country don't actually exist. Right, exactly. Yeah, the way our parliament works is that any party with a majority of one seat can pass any law they like as long as they keep their backbenchers in line. The difference between the Conservatives' 80 seat majority and the protected 200 plus seat majority for Labour this time is in the Institute. for government's own words, non-material.

Okay, but if it's non-material, if a supermajority doesn't exist, why the hell do our headlines keep on talking about it? Because it's scary, Helena, and nothing sells headlines like fear. Nothing sells headlines like fear. Sad but true. But while the term is repeated in the headlines,

it was coined by the Tories. So it's a clear political strategy. It's a clear political strategy, yes. Although they didn't actually invent the term. They borrowed it because in the US, a supermajority is a valid thing. Congress can only impeach a president, for example, with a majority vote of two thirds.

That's a supermajority. But in the UK doesn't mean anything. A majority of one is enough to vote all laws. Opposition parties still get 20 days to table their own motions. Democracy goes on. Okay, so there's no need to panic vote. Vote exactly as you please. Helena, did any media storm stories catch your eye this week?

Okay, yes. just stop oil spraying orange powder on Stonehenge in a protest about oh no wait, that bit actually wasn't in the articles. Yeah, was it something to do with just stopping oil? Okay, but it's a good thing their mission is in their name because it wasn't in any of the news articles I read. Okay, Matilda, tell us, what are the five Ws you're supposed to answer in an article?

Who, what, where, why, when? Right, this is like primary school level shit, okay? Except when it comes to just stop oil, and most climate-related protests in this country, news outlets reporting on them somehow seem to totally forget the why. With the Summer Solstice's Stonehenge protest, we've heard from, police officers about criminal damage, geologists about rock health, arch druids about how aliens could be coming as a result of the paint.

We've even heard what a bloody children's author who wrote about wizards things. But in countless articles, we haven't heard what the point of the protest actually was. Whatever you think about the protest, like, that's incomplete reporting. Well, you can't really decide what you think about the protest if you're not given the cause. Which, to fill people in, was to demand that the next UK government end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. It is kind of weird for news outlets to exclude this from the conversation at a time when fossil fuel caused climate changes, literally setting the world on fire. Right. This week, there have been wildfires. the Mediterranean, 40,000 cases of heat stroke in India,

100 million US residents affected by heat warnings, how aren't editors and journalists making this connection? I find it striking that, well, striking to, you know, one word to say it, that over 1,000 pilgrims have reportedly died from heat at this year's Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia being one of the biggest fossil fuel exporters in the world. will this put pressure on their government to self-reflect? Self-reflection, not really what the Saudi government is famous for. Although man-made climate change is predicted to make Saudi Arabia

one of the least hospitable places on planet Earth within a lifetime. Fun. Okay, well, time for one more story? Yes, please. I do want to do a little Rwanda refugee watch. I love that this is your mission to scrutinize whether Rwanda is actually a safe country for refugees. I actually do love that. Thank you. Because, I mean, no one else is doing it.

And our government has literally written into law that Rwanda is safe for refugees in their totally rational bid to deport a plain load of asylum seekers to mid-Africa before the election. Keep on dreaming, guys. I'm constantly amazed how little our media has reported on Rwanda's onslaughts against refugees. It's a gift that keeps on giving. Just last week.

Which was World Refugee Week, as we covered here on Media Store. Yes, topically named because it's a week that saw 350,000 new refugees displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is an extraordinary number in an extraordinarily short period of time. And the reason? A vicious rebellion backed by none other than the Rwandan government, which means refugees in the east are trapped between militias committing rape and murder and the country funding them to do so. Rwanda's Western allies, like the UK, have been noticeably silent on their involvement in the Congo. Why? Could it be anything to do with the fact our government is paying them to take our asylum seekers and pegging its political success on their human rights record?

It's so telling what we don't comment on or report on, maybe even more than what we do. That's a super important story that needs to be told. But before we move on, I'm going to balance that story with a little bit of positive praise for the media. Because in last week's Refugee Week episode, we do talk about the importance of giving credit when it's due. I don't know if you saw the BBC has published a vital investigation exposing the Greek Coast Guard for murdering migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Oh, finally, that is so overdue. Yes, and we've had testimonies ourselves about this happening in the med, but it's really hard to publish them without hard proof. So, well done to the BBC investigative team for making sure that the truth gets out there.

Okay, time to get on to our main story of the week. What are we looking at, Helena? As June comes to a close, so does Pride Month. So I thought we could take a look over the month's LGBT Plus reporting, the good, the bad and the ugly, and what it tells us about Rainbow reporting the rest of the year round. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. That's just common sense.

