The biggest story of the week came at the end of it. Detransitioner Fox Varian was awarded $2m by a New York jury - partly for medical expenses, partly for past and future pain - against the medical practitioners in charge of her care when she had both her breasts amputated. It was particularly significant because both her therapist and her surgeon were found to have committed medical malpractice.

‘Varian’s mother, Claire Deacon, testified that she was against the surgery, but consented to it out of fear her daughter would commit suicide’

Coverage was thin, even though it was the first medical detransition lawsuit to go to trial. The first to report it was the Epoch Times (by reporter Stacy Robinson, who was quote posted by Elon Musk - the story was viral on X). Fox had the surgery when she was 16, and evidence focussed on whose idea it was for Fox to identify as a boy, and who pushed for the operation. The jury disagreed that the therapist and surgeon had taken ‘the appropriate steps’ before the mastectomy was performed. The National Review picked up detail from the Epoch Times and added its own comment:

‘It’s an important development in the great cause of protecting gender-confused minors from irreversible procedures..Most trial lawyers are liberal politically, but if they smell money in the water, they will sue the ‘gender-affirming’ care industry into the ground’

Edit and update: The Daily Mail has reported it here

In place of legacy media coverage (apart from the New York post), there was interest from medical, legal and business websites - Science, Public Health Policy and the Law,BizPac Review Business and Politics and Mind Matters among them.

Independent journalist Ben Ryan was the only reporter to attend every day of the trial and he’s promising a big piece. Gerald Posner gave us this.

We reported that the concerned BBC staff had told news execs three years ago that the US Bureau was on course to miss this huge story. Of course, it did and has, and no doubt will seek to ignore it for as long as possible.

GBNews and Josh Howie are always the first in the UK with these stories. They covered it tonight with Maya Forstater of Sex Matters. They also discussed Hampstead Ponds and the Council of Europe conversion therapy campaign.

Child participants are being recruited right now for the Pathways puberty blocker trial, and it’s due that the health impacts on young people should make legacy news outlets. Although most people trying to bring awareness to the issue have understood the problem for some time, it’s still new to most.

The British Medical Journal published these rapid responses to this article by Adele Waters on the Pathways research, all urging that the ‘Streeting trial’ be abandoned or redesigned.

On Wednesday GB News interviewed a detransitioning man, Michael Kerr. He criticised the NHS, saying its ‘gender services’ operate on an ‘affirmation first’ model, and warned that patients who choose to detransition can be left without proper care or support. It also spoke to Stella O’Malley of Genspect about the Pathways trial.

The connection is not quite being made across the media yet between puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones/‘adult transition’. GB News is the exception. Most children who have their puberty suppressed will go on to opposite sex hormones - the link is direct. That means that stories about adults damaged by opposite sex hormones and surgery should all mention puberty blockers and Pathways, especially as they’re extremely topical. We’ve written to health editors this week about it.

Related: the Council of Europe passed a motion in favour of banning so called ‘conversion therapy’ for so-called ‘gender identity’. See clips from many of the speeches in the CoE Parliament here, including the British MP Kate Osborne, who proposed it. It’s not the law: but it means a new human rights standard has been adopted. Due to the awareness-raising of Athena Forum EU, there was a letter writing campaign to MPs. Coverage was nil apart from Pink News.

The second biggest story of the week in a very crowded field was the High Court’s rejection of Sex Matters’application for a judicial review - over the Hampstead Ponds refusal to implement the Supreme Court ruling and enforce a single sex policy. This was maximally misreported by almost every single news outlet. Journalist Janet Murray explains here and here.

It’s what happens when the framing is always trans first, women second. The best piece on the ponds came from Jill Foster - there’s a Telegraph gift article embedded in her post here.

The other court hearing which dominated outlets was the David Toshack employment tribunal. Otherwise known as the ‘prison officer pronouns’ case.

Toshack was told during training that it was the law that prison offices had to use the preferred pronouns of inmates (it’s not). He was sacked when he said he wouldn’t. The evidence was truly extraordinary: for the full benefit read the line-by-line updates from Tribunal Tweets here. The BBC shamefully closed replies to its X post about the story and hid its article without proper ‘tags’. But there was plenty of decent coverage - Sky News version here.

Busy week for the BBC which published its Thematic Review of Portrayal and Representation, which baulked at the idea of including sex and gender, and found unease in the BBC consumer about token diversity efforts.

