THE BBC has issued an apology after the subtitles on a news report about the Supreme Court’s ruling on sex and biology mis-gendered people.
The mistakes happened in English subtitles during a broadcast on the Welsh-language S4C on April 24, which looked at how trans people’s lives would be impacted by the court decision.
On April 16, the Supreme Court had ruled that sex under the 2010 Equality Act was biological, and trans people therefore did not gain access to protections based on sex even if they had a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
The S4C report eight days later looked at the consequences of the ruling, but wrongly used pronouns associated with people’s biological birth sex rather than their trans identity.
The BBC said that it had checked with the subtitle provider to ensure that pronouns reflect a person’s acquired gender, and that “immediate” steps had been taken to ensure this would be the case moving forward.
The broadcaster said in its apology: “In a report about the recent UK Supreme Court’s ruling and how it could affect trans people's lives some of the English subtitles that appeared on air were incorrect, resulting in the incorrect gender and pronouns being used four times. This was an error and we apologise.”
It went on: “Red Bee, the company that supplied the subtitles, have assured us they have a clear and documented policy which is that their subtitles should always reflect the gender and pronouns that the person identifies with.
“However, they acknowledge this didn’t happen on this occasion and because of human error the translated subtitles were incorrect.
“Red Bee have also apologised and have taken immediate steps to ensure this kind of incident does not happen again.”
The Supreme Court ruling led the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to issue guidance saying that workplaces must offer single-sex spaces based on biology.
However, the EHRC said that some people may appear to be from a gender different to the sex they were assigned at birth. It said it would also be lawful to exclude them from single-sex facilities that align with their biology.
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon previously said that she thought the court ruling risked making trans people’s lives “unliveable”.