Pride month is, of course, that time of year when corporations, get together and financially explore. the decades-long struggle of gay people for acceptance. How should medical professionals treat children and young people with gender dysphoria? An exceptionally toxic debate. So have we gone rainbow crazy? Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia and I'm Matilda Malinson.

This week's Media Storm, Pride Month under attack, rainbow washing, queer baiting and fears of gender ideology. Welcome to the MediaStorm Studio. We are so thrilled to be joined by two special guests today. Our first guest is the founder of Queer AF, an independent LGBTQIA plus publisher, supporting queer creatives to build a media career. He is a journalist, award-winning digital media producer, and Forbes Under 30 recipient.

He's been on Media Storm before, but he's back, back again. It's Jamie Wareham. Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Our second guest is a comedian and writer. She has won and been nominated for so many awards we'd be here all day if we listed them all. But they include Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,

best show at Leicester Comedy Festival, and a Writers Guild Award for Best Radio Comedy. You may have seen her on Mock the Week, QI, House of Games, live at the Apollo, and so much more. It's the wonderful Olga Cork. Welcome to the studio. And also, I feel like important to say, my mate.

Yes! Yeah, big time. We have each other's phone numbers and everything. I know, it's crazy. I love name dropping. I love name dropping, Olga. Okay, we're here to talk about Pride Month, and more importantly, how we can extend Pride Month beyond the month.

So, first up, how do we know that it's Pride Month? Is it because LGBTQ plus voices and rights are uplifted? Is it because queer culture is celebrated? Or is it because the biggest corporate brands have changed their Twitter logo to a rainbow. Corporate rainbow washing during Pride Month has long been a problem

called out by the queer community. Who can ever forget the Marks and Spencer's LGBT sandwich? FYI, for those who don't know, the letters stood for lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato. Or this year, in the States, a Burger King released a burger

with two bottom buns. Well, how about that? I feel like with the Marks and Spencer sandwich, like for me, the next thing is like, It needs to be like a K-Maw salad, you know, because they're still missing the cue out, so. Yeah. There's a few letters missing from that.

What would the I be? Iberico ham. Oh. Is Iberico Han the only food beginning with I in the world? Because I genuinely couldn't think of anything. I know. I was like, ingredient. I don't know.

So it would be Iberico ham and with the A apple. Oh my God, we're so basic. A whole shirkutriouri. board of sexualities and identities. Well, look, rainbow washing, also known as pink washing, is the marketing practice of using rainbow theme symbolism in campaigns without any lasting or meaningful action to support the queer community. This year, though, as transgender and gay rights have become a conservative battleground,

more and more companies are actually opting out of doing Pride Month at all. Take Bud Light as an example. Last year, Bud Light did a partner marketing campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, sending her personalised beer can. But this initiative caused a backlash from their trans-hating consumers who unfortunately responded with abuse, boycott threats and videos of themselves machine-gunning Bud Lights. I love that they bought the Bud Light and then machine-gunned it. It's like, you're still supporting Bud Light. Like, thank you. And have you tasted Bud Light?

No. I mean, shooting it with a gun is the best thing you could. Well, in response, Budweiser backtracked faster than the speed of light. The CEO of Budweiser said they'd never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. Did they just want Dylan for a diversity box tick? I mean, do they actually care about inclusion in their company? Another backlash we've seen has been Target stores in the US. Last year, they had a sort of rainbow exhibition.

and customers complained about it. This year, they just said they're not going to be doing any tool for Pride Month because of, quote, consumer research. On the topic of Target, did you see that incredible queen of an employee? This was a couple of years ago. Someone was clearly trying to get a rise out of her, and they were like, do you love Pride? And she's like, yes. And then they were like, but do you know that that means that you support Satan?

She's like, I love Satan too. That's the kind of show we need. But I guess here in lies the issues, if corporations are seeing a backlash from the queer community for rainbow washing and if there's a backlash from the anti-LGB people for celebrating Pride, are we simply just going to see less and less support for Pride Month? Jamie, maybe you could weigh in. Yeah, I think the important thing that we go into this conversation thinking about is like last year's Pride backlash was coordinated by a handful of groups that are frankly like US right, conservative Christian fundamentalist groups, right? And their, like, coordinated action created a much bigger impact than is reflective in wide society. Like, most people enjoy Pride Month. As a society, we love Pride Month and we love its intention. What Bud Light got entirely wrong is it didn't know what its intention was behind that campaign.

