Alex Kay-Jelski is the latest individual to realise that the internet never forgets and, when it suddenly remembers, the impact can be spectacular – and not in a good way. Kay-Jelski is the ‘soon-to-be Director of BBC Sport’ according to his account on X (formerly Twitter). But that’s as much as a casual observer will find out; the account is protected, presumably because of an all-to-familiar pile-on. The journalist has found himself in the centre of a Twitter storm over sex and gender, amplified in part by JK Rowling.
This particular story goes back five years when Kay-Jelski was sports editor at the Times. On 27 March 2019, he launched into the debate over transgender athletes in women’s sports. Kay-Jelski’s approach was rather unwise. He claimed that Martina Navratilova and Sharron Davies – two former sports stars who were courageously making the case that transwomen (like me) had no place in women’s sport – were not experts in the matter, before constructing the alternative case for transgender inclusion.
After casually dismissing the idea that repressive regimes might take advantage by transitioning male athletes into medal winners, he decided that he couldn’t see any evidence of a ‘supposed crusade to obliterate women’s sport’.
A generation ago, Kay-Jelski’s opinion piece would have been the next day’s chip papers, and that would have been the end of it. But not now. Someone online put two-and-two together and did a shout out:
People are getting crushed by the weight of criticism all the same
The new BBC Director of Sport, @AlexKayJelski, a man who said @sharrond62 @Martina weren’t experts & compared excluding men from women’s sports to excluding Jamaican or Ethiopian women
The commentator was right when she criticised the inappropriate and offensive analogy that Kay-Jelksi cited in his conclusion. Five years on he may well agree – we all live and learn – but who knows?
What happened next was rather predictable. Because Navratilova was tagged in the message, she picked it up in her notifications. She responded as anyone else might had they been accused of not really knowing what they were talking about:
This is pretty pathetic – never heard of this man, looked him up here and found myself blocked.
Once again, good to know that men apparently know what women like myself and Sharron know about biology and sports etc. Just amazing to be this confident, no?
To which JK Rowling responded,
I’d say it’s unbelievable for a man in his position to say these things at all, let alone block you, and yet, given the shameful state of the BBC’s reporting on the women’s rights/gender issue, it’s utterly predictable.
Both Navratilova and Rowling were right to be indignant, and in their messages they said nothing that previous generations would not have said. Somebody they did not know had been critical of women who very much did know what they were talking about. Years ago, that conversation might have happened on the phone, or even in real life. Perhaps one of them might have written to the Times? But likely it would have ended privately.
Social media is not private, though. It is very public. Navratilova’s message has been viewed over a quarter of a million times in less than a day. While many observers will have read and reflected, and maybe commented to their friends, others will have gone straight to Kay-Jelski to tell him what they think.
That can be crippling. Social media pile-ons are an experience like no other. While the rest of the world carries on going about its business, the impression from ground zero is that everyone is talking about you and not in a good way. It’s hard when you can defend what you might have said some years ago; even harder if you now realise it was nonsense at best and defamatory at worst. And your employer is being copied in to everything.
There is no point in responding to the onslaught, it just keeps coming. That is not Navratilova’s fault nor Rowling’s, but the weight of criticism from the the mob can be crushing all the same.
Kay-Jelski is an adult and a journalist. He is in as good a position as any to cope. But pile-ons keep happening and, as a teacher, I’m aware of the impact they can have on the more vulnerable, including children and young people. Human beings might have created social media but have hardly evolved for it. We do need to get to grips with the impact it can have on people and their mental health. Yes, people say daft things. But we all need to get over them.
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