"A Vile and Horrible Little Film"
On Tuesday 30 May 2023, C4 is screening a
documentary with the title ‘Gender
Wars’.
I took part in filming for a film called 'Sex/Gender
Matters'
I did NOT agree to take part in a film called Genderwars,
which is all; about the apparent victimisation of Kathleen Stock
What was initially discussed, and believed I had agreed to Take Part In.
Initially, when contacted about this film titled at that
time ‘Sex/Gender Matters’, I explained I would not take part in any project
which ‘questioned’ or ‘debated’ our rights. Any debate is specious,
trans people’s lives are not up for debate and trans women generally pose no
threat to women. As in any group of people, a few do not abide by
the law. But we don’t consequently
question the existence of entire minority groups and their rights any
longer, because a few are not law abiding.
The battle for all to have their core human and civil rights
recognised has been won several times in recent years. Trans people like black
people, disabled people, LGB people and women fought hard through the courts
and parliament to have their rights recognised. The rights we have came
through the European Courts – nothing was given for free, every single right we
have from non-discrimination to gender recognition is only there because the Senior
European Courts told the UK government that they had to provide them.
I agreed to take part in this film, having chatted with
Julie Bindel about it, only in order to move away from
the debate about our lives, our rights, and our existence, to a more
positive debate about how trans people and women could work together
to address one of society’s core problems, namely men’s misogyny and their
violence towards women and trans people, who have similar levels of
sexual and physical victimisation at the hands of men, across their lifetimes.
On 06 October 2022 Pamela
wrote:
I have been asked to make a film for Channel 4 on the
gender "debate". This will involve both the perspective of
transgender people as well as those people who are gender critical. To be
clear, I am interested in making a film which fully includes people's views,
experiences and thoughts on both sides of this polarised issue.
On 12 October 2022 Pamela
wrote:
I'm extremely
interested in the ongoing work of Press for Change and would like to ask
Stephen about a few ideas I have for the documentary. I am genuinely very
grateful for the offer to talk as it is crucial for us to be able to be able to
make this film.
I really do want to get things right and would be grateful
for a conversation which I am sure would inform my approach to filming with him
and his wider story and also explain my film in full context.
In February 2023, as asked for on 01 February 2023, I provided
Pamela Gordon with references to some of the historical persecutions of those
people, who if they lived today would probably be trans identified. I later
obtained details of the photographer who gave her permission for the company to
use a photograph of trans people taking part in Pride with the Press For Change
(PFC) Banner.
I asked who else was taking part in the film and Pamela told me that so far it was myself, Julie Bindel and she needed suggestions as to others,
particularly trans academics, who might be willing to be filmed.
Filming
During filming, an all-day affair, we discussed many things
including:
● the history of the persecution of trans people,
● my transition history,
● my 30 years of academic research,
● PFC and my role in the legal cases,
● PFC and its history
● the lobbying of MP’s and PFC’s roles as stakeholder
advisers in the drafting of the Gender Recognition Act and later the Equality
Act.
● the battles my family had to fight,
● what Sarah had had to go through to become a mother.
● what it meant to be refused a parental role in law to our
children
● what it was like as an academic facing student protest
● how I chose to negotiate and talk with the students who
disrupted my lecture, who thumped me, or who said they wouldn’t be taught by
me,
We discussed how I, as a trans person, didn’t and would
never have the choices that Kathleen Stock had. In 30 years of what was an
astonishing career, nobody would short-list me (never mind offer me a job within
a week as happened to Stock).
The Film that my wife, Sarah, & I previewed
I am included in the film two or three times for a few
seconds each time. But that is irrelevant.
But what we saw:
1.
It was not explained who I am and why I am included.
2. They
do not reference my 50 years of experience, or that I am an expert, who has
worked on these issues with Governments and courts all over the world,
including the UK Government.
3.
How much they use me is not the point, how they
represent me is the point i.e.,
o
what I know,
o
what I have done, and
o
what I say.
4.
The film is about all about Kathleen Stock. My
partner Sarah put it perfectly when she said,
“This is the Kathleen Stock Rehabilitation
Movie”
and as she left the room, she summed it up:
“It is a vile
and horrible little film”.
5.
Stock is portrayed as an unfairly attacked woman who is
being targeted & terrorised by trans activists using unlawful techniques.
6.
Even the Cambridge debate only shows one side, Kass
tearing a strip off Stock. But there was so much more to that debate than those
couple of sentences.
