The press watchdog has been accused of double standards over how feminist complaints about transgender issues are handled.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) upheld a complaint of discrimination against The Spectator earlier this week, ruling that referring to a trans author as “a man who claims to be a woman” was “pejorative and prejudicial”.
However, it has emerged that the watchdog dismissed a separate complaint earlier this year over an article calling a trans woman convicted of making violent threats a “woman”.
Ipso said investigating the inaccuracy complaint would intrude on the criminal’s privacy.
Journalist Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, claimed an article in The Argus misreported the gender of Layla Le Fey, a trans woman with a criminal record who had threatened to kill, blind and mutilate her.
In a social media post, Layla Le Fey told Ms Joyce: “God how I would love to just rip your eyes out, chop your hands off, and carve your face up really badly.”
The trans offender also threatened to “kick the s—” out of Kellie-Jay Keen, another woman’s rights activist, and “break” her spine, and wrote they wanted to “prove” a point that “some trans people are extremely violent”.
In February, Le Fey, who already had a previous conviction for common assault for attacking a shop clerk with a claw hammer, pleaded guilty to four offences under the Communications Act, including threats of arson, in relation to posts targeting the two women.
Trans woman Layla Le Fey threatened Ms Joyce and Kellie-Jay Keen, another woman’s rights activist
Following the conviction, The Argus published an article which opened with the paragraph: “A woman could be jailed for making online threats to kill campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen.”
Although the headline referred to Le Fey as a “trans woman”, the body of the article did not identify the offender as someone born male who now identifies as a woman.
The article’s “inaccuracy”, Ms Joyce told Ipso, “significantly impacts” her and Ms Keen, the victims in the case.
In her complaint, she wrote: “It is always misleading for a media outlet to use any of the words “woman”, “female”, “she” and “her” for a man/male person since many readers will understand the person to be biologically female, which in the case of men – including those who identify as women – is false. This is a breach of the Editors’ Code.”
She added: “I am not a ‘third party’ in this complaint. It closely relates to me – to my life and to my knowledge of what happened to me; I dared to speak about women’s rights and a man who doesn’t care for women speaking about their rights threatened me in an attempt to intimidate me into silence.
“This misreporting of a crime has had a significant impact on my life. It is revictimisation.”
But despite acknowledging she was a victim in the case, Ipso dismissed Ms Joyce’s complaint as a “third party issue”. The regulator said that determining Le Fey’s gender – critical to assessing the complaint of inaccuracy – would require an investigation that “could represent a significant intrusion into their privacy”.
However, the ruling is in sharp contrast to the regulator’s decision on Tuesday to uphold a complaint of discrimination by trans author Juno Dawson against The Spectator.
The regulator found that an article in the magazine by journalist Gareth Roberts, which described Dawson as “a man who claims to be a woman”, was “pejorative and prejudicial”.
Ms Joyce said that the way Ipso interprets the Editor’s Code “is biased in favour of people who hold the fringe, counterfactual belief that men can have a “gender identity” that makes them women, and against people who accept the fact that humans cannot change sex.”
Ms Joyce accused the watchdog of double standards and having “bias against gender-critical women”, claiming that Ipso handled Dawson’s complaint differently to her own.
Ipso found a Spectator article which described Juno Dawson as ‘a man who claims to be a woman’, was ‘pejorative and prejudicial’ – Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph
She told The Telegraph: “When a man with a prior conviction for violence, and who identifies as a woman, threatened on Twitter/X to carve up my face and cut out my eyes, press reporting of his conviction referred to him as a woman. Ipso refused to act when I complained, even though its Editors’ Code says reporting must be accurate.
“Ipso placed the feelings of a violent criminal who threatened extreme violence against a woman who refuses to pretend he is a woman ahead of the feelings of his victim, and ahead of the plain truth. The press regulator is simply not fit for purpose.”
Ms Joyce said that Le Fey’s pattern of offending is “absolutely classic male violence against women. It is a sex-based crime and it’s done to intimidate”.
She explained: “When it comes to crime reporting, misrepresenting a perpetrator or alleged perpetrator’s sex will always be material, because it will always be relevant to the public’s understanding of the story. Criminality is highly sex-linked – most violent crime, and nearly all sexual crime, is committed by men – male people.
“It is not only grossly misleading for a media outlet to present a man committing a male-pattern crime as a woman; it is even more especially so when that crime is against a woman, and motivated by woman-hatred.”
Ipso has been criticised this week by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who called the Spectator ruling “farcical”, and Claire Coutinho, a shadow equalities minister, who said it was “totally bizarre”.
The Spectator is understood to be considering severing ties with the press watchdog, with Michael Gove, its new editor, calling the ruling “outrageous”.
The magazine is expected to start gauging interest in such a move from other outlets, while The Guardian and The Financial Times already manage complaints in-house.