A MAGAZINE’S reference to Juno Dawson as a “man who claims to be a woman” in an article on Nicola Sturgeon was discriminatory, the press regulator has found.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) said the use of such language in The Spectator online article was “personally belittling and demeaning” towards the novelist.
Dawson, who has a gender recognition certificate having legally changed gender in 2018, had complained to the press watchdog that she had been deliberately misgendered with the intention being to offend her.
The article, published in May, was headlined “The sad truth about ‘saint’ Nicola Sturgeon” and was a comment piece about the former Scottish first minister, focused largely on her stance on transgender rights in Scotland.
It reported that Sturgeon (below) “was interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, and so the conversation naturally turned to gender”.
Ipso said the Editors’ Code protects the right to hold and express a wide range of beliefs, and the columnist was entitled to express beliefs about gender transition and biological sex, but that the code also requires the press to “avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s … gender identity”.
The Ipso finding, published on Tuesday, stated: “In the view of the committee, referring to the complainant as a man ‘claiming’ to be a woman was personally belittling and demeaning toward the complainant, in a way that was both pejorative and prejudicial of the complainant due to her gender identity, and was not justified by the columnist’s right to express his views on the broader issues of a person’s sex and gender identity given that this targeted her as an individual.
“The committee upheld the complaint of discrimination under Clause 12.”
Ipso did not uphold Dawson’s complaints of inaccuracy or harassment.
It said: “The committee considered that the sentence in issue was sufficiently distinguished as being the columnist’s view that the complainant remained biologically male despite the transition process she had undergone rather than being a statement of fact about the complainant’s sex or gender as recognised under the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
“For these reasons, the committee did not uphold the complaint of inaccuracy.”
Ipso required The Spectator to publish the finding online to remedy the breach of the code.
