By Jen Ives
Part I: The Ruling
Part II: Statues
Part III: Passing
Part IV: Call It Out
Part V: Time Off
PART I: THE RULING
I’m on the 4th floor of BBC London Broadcasting House. Its layout is identical to all the other floors, above and below it. The silent working booths, the coffee kitchens, the toilets. Learn one layout, and you’ve learnt them all, they say - it’s supposed to make navigation as simple as possible. Even so, I’ve found the last 2 years working here anything but ‘simple’.
I don’t work for the BBC, exactly. I work for an outside health company, contracted to support those employees within the system who require access support. I have a care experience background, which got me through the door. That being said, I am registered as a ‘freelancer’. I have a BBC email account, and an entry pass, and the ability to sign in guests, and full access to the free tea and coffee making facilities if I want, which I usually don’t. I’m told that they used to be better - like they have at Television Centre in Whitechapel.
When employees see me in the corridors, they smile or strike up friendly conversation, assuming as they do that I am an employee proper, just the same as them. But I’m not. Not really. I’m an interloper. A fly on the wall. Somebody who got in through the back door. Deep stealth… yet again. I know that; despite my degree in Film and TV Production, my experience as a professional comedian, my IMDB writing credits, and my stunning personality, I’d have probably never been able to get in any other way. I don’t believe this because I’m pessimistic… I’ve applied numerous times.
***
I’m on a bus now. It’s April 16th 2025, and I am travelling in on the 176, early morning. I usually get some combination of bus and underground train from Elephant and Castle, but this morning I decide I want the journey to take as long as possible.
When I had first gotten on the bus I was listening to a podcast about the creeping wave of fascism in the US, and what might be done about it. It was a podcast by the American Liberal commentator and journalist Ezra Klein, who I had lately started to grow sick of. His perpetual fence sitting, and Devil’s Advocate platforming of losers like Ben Shapiro had started to get right on my tits. So I turned it off. As soon as I did though, I received a notification from the BBC News app, letting me know that the UK Supreme Court was making a ruling on the ‘definition of sex’ as it pertained to the equalities act. The ruling was being streamed live, with superchats enabled. I put my headphones back in so I could watch along: stuffy old men hunched in a courtroom. Neutral faced terfs - trying their best not to look too overjoyed by the whole affair.
By the time I had reached my final stop - Tottenham Court Road - the ruling was in. Trans people would no longer be considered as their lived sex, legally. This, as I understood it at the time, meant that trans people, even those with a gender recognition certificate, were no longer considered their acquired sex under equalities law, and their access to use single-sex services would be severely limited. Basically: ‘Use the mens, tranny’.
Even now, there’s a lot of confusion about what this means. Businesses and councils were thrown into turmoil at how they were going to effectively ‘come into line’ with these changes, which were said to offer ‘much needed clarity and common sense’ in the ‘fight to protect women and girls’. On that morning, I was also confused. I too had no idea exactly how this would affect my day to day life, or how organisations would change their policies to ensure ‘equal rights for all’. All I knew is how I felt.
Shit.
On the walk to the BBC offices, I bought a vape from a corner shop. I’d been trying to quit for a while, and was doing quite well at it. That morning though, I had more important things to worry about, and the blueberry razz vape was, as sad as it sounds, the only thing stopping me from bursting into tears. There was a comfort in it - a control. After all, it was my life, wasn’t it? I still had autonomy, didn’t I? So what if it was bad for me? So what if it killed me? Who cares? They’d probably like that, too, wouldn’t they? Society…
I didn’t have a gender recognition certificate. I still don’t. I’ve never been especially great at paperwork, and to be honest I’ve always found the idea of it to be absurd anyway. To my mind, the way a person lives is all the ‘certificate’ they need. My passport and ID’s had long been changed some 15 years ago. Deed poll. Every letter I’ve had through the post for nearly half of my life has been addressed to either ‘Ms’ or ‘Mrs’ Ives (I’m not especially keen on the latter, because I’m only 36). I’ve always been ‘Jen’ in my mind. But externally I’ve been Jen for plenty long enough, too. I’ve been through numerous romantic relationships as Jen. I’ve made great friends as Jen, and drifted apart from others. I’ve held several jobs, and been a good enough employee in all of them not to be let go. Jen has been to birthdays and funerals, and even a couple of West End musicals when cheap seats have been available. She’s travelled a little bit, and even once appeared on TV (Channel 4, if that counts). Jen has lived a life; and as far as I’m concerned is just as real a woman as any with, or without a GRC.
Ironically though, just a few months before the Supreme Court ruling, I had started the process of acquiring a gender recognition certificate. I had logged onto the online portal, and had began the needlessly overlong process of filling in my application information. Looking back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if something in me knew that things were about to change? That the tides of public opinion were shifting, and that I’d be better off having something a bit more ‘concrete’, regardless of how flimsy I felt it was philosophically. I had planned to document the entire process of ‘gender recognition’ for an article, which would cover some of these ideas - about the paradox of needing to do something you didn’t really need to do. What the Supreme Court Ruling did though, was prove that my feelings about a certificate of recognition were justified, because it was now clear as day that it had never really meant anything at all. The ruling was clear: even those with a GRC weren’t exempt. It turns out that a government issued piece of paper simply isn’t enough to protect you when a government has been infiltrated and manipulated by transphobic pressure groups.
