Many felt it was brave, and a long overdue airing. It involved a thorough investigation of claims that transgender women had been harassing lesbians to sex. The BBC News site published the findings.
But a leaked email shows that the influential trans lobby group Stonewall attempted to suppress the investigation before it had even been published – and made the extraordinary claim that debating the issues was equivalent to ‘sexual racism’.
This latest move to try to stifle free speech will add to growing concerns about the influence of Stonewall, which is paid millions of pounds for advising public bodies – including Government departments, police forces and universities – plus a range of private companies.
DON’T BETRAY US: Lesbians protest at being ostracised by trans activists. Pride in London Parade 2015 attracted over 30,000 participants
Stonewall was founded as a campaign organization for gay rights. It has received widespread praise for its important work.
Today, however, it is dominated by the campaign for trans rights and controversially sets out to promote self-declared ‘gender identity’ – the doctrine that people are whatever gender they say they are – ahead of biological sex.
This supports, for instance, the belief that lesbians with penises and gay men with vaginas are possible. Stonewall said that people who do not agree are bigots.
Such is Stonewall’s influence that a former aide to Boris Johnson has claimed the group has been allowed to dictate Government policy by advisers who present him with ‘skewed’ pro-trans information.
Earlier this month, the BBC followed several other high-profile bodies, including Whitehall departments, in dropping its membership of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.
Under the scheme, employers pay the lobby group to help ‘embed LGBTQ+ inclusion’ in the way they work.
The BBC’s announcement came two weeks after the Corporation published an investigation by journalist Caroline Lowbridge in which some lesbians told how they felt pressured into having a sexual relationship with trans women – specifically, men who say they are women but who have retained their male genitals.
THE investigation cited three lesbian women who said they feared being labelled ‘transphobic’, and risked being shunned and threatened by the gay and trans community if they refused to take trans women as partners.
Stonewall supporter during Pride London 2015. July 27, 2015
They told Lowbridge they felt under a bizarre form of pressure to ‘accept the idea that a penis can be a female sex organ’.
One told how she had been described as a ‘genital fetishist’ for only wanting to have relationships with biological women.
Another said: ‘I was told I owed it to my trans sisters to unlearn my “genital confusion”.’
The article also included a controversial argument made by several trans activists that expressing any preference in sexual partners should be considered ‘discriminatory’ as such preferences often exclude trans people.
This is sometimes referred to as ‘the cotton ceiling’ – a distasteful reference to underwear suggesting that trans women are systematically blocked from having sexual relationships with biological females.
It was praised by the BBC, and some lesbians vented their dismay at being excluded for wanting to have relationships with only women.
Campaigner Kat Howard wrote that she was ‘incredibly grateful to Caroline Lowbridge, and the BBC for this article’, adding: ‘We need help protecting young lesbians everywhere from an LGBT community that would rather see them silenced than stand up to the male perpetrators of assault.’
Yet now it has emerged that months before the article appeared Stonewall’s chief executive Nancy Kelley wrote to the editorial director of BBC News to denounce Lowbridge’s work in an apparent attempt to get her piece stopped.
In her email, Kelley suggested that the BBC article would end up being ‘transphobic’ because it represented trans women as ‘sexual predators’, which was a ‘central anti-trans argument’.
She further complained that the ‘highly toxic’ cotton ceiling issue was ‘analogous to issues like sexual racism’.
Trans Pride’s annual parade will take place from Wellington Arch, near Hyde Park, to Soho square in September 2019.
And although she acknowledged that in sexual relationships ‘consent is paramount and we all want who we want’, she added that ‘structural oppression can influence who we want’.
This is because social bias against trans people can have an effect on our private thoughts.
It’s understood that the editorial process took several months before the final article was published.
Stonewall confirmed that the piece was modified, but it is not clear if this was due to the September 2020 email leak.
We don’t know if Kamal Ahmed at BBC News took action on Kelley’s specific concerns. He was dismissed in February.
The article was not only praised, but also drew mass protests from groups representing trans rights.
An open letter, from Trans Activism UK, had 20,000 signatures and described the article as ‘incredibly dangerous’ for suggesting the issue of lesbians being coerced into sex with trans women was widespread.
4 819 complaints were received by the BBC within days of publication. 5520 praises were made for its coverage.
