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A week of picking on trans people
Feb. 22nd, 2012 12:12 pmIt's hardly unusual for trans people to be picked on by the rest of society, but this week has been egregious.
Firstly, there was the news story of the five-year-old child who was born male but wants to be a girl. Several national newspapers saw fit to publish not only this child's name but also the name of her school, some of them on the front page.
Secondly, the bookmaker Paddy Power ran a campaign which invited people at a racing meet to judge whether women were transgendered or cisgendered (the bookmaker asked people to "spot the stallions from the mares").
Thirdly, after a transsexual man reportedly recently gave birth in the UK, the Sun set up a hotline for its readers to tell its reporters where he lives. Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton, is to be commended for tabling an early day motion in the Commons condemning this behaviour.
And fourthly, the charity Plan UK decided to make a bus shelter advert that was visible only to female observers. This worked by using facial analysis software, and was apparently 90% accurate. It seems that nobody thought of the dangers inherent in having a machine declare a person's observed gender to the rest of the bus queue. (If the machine had a 10% false positive rate, can you imagine what a gift it would be to a bully waiting for the school bus?) Sarah Brown gave this device the wonderful name "Out-o-tron". Plan UK are not apologising and have permanently lost my support.
Firstly, there was the news story of the five-year-old child who was born male but wants to be a girl. Several national newspapers saw fit to publish not only this child's name but also the name of her school, some of them on the front page.
Secondly, the bookmaker Paddy Power ran a campaign which invited people at a racing meet to judge whether women were transgendered or cisgendered (the bookmaker asked people to "spot the stallions from the mares").
Thirdly, after a transsexual man reportedly recently gave birth in the UK, the Sun set up a hotline for its readers to tell its reporters where he lives. Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton, is to be commended for tabling an early day motion in the Commons condemning this behaviour.
And fourthly, the charity Plan UK decided to make a bus shelter advert that was visible only to female observers. This worked by using facial analysis software, and was apparently 90% accurate. It seems that nobody thought of the dangers inherent in having a machine declare a person's observed gender to the rest of the bus queue. (If the machine had a 10% false positive rate, can you imagine what a gift it would be to a bully waiting for the school bus?) Sarah Brown gave this device the wonderful name "Out-o-tron". Plan UK are not apologising and have permanently lost my support.