Outside the building, employees put their passes on - holding off until the very last second, because wearing the pass outside the premises has become a safety concern now. That’s the sort of reputation the BBC has at the moment. I think about getting a coffee from the on-site Cafe Nero, but think again when I see the line. A famous presenter is getting her regular coffee order - which the staff know by heart. She lights up a cigarette outside, and pays me no mind at all as I pass her.
Even before I enter the building, I can see the screens in the lobby. The rolling news, telling everyone in the vicinity that - it’s official - Trans women aren’t women, afterall. The employees milling around the revolving doors look up and take it in, emotionless - barely an expression registering on their faces. For them, this is just another day at the office. More content to fill up server space. More grist for the media mill. For me, though, it’s a Kafkaesque, existential nightmare. And little do I know, it’s just getting started…
PART II: STATUES
The Supreme Court ruling was, for that next week and a bit, big news at the BBC (and everywhere else). Papers had front page headlines, and the topic was being discussed constantly on TV and radio news stations, seemingly everywhere. And that morning, when that news broke, I made my way into the very epicentre of British news: BBC London Broadcasting House.
When you enter the premises, on the left hand side, you walk past an engraved mural on the side of the ‘old building’ of an elderly man, holding onto a naked little boy. It’s called The Prospero and Ariel, and it was carved by Eric Gill in 1933. When I first started at the BBC, it was covered in scaffolding and hidden behind a tarp, because in 2022 an angry man had climbed up there and smashed it with a hammer. This is because, in his diaries, Eric Gill admitted to sexually abusing his daughters, as well as a dog. Rather than take the hint of public opinion, the BBC instead decided it was deserving of preservation, and now it remains - protected by a thick sheet of damage-proof glass.
On the right hand side, just before you enter the building, is a statue of George Orwell. He looms over tall, with his trademark cigarette in hand - the area itself a smoking zone for stressed out journalists, producers and security guards alike. And, I suppose, disenchanted Access Facilitators. The inscription on it reads: ‘Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ - which always seemed ironic to me. The BBC claims to take impartiality deeply seriously and yet, when ‘trans issues’ are involved, trans people themselves are so seldom ever invited on to express their side. Instead, a short rolodex of gender critical commentators are given priority - Helen Joyce, Milli Hill, Graham Linehan, Helen Lewis, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel and more.
Of course, the BBC identifies as ‘impartial’ - because it will bring on a cisgender journalist or Peter Thatchell or some dude with a passing interest in ‘the debate’ to be the ‘balance’ and speak for us - but it always feels as though the ‘pro-trans side’ is calculatedly chosen to be as vague and ineffectual as possible. With very few actual trans people ever consulted, everything remains theoretical. Passionless. A mental exercise, or philosophical puzzle to be worked out. The emotional ramifications on trans people’s lives are kept at a comfortable arms length. When, on the extremely rare instance that an actual trans person will be invited on, they will (understandably) plead the case for empathy and understanding - but in such an unbalanced climate it simply isn’t enough. That ship sailed long ago.
Security guards check my pass, and after moving through some precarious, frequently jamming revolving doors, I make my way to the lifts. Their slowness to arrive is an inside joke. Everybody hates them, but nobody complains. Accepting their innate shittiness, like so many things in British society, they’re taken as given - one of hundreds of little inconveniences we ought to bear, or else we aren’t British. Too late to do anything about it now. The BBC, despite modern appearances, is still antiquated on the inside. The lifts, it often seems, are not the only things ‘slow to arrive’.
As I wait for the lift to come, a mix of journalists and producers gather around behind me. After some pleasantries about their holidays - lovely couple of weeks in Morocco - conversation turns to the Supreme Court ruling.
“What about Kathleen Stock? She’s always a good guest”.
I don’t know what show they’re putting together, but I guess it must be Woman’s Hour, or something like that. Woman’s Hour loves a transphobic point of view, utterly obsessed as they are by the idea that ‘women’s rights’ are in perpetual conflict with ‘trans rights’. I used to listen, a bit, but went right off it when I came to realise I wasn’t the right kind of woman. Of course, there being no trans-focused programming at all, I wasn’t left with many other options.
Each lift plays through its speakers a different BBC radio station, live as it airs. In the right lift, you might be treated to Hip Hop, or Bhangra, or Classical. Or, if like me that morning, you’ll be riding up to the 4th floor, forced to listen to two ‘experts’ discussing the erosion of trans people’s dignity on BBC Radio 4 - one of which sounding particularly smug and pleased with the outcome.
More people enter the lift at floor 2 - staff journalists and producers and editors - anxious to get their bad morning coffee. All of us stand in the lift together, not looking at each other, and I wonder how many of them know I’m affected. I wonder if they can feel my sadness and my anger and my dejection. I don’t think any of them have any idea about any of it. I think that there are seemingly so few trans people working at this BBC building, that they would have no good reason at all to assume that I might be one.