It was just doing Pride because, well, it's June. In June, we do Pride, right? It was, like, a mean girl's approach to, like, a real issue that requires, like, a lot of depth and thought. the way that they should have done that campaign is like thought about the intention and planned for like a backlash and then it should have stood by that campaign the biggest tragedy of that saga it's that this poor incredible influencer woman activist was just left to just deal with the entire brash of the entire american and frankly global right who were just at her doorstep with budlite who are a massive corporation that have PR teams and organizations and HR that could have stepped in to protect Dillard. and didn't do that at all. She was completely left on her own. And I think that's like the biggest tragedy. Yeah, we can laugh at Americans' machine cunning bud light,

but that is actually fucking terrifying for Dylan. Jamie, I wonder though, is there any value to these corporate pride campaigns if that intention is there? is there a way for these corporations to really help the Pride cause during Pride Month? I think what's really interesting about this question is it sort of changes year to year. Like I remember when I was like in college, obviously not that many years ago, but a few. It was a really big deal that corporates were going rainbow. But that was a huge victory.

You know, 15 years later, we're now in this conversation. It's like, what can corporates do? And I remember a couple of years ago during kind of Liz Trust's time as Equality's minister, if we can all remember that far back. Like she was talking about banning trans women from kind of single-sex people. places, 130 corporates all signed an open letter saying, don't do this government, and the government changed its mind and roll back those plans. You know, and corporates give a lot of cash to LGBT projects that would not be able to run without it. Like, I see their part in like fixing the

problem. So yeah, they totally have a role to play. They just got to sit down with us, listen to us get it right? You know, that's the, that's the bit that's missing. Yeah, the critique isn't don't do it. The critique is do more. And do it better, you know? But what does make a sense? successful Pride Month campaign then? Also, like, can you, like, as a consumer, can you, like, tell the difference between something that is rainbow washing or something that is, like, a genuine Pride Month campaign? Oh, boy. You're looking at me as if I know.

Yeah, I think whatever elevates specific queer voices, like, that's the first thing that came to mind, that if it's making Deutsche Bank or Deloitte look like they're gay, that doesn't really move the needle for me. But let's say if they sponsor a music festival where they'll, like, I don't know, show a chapel roan, or I'll find out about queer creative as I've never heard of before, or they get to do work they didn't have the funding for. That, to me, is exciting. Yeah.

For me, like, a successful pride campaign, like, like, it's really easy to, like, tick the box of, like, we've sold a cuddly rainbow monkey and 10% of the profits are going to a charity. Like, that's great. Like, tick, well done. We'll take that cash. But what's much better is if the pride campaign actually has a message. So I think it was, like, E-45 this year that did a pride campaign about bodies and what different types of trans bodies need in terms of, like,

care and love. That was way more powerful, but you're not only like selling your brand, but you're also like shifting the conversation forward. So I think there's like a really exciting opportunity to tell stories about queer people in advertising. And surely that's an opportunity also to hire and pay queer storytellers to design that marketing content for you. I mean, took the words right out my mouth. And you talk about messages and the messages corporate send. What message does it send when companies like Bud, and target retreat from their campaign? It normalises what that handful of haters believe in.

People have retreated. 25% of marketers felt like they shouldn't do something this year. That's huge. That's one in four people thought last year's Budd Light Cycle was a reason to not do gay ever again. Like that's bonkers after like 30 years of progress. So it's going to take decades to unpack. And that's the thing that I don't think these.

corporates always necessarily are thinking about right they're making very quick business like marketing decisions whereas the impact it has on a incredibly and increasingly vulnerable community is just huge. Olga as someone who is part of that community the LGBT community when you like first started doing comedy and started talking about your sexuality on stage was that something that you had to really sit and think about whether that would be like okay or like safe for you to do when you first started doing comedy. It did take me a while. And then when I did, it took me a very long time to arrive at material that I felt was

authentic to my experiences of bisexual woman. And I was like torn because obviously I feel like that's the story of every bisexual's life where they don't feel gay enough. And they have to like beef up their by CV and just sort of like over, overdo it. But in reality, I wanted to be very authentic to like my lived experience. And that lived experience was that I had dated more men than I. I did women. We don't know whether that's because of heteronormativity or where I am at the Kinsey scale. I don't really, it doesn't really matter why I am the way that I am. And that was

something that I felt like it felt like I had to say partially because I knew that I never heard anyone talk about it. The only bisexuals I've ever felt very militantly 50-50. And then also, because I am like, I'm a completely straight passing person. So I would never want to appropriate someone else's struggle. You were nervous about appropriating people's struggle. Do you think you could explain what that means appropriating people's struggle because I think that says so much. Oh, God. Well, I mean, queer people, generations of queer people before us didn't have the luxury of

sitting around and being like, nah, kiss a girl, do whatever you want. Like, they would actually be persecuted for it. So I think you have to be very sensitive around how much people had to sacrifice and fight for the comfort and almost like flippancy that you get to afford yourself today to, I don't know, frolic about and collect gay money. This is really interesting because it does lead us into something that we want to talk about today, which is like a hot topic this Pride Month. Celebrities saying that they're queer and then setting the record straight, literally.

