The UK's useless press regulator
With Ipso in the news, I take the opportunity to dissect my failed attempt to get it to stop pandering to trans-identifying criminals and take victims seriously
Earlier this year Layla le Fey, a trans-identifying man (pictured above), was convicted of making violent threats against me and Kellie-Jay Keen, the organiser of the Let Women Speak rallies.
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In 2020 the same man had pleaded guilty to carrying an offensive weapon (a clawhammer) which he used to threaten a shopkeeper in a row over a bottle of wine – and that wasn’t his first offence either, he had previously been convicted for carrying a knife.
This man has a criminal record @sussex_police, and he is now threatening to kiII and commit arson. What are you going to do about it? https://t.co/d4auZrusly https://t.co/m5vwbEMQeL pic.twitter.com/m72sqN0AaE
— Let Women Speak Official (@StandingforXX) June 7, 2023
On that occasion a soft-hearted (or soft-headed) judge had suspended the sentence because being in a man’s jail would be tough. This time too, his sentence – 20 weeks in prison – was suspended. I can’t say I was massively surprised.
But I was pretty enraged by the reporting. The Mail quoted from my victim statement, but changed the male pronouns I had used for Le Fay – I complained, and the remarks were removed and a note added to the article. I was told afterwards by someone who had been in court that they were changed when my statement was read out, which only makes me angrier. The local paper, the Brighton Argus, headlined a piece “transgender woman” but then called Le Fey a woman in the piece.
At first I wasn’t going to do anything about it – there are too many fronts in this war to fight on all of them. But a little while later a woman got in touch with me to tell me that she and some friends had complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), a regulator that most papers are (voluntarily) signed up to, and had been brushed off with the excuse that they were “third parties”. Would I consider picking up the complaint, she asked.
And so I did. I wrote to Ipso, forwarding the final response to those women and asking to be added as a complainant. Ipso said I needed to put in a new complaint. That was obviously an attempt to get me to give up and go away, but instead I sighed deeply and filled in the online form with materials cut and pasted from my initial email. But to no effect. According to Ipso I too was a “third party” in a complaint about inaccuracy in the reporting of a crime against me. Moreover, it added, investigating the “accuracy” point about Le Fey’s sex (it said gender) would be unacceptably intrusive for him. This despite his sex not being at issue – he’s obviously male if you look at him, and also describes himself as a “proud trans woman”, and was described as a trans woman in court.
I was furious, but let it go because I couldn’t see anything further I could do about it. Then, earlier this week, Ipso issued its ruling in a complaint taken by Juno Dawson, another trans-identifying man, against the Spectator. It related to a column in which journalist Gareth Roberts had described Dawson as a “man who claims to be a woman”. Dawson complained to Ipso, saying that in 2018 he had “legally changed gender” (that is, had got a gender-recognition certificate) and that the article breached the Editors’ Code on three grounds: that it was inaccurate (section 1), harassment (section 3) and “prejudicial or pejorative” (Section 12). The first two points were rejected. The complaint under Section 12, however, was upheld.
I think it’s that word “claimed”. In this ferocious linguistic war, every shade of meaning is analysed and fought over. Those of us trying to shift public opinion are always walking a fine line between propping up our enemies’ lies, on the one hand, and repelling the undecided or “be kind” crew, on the other. I personally wouldn’t have written “claimed” in this piece; I’d have used my tried and tested formulation of “a man who identifies as a woman”. This isn’t because it’s perfect – what on earth does “identify as” mean anyway, especially when someone’s identifying as something they’re not? It’s because from personal experience, with the Overton window where it is currently, it’s the best combination I’ve found yet of absolutely unambiguous and “doesn’t scare the horses”. When the Overton window moves, I will too.
Roberts’s version is utterly defensible, however. I’ve just tried various Google searches of the format “X claims/ claimed”, and it’s clear that the way it’s used in the media is to report that someone is saying something about themselves, and then to cast doubt on the accuracy of that claim. There’s no suggestion that you’re “prejudiced” against the person, and it’s not “pejorative”. It’s simply saying you don’t believe what they are saying – which is precisely what Roberts was doing, and he has every right to.
Here are a few examples from my Google searches:
Boris Johnson claimed to be a unionist, yet for expediency sold out Northern Ireland
Johnson claims to be on track to win next election amid rebellion
Starmer claims to be against dynamic alignment…But he used to say the opposite
Rowling claimed to be sharing her survivor story, not for sympathy, but “out of solidarity…”
Pleasingly, under its new editor Michael Gove, the Spectator is having none of it. Gove is apparently considering pulling out of Ipso and joining a rival regulatory scheme, and to be exploring whether other editors have also had enough and might join him.
The Telegraph has been running most of the follow-on stories, so I got in touch and asked if they were interested in my Ipso run-in. I sold it as evidence that “Ipso is biased against women’s rights campaigners – and reality”. It said yes, and the story has just come out. Here it is (and an archived version).
