The Sun and the ‘Gender Benders’

THE Press Complaints Commission – recently branded ‘absolutely awful’ by Ken Livingstone – has published a list of recently resolved complaints. It shows that an unnamed woman from Camden rapped The Sun for it’s use of ‘gender bender’, the pretty thoughtless shorthand slang used to describe transexusals and transvestites.

The full details of the complaint are not published but a case summary reads as follows:

COMPLAINT:

A woman complained to the Press Complaints Commission through Liz Willows of the Camden LGBT Forum that the newspaper had raised a breach of Clause 12 (Discrimination) in referring to her as a “gender bender” in the text and headline of an article originally published in 2008 but still hosted on its website.

RESOLUTION:

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper wrote to the complainant accepting her concern about the language used and removed the article from its website.

DATE: 25/5/2010

So The Sun has noted concerns over the use of ‘Gender Bender’. Does that mean they are reviewing the appearance of the word in other stories on its website. Boy George is described as a ‘chart-topping gender bender’, actor David Tennant apparently once played a ‘gender bender barmaid called Davinia’ and a murderer learned about his ‘gender bender grandad‘ at the age of seven. The Sun‘s sister newspaper, the News of The World, has more examples.

Another case marked closed at the PCC then?