The infamous anti-Trans article by the BBC, published Tuesday, October 26, has now been amended to remove contributions from Lily Cade, self-described “artist of sex”, after she wrote and published five blog posts calling for violence against Trans women.

Cade has been accused by several women of sexual abuse over a number of years and is openly transphobic, and up until now, deemed a credible source by the BBC.

PinkNews reports that Caroline Lowbridge, the author of We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women, was aware of the sexual assault allegations against Cade prior to publication.

If trans women wrote about cis women the way lily cade wrote about trans women, esp after being in the BBC the entire media machine would be focused on it for months, trans charities would be forced to shut down and politicians would openly restrict the rights of trans people

— Mia Mulder (@Potatopolitics) November 3, 2021

Despite this prior knowledge, Lowbridge and the BBC decided to use Cade as a source anyway and also did not see fit to include any mention of these allegations in the anti-Trans piece. These are just two in a series of dubious choices regarding this article, which the BBC are still defending as “an important piece of journalism”.

The BBC have only removed Lily Cade from the English language version of the article, not the versions published oin Portugal or Brazil. pic.twitter.com/GZKHFvwExS

— Laura Kate Dale – Mastodon "@[email protected]" (@LaurakBuzz) November 4, 2021

An addendum has been added to the original digital publication, which reads:

“We have updated this article, published last week, to remove a contribution from one individual in light of comments she has published on blog posts in recent days, which we have been able to verify.

“We acknowledge that an admission of inappropriate behaviour by the same contributor should have been included in the original article.”

Seriously. Lily Cade has written a Unabomber-style rant about literally executing trans woman, with the specific names of who she would lynch. That's who @BBCNews are platforming as having a legitimate viewpoint in the discussion around trans rights. That's where we are.

— Steph Paton 🇵🇸 (@stephenpaton134) November 2, 2021

Independent.ie made a very generous interpretation of Lowbridge’s article, saying, “The piece, published last week, questioned whether a lesbian is ‘transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women.'”

As pointed out by an open letter of complaint to the BBC with over 20,000 signatures, the article “dangerously frames” lesbians being pressured into sex “as a widespread issue” when the reality is that this is “a matter of incredibly rare, isolated experiences”.

Trans Activism UK are the voices behind that open letter, and they have responded to this latest move by the BBC, removing Lily Cade from the article, saying “The BBC quietly removing Lily Cade isn’t enough.”

The BBC article strongly implied no other trans women would talk to them, but @ChelseaPoe666 did, and she told them about Lily Cade’s accusers pic.twitter.com/mIZCT7b7Oi

— worms cited (@christapeterso) November 3, 2021

“While the BBC have removed the quotes and statements by Lily Cade from the article, they did not mention Lily Cade by name in the retraction, or the nature of her genocidal transphobic manifesto in the days following the BBC’s article, the nature of the sexual assault allegations against her by cisgender lesbians, how they undermine the core point of the original article (that sexual assaults of cis lesbians are specifically being done by Trans women as an overall societal group), or that Caroline Lowbridge was well aware of those allegations prior to the publishing of the article and chose to bury that information, as alleged by Chelsea Poe.”

Lily Cade's genocidal tirade against trans people, after she was platformed by the BBC, illustrates two things:

First, this is not an uncommon opinion among TERFs

Second, when Dave Chappelle declared, "I'm on team TERF," what trans people heard was "I want you all gone."

— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) November 2, 2021

The statement goes on to say: “By choosing to remove all mention of Lily Cade, rather than contextualise her as a cisgender lesbian accused of the same crimes levied in the piece against Trans women, the BBC is again choosing to bury the rebuttal argument that anyone from any background can be an abuser, and that to paint this as a Trans woman specific issue is painting a minority group with a single brush stroke… This is not sufficient as a correction, or apology.

“The BBC needs to own up to the fact they have published something deeply dangerous, platformed dangerous individuals, and should not be allowed to quietly sweep this under the rug.”