I append my correspondence with Ipso at the bottom of this piece. Looking back through it, what jumps out at me is Ipso’s insistence that a person’s sex/ gender identity – it doesn’t really distinguish between the two, and stubbornly responds to points about sex as if they were about gender identity – is nobody’s business but their own. By calling my attacker a woman for no reason other than that is what he wants, they are siding with him and against me and Kellie-Jay. This despite us being his victims, and more particularly his victims because we refuse to play along with his pretence. But Ipso doesn’t even acknowledge this point, or the related point that most violent crime is committed by men, meaning that inaccuracy about sex in crime reporting is a serious distortion of the truth that over time misleads the public.
Ipso also seems to suggest that establishing the truth about Le Fey’s sex would involve an investigation that would intrude unacceptably on his privacy. This is obviously absurd – he’s “out” as identifying as a trans woman, and that is how he was described in court. The (deliberate) muddling of sex and gender identity means I’m not really sure what Ipso is on about – is it saying, in a coded fashion, that it doesn’t know whether he has a gender-recognition certificate, or is it saying that the reporting is not inaccurate unless he accepts that he is (biologically) male? Either way it’s ludicrous.
The potential relevance of GRCs to Ipso’s deliberations is intriguing. These are legal documents, and supposed to have no relevance for any purpose other than laws where a person’s sex makes a difference of some kind. A man who has a GRC stating that he is a woman can be recorded as a woman on a marriage certificate, for example. He counts as a woman for the tax and pensions systems (this makes little or no difference nowadays, but used to make a lot when a woman’s income went on her husband’s tax return, and women’s pensions kicked in five years earlier than men’s). There is nothing requiring private individuals or the media to play along with the pretence of “legal sex change”.
But that is not what people who hold GRCs think. Dawson certainly seems to think that holding a GRC bolsters his right to force journalists to call him a woman; in its ruling on his complaint Ipso says:
“The complainant complained first directly to the publication and then to IPSO one day later. She [sic] said that the article was inaccurate in breach of Clause 1 to report that she was “a man who claim[ed] to be a woman”. She said that she held a Gender Recognition Certificate and was declared a woman in all legal matters by the Gender Recognition Panel.”
Personally, I think Ipso is using GRCs as an excuse. It seems to me to be motivated by cowardice above all. It knows that whatever choices the outlets it regulates make about pronouns and other sexed language, there are bound to be complaints to the regulator – and those from the transactivist side are far more deranged. Since you can’t know whether or not someone has a GRC unless they tell you, it’s jolly convenient to rule that you can’t know anyone’s sex (meaning “sex as modified by a GRC”, but with “sex” stealthily replaced by “gender” and the “as modified by a GRC” bit silent) without an “intrusive investigation”.
Here is my correspondence with Ipso, in chronological order. (I’ve edited to remove a couple of references to the name of the woman who alerted me to the previous complaints.)
February 25th, 2024
My name is Helen Joyce, and I am one of the two victims of the crime that was reported in the Brighton Argus under the headline “Trans woman could be jailed for threats to kill”, with the standfirst “A woman could be jailed for making online threats to kill campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen”. I attach the tweets the man in question posted to us, and which have led to him being convicted.
I have not complained to IPSO before regarding the article, but was moved to do so when forwarded your unsatisfactory pro forma response to complaints made by several other women. This says that you declined to consider whether there has been a breach of the Editors’ Code in large part because “the alleged inaccuracy related most closely to Layla Le Fey”, and the complaint was not made by him, but by a third party.
Inaccuracy regarding reporting of the sex of this man does not merely closely relate to him; it also significantly impacts Kellie-Jay and me, as we are the victims of the crime he's been found guilty of. We are two women’s-rights campaigners, and Le Fey is a man who threatens women’s-rights campaigners in an attempt to silence us. This is absolutely classic male violence against women. It’s a sex-based crime and it’s done to intimidate.
By reporting this as a woman-on-woman crime, the Brighton Argus is severely misrepresenting a crime in which I was a victim. I had to report this crime. I had to give a police interview and write a witness statement, and prepare to give evidence if the man who threatened me pleaded not guilty. I wrote a victim impact statement which will be used in deciding regarding sentencing. In it I explained how these threats have affected my life. I have to consider my safety when I attend public events, especially ones that it’s known I will be attending. I have applied for a restraining order barring Le Fey from being anywhere near where I live, or anywhere it is known in advance that I will be attending.
I say all this because I want to explain why you shouldn’t brush off my complaint, the way you have brushed off those of all the other women who have complained about what you call an “alleged inaccuracy”. I am not a “third party” in this complaint. It closely relates to me – to my life and to my knowledge of what happened to me: I dared to speak about women’s rights and a man who doesn’t care for women speaking about their rights threatened me in an attempt to intimidate me into silence. This is misreporting of a crime that has had a significant impact on my life. It is revictimisation.
