Gender mix-up: The Guardian says sorry

[Claire McNab <claire@siberia.demon.co.uk>]

The Guardian, Saturday July 3, 1999 (Saturday Review)

<http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,3029,63067,00.html>

GENDER MIX-UP

The Readers' Editor on confusion over reporting sexuality

Ian Mayes/Open door

About a month ago we published a report of an employment tribunal in
which Eleanor Lynall, a marine surveyor, was seeking compensation
from her former employer for unfair dismissal and sex
discrimination. Ms Lynall, who had been known to her employer as
Andrew Lynall, had for nearly 10 years been undergoing counselling,
diagnosis and treatment for gender dysphoria and gender reassignment.
She is a transsexual person in the process, under medical
supervision, of shedding an uncomfortable male identity for the
female one to which she feels she has a natural claim and for the
liberation into which she is prepared to suffer the accompanying
trauma.

She told her employer formally of her intention to adopt a female
gender role and was dismissed shortly afterwards. Her employer
resists the claim of unfair dismissal and the tribunal has yet to
announce its conclusion.

The rights and wrongs of the case are not the question here. The
question is the Guardian's blunder in its report of the tribunal
hearing in referring to Ms Lynall as Mr Lynall throughout, despite
the fact that she was presented to the tribunal, and in all the
documents involved, in her new role. Her gender was, you could say,
the point of the proceedings.

Ms Lynall, a Guardian reader for years, felt our treatment of the
case, in particular the apparent denial of her gender, was a slap in
the face from a paper of which she had considerably higher
expectations. Indeed, anyone following the paper's generally
sympathetic and helpful coverage of transgender issues, especially by
our legal affairs correspondent, in the past few years might have
held a similar view.

Ms Lynall complained to the Press Complaints Commission and in a
covering letter which accompanied a copy of the complaint sent to the
Guardian, she said: "It would be an extreme understatement to say
that I am offended by the article."  I read Ms Lynall's complaint and
asked the PCC to give me the opportunity to look into it, on the
understanding that Ms Lynall would be free to return to the PCC later
if she wished.

Ms Lynall, by the way, was not the only person to complain. Another
reader, who, I have since learned, is also a male-to-female
transsexual, wrote that for the report "continually to refer to Ms
Lynall in the male gender is not only insulting and distressing in
the extreme, it betrays a profound ignorance of both transsexualism
and the meaning of discrimination within European Law and the Sex
Discrimination Act, which now [from May 1 this year] explicitly
protects TS people".

How did it happen? The Guardian's report was supplied, substantially
in the form in which it appeared in early editions of the paper on
June 2, by a news agency. I spoke to the agency's reporter who read
from his original copy. He had referred to Ms Lynall once, placing
her in her former employment with the company from which she is
seeking redress, as Mr Lynall, and in all other references as Ms
Lynall. This seemed to me to be an accurate and acceptable thing to
do.

Unfortunately, the copy was then changed by the agency before
transmission to its clients. It says it did this in an honest
attempt to achieve clarity and consistency, and that the last thing
it wished to do was to cause offence. It now recognises that it was
wrong and says it will bear in mind the lessons of the story.

We should have noticed and corrected it. We didn't and we apologise
to Ms Lynall for not doing so.

Ms Lynall says her main purpose in complaining to the PCC was to try
to prevent such things happening to others and to foster a greater
understanding of gender reassignment. She feels many people still
regard it as though those involved are exercising a lifestyle choice.

"As far as choice is concerned," she says, "there are transgendered
people who, for religious, family or other reasons, decide not to
submit to treatment, and consequently live out their lives in often
extreme distress. For myself, and doubtless for others in a similar
position, gender reassignment was started only after exhaustive
diagnosis and assessment of alternative remedies, none of which was
considered likely to be effective."

Ms Lynall embarked on this long, difficult journey of transition
nearly a decade ago. We clumsily stuck out a foot to trip her.

Readers may contact the office of the Readers' Editor by telephoning
0171 239 9589 between 11am and 5pm Monday to Friday. Surface mail to
Readers' Editor, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER.
Fax 0171 239 9897. email: reader@guardian.co.uk

--------------------------------

Useful links:

Gender Trust - <http://www3.mistral.co.uk/gentrust>
FTM Network - <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ftmnet>
Beaumont Society - <http://members.aol.com/bmontsoc>
Mermaids - <http://www.geocities.com/westhollywood/village/2671/>
Gires - <http://www.pfc.org.uk/gires/>
Press for Change - <http://www.pfc.org.uk/>

ENDS