Angela Wild, a member of lesbian campaign group Get The L Out who was quoted in the article, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘For years lesbian activists have been trying to get the message out that it is not bigoted to say “no” to sexual pressure from males who identify as women.
‘The fact that Nancy Kelley has framed the reporting of this issue as transphobia is disgusting. Stonewall are a disgrace and no longer represent the interests of lesbians.’
Author John Boyne described Stonewall as authoritarian for ‘telling gays how to think, who to date and betraying lesbians completely.’
The BBC rejected the complaints against the article arguing it had gone through ‘rigorous editorial processes’. adding that its journalism should explore issues ‘even where there are strongly held positions’.
Last month, former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood told The Mail on Sunday there has been a ‘climate of fear’ at the Corporation around issues of race and gender, with self-appointed censors among the broadcaster’s own staff.
A banner is held by rotesters during an October rally on Parliament Square
Wood wrote that concerned executives had found themselves at the centre of a ‘culture war’.
Last month an independent report into the BBC warned that ‘networks’ of internal influence – including those representing sexual minorities – could affect its impartiality.
In a statement to The Mail on Sunday, Stonewall said: ‘We can confirm that we wrote to the former editorial director 14 months ago to raise a concern about a previous version of the article that was relevant to his role in upholding the BBC’s editorial guidelines.’
The broadcaster’s withdrawal from Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme prompted a huge backlash, with many complaints from BBC staff.
Rhodri Talfan Davies, the Corporation’s executive refused to confirm Stonewall’s journalistic success after it was announced.
But speaking to Radio 4’s Women’s Hour last week, Kelley was open about her group’s intentions. ‘I want Stonewall to have more influence on the editorial policy of the BBC,’ she said.
The Corporation’s decision to abandon ties with Stonewall – and publish the article – suggests the BBC is taking a much more robust approach
The issue of the lobbyists’ influence on the BBC was also covered in a ten-part investigative podcast titled Stonewall, made by presenter Stephen Nolan and released on BBC Sounds.
Stonewall chose not to engage with the series’ makers.
Stonewall decided to incorporate transgender issues first in 2015. This was under the leadership Ruth Hunt (now Baroness Hunt from Bethnal Green), a crossbench peer who had previously worked at the Equality Challenge Unit advising on gender identity equality and sexual orientation.
Kelley succeeded her last year. The group has since become a vociferous champion of transgender rights, prompting some – including two of the charity’s founders, broadcasters Simon Fanshawe and Matthew Parris – to accuse Stonewall of abandoning the interests of lesbians, gay men and bisexual people.
Under Kelley’s leadership, Stonewall believes that individuals have a ‘gender identity’ based on how they feel inside, which is more important than their sex at birth.
Terms including ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ have now been reframed to refer to ‘same-gender’ attraction – rather than ‘same- sex’ attraction – to avoid excluding trans people.
This means, in effect, that trans men – biological females – who still retain their vaginas can be gay if they are attracted to men, while trans women – biological males – with penises can be lesbians.
Stonewall has received substantial amounts from the BBC under its Diversity Champions scheme. The BBC recently adopted these definitions within its editorial style guide. They are not yet certain if they will be.
Stonewall earns millions from Diversity Champions programs, as well as the fees businesses pay for to have their policies reviewed.
Terms including ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ have now been reframed to refer to ‘same-gender’ attraction – rather than ‘same- sex’ attraction – to avoid excluding trans people (File photo)
Only Government departments have spent hundreds of thousands on these programmes.
Being part of the scheme gives employers the chance to appear in the charity’s coveted Top 100 workplace index if their policies meet Stonewall’s approval.
Last year’s list included Sainsbury’s, MI6, Oxford University, Sussex Police, Barclays, the Ministry of Justice and the Army.
The scheme’s partners include Channel 4, Ofcom and Ofsted. They also have links to several Whitehall departments, including the University of Essex and Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Philosophy professor Kathleen Stock – who was hounded out of Sussex University for saying that biological sex matters and wrote about her experience in the MoS this month – has accused Stonewall of helping drive a climate of bigotry in British universities.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘Many people and organisations make representations to the BBC about various aspects of our coverage.
‘BBC News is editorially independent and the BBC alone decides what we broadcast or publish. The story is on our website for anyone to read.’
The BBC’s experience with Stonewall is just one fascinating example of how a host of organisations – both public and private – are coming under intense pressure by a powerful lobby group that many fear is causing profound damage to the rights of women.