Interview: Jess O’Thomson on Brianna Ghey and Anti-Trans Media Bias

The murder of a young transgender girl in the UK has created a media feeding frenzy, but the one aspect the press hasn’t focused on is the motive of trans hatred from Brianna’s killers.

Brianna Ghey, in a publicly available photo

by Evan Urquhart

Assigned Media: To start out, tell me little bit about who you are and what you cover, and your relationship to mainstream journalism in the UK, which I understand is a bit nontraditional.

Jess O’Thomson: I am a legal researcher and a journalist, and I have a nontraditional relationship to journalism because I kind of became a journalist by accident. I was studying my law degree and seeing absolutely tons of anti-trans misinformation about the legal situation for trans people here, about what human rights law says about trans people and trans rights. These were things I had expertise on, and I wanted to do some work to clarify things, correct misinformation, and most importantly to equip the community with knowledge that they could use to advocate for their own rights.

So, I started writing, originally, for the Trans Safety Network about important legal issues concerning trans rights over here, and very quickly it became clear that I was filling a niche that didn’t really exist. So, it became a greater and greater part of what I do with my time. 

[Here is O’Thompson’s portfolio, and their Patreon. You can also find them on Twitter.]

AM: And, could you talk, briefly, about how few transgender people are in journalism in the UK currently?

JO: So, there’s almost no one. Most of the people who are actually working on these issues do so on a freelance basis or, you know, the most successful people will have a column, usually in a minor publication. That’s it.

 The media over here is also incredibly transphobic. There’s a reason we’re referred to as TERF island, and even the left wing press has massive problems when it comes to trans inclusion.

For instance, when I was doing coverage of the Honour Oak attack, a far right attack on the trans community over a drag event at a pub in London. I was the only journalist that was there, and I myself was injured. And, I was desperately contacting various members of left wing publications who I was asking, please cover this properly, and there was just a complete failure to do so.

screenshot from Trans Safety Network

AM: Now, talk to me about the Brianna Ghey murder trial, which you attended and reported on.

JO: In February of last year, Brianna Ghey was murdered by two teenagers who had lured her to a park on the pretense that they were friends and that they wanted to hang out with her, and then stabbed her to death 28 times. 

The trial was in December, before Christmas, and then the sentencing was Friday. During the trial we heard of messages between the defendants. They spent a significant amount of time planning this murder, before it took place, they had a list of targets, of which Brianna was one, but it was Brianna they eventually selected to kill. Some of the other targets they had referred to in homophobic terms, but Brianna in the messages was referred to explicitly in incredibly hateful, transphobic terms.

The male defendant exclusively referred to her as an “it.” The female defendant was less explicit, but happy to receive these messages. She had an obsession with Brianna, and she was also interested in serial killers and in snuff films and those kinds of things. Both referred to her genitalia. The male defendant said he wanted to see what size of penis she had after he killed her. He also said he wanted to see whether she “screamed like a man or a girl.”

AM: And, now if you could, just talk a little bit about the media coverage throughout the case. The word sensationalized hardly does it justice, right?

JO: I’ve described it as the “true crime-ification” of this case. I think it’s beyond irresponsible, even as we’ve heard evidence in the case that the female defendant idolized serial killers and wanted the fame and attention and celebrity of being a serial killer.

AM: I don’t think we said their ages, but that was a main focus. What age were these young people when they killed Brianna?

JO: They were 16 when they were sentenced but I think they were both 15 when the offense was committed.

screenshot from the Daily Mail

AM: These are very young killers, and a young girl murdered, and the murdered girl was transgender, so it’s just been like alcohol on an open flame for the press, correct?

JO: So, you may not know the context here of this kind of reporting: Have you heard of James Bulger? This will give you an insight into the mindset of the British press who behave uniquely in this kind of world. I see a lot of US coverage, but I don’t see anything like this.

James Bulger was a toddler, in the 90s, who was murdered by two ten year olds who took him from a shopping center to a train track and murdered him. 

Two ten year old children. And the press here lost their shit. Went absolutely wild. Pictures of the killers on the front page of every paper, the home secretary even intervened saying they should be given a higher sentence than they were given. It was everywhere. And I think this will give you an insight into what we’re seeing.

AM: I think perhaps the closest comparison in the US would be something to do with race. So, a Trayvon Martin or an OJ Simpson case, maybe, something where it just consumes the media, consumes the public, is just everywhere, for months.

JO: Of course, knife crime, including amongst youth, remains a huge problem in the UK, but in the nicest possible way… I believe it is rarer for kids to kill each other here? The last school shooting in the UK would have been, I believe, in the 1990s. You have them on, almost, a weekly basis. It’s a different climate.

AM: Oof. Yeah. So, why did you feel it was important to cover the trial in person, as a trans journalist, when there was all this wall-to-wall coverage in the UK press?

JO: The reason was that I don’t trust the press. Having done a lot of hate research, I didn’t trust the press to report accurately on what was actually said in court. And, I also didn’t trust them to report sensitively. I wanted to provide coverage for the community that was both accurate and sensitive.