This is something I’ve noticed a lot over the past two years. Because I never see any other visibly trans people in the building, there is an unmistakable culture of cisgender staff talking about trans people. We are, to them, a topic. A curio - good for another episode of the grotesque Moral Maze or Newscast or AntiSocial. I hear them, all the time, talking these topics through from a mere one desk away (sometimes the same row of desks if it’s busy). They argue among their teams, albeit in mostly hushed tones, about the ‘confusing’ nature of the terminology. They performatively pretend to not understand pronouns, despite supposedly being well educated. I hear things like ‘We should probably have a sentence in there saying they were born a man’.
Sometimes though, the more seasoned journalists will speak more forthrightly on the topic. Once, I heard a staff member (who I’ll call ‘R’) crying out in desperate frustration about the fact that a cisgendered, black, female athlete was ‘a bloody man for Christ's sake!’ It was some kind of chromosomal/hormonal imbalance story. A black, female athlete under higher scrutiny. Nobody corrected him, or disciplined him, or even questioned him. They were, it seems, simply too busy to.
That morning inspired similar conversations, all happening around me - all day. Sometimes just within earshot - sometimes right next to me. When I was away from the desk, the product of those conversations would play out on the screens around the building - rolling news pieces about the impact of the ruling - the potential for ‘clarity’ they posed. Interviews played out with openly transphobic women who hailed the ruling as a ‘win for common sense’ - and celebrated the return of ‘the adults in the room’. If these were the adults, I thought, we’re in massive fucking trouble.
One of the biggest problems, I think, with the BBC’s attitude toward LGBTQ issues is its refusal to dedicate any meaningful programming to LGBTQ people. I’m not talking about the occasional dramady sitcom about gay dating or a coming of age sob-story - I mean a regular show which allows queer people to talk about queer issues. The BBC has made contributions in this way to many other under-represented groups, through minority-lead shows and some dedicated stations, and although those efforts are far from perfect, the absence of anything highlighting queer voices is hard to not notice.
You would think that an organisation, so keen as it supposedly is to appear impartial, and with it, would at the very least make a few even half hearted gestures. But they don’t - probably because any sort of allusion to queerness before 9pm is now regarded as pornographic. Which makes it all the more galling to see various right-wing media outlets painting the BBC as being ‘captured’ by the apparent ‘trans lobby’. I’ve noticed this coordinated effort ramping up of late, coming in right alongside the guidance of the Supreme Court Ruling, framing Aunty Beeb as now having to course-correct, after ‘pushing it too far’. But really what they’re referring to is a few half-baked internal attempts to encourage staff to put pronouns in their email signatures. No tangible ‘queer agendas’ were ever proposed, let alone carried through.
Since the ruling, the BBC has made a point to more dedicatedly cement their language guidelines when discussing trans people - with no podcast episode, radio show or news article on the subject lacking in a clinical explainer sentence such as: “Trans women - biological males who identify as women” or the “Trans men - biological females who identify as men”. This is done under the facade of their ‘educate and inform’ policy, however falls woefully short of anything close, due to its complete refusal to engage in the actual science - medical or social - around the topic.
Aside from this being an oversimplified, disingenuously unphilosophical description - it’s actually laughable to think that, at a time like this when trans people are in the press constantly, that your average member of the public wouldn’t know what a trans woman or a trans man is. The only explanation then, is that the BBC are doing this in an attempt to muddy the waters. To hint at their biases without outright saying them, save breaking the expertly crafted illusion of their ‘impartiality’. They do the same sort of thing with Palestine. And so, the internal cult of ‘impartiality’ becomes the delusional self-denial of even the most well intentioned journalists there.
The day is difficult. It feels as though the discourse is inescapable, and the way in which my community is so openly generalised in conversation makes me want to throw a chair. There is a woman with curly hair who works a few desks down from me. She has headphones on a lot, so must be editing. At one point, I overhear her telling a colleague:
“I think it’s good. We want clarity on this, and now we know where we stand, don’t we?’.
Later, I walk past a booth and hear something like:
“So, do we stop referring to them as ‘trans women’ and use ‘trans identified men’ instead?”
I cannot believe what I’m hearing. This is the ‘captured’ BBC I keep hearing so much about? This is a BBC under the ‘rule of gender ideology’? Why then, am I not seeing any other trans people here at all? Not even at the IT desk, or working in the canteen. I am being gaslit.
I try my best to remain cheery and alert, which my job as an Access Facilitator demands, but the people I work with can sense something off with me. I’d like to tell them about how I’m feeling, but I don’t - for a few different reasons. I don’t know if they know I’m trans. Professionalism dictates that I don’t really bring it up, and I’ve never really wanted to. All I’ve ever wanted was to show up and get on with it. To me, being trans doesn’t define me. I’m a hundred and one other things before ‘trans’ - except now, it’s being wretched out of me. Forced up to the surface, whether I like it or not.
The other reason I don’t share my feelings is; I can’t quite comprehend how to. To my knowledge, none of the people around me are trans, so to verbalise all this would only be an inappropriate, workplace mess. Overexposed & underexplained. Entirely unhelpful. I resent it. The very need to out myself, when it’s never been necessary before - not in any of my previous jobs.