This month when doing the PR rounds for her lesbian dating show, I Kist a Girl. Danny Minogue said the words, I identify as queer in a weird way. Kew all the gay is getting really excited about a queer icon until... Yeah, Danny wrote in an Instagram post. to clarify, I was not making an announcement that I'm a lesbian or queer, I'm straight and in a long-term hetero relationship. This whole saga taught me a new word I'd never heard before, which is queer baiting, which as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, is sort of incorporating

apparently gay appeal into a brand to draw in gay and bisexual audiences while staying ambiguous about sexuality itself, I guess, to not, you know, lose any homophobes from your audience, having your cake and eating it too. Am I getting that right? Jamie's nodding. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's like nothing new, you know, it's been around forever and, you know, hot guys who go on the front of cover of magazines have long understood this concept. So, yeah. I mean, David Beckham being on the cover of attitude and then saying nothing when confronted with the fact that he took a Katari sponsorship. Right. That's such a good example.

Yeah. I do want to talk about the term queer baiting, though, because I have had a lot of people say that that term in itself is problematic because we actually do not know whether someone is queer or someone is not. And then also part of me is like, I don't think anyone owes to tell you what they are. I don't know. It just feels like very weird to pressure a person into coming out. Yeah. And with the like Danny thing, the thing I would say about Danny is that definitely didn't get this right on this occasion. But like, she's a super queer ally. She turns up to the small. all charities and she records messages for them. So, like, I can forgive Danny on this occasion because she cares and she gets it and she sits there and listens and when we say, we need it to do this, she goes, okay, that is proper allyship after all, so. Yeah, I think something that's missing from the whole conversation or the media coverage or the corporate PR is education about that suffering, that struggle that Olga, you described.

I mean, I know when I asked you to say, what do you mean appropriate struggle? you're kind of probably thinking, oh, you know, it's obvious. But I think so many people have no awareness of the struggle that LGBTQ plus people have faced at the very least during Pride Month. You know, the media could commit to educating people about that. That should be something happening all year round. But what we see time and again are stories about discrimination against LGBTQIA plus people not making the mainstream media. So something that we want to talk about today is the incredible reporting that has been done this month

by independent outlets like queer as fuck to bring these incredibly important stories to light. The first story we want to focus on is this. NHS England is facing accusations of an institutional attempt to cover up a rising number of deaths among transgender youth waiting for its care in order to protect its reputation. Jamie, could you just run us through this story?

stories that we understand. Like basically what that kind of investigation found is that in the wake of the Taverstock v. Bell case, which was like a big case about a person who detransitioned and accused that young person's trans youth clinic of like forcing them to go down a route they didn't want to. They kind of shuttered the approach on gender affirming care, so puberty blockers and hormones for trans youth. That case was actually overturned a year later, but those shutters were never opened again.

So when that case came through, basically trans youth stopped getting any support or access for gender affirming care, which lots of studies show saves lives, prevents suicides. And so over a number of years, suicides on these waiting lists and in their care started to get reported. Initially, in these like quarterly meetings at that clinic, they were reported as trans youth suicides. It became more and more clear that that was an unuseful thing to be saying because it was politically inconvenient. And so over a number of years, the data went from reporting on trans suicides to reporting on trans suicides to reporting on deaths within gender care. And so there was this like deliberate attempt, or what looks like a deliberate attempt to like obfuscate and suppress that

information from coming out. These two whistleblowers spoke out within that organization. And in one of the things that the whistleblower kind of shared is that there was literally an FOA request that attempted to find this information out as kind of community activists started to see it happening. And in that internal document, it said that they decided not to disclose the trans youth suicide because it was politically inconvenient to do so. So that's kind of like quite a shocking omission. Oh my God. But like literally that is such a huge important story. This is open source journalism. The investigation looks at public information and freedom of information request. So like the data is there. Why did no mainstream media outlet think about picking it up?

