The Brianna Ghey murder: Sentencing and the media circus.
With the trial now over and the killers sentenced, the media festival of sham-concern-for-money will soon move on. But, if you are cisgender, please don't bother to even express your sympathy unless you are prepared to speak and act against the torrent of hate descending on Britain's trans community. Because your sympathy means nothing.
The Brianna Ghey murder trial today came to an end, with the sentencing of the two young people who brutally murdered her in a North of England park last year. Brianna Ghey was - for anyone outside the UK or who has been living in a dumpster for the last 12 months - a trans girl. And with this final chapter, the Money-Making Media Circus rolls on to its deeply monestisable, final chapter with the 'tv specials' and the ‘inside stories’ and the interviews and all the other things that have been embargoed till today. The killers' pictures are out there too, plus their names. It's an editor’s wet dream. After today, of course, readers can click onto something else, some other profit-driving soundbite, some other meme. Refugees again maybe, or Muslims. (I note that a recent, horrifying, acid attack has been reframed by the British right wing press (led by The Times) as a story about asylum seekers).
Like everyone else in the UK trans community, Brianna's death really rocked me.
We know that our lives are in danger in this country.
We know that there are people who want us gone. They have said so.
And in Brianna's death - it happened - for real - with all the hate language that we know is used about us, alongside.
Her killing was despicable, awful, terrifying, heartbreaking. I went to a vigil in London’s Soho Square and stood with hundreds of frightened, angry people. I listened to speeches (after one of which TERFs and GCs, backed by sympathetic comments of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, called for the speaker to be arrested). I felt sick, sad, scared, part of something but deeply alone - and not surprised in any way.
And then there's the media carousel.
The Times and The Daily Mail sent reporters to find out Brianna's Deadname (ie her original birth name) and printed it. The experience of having this shared without permission is one of the most traumatising, invalidating, and erasing things that a trans person can go through, a way of reducing your life to a lie. Doing it was a way of killing Brianna again. The Times initially even refused to refer to Brianna as a girl.
Later the crocodile-tears-for-money downpour became torrential as the Mail launched a 'blockbuster', lucrative, podcast about the trial, with its faux-concern and outrage and - like every fucking newspaper - desperate to make as much cash out of this case as they had once made out of the Bulger story.
Hand Wringing and Pretend Care all round. Though of course with only a limited dose of the 'trans question', with the police getting in on it all by trying to erase the possibility that this was a hate crime from the outset (supported by notable 'Gender Critical' figures who wasted no time at all to claim that Brianna's (some called her 'he') death was being "exploited" by 'trans activists').
She was so young, said the headlines. A life cut short. What a character. What a future. Hacks lined up to spill it out. But lets not really go big on what this crime really was - one of hatred of trans people and the delight in killing one eh?
And whatever you do don't join up the fucking dots and tell the wider story of what's actually happening to trans people across Britain (see the exploding hate crime figures), or is planned by Tory ministers for trans kids in schools (like Brianna was), because that's going to end up pointing the finger at the society and the politicians and their cheerleading newspapers - the ones that planted all this hate inside these kids' heads in the first place.
As a trans woman, who grew up a trans girl as I did (and couldn't tell a soul, because I was frightened someone would beat me up, and they absolutely would have) reading of Brianna’s death was very hard. I actually couldn’t. I went numb inside. What Brianna went through and why was unimaginable and my brain wouldn’t let me do it I guess. What her family has faced (and will face forever) was horrific, as their beautiful daughter was taken from them. The family’s dignity has been humbling to see.
But, my main message to the cisgender world with its momentary, pointless, empty, interest is…just sit down, ok? Unless, you are finally, at last, going to do something?
You see I'm pretty unimpressed by your ‘sympathy’ or your ‘care’ or your ‘concern’ around a story like Brianna's when the government that runs your country is planning a range of things that could well see people like Brianna wanting to take her own life without waiting to be murdered by psychopaths whose language and outlook they were TAUGHT by the wider discourse created in government and the media.
I refer of course to government plans to:
1. Prevent teenagers from transitioning in school
2. Prevent trans young people already at school from using facilities - like changing rooms or toilets - that reflect their lived gender
3. Prevent trans children from taking part in team sports that reflect their lived gender.
4. Oblige schools to tell parents if a child acts in a gender non-conforming way.
5. Permit teaching staff to misgender a pupil, without issue, and deadname them without restraint.
6. Eliminate the possibility of a trans teenager accessing puberty-pausing medication except if they are part of a small research study.