Inexplicably, I do get through the day. I manage to distract myself with little walks around the office. Taking pens from the stationary cupboards, which I’m not entirely sure I’m entitled to, not being an ‘official’ BBC employee. On my way out that day, I overhear several different mentions of stories in development relating to the Supreme Court ruling. On the underground train, I see a folded over Metro paper with the headline: UK Supreme Court rules legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex - then tens of copies of the same front page, scattered out across seats and the floor all around me.
Tomorrow I will have to come into the BBC again. In my heart I already know that the timer has begun counting down. That, at some point soon, I’ll not be able to take it anymore. And, most likely, I’ll leave.
PART III: PASSING
The weeks following the Supreme Court ruling all blend into one. Still, nobody really knows what it all means - because the supposed ‘guidelines’ have yet to be formalised. At the BBC, I wait patiently by a casual working desk, pretending to type something on my ipad, but I’m actually waiting for just the right moment to use the ladies toilets. 3 women have just gone in, so to enter now would be foolish as they’ll all be in stages, and one will be bound to perceive me. Only when all 3 have left, and none others have entered - only then can I zip in.
There’s more to the Supreme Court ruling than just where trans people can go to the toilet, but it’s what most people are focused on. The toilet thing is, I suppose, a shorthand for ‘women's spaces’ in general - and now that the ruling has passed, the questions of ‘accomodations’ rears its head, almost immediately.
On the TV outside the toilets, which is permanently tuned to BBC News, some ghouls in pink t-shirts are being interviewed. They’re celebrating the decision - claiming that ‘it’s over’. That the ‘debate’ has ‘ended’ and ‘women have won’ - which is odd, considering how many women I know who are completely dismayed by all this. My friends, who are women, don’t feel as though they’ve ‘won’. They didn’t even know they were in a fight.
London Broadcasting House is stuck in the past; unlike its cooler, youth-focused, comedy devising sister building Television Centre, where they have state of the art, mega-clean unisex toilets. At TVC, men and women enter the cubicled hub world together, then separate to their personal cubicles, like little university dorms, with an ensuite sink and forgiving lighting. They do their business, then return to the open-plan offices together - relieved and ready to come up with some hot new vehicle for Romesh Ranganathan. Broadcasting House, though? It’s men over there, and women next door. Classic style - just like when they opened in 1932. The idea of ‘Unisex’ feels out of step with the buttoned up, conservative aura of the building - one which has been plastered with a colourful, funky decor that might have felt modern in the early 2000s, but in reality struggles to properly cover the cracks. It feels forced, like lipstick on a pig.
Occasionally I’ll be sent to TVC to cover somebody, and the staff certainly seem more relaxed there. They have big coffee machines; the kind you get in a Wetherspoons, which pump out hot chocolate or cappuccino, or some cheeky combination of the two, if you can time it right. All gratis. Once, while I was there, a large bolt fell down from the ceiling onto the desk beside us - so it isn’t perfect. I remember at the time thinking it felt significant - like the place was literally giving up; unable to hold itself together any longer, under the strain of competing for the youth with social media influencers, independent podcasts and Mr Beast. Still, the coffee was better.
Unfortunately, most of the time I’m stationed at Broadcasting House, with their shitty instant coffee and dreadful lifts. Lifts in which I had stood beside the likes of Dara O’Brien, Jeremy Vine, and the recently ‘let go’ Scott Mills - whose departure is still a cause of speculation. It wasn’t the only scandal I witnessed firsthand while there. I’m present for the departure of Tim Davie. The uncertainty in the air is palpable that day - everybody on edge that next week might be their chosen time to be ‘moved on’. To go on to ‘better things’. To be sent off to a ‘farm’ to live out the rest of their days.
Eavesdropping becomes my true vocation. I am, for the most part, entirely invisible while at the BBC. My pass puts people at ease, and I am privy to many a sad conversation - a stressed out, overworked journo, or a freelance production assistant who feels she’s been overlooked or disrespected. I am a spy, but not by choice - I don’t want to hear these things - I just do. So often I’d be sitting in a booth before my shift begins, writing in my diary about how terrible I’m feeling, and I’ll hear someone close to a panic attack in the booth next door.
I try to stop spending more time in the building than I need to. I elect to spend the mornings in the Cafe Nero instead, which is full of BBC staff too, but usually distracted by their phones. I make sure to use the toilets there, being as they usually are, spacious, unisex and cleaned regularly. I consider it a ‘treat’. A moment of anxiety-free pissing. Nobody can judge me here - I bought a coffee. It doesn’t help me for the rest of the day, though. For the next 8 hours, I am on my own.
By the time of the Supreme Court ruling, I’ve already been at the BBC for about a year - and during that entire time, had used the ladies toilets in much the same way as I had been doing for the past 15 years of my life. My initial reaction to the ruling was indignance. I wrote a piece about how I didn’t care what the law said - that I was going to continue living as I always had done. How I had no intention whatsoever of reneging on my side of the social contract the UK government had metaphorically had me sign when I transitioned. I think I had to come out swinging like that, because in truth - I was scared. I needed to try and remind myself who I was - how much I’d already been through to get here in my life, and how disappointed in myself I’d be if I caved.