It’s now going to drop the nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act as its basic diversity metric. It was also revealed (in almost certainly connected news) that the BBC are about half a billion pounds down due to licence fee refusals, and is desperately considering new ways to find cash.

It also appointed a new interim DG, Rhodri Talfan Davies, who’s unusual for having been interrogated previously on how sex and gender are reported. Follow the links here to hear him telling Woman’s Hour his thoughts on the end of the relationship with Stonewall.

SEEN in Journalism@JournalismSEEN

This is what the new interim DG, Rhodri Talfan Davies, said would be ‘up to the presenter’ - clarifying that ‘pregnant people’ are women. He said it in 2021: by 2025 the Executive Complaints Unit was upholding 20 complaints against Martine Croxall for doing just that.

SEEN in Journalism @JournalismSEEN

Please listen to the interview linked here from BBC Woman’s Hour in 2021 Rhodri Talfan Davies, new BBC interim DG, effectively approves what Martine Croxall @martinebbc was told was a breach of impartiality last year Plus more: it’s well worth catching up with

Staying with the BBC, it is currently rejecting complaints across a number of pieces. It updated this piece about nurse Jennifer Melle to include the fact that the man for whom she accurately used male language was a ‘biological male’. But it rejected complaint that it highlighted her Christianity - while omitting that the male patient was a convicted paedophile. It also rejected a complaint about its coverage of Maddison Wilson’s death - a child rape suspect for whom it used female pronouns, justifying it with the ‘style guide’ defence. It’s unacceptable. We’ve written to the BBC about this too.

It’s also maintaining a continued defence, right up to the Executive Complaints Unit, of its Jammie Booker coverage 25 minutes into this clip. It claimed Jammie Booker was disqualified from a strongest woman competition for being trans - and still says it was both accurate and impartial to do so. It also used female pronouns when the entire story is about the fact he’s a man. Not only is it a lie, any such disqualification would be illegal.

We have many concerns about the BBC complaints unit, as it seems to have decided to ignore the BBC-wide instruction from the Director of News Content that males who adopt a female identity should be described as ‘biological males’. We will pursue them. We’ve already contacted the DoNC about it.

It emerged thanks to the work of Ermine Amies and the Women’s Rights’ Network that Norfolk Police are still allowing suspects to ‘identify’ their own sex. It came originally from the fantastic Eastern Daily Press and picked up by The Telegraph, shared by Yahoo!, the Express and others including multiple local outlets.

The Times reported that this case is coming to court. It didn’t get a lot of coverage, which may be a mistake, as future hearings will undoubtedly be explosive. LGBTYS is so controversial that the chair of Children in Need, Rosie Millard, resigned over half a million pounds worth of grants to it - awarded after its former chief James Rennie was convicted of child abuse.

Mini round up

The Telegraph had to correct this piece of legal advice to a woman who’s husband had ‘transitioned’ after @transwidows complained

The Daily Mirror decided to comply with the pronoun demands of this rapist. It doesn’t have to - it chose to. We haven’t reminded them yet that there’s no law or regulator code that forbids it, but we will do this week. Edit and update: we’ve done that and will keep you posted.

The Herald looks ahead to the latest legal action over Scotgov’s trans policy, which starts on February 3 - Tuesday this week. Scotgov rejected a request for a statement on males in the female prison estate.

This from Jersey became a very popular story. Not quite sure why. It’s had more coverage than the first victorious jury trial detransition law suit. Row over trans schools guidance - the local outlet, the Bailiwick Express did the best job.

In the US, journalist and author Michael Shermer spent 15 minutes explaining to Brian Lehrer on WNYC, New York’s public radio station, that people can’t change sex. He was treated badly by the presenter - explained here by Lisa Selin Davies.

Also in the US, New York government lawyer Glenna Goldis was sacked by NY’s Attorney General

Bizarre story of the week, and ridiculed by lawyers - the Guardian claimed that the ‘EHRC single-sex spaces guidance is being adapted under ‘constructive’ new chair’. The evidence it produced for this was on about the same level as a proverbial ‘close friend’ revealing pop star secrets: built on wishful thinking, confirmation bias, gossip and the drive to magic a story out of nothing.

This groundless claim was republished by affirmative outlets, which currently seem to be grasping at straws, despite its grudging, but damning final line - ‘An EHRC spokesperson said it was ‘convinced that our updated services code of practice is both legally accurate and as clear as it is possible to be’.