6. Remove the long established right for trans women and girls to use women's hospital wards.
7. Bar trans women and girls from single-sex spaces in society like women's toilets or changing rooms.
8. Push for the further elimination of trans women from women's sports at all levels - now almost complete.
9. Ensure that all trans women working in single-sex spaces in healthcare (ie women's hospital wards) be outed to patients and banned if the patient requires it.
All of these initiatives are planned by the Conservative government (except two, nos.6 and 8, because they are already happening). Labour is sympathetic, or signed up, to most.
Any sympathy, any concern for the trans community in Britain, or what happened to Brianna, from cis people, must be set in this context.
Unless you have spoken, better still acted, in rage, against these overt, clear, and in-progress, proposals to destroy our lives, or you do so now, I am not interested in your take on Brianna. I am not interested in your sympathy. So many of us are through with asking nicely, or hoping that you might notice what is going on in this country. How much clearer do you want it to be?
Your government and your newspapers are desperate for trans women to be seen as monsters, perverts and a threat.
Yet it was Brianna that was killed. By someone who called her “it”.
I feel physically sick at the sight of the media feeding on the clicks and hits for this "exotic" murder story. To the media: A girl was killed, and the attitudes you have done so much to fan helped do it. Like you have done before and will doubtless do again.
Actions speak louder than words, but there isn't any action to stop this juggernaut of hate. And I'm not buying the 'what can I do? They don't listen' narrative. You're not even trying, mostly. When several hundred Post Office Sub-postmasters were revealed on ITV to have been crucified by an out-of-control computer system, the country (quite rightly) lost its mind and petitions forced the government to act within days. That action, based on that tv programme, unblocked 25 years of government apathy and cover up.
Meanwhile, there's plenty of action the other way - to eradicate trans people from British life. Just today - as Brianna's case was concluding, a group of anti-trans haters amassed at London Bridge station to protest at the display of the LGBTQ+ 'Progress' flag as part of LGBTQ+ History Month - because it includes trans people. I guess it was a day in which we saw the faces of a whole range of people who hate us, in various ways.
The cancerous hate, in all is growing forms, is about to eliminate trans women from British society and cause even more misery and deaths, and you, who are reading this, are very likely doing absolutely nothing about it.
Change. Speak. Act. Please.
******
Added Feb 5th:
If you do want to act, but genuinely don't know how, start here
If you want to raise your voice against the government's attempts to ruin the lives of trans young people in schools, you have till March 8th to do so. You can do so here, with Stonewall's guide to some of the questions here
There is also further commentary about this guidance, including insight into the decision of the UK government not to consult any LGBTQ+ organisations, nor parents of trans children, nor trans young people here, here, here, here and here.
With the trial now over and the killers sentenced, the media festival of sham-concern-for-money will soon move on. But, if you are cisgender, please don't bother to even express your sympathy unless you are prepared to speak and act against the torrent of hate descending on Britain's trans community. Because your sympathy means nothing.
The Brianna Ghey murder trial today came to an end, with the sentencing of the two young people who brutally murdered her in a North of England park last year. Brianna Ghey was - for anyone outside the UK or who has been living in a dumpster for the last 12 months - a trans girl. And with this final chapter, the Money-Making Media Circus rolls on to its deeply monestisable, final chapter with the 'tv specials' and the ‘inside stories’ and the interviews and all the other things that have been embargoed till today. The killers' pictures are out there too, plus their names. It's an editor’s wet dream. After today, of course, readers can click onto something else, some other profit-driving soundbite, some other meme. Refugees again maybe, or Muslims. (I note that a recent, horrifying, acid attack has been reframed by the British right wing press (led by The Times) as a story about asylum seekers).
Like everyone else in the UK trans community, Brianna's death really rocked me.
We know that our lives are in danger in this country.
We know that there are people who want us gone. They have said so.
And in Brianna's death - it happened - for real - with all the hate language that we know is used about us, alongside.
Her killing was despicable, awful, terrifying, heartbreaking. I went to a vigil in London’s Soho Square and stood with hundreds of frightened, angry people. I listened to speeches (after one of which TERFs and GCs, backed by sympathetic comments of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, called for the speaker to be arrested). I felt sick, sad, scared, part of something but deeply alone - and not surprised in any way.