I keep up the act for as long as I can. In the weeks following, I continue to use the ladies toilets - with no issues. But something is off. Some anxiety that I had worked so hard to shake off over the years - the hiding in the cubicle until everyone else had left the bathroom. The attempt to get in and out as quickly as possible to avoid suspicion. The deep fear of being confronted. All these feelings were flooding back, full force. And slowly, sure enough, I begin to let myself down. I stop using the ladies, and instead begin using the single, dedicated unisex toilet on my floor.
Some people think that unisex toilets are the answer to all this, but they aren’t. They’re expensive to install, and many businesses simply don’t. More than that, though - it’s what they represent. So much of ‘transition’ is, actually, about integration. It’s about living your life in as authentic a way as you possibly can. It’s about belonging, not accepting yourself as ‘other’. The inherent implication with the Supreme Court ruling is that trans people - trans women specifically, can’t be trusted. It says that we, all of us, are capable of rape. That the urge lays dormant in us. That is what is being communicated. It is not about cis women’s ‘feelings’.
What’s more, when a trans woman like myself elects to use a unisex bathroom over a ladies room, she is outing herself. Strangers will wonder why she’s choosing to line up for the unisex, rather than zipping into the ladies, which is vacant. They’ll inevitably put two and two together and figure it out. Friend groups at clubs will be split up, all the girlies off to the loo, and the one trans woman of the gang forced to take herself off to the other space. The little tranny’s room. The kid’s table. The buffered safety zone, where she can only harm herself. This has an impact on a person’s psyche. It puts them in their ‘place’ and leads to despair. Trans people’ll decide that a fully lived life simply isn’t worth the hassle, and we’ll stop going outside. And those who hate us will have won. They’ll have gotten exactly what they wanted.
The other thing is, the BBC unisex toilet is almost always occupied. For cis people, its solitude is appealing. For them, it’s a break - a moment to look at their phone, or have a sneaky vape. Maybe even a nap, I assume. To them, it serves the completely opposite function. So, more often than not, I find myself having to use the disabled toilet out of pure necessity. I know a lot of different people have a lot of different perspectives on this, but mine is: I don’t want to use it. Not because I’m uncomfortable with the association. The very disabled people I work with have a saying: Some people are disabled. Others are not disabled… yet. The truth is, I just feel guilty about it. I know from caring for my disabled mother, and spending 5 years working in a disability care home, and then working with disabled people at the BBC - that disabled people have it tough. So often you’ll encounter an accessible toilet, occupied for ages, or clogged up, or out of order, or without a key. Disabled people need these spaces freed up for them, and although I’ve had disabled people tell me that they ‘don’t mind’ me using them, and I appreciate it, it isn’t the point. The point is, we’ve completely and unnecessarily overcomplicated something that was, for all intents and purposes, working just fine. Just to make a political point. Just to make trans people feel small, and put us back in our place.
And it’s working. I do feel small. Infantesimal, in fact. If I didn’t know my place before, I certainly know it now - and it isn’t here. It’s nowhere near these sorts of people. But it’s a tough pill to swallow, because I’d always hoped I could be a part of it - that I could help move things forward somehow. I always hoped I could be an exception to the rule - a fluke, who despite the odds, made an impact. But that only seemed possible to me so long as progress continued - and of recent, I feel as if all of it had been an illusion. A misunderstanding on my part. I had thought I was in with a chance, like a kid at the fair, not knowing the ring toss is rigged.
I speak to my manager. I ask him if he can get in touch with the BBC head offices and see what it is I am supposed to do. So much has been said about how the ruling brings ‘common sense’ and ‘clarity’, but I couldn’t be more confused. I resent having to ask my manager at all, because it means I have to ‘out’ myself again. I don’t know if he knew that I was trans or not, because I’d never mentioned it to him - not on my application and not in my interview. As used to be my right to do. It didn’t affect my ability to do my job, I thought. But now, I have to explain the entire thing - as though I’ve been a ‘liar’ all this time.
I have to hold back persistent tears over our Teams call. I can see that he’s concerned - empathetic. He says he’s been keeping up with the news, but had no idea what I was going through. The whole thing is just so fucking embarassing. This is not me. I’m Jen Ives - I sneak in to LGB Alliance Conferences and get screamed at. I used to stand in front of hundreds of people on stage and make them laugh, with my venomous little thoughts. And now I’m crying on a Teams call with my manager.
Eventually he’ll hear back from BBC Head Offices. It takes a while, because I’m not an ‘official BBC employee’. Apparently, the current advice is for me to ‘go on using whichever toilet I’d like’ and that I should ‘come to them if anyone confronts me or says anything about it’. This, to me, is baffling. I realise at that moment that nobody knows anything. Everyone is confused, and feeling their way through as they go. This ruling has created a problem where there wasn’t one before, and has been entirely successful in framing me as an inconvenience that needs to be worked around. If I need to be confronted first before they can work things out, then I decide that I am simply not safe here. Or really, it seems, anywhere at all.