I assumed, naively, that everyone would be shown in a
similar way to each other in order to obtain that balance they said they were
seeking, In fact,
7.
Throughout the film Stock is allowed to narrate the
story, her involvement, her background, and what she sees as her persecution.
8.
Nobody else gets to do that. I do not get to do that, to
tell about my life as an academic who has faced similar events and handled them
very differently could have been the direct contrast to hers.
9.
Stock’s narrative is never questioned, it is taken as
read – as true.
10. None
of Stock’s public claims have been challenged in this film – for example,
she says and writes that ‘trans people
should not experience discrimination’, but then promotes a change in the
Equality Act 2010 which would result in trans people experiencing direct
discrimination
11. The
film repeatedly contrasts Stock’s ‘distress/bravery’
with various trans people and allies protesting her at different locations, but
the film never explains the reasons for the protests.
12. The
film show ‘all in black’ activists setting off coloured smoke flares. But as the
film director and producer knew they were not smoke bombs, but coloured short
lived blue and pink flares (the colours of the trans flag). The flares were lit
outside Sussex University’s administrative block, a long way from her lecture.
But they show them in such a way, that Stock’s public claims of people setting
off smoke bombs whilst she is lecturing appear to have validity.
13. They
imply Stock faced protesters at her lectures. She did not. There was no
demonstration inside her lecture. However, I did face protesters inside my
lecture and I was filmed explaining how he successfully handled it. There is
also accessible film on Parliament TV of Stephen explaining it to the
Parliamentary Public Bills Cttee when it took evidence on the Higher Education
(Freedom of Speech) bill https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-09-07/debates/8afc9afb-4a55-4aef-a364-5686c34ccf29/HigherEducation(FreedomOfSpeech)Bill(SecondSitting)
and
14. They
allow Stock to frame the protests as being because she thinks trans women are
not women. This simplistic framing makes Stock look like the victim of
irrational trans protestors. However, they were protesting the implications of
her campaigning to have trans people lose their current rights, and her attacks
on a fellow academic Alison Phipps (that’s another story of how victimised she
can claim to be).
The Contrasting Representation of Trans Participants and Stock
15. The
film follows Kathleen throughout, in a way it does not do with other
participants, not even the trans woman Katy. Katy is shown as if she is the
‘only reasonable trans person’ – something the film crew knew to be not true.
In fact, all the trans people they filmed bent over backwards to be reasonable.
(FFS I received an OBE for being ‘the most reasonable lobbyist the Dept of
Constitutional Affairs had ever worked with’.)
All of us, Lily, Kass, Finn, Gina, Charlie and Andrew were
aware that we were sticking our necks above the parapet, but we did not think
the film director and producer were shooting at us.
I feel responsible because I know Charlie and Andrew only
took part because I had agreed to take part. I feel responsibile for persuading
Gina that this was OK, for telling Finn it was worth thinking about working
with Pamela Gordon.
Whilst all of us are presented well (i.e. sane) in the film,
16. All
of us are presented outside of any context other than Stock’s victimisation,
i.e., Stock’s version of the world.
17. We
agreed to take part in a film which would help improve communications and move
the debates forward to focus on the real issues of male violence and misogyny. That
is not mentioned at all in this film.
18. I
did not agree to take part in a film about Kathleen Stock, and as the director
and producer knew I would have refused to be involved in such a film. I would
be surprised if I heard any of the others agreed to be filmed for a film about
Kathleen Stock.
19. This
documentary continues to expand Stock’s distorted and disingenuous claims,
portraying her as ‘ever so reasonable’.
20. Even
Stock’s dressing in a more non-feminine way is not placed in the recent
context of her falling in love with a woman. Having spent most of her life as a
feminine married woman, she even claims she now understands a little of how it
feels to be trans having occasionally been misgendered herself. I will assure anyone
that almost 6’ tall Kathleen Stock cannot understand a fingertip of the life this
5’2” trans man has lived over the last 50 years.
21. No
context is included – The battles I had just to get testosterone therapy and
later surgery. She has no idea of the fears that I and my family have had to
face - the times I have been hit, been sacked, been threatened with eviction,
had people throw glass bottles at my kids. This film could have shown the
prejudice and discrimination that me and others like me faced, and fought, to
get to have our rights, but it doesn’t because that would take away from Stock’s
apparent persecution.
22. The
film sums up trans people’s worries as being a little scared about going to the
loo in a pub. It is an utterly disgraceful piece of editing
Errors in the Film
There are also significant errors (I assume not
deliberate) In the film.