And then there's the media carousel.
The Times and The Daily Mail sent reporters to find out Brianna's Deadname (ie her original birth name) and printed it. The experience of having this shared without permission is one of the most traumatising, invalidating, and erasing things that a trans person can go through, a way of reducing your life to a lie. Doing it was a way of killing Brianna again. The Times initially even refused to refer to Brianna as a girl.
Later the crocodile-tears-for-money downpour became torrential as the Mail launched a 'blockbuster', lucrative, podcast about the trial, with its faux-concern and outrage and - like every fucking newspaper - desperate to make as much cash out of this case as they had once made out of the Bulger story.
Hand Wringing and Pretend Care all round. Though of course with only a limited dose of the 'trans question', with the police getting in on it all by trying to erase the possibility that this was a hate crime from the outset (supported by notable 'Gender Critical' figures who wasted no time at all to claim that Brianna's (some called her 'he') death was being "exploited" by 'trans activists').
She was so young, said the headlines. A life cut short. What a character. What a future. Hacks lined up to spill it out. But lets not really go big on what this crime really was - one of hatred of trans people and the delight in killing one eh?
And whatever you do don't join up the fucking dots and tell the wider story of what's actually happening to trans people across Britain (see the exploding hate crime figures), or is planned by Tory ministers for trans kids in schools (like Brianna was), because that's going to end up pointing the finger at the society and the politicians and their cheerleading newspapers - the ones that planted all this hate inside these kids' heads in the first place.
Hand Wringing and Pretend Care all round. Though of course with only a limited dose of the 'trans question', with the police getting in on it all by trying to erase the possibility that this was a hate crime from the outset (supported by notable 'Gender Critical' figures who wasted no time at all to claim that Brianna's (some called her 'he') death was being "exploited" by 'trans activists').
She was so young, said the headlines. A life cut short. What a character. What a future. Hacks lined up to spill it out. But lets not really go big on what this crime really was - one of hatred of trans people and the delight in killing one eh?
And whatever you do don't join up the fucking dots and tell the wider story of what's actually happening to trans people across Britain (see the exploding hate crime figures), or is planned by Tory ministers for trans kids in schools (like Brianna was), because that's going to end up pointing the finger at the society and the politicians and their cheerleading newspapers - the ones that planted all this hate inside these kids' heads in the first place.
As a trans woman, who grew up a trans girl as I did (and couldn't tell a soul, because I was frightened someone would beat me up, and they absolutely would have) reading of Brianna’s death was very hard. I actually couldn’t. I went numb inside. What Brianna went through and why was unimaginable and my brain wouldn’t let me do it I guess. What her family has faced (and will face forever) was horrific, as their beautiful daughter was taken from them. The family’s dignity has been humbling to see.
But, my main message to the cisgender world with its momentary, pointless, empty, interest is…just sit down, ok? Unless, you are finally, at last, going to do something?
You see I'm pretty unimpressed by your ‘sympathy’ or your ‘care’ or your ‘concern’ around a story like Brianna's when the government that runs your country is planning a range of things that could well see people like Brianna wanting to take her own life without waiting to be murdered by psychopaths whose language and outlook they were TAUGHT by the wider discourse created in government and the media.
I refer of course to government plans to:
1. Prevent teenagers from transitioning in school
2. Prevent trans young people already at school from using facilities - like changing rooms or toilets - that reflect their lived gender
3. Prevent trans children from taking part in team sports that reflect their lived gender.
4. Oblige schools to tell parents if a child acts in a gender non-conforming way.
5. Permit teaching staff to misgender a pupil, without issue, and deadname them without restraint.
6. Eliminate the possibility of a trans teenager accessing puberty-pausing medication except if they are part of a small research study.
6. Remove the long established right for trans women and girls to use women's hospital wards.
7. Bar trans women and girls from single-sex spaces in society like women's toilets or changing rooms.
8. Push for the further elimination of trans women from women's sports at all levels - now almost complete.
9. Ensure that all trans women working in single-sex spaces in healthcare (ie women's hospital wards) be outed to patients and banned if the patient requires it.
All of these initiatives are planned by the Conservative government (except two, nos.6 and 8, because they are already happening). Labour is sympathetic, or signed up, to most.
Any sympathy, any concern for the trans community in Britain, or what happened to Brianna, from cis people, must be set in this context.