In true BBC spirit, nobody who matters seems to have any useful opinion one way or the other. And people like me are left to navigate the landscape… alone.
PART IV: CALL IT OUT
I am starting to lose it. Every overheard snide remark about trans people cuts me far deeper than it ought to. I used to be resilient about this stuff - discount it, because I always assumed we were moving forwards - slowly but surely. But when you hear BBC employees who should know better, freely and confidently airing their ‘gender critical’ views, you can’t help but feel as though things have lurched backwards.
‘R’ yet again is spouting his thick, transphobic nonsense with reckless abandon. I try to ignore it - to get on with my role’s admin tasks - booking BSL interpreters for BBC events. ‘R’ is on one about women’s prisons. He thinks trans women should be placed in men’s prisons, regardless of the circumstances. I wonder if he knows what the chances of us being raped are? I wonder if he cares at all?
Multiple times in a single week, I sense myself ready to jump up from my desk and tell some producer or other to shut the fuck up. Frequently, I’m finding myself ready to ditch. To chuck my laptop across the room and walk out; leaving the person I’m supposed to be supporting on their own. I’ve not felt this sort of uninhibited abandon since I was back at school. They say that stress ages you, but it seems as though I’ve regressed - my sense of personal dignity at an all time low.
They’re putting together a show - discussing the topic with their colleagues. Having a conversation about which pronouns to use, and whether or not they ought to include a guest’s biological status. But I don’t call them out, because I know that I have no sway. My job isn’t to intervene - to make editorial suggestions. I was told when I started about a previous colleague who didn’t quite understand their facilitator role - thought they were ‘part of the team’. I’ve never been under that delusion. Always been professional. But right now, I’m feeling the weight of responsibility to say something. To let them know how off the mark they are. To give them the trans perspective their team is so lacking. If not me, then who? But I am, as usual, the only trans person here. My perspective isn’t expected, or wanted.
One day, I find myself struggling to hold back tears in a Teams call with someone I’m supposed to be supporting. We often talk politics before we get to work, and I like them a lot. They can see, even through a webcam, how much this has wrecked me. They kindly tell me they’ll see if they can put me in touch with the BBC’s LBGTQ society, who might be able to help.
Unfortunately, in the end, I’m not permitted to join. My presence at the BBC is a mere fluke. I am entirely unimportant.
I’m just as bad outside of work. I can feel myself emotionally regressing, and my boyfriend is seemingly always worried about me. I no longer feel like a ‘fun’ person and I struggle to maintain a social disposition. When we first met, like everyone I suppose, I presented my best self. Pretended to be put together. I was faking it until I was making it, and the more he believed I was strong, the more I did too. Mutually beneficial. But after the ruling, I changed. I stopped wanting to go outside. I stopped trusting in society, and lost hope that people were good. I couldn’t bat away the idea that, maybe, this was as far as I was going to get in my lifetime. Perhaps I had been naive to believe I could achieve more? I started taking too many antidepressants too quickly, thinking it would help numb me, and I had a little scare one morning while I was working from home - where I went lightheaded and sleepy. I had to cut off a Teams mid-call to lay down and recover, for fear of being sick. To put it bluntly, I was broken. I had stopped doing stand up altogether - disillusioned by the scene, and its inability to celebrate more than one trans person at any time. Every self-deprecating joke I’d see from another trans comedian made me shudder, knowing that I’d once spoken such things, too - but now was simply not the time for it. We were being deprecated enough, without having to do it to ourselves. I had decided that comedy was too limited a form. That it wasn’t helpful.
At the time, the coffee mugs at Broadcasting House had the slogan ‘Call It Out’ printed on them. I never paid it much mind, seeing as I wasn’t a ‘proper’ member of staff, anyway. One day though, as part of my job role, I was tasked with helping a client run a staff session on the topic of ‘Call It Out’ - a campaign to create a more pleasant working environment for ‘everybody’. It’s not an internal secret or anything - the public website on ‘Call It Out’ reads: ‘Our vision is a BBC culture that is kind, inclusive, safe and supportive – without exception’. Staff were each encouraged to go around, and speak openly and honestly about the culture at the BBC, and I remember it feeling like a completely surreal experience to be the only person in the room not called upon for a perspective. It was just as well, really. At that time, I likely would have said far too much. Been too emotional, and said something I’d have regretted. I would have taken it out on the wrong people.
There were, as far as I could tell, no openly trans people in that meeting. In fact, I never saw any trans people anywhere working for the BBC - not on our floor, at least. Not in the canteen. Not as producers or journalists or script editors or receptionists or cleaning staff or anywhere. Just me. I’m sure the BBC does have transgender staff - somewhere. But if they do, they’re hidden away. That being said, it’s no real surprise to me why they wouldn’t want to ‘out’ themselves there. The way to get by, I imagine, is under the radar. I can’t help but feel though that a few more trans people might improve the culture a little bit.