I mean, the mainstream media love writing about trans people, right? not one involves this. This week, yeah, Telegraph Times all her front page stories about, you know, transgender, quote,

ideology as a risk to kids, they justify that incessant reporting on the topic by saying, you know, this is about

protecting children and to not protect children. These rising suicides of children as a result of policy. It is not just negligent. It is cruel.

And we're not just talking about like a handful of kids either here, Right, like this sort of data finds at least 16, but that's the 16 that were reported to these services. There's probably many, many more. And even like 16, that's a lot of kids who we as a country have allowed to die. It's just really chilling how much both the major parties in the United Kingdom are now sort of supporting transphobia. A telltale sign of like a right-wing viewpoint or talking point is talking about children when it comes to abortion rights, right?

when it's like fetuses, because this is like a voiceless group that you could just speak on behalf of and then clutch your pearls and talk about only theoretically. And so when we talk about being scared for trans youth, we're not talking about individual people. They're not talking about individual people. They're talking about a voiceless demographic that will never, in their eyes, speak for themselves, right? So when you're talking about individual trans youth actually killing themselves, they suddenly

become people and become real, whereas they are never actually spoken about as real people. they're talked about purely as theoretical. They want a voiceless demographic that they could use to push their ideology. And then as soon as those children turn 18 and can actually stand up in the media and speak for themselves, they're shouted down, made out to be villains. You know, they go from being voiceless, vulnerable children who we want to protect to as soon as they have a voice, we don't want to hear it shut up, you know? The voiceless nature of trans coverage in the press in the UK is one of the biggest problems.

A couple of days ago, I opened the BBC news app and on my homepage is a headline and a picture of J.K. Rowling and it says J.K. Rowling accuses labor of abandoning women over its stance on the rights of transgender people. Now look, we all know that J.K. Rowling has some very strong anti-transgender opinions, if you want to call it. call it that. And like a quick scroll down her Twitter feed, not that I'd recommend it. Brain rot. Yeah, brain rot. Like she is literally obsessed. She basically doesn't tweet about anything else. There's a really good podcast on this. It's called, from a bit fruity with Matt Bernstein, episodes called J.K. Rolling spiral into madness. It really shows how she's gone from basically just saying sex is real to like really deep radicalization. But anyway, my point being, this is what I opened on the BBC homepage. Why does it matter what J.K. Rowling has

said about trans rights. Are we going to go around and interview every single, like, fantasy author about their opinions on 1% of the population? Like, it makes no sense, but we are so deep into letting other people speak for trans people. Like, a headline today was Labor to speak to J.K. Rowling, to, like, take a meeting with J.K. Rowling. It's like, why is she the authority on trans people and even on women's rights? Like, why is she the authority?

she is a person who wrote a story about a wizard. They're meeting Richard Branson about period care that same day. And if you remember one of our previous episodes on transgender rights, we had sort of wanted to talk about a JK Rowling story at the time, but our two guests who, you know, were gender minorities, said, actually, can we not? Because if our names even appear in a piece, which mentions J.K. Rowling, we'll get targeted.

So her getting the platform is, actively depriving the platform from people affected. Yeah. And it speaks to like a wider cultural issue in the media. Everything is filtered through how many Instagram followers you've got, rather than do you understand this topic? Are you an expert on it? And can you provide valuable insight?

The reason J.K. Rowling is gone to all the time is because she drives clicks. Journalism used to be this really important part of our democracy. And we have been eroded further and further down the line into this like entertainment zone. I love entertainment. Don't get me wrong. Like, I'm happy to sit there and watch below deck. But I also really want to understand information about my world so I can navigate it. And that part of journalism has been so crucially and critically lost.

People want this journalism. Hell yeah. I got a wake-up call last week where I was Googling, I'm going to Glastonbury tomorrow. And I was Googling, oh, what's the weather going to be at Glassmanbury? And then every single news outlet had a news story about it. And every news story was, it's too early to tell. And someone's there typing it. Now! News.

