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In April 2025, a decision by the Supreme Court of England and Wales determined that the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex. It provoked a wave of discriminatory incidents and raised the spectre of new restrictions for transgender people.
More recently, attempts by conservatives to connect the murder of far-right American commentator Charlie Kirk to transgender people – without any hard evidence – exposed the intellectual gymnastics some reactionaries will resort to in justifying the ongoing assault on the human rights of minorities.
The effect is what amounts to an open season on trans and intersex people, on both sides of the Atlantic. Media coverage of the issue is patchy and caricatured, when not actually complicit.
The violence is real
In a survey of 98,272 LGBT+ people residing in the EU, 36% report having suffered discrimination on the basis of their sexual or gender identity in 2023, according to figures from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published in 2024.
Rates of discrimination are particularly high for trans women (64%), trans men (63%), intersex people (56%) and gender-diverse non-binary people (51%).
In France, “transphobia ranks in the ‘top 3’ of LGBTIphobias recorded by SOS Homophobie”, according to a report that organization published in 2025. In 2025, SOS Homophobie recorded 371 cases of transphobia out of 1,624 LGBTphobic acts (23%) in France. The most recurrent acts involved rejections (57%), insults (26%), discrimination (14%), harassment (13%) and threats (10%). Physical assaults accounted for 8%.
In Spain, a series of transphobic assaults in recent months reveals a similar upsurge in hostility towards the trans minority. In June 2025, a trans woman was assaulted by five people in Barcelona's Sant Antoni district. They hit her, dragged her along the ground and filmed the assault to share on social media, which led to their arrest.
The Spanish National Federation of Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual, Intersex and Others (FELGTBI+) reports that over the past year, one in four transgender people were victims of physical or sexual assault (26.70%), while 35.60% suffered harassment and 37.80% discrimination.
A study carried out by the Carlos III Health Institute reports that almost half of transgender and non-binary people have been physically assaulted at some point in their lives. Such trauma can leave serious psychological scars. According to the report, around half of the victims have had suicidal thoughts.
In Ireland, a government-funded survey on people's attitudes to diversity in 2023 reveals that the average respondent has a clearly positive attitude towards transgender people. If statistics published by the Irish National Police are to be believed, gender-related hate crimes remain relatively uncommon.
The Irish police counted 25 cases in 2022, 38 in 2023 and 17 in 2024. But this apparently positive situation must be nuanced because, as the FRA notes in its report, there is a “persistent trend towards under-reporting of bias-motivated crimes”. The agency points out, for example, that in Ireland, 11% of respondents claimed to have reported incidents of hate-motivated harassment they had experienced in the year prior to the survey to an authority or organization. “16% [of LGBT+ people surveyed who were victims of violence] went to the police in Ireland to report hate-motivated physical or sexual assault. This figure is 11% in the EU-27.”
The media’s role
For Anaïs Perrin-Prevelle, director of OUTrans, a feminist trans self-help organization based in Paris, the French situation is unusual in Europe: “We notice that the countries that are behind or near us in [certain rankings dealing with transphobia] are ones where we've seen big government anti-trans campaigns”, of the sort that France has been spared. Anaïs Perrin-Prevelle believes that France’s issues of transphobia can be better explained by “politico-media noise”.
Excessive media coverage of trans questions is contributing to the increase in hate speech in France, concurs the SOS Homophobie report. 50% of the testimonials collected in its “Media” category relate to transphobia. “This percentage can be explained by the fact that most media reporting on trans-identity relay the words of notorious transphobic activists, rather than talking to the people concerned”, says the report. “Between conspiracy, stigmatization and disgust, transphobes seem determined to put trans people at the heart of political and societal debate.”
To mark International Transgender Day of Visibility on 31 March, the Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Intersex Journalists (AJL) reminded the media world of its responsibility. “We expect our fellow journalists to treat people responsibly and with respect, [and avoid] sensationalist hype, unhealthy curiosity and misinformation”, it pleaded. “We call for a voice to be given to the people concerned, who are all too often rendered inaudible or thrown out to pasture in programming that claims to be ‘entertaining’”. The AJL said it expected journalists to be “extremely rigorous [...], particularly in their choice of interviewees for their field of expertise”.
While Anaïs Perrin-Prevelle acknowledges the importance of media coverage, she believes that the influence of social media cannot be overlooked when it comes to understanding transphobia. On certain platforms, it's not uncommon for transphobic content to be given far more prominence than content representing transgender people in a positive light. This, for the OUTrans director, feeds a climate of phobia. “I like to refer to etymology, and transphobia is, literally, the fear of trans people. We live in an etymologically transphobic society.”
In Spain, there have also been a number of public declarations and political decisions that have been perceived as attacks on the rights of LGBT+ people. In 2023, the Madrid Assembly passed a proposal to amend and repeal a large part of the autonomous community's LGBT+ laws. It marked, according to Amnesty International, a “serious step backwards in terms of human rights”.
Several Spanish public figures have been targeted by transphobic remarks. In 2021, a deputy from the far-right Vox party referred to transgender deputy Carla Antonelli (PSOE, centre-left) using male pronouns. Actress Carla Sofía Gascón also felt she had suffered attacks partly motivated by being a visible transgender person in the media. Gascón had been the subject of criticism for tweets deemed Islamophobic, racist and offensive that the actress had posted in the past. She subsequently apologized publicly.
Visibility, an imperative
Transgender people must be made visible, but in all their diversity. Anaïs Perrin-Prevelle stresses the need to show that transgender people exist, and that “visibility isn't absolute, it has to be multiple”. For her, this is where the media has a role to play.
For the director of OUTrans, however, the work goes beyond the media. Given the scale of the task and the lack of resources, she believes that long-term support must be provided to associations fighting transphobia and for the rights of transgender people. She also calls on the government to apply anti-discrimination laws fully.
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