So, for example, a lot of the press chose to deadname Brianna, when her previous name was said in court. And, you know, it needed to be said in court. Her debit card, with her deadname on it, was a piece of evidence. And so the jury needed to know that that was her deadname.

I wanted to provide sensitive coverage that didn’t include stuff like that. I also thought, as someone with legal expertise, I was well placed to be in court, to understand what was going on and how to interpret things, and be able to report on it.

AM: Tell me a little bit about the picture of Brianna that emerged from the trial? It’s so easy to focus on the murderers, but let’s describe Brianna first.

JO: Brianna was an amazing young girl who was outgoing, who was brave, and who wanted to be famous. She was on TikTok, and that’s one of the reasons her death had such an impact on the trans community. Because, for a lot of trans young people, she was someone that they knew, someone that they followed and had seen her videos.

She was also an incredibly anxious, scared, vulnerable young girl, in part because she was a trans child in a transphobic society. We heard in sentencing, on Friday, that when Brianna got on the bus to go and meet her killers in the park, it was the first time she’d managed to get on a bus by herself.

Her mother was incredibly proud of her and considered it to be a breakthrough that she’d managed to do this. Only, of course, she was on her way to her death.

screenshot from ABC News

AM: It’s so hard not to be impacted by some of those details… But, I think the most sensational aspect of the story in recent days has been the naming of Brianna’s killers, who we decided not to name today. How has the naming of the killers impacted the coverage?

JO: The coverage has focused on these two children as uniquely evil monsters, on whom the blame can be attached for everything that happened. That’s not to say these two children aren’t to blame. Of course they are culpable for their actions. But it makes it very useful to distract from the wider context in which this occurred, from the vulnerability of Brianna and from the transphobic motivations.

There’s been a documentary released by the Daily Mail here in which they focus almost exclusively on the two, on their home lives, they’ve got a child psychologist on to make all sorts of speculations about them.They are making them famous, and we know from the evidence that that is what the female defendant suggested she wanted. Some of the pictures that have been posted of them, they’re not their mug shots from when they were arrested, they’re glamorous social media shots that I’m sure the killers would be very happy to have printed in the press. It takes the focus away from Brianna, takes the focus away from her family and what they need. 

Now, whenever people talk about Brianna, it’s going to be these two who are the center of focus rather than her, and what I think we need to be thinking about, which is how to keep trans kids safe.

AM: One aspect Assigned covered, after the verdict, was how the press downplayed any details that pointed to transphobia as a motive. Recently, at sentencing, the prosecutor and the judge made statements that finally acknowledged the ways hatred for trans people figured into the motivation for the killing, particularly for the male defendant, correct?

JO: There have been a few admissions now, in the press. I think there had to be. Although, there are continuing attempts to focus on only one half of the motivations.

AM: I saw that, in my prep for this. They all talk about the girl’s craving for fame, and less about the boy’s hatred of trans people.

JO: Yes, exactly. 

While the judge said that the anti-trans hatred was primarily a motive for the boy, she also said this was a murder that they were both involved in together and knew each other’s motivations. When we’re talking about the transphobia here, you know, the messages were between the two of them

AM: Right, it’s not like the girl had no idea that these virulently transphobic messages were how the boy was psyching himself up to kill. She got the messages and they were integrally part of their shared planning and shared motivations.

JO: Yes, this was something between them, they engaged in it together, all the way. And the justice very clearly, in her sentencing remarks, said that the murder, not just the boy’s role in it, was motivated in part by transphobia. The crown prosecution service here has also explicitly said that this is a transphobic hate crime, that this is how they are considering it.

But, of course, this is all based on the evidence we heard during the trial. 

During the trial, sitting there in court and then reading the reporting of the people next to me, I felt like I was being gaslit. Because I was in court hearing this incredibly transphobic material, with none of it being reported on as transphobia during the trial, or even after the verdict. 

The Guardian over here, a supposedly liberal publication that publishes a lot of transphobic material, even decided to publish an article entitled why the police ruled out transphobia as a motive. [insert briannaghey1]

screenshot from the Guardian

The press have deliberately obscured the role of transphobia in this case, with the goal of downplaying the wider impact of transphobia in society which they have played a key role in promoting and are complicit in. 

AM: To wrap up, I wanted to ask if you think there’s any chance this story will lead to a re-examination of the way transphobic messages can lead to the dehumanization of trans people and contribute to making violence easier to contemplate?

JO: [Sharp laugh] I wish.

I think that would be the best outcome, but I think it’s an unlikely one. The press has made clear they’re not willing to reflect, to grapple with the role of transphobia. I hope that maybe some individuals who have been involved in gender critical activism might pause and reflect, I think that could be possible, but I think the movement as a whole and the press, frankly, have too many vested interests in ensuring the continued demonization and oppression of trans people. They will not, they are not capable, of actually changing their behavior in this matter in a way that will protect trans children.

I think it’s up to us in the trans community and the wider queer community to reflect on this, and see what we can be doing to protect trans youth.