IPSO judgement on spectator.co.uk with regard to Editor’s Code Section 12.1

Juno Dawson complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that spectator.co.uk breached Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “The sad truth about ‘saint’ Nicola Sturgeon”, published on 21 May 2024. 

The complaint was upheld, and IPSO required spectator.co.uk to publish this adjudication to remedy the breach of the Code. 

The article under complaint was a comment piece about Nicola Sturgeon and focused largely on her stance on transgender rights in Scotland. It reported that Nicola Sturgeon “was interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, and so the conversation naturally turned to gender”. 

The complainant said the article breached Clause 12 as she considered the claim that she was “a man who claim[ed] to be a woman” to be discriminatory as she legally changed her gender in 2018. The complainant considered she was deliberately misgendered with the intention being to offend her. 

IPSO considered referring to the complainant as a man “claiming” to be a woman was personally belittling and demeaning toward the complainant, in a way that was both pejorative and prejudicial to her gender identity, and was not justified by the columnist’s right to express their views on the broader issues of sex and gender identity.