The BBC altered testimony from an alleged rape victim to fall in line with her transgender attacker’s preferred pronouns.
An article published on the website for the UK’s publicly-funded broadcaster last year, previously entitled “We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women,” saw woke editors change quotes from an alleged rape victim who had referred to her attacker as “he/him”.
According to a report from the Times of London, the quotations were changed in order to not “misgender” the alleged rapist and to conform to the BBC’s style guide, which was developed with input from the Beeb’s “central diversity team”.
Replacing references to “he/him” in the piece with “they/them” the article reads: “[They] threatened to out me as a terf and risk my job if I refused to sleep with [them]. ‘I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory so [they were] a ‘woman’ even if every fibre of my being was screaming throughout so I agreed to go home with [them]. [They] used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing [their] penis and raped me.”
The editorial decision to change the quotations was reported a contentious issue within the broadcaster, with some journalists arguing that the remarks should have been published unaltered and others believing that the alleged sex attacker’s pronouns should be respected.
In a statement, the BBC said: “It’s routine to have editorial discussions about different stories. Our only intention when deciding on language is to make things as clear as possible for audiences.”
Britain’s public broadcaster went on to say that while the style guide influenced the decision, it was ultimately up to the news room to alter the quotations.
The style guide, which sets out the language rules for news reporting at the BBC, was updated in November of 2020 to include: “Where possible, use the term/s and pronoun/s preferred by people themselves, when they have made their preferences clear.”
Criticising the decision, the co-founder of the feminist Get The L Out organisation, Angela Wild said: “It’s really unethical and disrespectful to the victim. It’s a form of gaslighting for a woman who has already been through sexual violence.”
Despite conforming to woke language parameters, the BBC’s article drew fierce backlash from the left for highlighting how some lesbian women have felt pressured into having sex with biologically male transgender individuals. Over 20,000 people, including some from within the BBC, signed an open letter last year denouncing the article as “incredibly dangerous” to transgender people in Britain.
It is not the first time that the BBC has been criticised for conforming transgender ideology, with the broadcaster being forced to issue a correction to an article calling women people “assigned female at birth”.
This week, the BBC has also admitted that a Radio 4 programme was “misleading” after a presenter had characterised Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s views on transgenderism as “very unpopular”.
Though the broadcaster said that Rowling’s views might be offensive to some, there was no “conclusive evidence that the objectors represented a majority”.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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