The following is a complaint about today’s Media Watch segment in its entirety submitted to the ABC.
I’m just wondering why Media Watch platforms transphobic arguments and people without critique. First you did the ACON story, allegedly fed completely by a one-person transphobic organisation ham-fistedly shoving them into the role of Stonewall in the UK, now tonight you’re playing two sides against each other in comment (Szego vs The Age, “trans rights activists” et all), but playing clips from an interview unchallenged.
If the neo-nazis, not “right wing crazies”, please be accurate here, were not invited in, why were they not held up with the anti-fascist, anti-transphobic counter protestors? They had ample time to pose with their disgusting signage to take pictures with transphobes, and then were guided out.
Why does someone who has medically transitioned not have an opposite sex body? Hormones clearly alter secondary sex characteristics, perhaps not as much as some would like, but playing it off as men simply self identifying as women without acknowledging the legal ramifications for lying on legal documents, and thereby inciting action against trans people is not trans people’s faults.
Having Paul Barry say that trans people are trying to stop women from talking, “denying women a voice”, is laughable. Are you stopping white people from talking when you refuse to platform racists? Nazis when you refuse to platform antisemitism? What these women believe is more important than what bits the factory equipped them with, and is insulting the intelligence of anyone who acknowledges trans men exist, who these transphobes also undermine and attack.
Media Watch has failed in all respects to represent trans people’s views under Paul Barry’s watch, and while I do not know which organisational rules may have been breached, it is clear his history of misgendering trans people, including journalists, and his inability to give due weight to “both sides” of whether we get to exist in society make him an unsuitable host for these topics.
If someone is decrying something as “woke”, they are not interested in matters of social justice, be it gender, race or religion, and it would be fair to ignore their contributions, however, you just dedicated an entire segment to one.
For all that, I guess we have clips of Paul Barry using phrases directly lifted from transphobes…
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