And so here I make the same points that other women have made, but I do so as an interested party. My standing as a victim of the crime in question, and the man in question, means you shouldn’t brush me off as you have brushed off other women.
It is always misleading for a media outlet to use any of the words “woman”, “female”, “she” and “her” for a man/male person, since many readers will understand the person to be biologically female, which in the case of men – including those who identify as women – is false. This is a breach of the Editors' Code.
This is the case even if the man is described as a “trans woman” or “transgender woman”. Public polling shows that a significant share of the population do not know what these phrases mean, with around a fifth thinking these terms mean a woman who claims to be a man, not a man who claims to be a woman; and another fifth simply unsure what they mean.
When it comes to crime reporting, misrepresenting a perpetrator or alleged perpetrator’s sex will always be material, because it will always be relevant to the public’s understanding of the story. Criminality is highly sex-linked – most violent crime, and nearly all sexual crime, is committed by men – male people. Women who send hyper-violent threats to other women, about cutting their eyes out and burning down their houses with their children inside (one of the threats Le Fey made to Kellie-Jay) are really rare; men who send such threats to women who dare to stand up to men are, sadly, common.
It is not only grossly misleading for a media outlet to present a man committing a male-pattern crime as a woman; it is even more especially so when that crime is against a woman, and motivated by woman-hatred. This inaccuracy affects me personally as the victim of such a crime.
As far as I can tell from your rather confusing email, your other reason for not progressing with this complaint is that any pronouncement regarding Le Fey’s sex might constitute an invasion of Le Fey’s privacy – presumably because it’s supposed to be unknown whether or not he is a man.
In fact, that matter is not in doubt. What is actually happening is that you – and the Brighton Argus – are prioritising the “rights” (in fact, the baseless demands) of a violent man accused of making death threats against two women over the genuine rights and concerns of his victims.
Le Fey was already a convicted criminal before his threats against Kellie-Jay and me, and the Brighton Argus knows this perfectly well since it reported on his previous crime. In that reporting the Argus similarly referred to Le Fey as “she” and “her”, but as you can see from the heading it is completely clear that Le Fey is a man who claims to be a woman (a “transgender woman”), not an actual woman, and that everyone in the court and the journalist writing about it knew this.
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18264144.brighton-hammer-thief-spared-prison-trangender/
The headline on that piece makes this clear:
Brighton hammer thief spared prison because she is trangender
The point is further made in the body of the article:
“Rebecca Upton [Le Fey’s barrister] said that because Le Fey did not have certified evidence of her gender reassignment, she would have to go to the male-only Lewes Prison.”
I look forward to your response.
Ipso responded on February 26th, saying:
We noted you wanted to add your concerns to an ongoing complaint. In this case, given the depth of your concerns and the fact you are identified in the article, it may be helpful to submit your concerns as a new complaint so that we can give them appropriate consideration.
This was an obvious attempt to get me to give up and go away; nevertheless, I went and filled out the form. On March 22nd I got this response:
I write further to our earlier email regarding your complaint about an article headlined “Trans woman could be jailed for threats to kill”, published by The Argus (Brighton) 9 February 2024.
On receipt of a complaint, IPSO’s Executive staff reviews it to ensure that the issues raised fall within our remit, and represent a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The Executive has now completed an assessment of your complaint.
You said that this article was inaccurate in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) because you considered it inaccurately reported the gender of Layla Le Fey.
While we acknowledge that the article mentions you, where you have not disputed the accuracy of the reporting about you specifically, we decided that the alleged inaccuracy related most closely to Layla Le Fey. We noted that you were not complaining to us on their behalf. This means that your complaint is what IPSO considers a third-party complaint, which IPSO may, but is not obliged, to consider.
When deciding whether to accept complaints from third parties, we have to take into account the position of the individual most closely involved. What that means in practice differs from case to case. Sometimes it is purely a question about whether we can practically conduct an investigation without the participation of that person; for example, if first-hand knowledge about something they’re claimed to have said or done is needed in order to establish whether an article is accurate.
However, we also have to consider the potential effect on someone if IPSO undertook an investigation into an article about them without their involvement, particularly where the point of complaint concerns their personal characteristics. An investigation into your complaint would require IPSO to correspond with you and the publication about whether this person’s gender was accurately described in the article before potentially publishing our findings on our website. Setting aside the question of whether we have, or might obtain, all the necessary information required to make a finding without their involvement, an investigation and the potential subsequent publication of an IPSO ruling could represent a significant intrusion into their privacy.
Having taken into account the above factors we have decided not to consider your complaint further. For clarity, this does not affect the ability of any person mentioned in the coverage to make a complaint to us should they decide to, or our ability to consider other accuracy complaints about the article.
The email finished with some boilerplate about how to appeal and thanking me for sharing my concerns. I didn’t bother to take it any further – it would obviously have been a waste of my time. But I’m delighted that the News Gods have given me this chance to stick the boot in now.
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