Unless you have spoken, better still acted, in rage, against these overt, clear, and in-progress, proposals to destroy our lives, or you do so now, I am not interested in your take on Brianna. I am not interested in your sympathy. So many of us are through with asking nicely, or hoping that you might notice what is going on in this country. How much clearer do you want it to be?
But, my main message to the cisgender world with its momentary, pointless, empty, interest is…just sit down, ok? Unless, you are finally, at last, going to do something?
You see I'm pretty unimpressed by your ‘sympathy’ or your ‘care’ or your ‘concern’ around a story like Brianna's when the government that runs your country is planning a range of things that could well see people like Brianna wanting to take her own life without waiting to be murdered by psychopaths whose language and outlook they were TAUGHT by the wider discourse created in government and the media.
I refer of course to government plans to:
1. Prevent teenagers from transitioning in school
2. Prevent trans young people already at school from using facilities - like changing rooms or toilets - that reflect their lived gender
3. Prevent trans children from taking part in team sports that reflect their lived gender.
4. Oblige schools to tell parents if a child acts in a gender non-conforming way.
5. Permit teaching staff to misgender a pupil, without issue, and deadname them without restraint.
6. Eliminate the possibility of a trans teenager accessing puberty-pausing medication except if they are part of a small research study.
6. Remove the long established right for trans women and girls to use women's hospital wards.
7. Bar trans women and girls from single-sex spaces in society like women's toilets or changing rooms.
8. Push for the further elimination of trans women from women's sports at all levels - now almost complete.
9. Ensure that all trans women working in single-sex spaces in healthcare (ie women's hospital wards) be outed to patients and banned if the patient requires it.
All of these initiatives are planned by the Conservative government (except two, nos.6 and 8, because they are already happening). Labour is sympathetic, or signed up, to most.
Any sympathy, any concern for the trans community in Britain, or what happened to Brianna, from cis people, must be set in this context.
Unless you have spoken, better still acted, in rage, against these overt, clear, and in-progress, proposals to destroy our lives, or you do so now, I am not interested in your take on Brianna. I am not interested in your sympathy. So many of us are through with asking nicely, or hoping that you might notice what is going on in this country. How much clearer do you want it to be?
Your government and your newspapers are desperate for trans women to be seen as monsters, perverts and a threat.
Yet it was Brianna that was killed. By someone who called her “it”.
I feel physically sick at the sight of the media feeding on the clicks and hits for this "exotic" murder story. To the media: A girl was killed, and the attitudes you have done so much to fan helped do it. Like you have done before and will doubtless do again.
Actions speak louder than words, but there isn't any action to stop this juggernaut of hate. And I'm not buying the 'what can I do? They don't listen' narrative. You're not even trying, mostly. When several hundred Post Office Sub-postmasters were revealed on ITV to have been crucified by an out-of-control computer system, the country (quite rightly) lost its mind and petitions forced the government to act within days. That action, based on that tv programme, unblocked 25 years of government apathy and cover up.
Meanwhile, there's plenty of action the other way - to eradicate trans people from British life. Just today - as Brianna's case was concluding, a group of anti-trans haters amassed at London Bridge station to protest at the display of the LGBTQ+ 'Progress' flag as part of LGBTQ+ History Month - because it includes trans people. I guess it was a day in which we saw the faces of a whole range of people who hate us, in various ways.
The cancerous hate, in all is growing forms, is about to eliminate trans women from British society and cause even more misery and deaths, and you, who are reading this, are very likely doing absolutely nothing about it.
Change. Speak. Act. Please.
******
Added Feb 5th:
If you do want to act, but genuinely don't know how, start here
If you want to raise your voice against the government's attempts to ruin the lives of trans young people in schools, you have till March 8th to do so. You can do so here, with Stonewall's guide to some of the questions here
There is also further commentary about this guidance, including insight into the decision of the UK government not to consult any LGBTQ+ organisations, nor parents of trans children, nor trans young people here, here, here, here and here.
Added Feb 5th:
If you do want to act, but genuinely don't know how, start here
If you want to raise your voice against the government's attempts to ruin the lives of trans young people in schools, you have till March 8th to do so. You can do so here, with Stonewall's guide to some of the questions here
There is also further commentary about this guidance, including insight into the decision of the UK government not to consult any LGBTQ+ organisations, nor parents of trans children, nor trans young people here, here, here, here and here.
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