When I first got the job, I was excited. Ever since I started writing, I had daydreamt about working on something for the BBC. I always imagined the TV series I would write would be best suited for the BBC - what with their history of groundbreakingly inventive comedy. And I have done a bit of writing for them in the past. Little things, here and there. CV builders. I’ve had sketches on Radio 4, and even had a pilot pitched to them, which they didn’t like. The BBC was, at one point for me, a magical seeming place. It’s funny what 2 years inside the building can do to a bitch. How dispirited it can make her. I suppose it’s because I got to see how the sausage was made - to understand some of the mentalities of the people with power enough to make positive changes for us, utterly failing to do that. The BBC is a hard fortress to break into, even for those who are bred for it - public school types who are raised to assume they’re owed a place there. Even they struggle to get in. So then, at a time with so little positive trans representation, and such deep, wilfully ignorant prejudices towards the trans community - it sort of shattered my hopes to ever be in with a shot. Not that I wanted one anymore, necessarily.
In a place where the likes of Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce’s names are bandied around as regular commentators on ‘trans issues’, it’s hard to see the BBC as ‘helpful’ for us. In fact, I heard these two ghouls mentioned so often that I wondered why they didn’t just offer them full time positions on Woman’s Hour. The way the BBC has so diligently pandered to gender critical pressure groups over the years, thereby giving them unearned credibility, has been a huge disappointment to me. Their inability (or refusal to) see the wood from the trees on the ‘gender critical’ movement has only made me realise just how ignorant and foolish a lot of the people running the ship there truly are. It’s fucking embarrassing, honestly. I thought Cambridge was supposed to make you smarter?
One day I had the displeasure of overhearing all the preparation work for an episode of the radio debate show ‘AntiSocial’. They were putting together a programme about the effects the Supreme Court ruling had had on British Girlguiding, with trans girls no longer being allowed to participate. A few days later, I listened to the podcast while pretending to do admin tasks at the desk opposite to the AntiSocial team. I was horrified by how badly put together it was - the guests who were ‘debating’ the issue were a cisgender gender critical writer, and a cisgender male journalist who, it seemed, had just taken a fleeting interest in the topic. Not a single trans person involved - and it showed, because the episode was atrocious.
Most egregiously, it featured a segment positioned as: Girlguides: Better Without Boys? Which featured studies and statistics about the effects that boys’ presence has on groups of girls, and how it might interfere with their learning. The ‘boys’ here though, are trans girls. Transgender children, with dysphoria - who’ve just had their lives turned upside down. They’ve just been othered and segregated and made to feel inferior to their best friends. They’ve had their social lives damaged, and on top of all that, the BBC thinks it is appropriate to misgender them - as if offhandedly referring to an underage trans girl as a ‘boy’ is anything less than cruel bullying. The irresponsible callousness of it infuriated me. It made me lose all respect for the BBC. Made me want to pick up a placard and stand out the front of the building across the road, with all the other loons, and scream ‘paedophile protectors!’ and ‘not my license fee!’. And they’ve not let up one bit since that episode - misgendering has, actually, become the done thing, with every news article involving a trans person insisting on reminding the reader of that trans person’s physical biology.
All I can think about anytime I’m there is how much the BBC has let trans people down. How it has wilfully turned its back on us, leaving us flailing in the wind. How I’m no longer able to view it fondly; as the broadcaster who gave me The League of Gentlemen or The Royle Family or Only Fools and Horses or Porridge. Now, I just view it as another cog is the machine that upholds transphobia in the UK.
Am I being harsh? Am I holding a television company up to too high a standard? I don’t think so. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just ‘Calling It Out’.
PART V: TIME OFF
I have never, in all my years of employment, had to take time off work for ‘mental health’. Not even when I was being verbally abused behind a Tesco checkout, or going through a traumatic breakup of an 8 year relationship. Even when working as a support worker for adults with learning difficulties - while so stressed out by the incompetence of the system and suffering debilitating stress-induced OCD-like symptoms, I still stuck it out. I don’t say this to brag - I probably should have taken the time off. I only make a point of it to put into context just how much the Supreme Court ruling affected me. It might be difficult to comprehend if you aren’t trans, but it rocked a lot of our community existentially. It was a message to us that ‘progress’ could be reversed. That courts could be bamboozled, and that media institutions would happily roll over and go along with it. It shifted the very ground under our feet, and made it feel as though we had been missold a life.
The BBC is what broke me, though. Being around all of that news and editorialising and panel discussion - about whether or not trans people should be entitled to basic dignity - it had burrowed its way into my brain, and caused me to have, what I can only really describe as: a breakdown. So I arranged another call with my manager… told them that I couldn’t do it anymore. Told them that I needed time. They were good about it - procedures were followed. HR was CC’d in, and video meetings were delivered with hushed, sensitive tones. I was encouraged to take time off, and everyone did a great job of persuading me they’d manage the increased workflow, despite their recent staff losses. Nobody made me feel guilty, and I was encouraged to let them know what might help me going forward. I told them that I only wanted one thing… clarity. I wanted a proper answer from the BBC. I wanted to simply know where I stood. If, as a ‘freelance’ trans woman, working for, but not actually employed by the BBC, I had any security at all? Was there anyone there ready to fight my corner?