This is news. What we're putting our resources into, literally. Okay, another story we want to talk about that is actually news is this. Queer AF has revealed leaked guidance used by NHS England. Showing over 6,000 children currently on the waiting list for the new children and young people's gender service are being invited for mental health assessments. And during these assessments, they're being advised to. stop gender affirming treatments and their families are being advised that if they continue

without, quote, appropriate care, however that's defined, they could face safeguarding referrals, which to me sounds like a threat of, you know, losing their kids. Essentially, the fear here is that young people could be forced to medically detransition. Jamie, could you tell us more. Yeah, and I think what is particularly upsetting about this story, we started to get letters from the parents and the young people. And these letters, they're framed as your child is on the waiting list for a new service, which hasn't yet been created even though the last one has already been shut down. And in the meantime, we'd like to invite you for our mental health support. So it's being framed as support for children and young families who are desperate, vulnerable, and have had their care completely closed with no opportunity of the new one, even. starting any type of soon. But what's actually happening at those appointments is an information

gathering process to find out whether they are taking or using private healthcare. And alongside all of this story happening, the government in their final hours eventually banned private healthcare options for young people around puberty blockers. So basically, the process was about gathering a list of people that were using these services that they were then planning to ban so that they could then prevent them from using them. And I just think that's really underhanded. It's a real state attempt for many people medically detransitioning and being forced to do that.

It's like a form of so-called conversion therapy. It's horrendous. And Kareaf did so much work to expose this story. I wanted to ask, like, did it get any pick up in the mainstream media? No one was interested in picking this up. And they kind of said, yeah, well, you just don't really quite have enough evidence. and then over the next three weeks, parent after parent, after parent, sent me emails

with copies of these letters, with testimonies of what happened to these appointments, being told that they were facing safeguarding referrals. Like, I have so many emails and upsetting messages from kids in my inbox that often spoke to me with their parents' permission, with their parents looped in. Telling me just how scared and upset by the world they are,

like it feels like quite a lot of evidence to me, particularly if 6,000 people have got this letter, which I know they have because I've seen so many copies of it. Jamie, that is a lot for you to have to shoulder, you know, as an individual journalist going against the grain, handling those accounts. I mean, are you okay? It was upsetting because as a journalist, when you're exposing the stuff,

like usually you have this like teflon layer of like, well, it's news, so you just have to kind of detach from it. But this is like a different level of a. attack, and I think this is what I've been really struggling to communicate more broadly, like not just to my audience, but like outside of that space, that these attacks on our community, they're not thematic, they're not rhetoric, and they're not even really cultural wars. These are like really visceral and in many ways violent because of the deaths they're leading to. And I'm not sure we as a community have quite worked out just how much under attack we are.

Yeah, it's scary out there at the moment. Credit to you, though, and, you know, the fact you are getting those emails as soon as you publish a story in an independent outlet shows that there are parents, families, children out there who are begging for their stories to be told and whom our mainstream media isn't serving for all the content they're putting out on this topic and not serving that community. No kids should deserve to go through the pain and anguish that so many queers of us, you know, like, I'm sure I'll go, you can speak to the spell right. Like, we just, we grow up in a world, like, thinking that the world hates us. Like, no one should, like, grow up in a world thinking that you're hated. Like, that's horrible for kids. Kids deserve to live and save families and go to school and not get bullied, right? And that's what I always find really interesting about what they're right saying.

They're actually saying all of that, but they then caveat it with their own moral panics, which induce the very thing that they purport to be fighting against. It's a very somber, sad end to this episode. Maybe we can, you know, look forward to next week's election. Yeah, exactly. We always like to talk about, you know, solutions, focused journalism. So with the general election next week, I wonder, do you have any thoughts on party positions on LGBTQ plus rights for people for whom this is a voting priority?

From my understanding, when it comes to trans issues, both labour and conservatives aren't looking great. And that's all I'll say. There aren't good options out there, like the Lib Dems, and the Greens have got some positive manifesto points as to kind of applied in the SMP. Like, there's progressive, exciting stuff going on in these parties, whether that's kind of self-ID or introducing non-binary passports. There's some great policies out there.

And like with DIV, we've been doing this kind of like queer election watch. We've got that all covered. But the thing like I would say coming into an election is we have won this fight before. Like we won it after the papers went after us in the 80s around the HIV and gay panic then. We won that fight, and because of that fight, I'm able to run a major organization that's called Queer as Fuck. We have won Gay Liberation before. We have one queer liberation before, and we will win trans liberation.

We just need to learn from those lessons from our past, apply them to now, and just recognize that although it's really crap at the moment, and we've done a like two steps backwards kind of moment, in the next 10 years, we're going to take five steps forward, and things will be better and we'll be looking after trans youth. And in the meantime, that's queer. We just got to do what we do best, which is, like, create safe spaces for ourselves, do things because the system won't provide.

And then go out and, you know, listen to share and allow the stereotype stuff. Oh, my God. Can I vote for you? I know. I know goosebumps. Olga's literally crying. I am. The second you said, we have won this way.

