Not Another Lucy Meadows
The conservative war on trans people took a dark turn this week.
Good morning, everyone.
Today’s newsletter will be dealing with topics of transphobia and suicide. If you’re not in the right space to read anything on those topics, maybe skip this edition. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.
I want to talk about Lucy Meadows.
The name may not sound familiar to you, but it probably should. To make a long story short(ish), Lucy Meadows was a trans woman from the U.K. who was also a teacher. Up until December 2012, she had been teaching at a school in Lancashire, England, under a male name and identity. That was to change following the school’s Christmas break. For the sake of keeping parents in the know, as a courtesy, the school included a little note at the end of the “staff changes” section of its December newsletter:
Mr [Meadows’ former last name] has recently made a significant change in his life and will be transitioning to live as a woman. After the Christmas break, she will return to work as Miss Meadows.
This is when things began to go awry.
In December 2012, The Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn published an article titled, “He’s not only in the wrong body… he’s in the wrong job.”
Littlejohn, a far-right columnist for The Daily Mail, decided that this update in the life of a private citizen was worthy of international attention. He opened with a few pained lines about how he had “every sympathy” for trans people and didn’t even have a problem with transition-related medical care being covered by the NHS because “transsexuals pay taxes, too.” Okay, then.
The paragraphs that followed quickly dispensed with the idea that Meadows was a sympathetic figure. I think it’s important to understand how the press (including Littlejohn) referred to Meadows throughout this ordeal, so when quoting from other people’s work, I will leave it as-is (meaning that yes, there will be mentions of her former name, “Mr,” and use of “he” and “him” to refer to Meadows — so, just wanted to give a heads up on that).
From Littlejohn’s column:
Nathan Upton is now in the early stages of gender reassignment treatment. He issued a statement which read: ‘This has been a long and difficult journey for me and it was certainly not an easy decision to make.’
So that’s all right, then. From now on, kiddies, Mr Upton will be known as Miss Lucy Meadows.
What are you staring at, Johnny? Move along, nothing to see here. Get on with your spelling test. Today’s word is ‘transitioning’
Littlejohn’s sarcastic, “From now on, kiddies, Mr Upton will be known as Miss Lucy Meadows" and “What are you staring at, Johnny? Move along, nothing to see here,” comments are meant to frame the very idea of a teacher changing their name as some sort of wild imposition to be foisted onto students. This conveniently ignores that I’m sure there have been teachers who have gone from “Miss” to “Mrs” (or vice versa) and possibly even changed their last names as the result of marriage. So clearly this wasn’t just about difficulty keeping names straight.
What I found particularly sinister about this section was how Meadows’ statement was presented.
What Littlejohn wrote:
Nathan Upton is now in the early stages of gender reassignment treatment. He issued a statement which read: ‘This has been a long and difficult journey for me and it was certainly not an easy decision to make.’
What Meadows actually said (words in bold were omitted from Littlejohn’s column):
"This has been a long and difficult journey for me, and it was certainly not an easy decision to make. I am grateful to governors and colleagues at St Mary Magdalen's for their support. I'd now ask for my privacy to be respected so that I can continue with my job, which I'm committed to and which I enjoy very much."
All she wanted was to be left alone and allowed to continue working a job she enjoyed. Obviously, there’s not much she could have done to prevent local gossip. If people are going to talk, they’re going to talk. That said, it can certainly be argued that she didn’t actively seek a spotlight and shouldn’t have been fodder for the anti-trans British press. Littlejohn, of course, left this portion of her statement out.
Later in the column, Littlejohn framed Meadows’ existence as somehow sinister and at odds with the well-being of children. He wrote:
Mr Upton/Miss Meadows may well be comfortable with his/her decision to seek a sex-change and return to work as if nothing has happened. The school might be extremely proud of its ‘commitment to equality and diversity’.
But has anyone stopped for a moment to think of the devastating effect all this is having on those who really matter? Children as young as seven aren’t equipped to compute this kind of information.
Pre-pubescent boys and girls haven’t even had the chance to come to terms with the changes in their own bodies.
Why should they be forced to deal with the news that a male teacher they have always known as Mr Upton will henceforth be a woman called Miss Meadows? Anyway, why not Miss Upton?
You hear that, Meadows? You don’t matter. Also, again, here was Littlejohn framing the very idea of a teacher changing her name and title as something students couldn’t handle.
Littlejohn went on to cite Wayne Cowie, a parent who had three children at the school in 2012, to justify the column’s existence, which seemed to include the lie that children were told they’d be punished if they didn’t refer to Meadows by her new name. This was not true, though the school said that it expected students to show Meadows respect just as they’d respect any other teacher.
