Trans+ Voices: what our project has done so far – and where it will go next

In March this year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) announced the launch of Trans+ Voices, a community-led investigative project working directly with trans and non-binary communities in the UK to explore the impact of toxic political discourse on their daily lives.

In the six months since, we’ve seen the outgoing Conservative party pledge to rewrite the Equality Act to recognise only biological sex, and the incoming Labour government decide to extend the ban on puberty blockers.

Last month a public row erupted, fuelled largely by disinformation, over boxer Imane Khelif’s gender and eligibility to compete in the Olympics. And just over a week ago, a group of trans teenagers camped outside the Department for Education to demand safer schools for trans students.

These events and countless others have highlighted the need for projects like Trans+ Voices. They’ve also prompted us to adapt some of our plans in response to the issues they’ve raised. Here’s what we’ve been up to since the project launched and where we hope to go next.

Explaining

Despite our name, at TBIJ we don’t believe investigative journalism is the only type of public interest reporting. Many of the people we spoke to in the early days of this project outlined the need for clear and well-researched journalism on topics that can quickly become heated, divisive and difficult to make sense of amid misinformation and partisan rhetoric.

That’s the approach we took to covering the general election, which arrived earlier than expected. We published explainers on what might happen to existing gender policies, what was being promised in the party manifestos and what new voter ID laws could mean for trans and non-binary voters.

And we even turned our hands to TikTok, using the platform to bust some myths about voting as a trans person, and to explore Labour’s approach to trans policy so far.

Listening

Trans+ Voices is a community-led investigation, a new approach being developed by TBIJ that seeks to change the dynamic of journalism from a one-way, extractive process into one of collaboration and co-creation. We want to truly listen to communities, then building stories and investigations based on what we’re told.

We initially identified certain areas of the UK where we hoped to hold listening events in the run-up to the general election but changes within our team – and the unexpected announcement of a summer election – meant we had to adapt. So in May, we held an online listening event in order to hear from communities across the country ahead of the general and local elections. Participants raised a range of issues, including access to healthcare and the difficulty for trans journalists or those covering related issues to get their work published – topics we are now focusing on as we plan the next stage of our project.

We’re in the process of setting up a listening event with trans and non-binary young people – in one of the areas we identified at the outset – whose voices are often lacking from media coverage of these issues.

Engaging

One of our first actions was to recruit an advisory group of six people from trans and non-binary communities who we meet regularly for input and feedback on our work, as well as ideas on where we can look next. Advisory group members, who are paid for their time, come from backgrounds including journalism, advocacy, healthcare and campaigning, and are based all around the UK, including in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“TBIJ’s Trans+ Voices project has been an absolute joy to be a part of – it’s so refreshing to work with journalists and media organisations who take trans voices, experiences and stories seriously, and aim to represent them in a way that respects our lives and our safety,” says Alexa Moore, policy, campaigns and communications manager at the Rainbow Project in Belfast and a member of our advisory group.

“Without this project, I have no doubt that some of these stories would have remained common knowledge within our communities – but never published, never investigated, never given the time of day.

“It’s absolutely vital that publications push back on the unending tirade of misleading headlines and scaremongering over trans people by presenting the real stories affecting our communities.”

Investigating

In July, we published an investigation by freelance reporters Sasha Baker and Valeria Rocca that revealed how the then Tory MP Miriam Cates had solicited help from the Bayswater Support Group – a parent group engaged in anti-LGBTQ+ conversion practices – to bring about policies rolling back trans rights in the UK. (Spokespeople for Cates and Bayswater rejected our reporting.) It was a story that Sasha and Valeria, and others in the trans community, had been trying to tell for a long time but hadn’t been able to find an outlet that would publish it.

“Several of us here at TSN are in tears that this has been finally outed in public,” Mallory Moore from Trans Safety Network told us when we published the investigation.

“We were well aware of some of the things you uncovered for years and have been fighting to get this information out. It’s such an important piece of work and we’re extremely grateful for you succeeding in getting it published.”

Behind the scenes, we’re working on our next investigations. Our project is due to run until at least the end of October, and in that time we hope to publish findings on topics including far-right influences on the UK anti-trans movement, access to gender-affirming healthcare, and the tactics used to suppress criticism of the anti-trans movement. If you have anything to share on those subjects, or anything else you’d like to talk to us about, you can get in touch at [email protected].