This one trans guy said
The Beeb gave the job of “analysis” on that Brighton NHS gendoo newtwoo wangwidge article to, of all people, Ben Hunte, their “LGBT correspondent” who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about women.
The hospital is currently receiving a huge amount of backlash following several misleading news reports and lots of misinformation on social media.
On Twitter, some have called the changes “misogynistic” or “an erasure of women”, and many have labelled them “ridiculous”.
Good start. Scare-quotes on misogyny; that’s Ben Hunte for you.
However, while some reports have stated that Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust is entirely replacing any language related to womanhood, this is not the case.
We know, it’s women and blah blah blah, but we still object to that, because it is in fact women and only women. We get to object to being redefined as well as being erased.
One trans man told me he is “disappointed” that language meant to include him is so divisive, as “adding others should not subtract”.
Poor Ben Hunte, he couldn’t persuade more than one trans man to tell him that?
It is odd that, aside from a few unspecified quotes from tweets, this “[o]ne trans man” is the only person in the article who isn’t identified by name or even how he came to Hunte’s attention.
I don’t know what the Beeb’s policy is on anonymous sources, so I can’t say whether this is consistent or not. My understanding is that most journalistic outlets try to only grant anonymity when there is a good reason for not identifying the speaker, e.g. they’re a government official who isn’t authorized to say what they’re saying, they’re at risk of being fired, they’re divulging some personal information.
But this quote isn’t providing us with any inside information of any kind, it’s just one person’s opinion. I suppose maybe it could be that he isn’t “out” as being trans and therefore doesn’t want to be identified as such? But no reason is given.
The reason I think this matters is not that the person’s name would mean anything to me or most readers; stating that he’s “Martin Smith from Croyden” or whatever instead of “one trans man” wouldn’t change the meaning really. But what is needed is some context. How did the reporter find this person to get the quote? Is he an activist? Does he have a history of making statements on these or other public issues? Is he a friend of the reporter’s? I suspect at least one of those is true.
And the reason this matters is because it colors these stories. There have been all sorts of examples here in the U.S. of political reporters writing stories that quote “undecided voters” or “former Democrats” who turn out to be Republican party officials, which only got uncovered because the reporter identified them by name and then some reader or critic made the effort to do the basic research that the reporter should have. But at least by disclosing the name, the reporter made it possible for someone to check their work.
In this particular instance, it’s not really a big deal. I’m sure there are plenty of trans men who hold this opinion, so I’m not suggesting there’s anything fake here. The real issue is that it seems to me that these kind of blind quotes are ways for the writer to inject their own opinion into the story, and I guess I’d just prefer that writers be up front about that rather than finding someone to be their sock puppet.
Yes, the standard spiel is “…who wishes to remain anonymous.” In fact, it’s especially strange that he didn’t write that, since it implies a threat by those horrid TERFs where none exists, which is precisely Hunte’s style.
It’s not even a proper quote. It has all the hallmark’s of [mystery trans man] being led:
Maybe the trans man is anonymous because he’s scared of being attacked online.
Sally, as latsot pointed out above, the journalistic norm in that situation is to add ‘…who wishes to remain anonymous…’ so that particular writer is either a sloppy journalist or just dishonest.
“adding others should not subtract”.
It doesn’t, but it sure as hell does dilute, eventually until there is no detectable trace of the original meaning. Is there a degree in Homeopathic Gender Studies yet?