Littlejohn then went into a full-on attack to close his column out:
The school shouldn’t be allowed to elevate its ‘commitment to diversity and equality’ above its duty of care to its pupils and their parents.
It should be protecting pupils from some of the more, er, challenging realities of adult life, not forcing them down their throats.
These are primary school children, for heaven’s sake. Most them still believe in Father Christmas. Let them enjoy their childhood. They will lose their innocence soon enough.
The head teacher denies that pupils will be punished for referring to the teacher as Mr Upton but added ominously that they would be ‘expected to behave properly around her.’ Upton is entitled to his gender reassignment surgery, but he isn’t entitled to project his personal problems on to impressionable young children.
By insisting on returning to St Mary Magdalen’s, he is putting his own selfish needs ahead of the well-being of the children he has taught for the past few years.
It would have been easy for him to disappear quietly at Christmas, have the operation and then return to work as ‘Miss Meadows’ at another school on the other side of town in September. No-one would have been any the wiser.
But if he cares so little for the sensibilities of the children he is paid to teach, he’s not only trapped in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job.
And there it is. A trans person existing around a child was, to Littlejohn, at odds with the school’s “duty of care to its pupils and their parents.” And updating her name was “forcing [challenging realities of adult life] down [students’] throats.”
“Let them enjoy their childhood. They will lose their innocence soon enough,” he wrote, equating the existence of a trans person with a lack of innocence.
Littlejohn’s interpretation of what Meadows asked for (reasonable accommodations) as an effort to “project [Meadows’] problems on to impressionable young children” made clear that he viewed someone being trans as a “problem” in need of a solution. It also spreads the false idea that trans people existing can “make” people trans. “Impressionable young children” is such a telling line.
He called Meadows “selfish” for wanting to keep her job (which she needed in order to pay her bills), and finished with a line about how she must apparently “care so little for the sensibilities of the children [she] is paid to teach.”
The Mail and other news outlets jumped in on the action. Of course, the Daily Mail had a “news” write-up of Meadows’ coming out. Here’s The Daily Telegraph, another conservative paper from the UK, treating this as a major news story, even going so far as to include old photos of Meadows along with a drawing one of her students did of her before she came out as trans (*gasp* she had been growing her hair out! This is scandalous, somehow?). “Sir tells pupils: I’ll be Miss next term.”
Fast-forward three months, and, well… “Sex-change teacher dead.” Yep. That’s a real headline published in The Independent. That’s who Lucy Meadows was to the anti-trans media: not a person, not a parent, but a being known simply for being the “sex-change teacher.”
The following day, the Independent published another story about Meadows. While more respectful in the sense that it didn’t refer to her as the “sex-change teacher,” it seems unlikely that the person (or people) who wrote the piece actually understood the problem, even though it is laid out in the headline.
From that article:
In an email sent to a supporter before her death seen by The Independent, Lucy Meadows describes how she was forced to dodge waiting reporters and photographers as she made her way to work at the Accrington primary school.
It emerged yesterday that Ms Meadows contacted the Press Complaints Commission, which circulated a note urging editors to call off reporters and photographers from pursuing the primary school teacher. The 32-year-old was found dead at her home on Tuesday after apparently taking her own life. The cause of death is unknown.
…
In her email Ms Meadows describes her daily life after her gender reassignment was reported.
“I became pretty good at avoiding the press before Christmas. I live about a 3 minute walk from school as they were parked outside my house as well as school. I’m just glad they didn’t realise I also had a back door.”
“I was usually in school before the press arrived and stayed until late so I could avoid them going home. I know the press offered parents money if they could get a picture of me… Many parents have been quite annoyed with the press too, especially those that were trying to give positive comments but were turned away.”
…
“I do hope that times really are changing; it’s nice to think that one day in the near future issues like this will be in the past.”
There’s a lot more I could say about Lucy Meadows, how the British press created an unlivable world for her, how the coroner even told the press “shame on you.” Instead, I’ll direct you to other articles about her and the circumstances of her death that I’ve found helpful (link 1, link 2, link 3).
We need to talk about what’s happening right now.
Looking back at what Meadows went through, thinking about the note about how she hoped “that times really are changing” and that “one day in the near future issues like this will be in the past,” I’m filled with a lot of anger. Why? Because times have not changed, and sadly, trans people have become a bigger target than ever before.
On Tuesday of this week, conservative activist Phil Kerpen tweeted a screenshot of an email from a local preschool. “He’s pregnant!” Kerpen tweeted. “This is a fancy DC preschool.”
See, the note was something sent out to the parents of students at a “fancy DC preschool” as a way to let them know that their teacher, who is a trans man (meaning that he was female at birth) is pregnant, and will be taking parental leave.
Kerpen’s tweet came with the goal of shining a light on this teacher and his school, to express disapproval of a trans person being a teacher, and to definitely let people know that he doesn’t believe trans people are who they say they are.
