The Spectator has been reprimanded by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) for calling transgender author Juno Dawson “a man who claims to be a woman”. The case represents a rare example of the press regulator finding a publication guilty under the “Discrimination” section of the Editors’ Code of Practice.
In May, the magazine ran a comment piece by Gareth Roberts about Nicola Sturgeon and her stance on transgender rights – in which he wrote that she “was interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, and so the conversation naturally turned to gender”.
In response, Dawson complained to IPSO that the magazine had breached Clause 1 (“Accuracy”), Clause 3 (“Harassment”) and Clause 12 (“Discrimination”) of the Editors’ Code.
The complaint was upheld only under Clause 12, which states:
The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
It adds that journalists must avoid mention of these characteristics “unless genuinely relevant to the story”.
In the complaint, Dawson said that Roberts’s remark was discriminatory, as she legally changed gender in 2018 and was declared a woman in all legal matters by the Gender Recognition Panel. Roberts, the complaint went on, was deliberately ‘misgendering’ with the intention to offend.
For its part, the Spectator argued it had not breached Clause 12 because the reference to Dawson’s gender was “was relevant, as it put the remarks made by Ms Sturgeon into context”. The magazine “did not consider this to be either prejudicial or pejorative”.
But, having dismissed Dawson’s complaints under Clauses 1 and 3, IPSO’s investigation committee ruled (not very pithily) that the reference to “claiming” to be a woman was “personally belittling and demeaning towards the complaint 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”.
In a powerful defence of press freedom, the new Spectator editor Michael Gove, who wasn’t working there when the piece was published, criticised IPSO’s ruling, describing it as “offensive to the principle of free speech and chilling in its effect on free expression”.
Gove wrote that Roberts was “exercising his right to free speech and indeed expressing a view that many would consider a straightforward truth”.
“Gareth Roberts’s right to see as he finds and write as he sees must be defended,” he continued. “It may be offensive to some and difficult for others. But as George Orwell argued: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’”
Gove concluded:
We trust our readers to make up their own minds on vital and sensitive questions of moral and ethical importance. We believe that individuals are better able to do so if they can read and hear from writers and thinkers who ask uncomfortable questions. We will continue to give free thinkers and brilliant writers such as Gareth Roberts a platform. And we will resist any effort to pressure them into conformity with another’s morality. For the Spectator, free speech is not a cause among many others which we may champion – it is the essence of our existence.
Commenting on the verdict, Toby Young, the FSU’s General Secretary, said: “IPSO is supposed to make sure newspaper and magazine articles are fair and accurate. It shouldn’t be in the business of trying to enforce gender identity ideology.
“Punishing the Spectator for publishing something factually accurate about a trans woman risks turning it into a laughing stock.”
