There’s a #BoycottTheMail hashtag going around
Good. Here’s the story of Lucy Meadows and her death.
Nor was it just biased reporting. Some columnists – the Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn led the way – simply used their columns, read by millions of people to attack a woman who wanted only to live her life in peace.
Littlejohn wrote a piece headlined: “He’s not only in the wrong body … he’s in the wrong job”, seemingly oblivious to the grief caused by misgendering Lucy. His focus was “the devastating effect” on pupils of Lucy’s change in gender.
“Why,” he asked, “should they be forced to deal with the news that a male teacher they have always known as Mr Upton will henceforth be a woman called Miss Meadows?”
Lucy was all about protecting those closest to her: friends, family, myself. So she worked hard to give the impression that this was annoying but she was dealing with it.
Still, when she came to spend that Christmas with us, I could tell that she was quite low. A friend, someone she had been falling in love with, had recently died. The hormones were continuing to have an effect. And it seemed the press were not going away any time soon.
We got through January, but it was hard to shake the sense that the press damage had gone deep. On 7 February, Lucy made her first suicide attempt. Or rather, she explained, she made her practice run. Because this was the only rational solution.
