WE NEED YOUR HELP. Newspapers are bullying trans people in the same way that they bullied gay people in the lead-up to Section 28. “Fury at BBC sex-change show for six-year-olds” screamed the Mail On Sunday’s front page recently. Other tabloids were quick to jump on the “story”.
The fuss? A CBBC programme called Just a Girl, about an 11-year-old trans girl who takes puberty blockers. It’s not an advert for gender transition; it just describes what her life is like.
The Daily Mail quoted Tory MP Peter Bone, who said: “It beggars belief that the BBC is making this programme available to children as young as six.” Now what does this remind you of? Gay men of a certain age may recall that in 1983 the same paper got its knickers in a twist over Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, a book about a girl who lives with her father and his boyfriend. Just like Mr Bone, bigots such as MP Jill Knight were concerned that these educational materials could be accessed by “children as young as five or six”. A few years later, Section 28 was passed, effectively banning the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools. The law was intentionally vague, and teachers were too scared to even discuss homophobia, meaning that many failed to act when pupils — like me — suffered homophobic bullying. Having access to information about trans people would have helped me through a tough time.