Media Storm - Unpicking the media storm: Trans rights as a threat to women

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Warning: strong language and mention of rape LIVE SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT: Media Storm will be LIVE at the London Podcast Festival this September, on Saturday 16th at 7pm! Book tickets now to join us as we breakdown the craziest headlines of 2023: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/media-storm-2/ Are trans rights a threat to women? Or is that narrative itself the real threat? Actor, author and activist Charlie Craggs joins Helena and Mathilda in the studio for this week's bonus episode, to pick apart mainstream media efforts to pitch cis women against their trans counterparts: where has it come from, who is it serving, and how is it being weaponised against women themselves? The hosts also spill the beans from their trip to Parliament, which took an unexpected turn for the transphobic. Buy the girls a coffee on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MediaStormPodcast  This bonus episode is created by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). The music is by Samfire (@soundofsamfire). More on Media Storm Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com   Media Storm was first launched the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Last week, we were joined in the studio by Charlie Craggs, who helpfully suggested that Helena and I fund our journalism with an only fan's account called News with Nudes. We could do like a sexy cover up with newspaper and then like pull each like newspaper away. Yeah, we could do a naked calendar. The sun headline like pasted across the nipples. That's actually quite a good idea.

Oh my God. God, maybe we could make a career out of this. I mean, it's amazing to see how well you've done since like first hearing about it. You've done fucking killing it. Thanks. It doesn't always feel like that. No, you really are. It feels like treading water.

Yeah. Even people outside of my like kind of echo chamber of the people I think would, like, know it, know it. And I was like, oh, hell, yeah, you're doing really, really well. That's how you know when you're doing good. Okay, okay. So we've just got to beg some more people for money. But I'm not just here to ask you to sponsor us on Patreon for just £3 a month by clicking on the link in the show notes. Note there's something much more important.

On last week's episode, Helena investigated and clearly laid out the facts around Scotland's gender recognition bill and the debate that has unfolded since. And then we spoke with Charlie. about the transgender narratives dominating today's debates and how coloured these are by fear. This has not always been the case. So where has it come from? Why now? And who is it helping?

Fear often comes from the unknown, which is why it's so important to listen to the people being painted into pariahs. At Media Storm, we platformed those spoken about in the news all the time, but never spoken to. This is their right of reply, so thank you for joining us this bonus week for transgender rights and the real threats to women. This whole trans women are a threat to women. I hadn't heard that.

I transitioned 10 years ago now and I hadn't heard that until like six years into my transition. I'd never heard, never heard a woman think of me as a threat or like any discourse about it in the media. And bear in mind, I'd been working in the media up until that point. I never ever had any issue, was never asked any questions about that and media stuff. Now it's literally all I ever do. And the shift of like being in the street, like the abuse I'd get would always be from like yobby, straight guys, football hooligan types, lads, road men types. Now the more shit I get in the street is and definitely, definitely online and in the media is from women, it's mind blowing because I can never have predicted that. It makes no sense. It just makes no sense.

Women have always been my only friends. I've never had guy friends. Women have been my safe space. Women are the reason I'm literally still here today, I would have killed myself a long time ago if it wasn't for the few friends I had at a time in my life where I was in an all-boys school, a rough all-boys school, growing up on a rough council stay, even like in my family, like of like boyish boys. And I just, it blows my mind. I'm just like, we're not your enemy.

We've never been your enemy. You've never been our enemy. Why is now like this, everyone getting dragged into this massive thing? There's something to this that I actually feel there's an extent to which women are being exploited by this narrative. Yes. There's already reasons to be cautious, to be afraid in your day-to-day life as a woman. And now we're being told that we need to fear all of these phantom threats as if they're immediate dangers to our very existence. And this narrative is serving really cynical agendas.

Actually, our first episode of this season was on far-right radicalization. And I spoke to reformed neo-Nazis to people who've been groomed online, people who've been undercover. And it seems that far-right recruiters are actively using this narrative, this emotive debate about transgender rights and using that to recruit ciswomen, because the far-right have recognized that they've been a very male-dominated movement and in order to have legitimacy, in order to continue to the next generation,

they need to recruit women. And one of the single most useful narratives to far-right radicals recruiting women to their movements is news about transgender rights. So whether it's serving far-right radicals, whether it's serving tabloid press that are making, you know, clickbait capital from it, or whether it's serving political groups

that want to distract people from, you know, at the cost of living crisis and scare them into voting for them. At the end of the day, women are being exploited as well by being made to fear things that they don't need to fear. And it's just, yeah, you're right. The affinity, the allyship is so much more prominent than this supposed threat we're being told now has to turn us into an us and them movement.