23. The
film seems appears to say that trans identities are a new thing; post-2004, but
obviously they aren't - I was born in 1955 and knew aged 10 that I was what was
referred to as a 'transsexual' or 'sex change'.
The word transgender was coined in 1979 by Virginia Prince,
and we coined trans at a meeting with Lynne Jones MP in 1996.
The European Court of Justice gave us a right to non-discrimination
in 1996, and the European Court of Human Rights recognised a right to
gender recognition, marriage, and privacy in 2002.
24. The
commentary implies Isla Bryson was held with women in a women's prison. She was
– but she was held in segregation (solitary) and the system we had developed
under Prison Rules (PSI’s) was undertaken.
There was a prompt (and I mean prompt) multi-disciplinary
team meeting, Isla underwent a thorough risk assessment and was transferred as
appropriate to the men's estate. She never met a female prisoner. I
worked on those prison rules for 8 years to get them put in place. After the
Karen White fiasco when the rules were snot followed, we worked a further 3 yrs
with government to ensure that would never happen again. And that process of
getting a sensible regime in place to protect women, wasn't quick or easy,
but it works as it did in the Isla Bryson case. That must be clarified,
otherwise the implications made in the film, become lies.
CONCLUSION
·
The film does not show my knowledge and
expertise (I suspect because it would show how specious the arguments of people
like Stock are. Just a few instances of my life would show how specious her
claim to persecution is).
·
On Pamela Gordon’s website she describes herself
and her films as relying
“on striking imagery, powerful
emotional testimony and a sharp eye for
injustice”.
I am ashamed of my own stupidity
and naivety in believing she would keep her eye on the ball of injustice.
Here are some of this year’s injustices the film fails
to see:
·
The film does not mention how trans rights are
being stripped across the global north – no mention of the hundreds of
anti-trans bills being pushed through American legislatures.
o
Relevance: it is US ‘anti-woke‘ right
wing billionaires who are pushing those
bills who now provide wages to Stock at the (not even a) University of Austin,
and those right wing billionaires rely on her ‘victimisation’ and her arguments
to push through those bills.
·
The film does not mention the proposals to
remove rights from UK trans people which are now being made by (of all bodies)
the EHRC.
o
Relevance: it is Stock and the
organisations she has been involved in, like Women’s Place, who have lobbied to
strip Trans people of our privacy rights (to pee in safety & peace whilst
at work, for Christ’s sake).
·
The film does not mention how the HE (Freedom of
Speech) Bill will force Universities to strip students of their right to free
speech.
o
Relevance: it was Stock’s ‘plight’ and lobbying that led
to ministers insisting we need a bill to protect the Freedom of Speech of the
neo-right like Stock. They could have
used me talking to the Commons Committee on what it was like to face a student
demonstration, and how I handled it in contrast.
·
Finally, the film does not even give a ‘news
headline’ to the death of a transphobically persecuted and victimised young
girl Brianna Ghay.
o
Relevance: Alongside the protests they so
frequently show, they could have interspersed images of the 50,000 trans people
and allies who stood silently in freezing temperatures for hours in February,
at over 100 vigils up and down the UK, after Brianna’s death.
I took part in this film solely so as to give both sides a
chance of moving forward. I told Pamela Gordon what Julie Bindel and I had
been discussing. I wanted (and Julie also said it was what she wanted) to
prevent the death of a trans person or a woman. I wanted not only to stop that
happening, but also to prevent the personal losses & repercussions that
would be experienced by the families of the victim and the perpetrator(s). It turns out we were too late for that.
From my perspective, this film builds on the (already out
there) false tropes of wicked trans people being women haters. Nothing could
be further from the truth.
The film may show us as reasonable people, but it does not
show how hard we have had to fight in order to become seen as reasonable and
not the sexual perverts we were names as in the 1970s/80s and 90s.
Consequently, this film won’t contribute to preventing the next death in this
horrible petty & unnecessary war.
As it is I am barely in the film, and who I am and why I am
there is not at all clear. It’s a head that pops up twice and says something
for 10 seconds then 20 seconds. I cannot even remember if it even says who I am
or that I am a professor, or trans, or anything else.
My concern now is to protect my reputation within my own
community.
If C4 insist on showing ‘the Kathleen Stock rehabilitation story’
then I will speak out about the deception the film makers took part in
It is quite simple: we agreed to take part in a film called
‘Sex/Gender Matters’, none of is would ever have agreed to take part in a film
called ‘Gender Wars’ about Kathleen Stock
