'The most recent example surfaced in the People a fortnight ago, in a story about the number of transgender officers in the Metropolitan Police. This originated in a FOI request made on the popular WhatDoTheyKnow website in May, which turned up the fact that some 582 Metropolitan Police officers identified as LG or B (or 8.5% of those who expressed a preference). In addition, 8 identified as intersex, and a further 6 as transgender/transsexual... *
'Similar issues arose earlier this year when The Sun claimed that the Ministry of Defence was paying for troops’ gender reassignment surgery. This arose from an FOI inquiry that revealed that over a possible two year period, the MOD had spent around £7,000 – out of a budget in excess of £100bn – to support military personnel in gender re-assignment.
'While accurate, this piece was condemned at the time by members of Trans Media Watch for stirring up controversy by running a story out of all proportion to the actual impact of the money involved...'
Jennie Kermode of Trans Media Watch told Pink News; "In the absence of any other context for the story, we can only conclude that the FOI use in this case was speculative and was intended to acquire material for a negative story about vulnerable minority groups. The negative intent in this case is clear from the paper’s choice to change the word ‘intersex’ in the police data to the inaccurate word ‘hermaphrodite’ which most intersex people find offensive.
“The deliberate omission [of background] suggests that the intent is to mislead readers.”
Quite rightly, Kermode says she does not wantto see any restrictions placed on FOI requests.
But what to do?
It's strange though that Pink News has headlined this article; 'Concern over ‘pernicious’ Freedom of Information requests on LGBT issues' - why not specify here this is a trans issue?
I can't think of any similar cases involving, say, gay men.
As Fagburn keeps repeating, trans people now occupy the same place in tabloid demonology as gay men once did.
So someone being trans is a story in itself - they hold a particular fascination if they work in "manly" professions, such as the police, the fire service or armed forces.
The tabloids think it is quite legitimate to out trans people.
And trans people are - almost always - only allowed to be presented as either a joke or a threat.
It really is quite dreadful, shameful, hateful stuff.
PS Worth stating again how vastly improved Pink News is since Stephen Gray became editor last year.
It's great to have a UK-based gay news where I can find out some things I didn't know were going on, rather than scream at all the things they've got wrong.
Pink Paper seems to have given up - the whole thing now appears to be written by interns...
* The Pink News article also details several “material inaccuracies, use of pejorative language and disingenuous statements”.
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