How anti-trans media undermines human rights and equality for everyone

Abstract

A moral panic about trans people has been raging in the UK press, amplified by social media. While it started ramping up in 2017, the political hostility to trans people goes back decades. Anti-trans media stories have served as a political tool to attack European equality and human rights frameworks for many years. Failing to take media transphobia seriously endangers everybody’s civil rights.

Many of the rights and protections that LGBTQ people have in the UK resulted from EU law and judgments by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This research examines the stories that the British press told about ‘Europe’ and LGBTQ rights between 1973 and 2017. The report’s findings are based on analysis of four widely-read newspapers: The Guardian; The Telegraph; The Daily Mail; and The Sun. It also includes some illustrative examples from the 2020s. The data was analysed using a feminist narrative approach.

In a healthy democracy, the media informs citizens on political issues, enabling debate and political participation, and holds political representatives to account. But the media is no longer fulfilling this democratic function. Newspaper ownership has become increasingly concentrated in a few powerful conglomerates. The Internet and social media created economic pressures that reduced journalistic standards. The UK press has resisted efforts to regulate it. The decline in media standards has accompanied the increasing input of billionaires and global far-right actors in our politics and our press.