Oh, my God. It's true. And with that, I think we probably have to wrap up, Olga. Can you tell everyone where they can follow you, if you have anything to plug, any shows coming out? My name is Olga Koch. You can find me on X, Instagram, Twitter, and on my website, rock androoga.com,

where all my gigs are as well. Jamie, take us away. Amazing. So you can find us at we are queryf.com, and I write a weekly newsletter to help you understand the LGBTQI plus news so that you can skip the doom scrolling because I do it all on your behalf. And the thing I would say,

which is so wonderful about the media storm audience, is that they totally get that proper journalism is like an investment in time and resources. And the last time I was on the podcast, we had like a lovely surge in members that came over to us and signed up for like a monthly or an annual subscription to like help us do this work, which as a not-for-profit outlet, the only LGBT not-for-profit organization that's also regulated and not afraid to be regulated by impress. That makes a huge difference to our work, which is actually not just about journalism, but is about investing in a new generation of,

queer journalists who can go into the newsroom and change it, which is my not-so-secretque queer military agenda. So if you're up for that, then, yeah, head to our membership page. Oh, that's amazing. That makes me so proud of our listeners. Same. And you mentioned Impress. We're actually having Impress on next week to look at election coverage. So thank you for the perfect future episode plug. Welcome back to Media Storm. Now, I spoke a couple of episodes ago with Cocoa Khan right at the beginning of Pride Month about how the Tory's announcement of their harshest anti-trans policies yet

was a great example of them leaning into culture wars in the run-up to a general election. One of their policies was that, in a wider overhaul of sex education, draft guidance states that schools should not teach about the concept of gender identity, that guidance will make clear that gender ideals, is a contested subject and that teachers must say that there are two biological sexes. And the headlines keep on coming. You may have seen earlier this week, Kier Stama of Labour also said he's opposed to gender ideology being taught in schools. Asked during a visit to a school in Kettering if he would rip up the ban on teaching about gender ideology at school.

He said, no, I'm not in favour of ideology being taught in our schools on gender. First of all, let's address this term ideology. is us talking about this term with Charlie Craggs, transgender activist and actress on the last series of Media Storm. To me, ideology has connotations of something sinister as well. There's a feeling of like radicalisation. I guess it's rooted in the context as well

because like the articles that has been used in where it's kind of come to prevalence haven't been in nice articles. It's a mess. We're literally just people trying not to be killed. Like we're people trying to literally just do a wee in the bathroom, we had been doing very happily, causing no concern to anyone for a very long time. They'll call us the lobby and imply that we're doing the bullying of making everyone conform to our beliefs and our ideology.

But who's the real bullies? When you're literally attacking our rights, I think Sean in her book, the transgender issue, put it really well in that it's wild to see how in the flip of a switch, we've gone from being the joke that literally like, ha ha, trans person, a tranny to be like, oh, they're It's so scary. It's like, we've, what? You're the ones who're scaring us. That was Charlie Craggs there, and here's the thing. In the coming weeks and months, you're likely going to see lots of headlines and articles and debates on what two posh men will or will not do when it comes to teaching about transgender people in schools.

What you won't hear is what teachers who currently teach these topics think, or what trans, queer and non-binary people experienced in school. Until now, we've been rounding up testimonies from teachers and LGBT plus people about their views on queer education. As a secondary school teacher, I was unsurprised to find out that the Tory government had suggested banning the teaching of the existence of trans and non-binary students and lives within education. The guidance that has been proposed from the Conservative government is exclusionary, which is the entire direct opposite of what a school should be. Hi, I'm Dean. My pronouns are they

them and I started the movement. Trans kids deserve to grow up. From a teacher myself, this guidance scares me. From a trans individual myself, this guidance scares me. It should scare you too. At the school where I teach, we teach about different relationships and LGBT lives from a place of empathy and kindness. We keep it factual, we keep it age appropriate, and it's based on knowing what you would do if you met a trans person and how would they like to be treated and we put it in the kind of wider view of equality for all.

Hi, my name's Kiki. I'm currently teaching here for an international school in Berlin. Having taught sex education in both the UK and over here, my main experience is that children already know stuff and they have a lot of questions. They already have some kind of awareness of all of the things that the government is trying to stop us from talking to them about.

I'm a social worker. Being trans is not a safeguarding issue. There's no reason why there should be a blanket rule that parents are informed if a young person is trans. Particularly if they don't want them to know, all this will mean is that trans young people no longer feel safe in school. Just the other day, I had a child in my class

tell me that there's more than two genders. So I asked him more and he said, yeah, there's male, female and bilingual. So it was really nice to be able to have a conversation with him and give him the correct vocabulary of non-binary instead of bilingual. Hi, my name is Alex and I am non-binary. I am in year nine, changing names. Many teachers think that that's for fun. and then I just decided I didn't like my dead name.