And it really is an us and them thing. Like a woman, if they're reading a reputable source and maybe if they don't have like trans people or many LGBT people in their life or in their circles, If you read a, like, a headline that's like, do you want men in your bathrooms? Of course they're going to say no. And then they're almost being told that, yeah, you're on our side then. And it's like, well, guess what?

I don't want men in my toilets either. I would have so much less issue if they were to be like, can we just make some trans toilets? And that's still like segregation. But I would, why are they saying I have to be in the men's? Like, do you want me to be beaten up? Do you want me to be murdered? Do you want me to be raped again? Because I will be.

And I will also be sucking off all your husbands. I really, I really hope you leave this thing because I promise, I make a vow. I've said on Instagram, if this goes through and all of a sudden we happen to be using the men's toilets. I'm going to be second off your husband. Not your, I will get, I'm going to have a thing where women who are on side can apply for a card

for their husband's wallet so that he can show the cards and be, but I doubt he'll show it. But he'll be exempt from being like cheated on. I'm going to ruin all your lives if you ruin mine. I have nothing to live for. If you're going to make me use the men's toilets where I literally, I'm making a joke, but I will be. in massive danger.

No, I can see the fear. Mad, yeah. And I think that a lot of the negative language around the transgender community in the press comes from the fact that the coverage is disproportionate. The trans community are still less than 1% of the population. And I think that is important to remember. Yet they are still painted as this like new, scary concept. And I really remember when I was younger, one of the things that helped me understand what,

gay person is, or what a lesbian person is, was learning about the history of homosexuality and knowing that many, many gay people have, like, existed for many, many years. And that's the same as the trans community. Like, trans people have existed forever. As a trans person, you just feel like, why can't people see this? You feel like you're going crazy almost. What you said about the kind of far right and their intervention is very, very, very clear when you look on Twitter and even on things like there was a study on TikTok where they set up the account as a woman and as a man and just did scrolling without actually like looking for anything to see what rabbit holes they naturally are pushed down with algorithms and how often it was leading towards

far right things for men it would be more like the Andrew Tate stuff but for women they'd be pushing them down the transphobic route so in the main episode for this topic go back and listen to it listeners we we talk about this headline where a student apparently identified as a cat. Spoiler alert, no student identified as a cat, but this was reported across mainstream outlets. The scary thing is it started off building traction by far-right outlets, and that migrated into mainstream spaces and made it onto the BBC. And so what we are actively seeing here is evidence that fictional far-right narratives are making their way into the mainstream, that the extremism is becoming mainstream. And it's something we need to be really on guard for.

Are you going to tell the story? Only a few weeks ago, Helena and I were in Parliament. Okay, tell the story. We were speaking in Parliament about misogyny in the media, and there was absolutely no mention of anything to do with transgender rights in the conversations that had been had. And there was this MP sitting to the left, me. As soon as they open the floor to questions, they said, does anyone have any questions?

She just started speaking. She didn't have a question. She just wanted to insert into the conversation that if we're talking about misogyny, I think it's really important to mention that sex-based rights have a role to play and that women need to feel safe and to feel that their territory isn't being encroached upon. Her tone, it felt very aggressive. and then later on a visiting MP from New Zealand had a question to ask but she said just first I want to respond that the threat here being discussed was not the transgender community before she'd even finished her sentence this MP lashed back and she stormed out of the room media stormed she media stormed out of the room hashtag media stormed

Helena breathed for the first time in about 25 minutes and yeah but this I mean in the context of this the transgender lobby that we see in the media. This was not someone who was reacting in defence of having been attacked by some angry mob. This was someone who inserted herself into the space to derail a valid conversation and steer it towards this binary heated debate in which a conversation about domestic abuse

had become about transgender people. It's just, it's wild to me because when I transitioned, the first thing my mum said who was super accepting was like, I'm just really worried. She was like, you're going to have such a hard life. I think everyone can agree turf or not. It's not fun being trans.

You are literally going to be like, oh, it's going to cry. I'm such a cry, baby. But like, it's just, it's so hard. I get cackled every day. Like, I was spat on on the face on the tube. Oh, this is the analogy I always uses. Like, if you're on a tube and a trans person gets on, are you thinking that they're going to attack you?

Are you going to be looking at them thinking, oh, God, I hope that person doesn't get attacked. You know that they're going to be the ones getting attacked, not attacking. So I'm just like, where is this notion of us being the bullies, you know? And it's wild to see how in the flip of a switch, we've gone from being the joke that literally like, ha-ha, transplants and a tranny to be like, oh, they're so scary. It's like, we've, what? You're the ones who're scaring us.

Media Storm, the award-winning investigative podcast from the House of the Guilty Feminist, we'll be back next week with an investment. investigation into the gendered impact of humanitarian crises.