And so I stopped going into work. I spent a lot of days in bed, trying to re-visualise a future that I might be happy with. Some compromise. I spent time with my boyfriend. I tried to keep things light - to not expose him to too much grief, but at times it was unavoidable. I was grieving. I was grieving the chance for a future I thought I was heading towards. One where I might find some dignity, and have a fair crack at finding success in a career - should I work hard enough. But I’d been doing that for 15 years now, it seemed as though every time I got close, something new got in the way. Some barrier, put up quickly while I had my back turned.
To management’s relief, I did come back to work eventually. Remote only, at first. But of course, it didn’t take long until I felt the natural pressure to get back to normal, and come back in. My employers had been completely professional - had gotten consent with me about how much to share with my colleagues. I had told them though, that I didn’t care. I wanted everyone to know why I was suffering - and if it meant ‘outing’ me now, then so be it. At least it was on my terms, this time.
Those I found it harder to tell though were the staff members I had been facilitating for. Their ability to come in and make the best of things, despite their various disabilities, made me feel like a big, dumb baby. Not a single one of them ever made me feel othered - their dedication, kindness and professionalism was probably what got me through it the longest, and the time I got to spend helping them with their projects - that was the closest I’ll probably ever get to being a ‘part of it all’. As kind as they were though, these were busy professionals - who I was hired to assist. Not the other way around. So I never wanted to burden them with my shit. All I wanted to do was be good at my job, so when I couldn’t - I had to step away. And, as such, there was mystery surrounding my absence. Some worried it might have been them who inadvertently upset me. But it couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
I was back a little while - getting by okay, as things had begun dying down on the ‘trans’ front. The BBC was about to bring in its new Director General - Matt Brittin, an ex-private school boy, and president of business and operations for Google. It had also just been announced that the BBC was set to lay off 2,000 jobs, so the staff perhaps had other things on their minds. Although this wouldn’t affect me, I handed in my notice shortly afterwards.
I was professional about it. I gave my full notice period, and I tried to make the handover as easy as possible. I let all my service users know personally that I was going, and I waited until the last few days of employment before I properly told them what I really thought of the place. I wasn’t rude about their employer, but I laid out an abridged version of some of what I’ve written here. I tried to make it clear how challenging things had been for me, just in the hope that perhaps one day, I’d come up in conversation again. When I had first started, one of the service users had told me that the facilitator before me had left because he’d managed to have a book published. He was missed, but everyone was happy for him. Now that I was leaving, I hoped that they’d tell the person replacing me something like:
“My last facilitator was really good. But she left because her spirit was killed from a transphobic death by a thousand cuts. Shame really…”
On my way out of the building for the very last time, the lift came surprisingly quickly - almost as if it were expecting me. The ride downwards was brief, and thankfully the radio was pumping out something dull about economics. I descended alone, no soon-to-be disgraced presenters accompanying me. I scanned my pass for the very last time to get through the revolving doors, and headed over, past the security, to the front desk.
“Can I help you?”
“It’s my last day, so I’m handing back my pass”
“Oh okay, well thank you for handing it back to us. Some don’t”.
Why on earth would I want to hold onto it? I thought. I don’t ever want to come back.
“Here you go…”
“Thank you, and good luck!”
And then I leave the building, passing the George Orwell statue - still leaning with his cigarette. I stop by it to vape. Still lingering around for a second, giving myself time to compose myself. A tourist readjusts the focus on her camera after I walk in front of her shot of George Orwell, ruining it.
I don’t see what the big deal is. He’s a statue. It’s not like he’s going anywhere…
As I vape, I think about ‘impartiality’ - the core, central belief of the BBC. The problem with the BBC’s version of impartiality is, that if the United Kingdom were to be ruled by a tyrannically racist, homophobic, ableist, fascist government tomorrow, how would the BBC; desperate as it is to remain impartial, adapt? Would they take a stand and report with more conviction? Or would they continue to do what they have continued to do? To change their language when reporting about such topics? To shift more into line with the zeitgeist - even if it’s rotten? When you insist that ‘all sides’ should be represented, who gets to decide what those ‘sides’ are? Because right now, the BBC is convinced that the ‘two sides’ of the ‘trans debate’ are ‘trans activists’ and ‘women’ - a generalisation so utterly stupid that, by any right, the George Orwell statue outside the building ought to have been removed years ago.
I leave for good, turning the corner onto Great Portland Street. I open my bag to check the contents aren’t damaged. To my relief, the ‘Call It Out’ mug I had stolen is still in one piece - a souvenir of a difficult 2 years. A small consolation prize, to make up for the rights I’d lost. For the career dream given up on.
As I walk to the underground station, I wonder what’s next for me… what dream I’ll get close to next?
‘Impartial’ was an independent, serialised piece by Jen Ives, based on her time working as an Access Facilitator at the BBC from 2024 - 2026. This is part 5, the last entry. You can read the entire thing at jenives.net . Thank you to the staff I facilitated for at the BBC, who made it somewhat bearable until it wasn’t anymore. You all deserve a raise. And thank you for reading this - I’m sorry it wasn’t very funny.
Inquiries: jeniveswriter@gmail.com