Ask. Teachers don't ask people. My maths teacher is the only one who's asked me. Only one. And that was because I was on the verge of having an anxiety attack because some people were being extremely transphobic and claimed they didn't know anything, but they already knew. The main difference that I've experienced since moving over here to Germany

is that there are a lot more living. about sex education and you can answer whatever questions arise, you can be honest, be open with the children. That as a teacher was such a liberating feeling to know that I didn't have to be sort of worrying about what I could and couldn't say and whether the discussions I was having were going to get me or my school into trouble.

That was definitely my experience of working in the UK. Finally, something for listeners to take home. I have a very important question. Who is festivaling this weekend? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Don't lie, I'm told you did not get glass-frey tickets this year. Please, bitch. I am going to Fusion Festival, which is near Berlin.

So obviously, way cooler and more hardcore than your little party. Also, no, I didn't get gastroar tickets, cry. So alternative. Okay, well, I will be one of the glastoe ravers, either dehydrating or wading through mud across this weekend's front pages. Show off. Well, because Glastow is always a headline act of the British media every

summer. Journows who got the ticket go on and on about how great it is. Journows who didn't get the ticket go on and about how muddy it is. There's no escaping it. But there is one part of Glastow that goes under the radar every year, which we wanted to bring to your attention. And that

is the festival's testament to British traveller culture. In our second series, media storm looked at a long-term rise in prejudice against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities that appeared to be taking us backwards in time. It turns out the mainstream media had had quite a hand in this. As much as it was incorrect up until the 60s,

we were portrayed as these kind of magical, otherworldly people, which has its own problems. But when you look at it from a media perspective since the 60s, the media representation of us in that time, has become awful. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. You want some beef? Yeah, I'll give you something.

It's bigger. Futter and gypsier. Snatch. Now, there was a problem with pious or gypsies. What are you doing, Paddy? Get out of the way back. Can't really understand much of what is being said. The most watched sitcom of all time now is afterlife of Ricky Javace.

Shit. What? And Mickey the Gypsy is a comedy character who sleeps with someone's wife. My ex-wife, Mickey the Gypsy. He's dirty. Is he violent? Punches out people for no reason. Then you factor in that there aren't any gypsies anywhere.

No directors, no screenwriters. We're not in the media, so we have no saying how we're portrayed. You're always aware that people sort of seeing your pikey and your gypsy and you receive that from a very young age. Dish honest people. Sort of like scum of the earth with no morals. You grow up sort of being learnt in. sort of being learned in a way from your family to hide who you are

and not to make people away that you're a gypsy because you know that straight away that they'll change their opinion of you straight away they won't trust you. People don't understand our community's actually being wiped out now. Our whole existence is illegal now. Everyone's just at a point of trying to make the best of what they can and huddle their families together and try and look after ourselves while we're all slowly picked off. Those were just some of the travellers we spoke to about the daily prejudice they deal with,

threats to their culture and negative stereotyping in our mainstream media. You can hear more by scrolling back to series two. In the episode, we learned that a huge problem with the lack of positive news stories celebrating the cultural legacy of travellers in the UK, of which there's plenty of, And that's why our take home today is about Glastonbury's Traveller Roots. Popular British Fairground, Festival and Free Rave Scenes are built on the backs, not just of traveller culture, but traveller workers who provide the muscle for many of the festival sites you might be enjoying this summer. You can see this in action at Glastonbury's Unfairground, a site in the southeast corner known for subversive art, performance and underground music. And at the unfair ground, you'll find the stopping place, or Atchintan in Romana's,

named after the now virtually non-existent traditional stopping places for gypsies and travellers to rest while moving around the country. Glastonbury's Atchintan is the focal point for a traveller awareness campaign, which features exhibitions, talks, music and storytelling. I'll see you there. So smug. Thank you for listening next Thursday. general election day, so we will be dropping an episode first thing in the morning, picking through the election coverage and helping you figure out how to figure it out.

A huge shout out to our Patreon supporters. We love hearing from you. If you fancy joining our community, the link is in the show notes. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Manson. The music is by Samfire. Our assistant producer is Katie Grant. You can follow us on social media. At Matilda Mal at Helena Wadia and follow the show by at MediaStorm pod. Listen and hit follow on Spotify.