Immediately, the replies were filled with people declaring that “my kid would be out of that class/school in record breaking time,” others calling for “jail for the whole teaching staff,” and another who wrote, “sounds like he needs to be institutionalized.” Others responded to trans people who spoke up in the replies with lines like “Bigotry isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it protects children from freaks like you” (that was said in response to a trans woman who is also a parent) or “Conservative parents don’t want to have to explain how freaks are able to get away with being freaks. Used to get thrown in circuses. Now they indoctrinate children.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) quote tweeted the post, writing, “Not satire.”
Why would it be satire, Senator? What’s so funny about this? Why is any of this your business? Why are you boosting this message? What is your problem, SENATOR?
I’m angry. I’m so, unbelievably, extremely angry. I finally just asked, “Do you think that trans people just shouldn’t be allowed to be teachers?” The answers I received from Kerpen’s followers were telling: “Yes,” “No those disgusting things shouldn’t be teaching kids,” “Yes,” “Yes. I think transsexuals should NOT be allowed to teach preschool and elementary age children,” “I think people should leave their sexual fetishes at home. It’s not appropriate in any way in the classroom. If you want to live as a male, and teach as a male, then be a male, not something in between. MEN DON’T HAVE A UTERUS, THEY CAN’T HAVE BABIES,” “Yes,” “Yes. They should not be teachers. Also. People with other major mental disorders should not be teaching young children,” and you get the idea.
Hours later, Kerpen deleted the tweet after someone suggested that he might find himself in legal trouble for posting it (almost certainly not, but eh, whatever got him to take it down is fine by me). Just to ensure that we all knew that he didn’t have some sort of change of heart or anything, he reposted it with the teacher’s name redacted.
When I saw Kerpen’s post, my thoughts immediately went to Lucy Meadows. These monsters are trying to do to this innocent teacher what they did to Lucy Meadows. Or at least they don’t care.
These are really scary times for trans people, and I don’t think many of our “allies” fully understand it.
Last month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), introduced a bill called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would make it illegal at a federal level for trans teens to access transition-related health care. This flies in the face of what every mainstream medical organization with an opinion on the matter has to say, but Greene doesn’t care. It’s not about “protecting children’s innocence” (funny how “protect the children!” has been the rallying cry for bigotry since the beginning of time), it’s about ensuring that trans teens (including those who have the full-throated support of their parents) are forced to go through changes that they will never be able to fully undo.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced plans to introduce a bill called the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.” The misleadingly-named bill would make it illegal for public and private entities that receive any government funding to potentially expose children age 10 and under to “sexually oriented material,” which is defined as “any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.”
Notice how it goes from things that actually would be “sexual” to finally just lumping in the existence of trans people into the mix? The result of this would be for organizations (both public and private) to purge trans people from their jobs. A trans person working in a school? Not anymore. A trans person who is a doctor? Good luck finding a new job. Trans person who is a librarian? Better find a new career.
That is the future the Republican Party wants.
It wants a world where people like me cannot exist in public. Now is the time for all the writers and commentators who’ve made careers out of acting as though they support trans people while just “having a few questions” to not only realize the role they’ve played in creating this hellscape, but to actively work to fix it.
In 2014, the press declared a “Transgender Tipping Point” because one trans actress had a recurring supporting role on a Netflix show (this was before Netflix was an original content powerhouse, by the way) and papers like The New York Times started rejecting pitches for stories about the importance of trans healthcare or nondiscrimination protections in favor of op-eds handwringing over the question “What makes a woman?” and publishing puff pieces about conversion therapists who got a bad rap. The truth is that we weren’t at a “tipping point” in any meaningful sense of the term. Trans people were still being discriminated against and attacked at alarming rates, still didn’t have access to health care, and were still going through hell just as much as ever. But hey, look, an actress had a TV role. Golly gee! That’s evidence that everything was great, apparently! (Oh, and then there’s Caitlyn Jenner, who is awful. Her success doesn’t mean anything about the success of trans people, generally.)
Trans people desperately need help, but I feel like I’m shouting into the void and losing my mind. Society has failed us, and it continues to pretend that nothing is wrong. We have just as much of a right to exist and participate in society as anyone else. I shouldn’t even have to say that, but here we are.
This is a great piece, I'm terrified of what comes next for us. Almost no one else seems to give a flying fuck what is coming
I got my school counseling degree about 18 months ago. I'm already out of the field. Living in a red state, it's genuinely not possible for those of us who very decidedly do not pass to get started. Some still try, they're braver than I am.
A friend of a friend was just fired from her 27-year career for advocating for a trans student, and she was a cis woman with all those years of experience and community involvement.
I genuinely do not know what to do.