BBC Alters Quotes To Avoid Misgendering Alleged Rapist

Before I start, I need you to imagine me, Rachel S, closing my eyes and sighing heavily in disbelief that the things I’m about to write about are Actual Events happening in real life. I do this quite a lot, and I need y’all to know that. And this one is a doozy.

Okay.

In October 2021, the BBC ran a story called “The lesbians who feel pressured to have sex and relationships with trans women.” It’s a compelling piece that raises questions about activism, representation, and how we understand sex, gender, and attraction.

Unfortunately, that is not why we are talking about it now.

No, we’re hearing about this piece because it has come out that the BBC took the testimony of a woman about her experience being raped and changed the pronouns she used so as not to misgender the alleged rapist.

In an article, the BBC saw fit to change the woman’s words so that instead of referring to “him” she now referred to her rapist as “they.” The BBC did this to protect the preferred pronouns of the alleged attacker, and to deprive the accuser’s right to telling the actual truth about what happened to her.

While the change of language, altering what the woman said and replacing it with an editor’s preference to uphold an alleged rapist’s preferred pronouns, was contentious within the editorial room, the transgender identified biological male’s preference won out over the woman “they” allegedly attacked.

The quote that was changed was from an anonymous lesbian, who wrote: “I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory so he was a ‘woman’ even if every fibre of my being was screaming throughout, so I agreed to go home with him. He used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing his penis and raped me.”