Good Morning Britain Host Piers Morgan Doubles Down on Anti Trans Rhetoric
By: Phaylen Fairchild
Tags: Television, LGBTQ, Culture, Transgender, Social Media

Good Morning Britain has committed to platform the discrimination espoused by the controversial television host.

Piers Morgan has spent the last few years as host of Good Morning Britain degrading, humiliating and mocking transgender people. The 54 year old ex-news editor of The Daily Mirror who had been fired from his position in 2004 for publishing photo-shopped images of British Soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner. The act was said to have threatened the reputation and public safety of those serving in the military for the sake of selling papers.

After a four year stint as a caustic judge on Britain’s Got Talent, he took a seat next to co-host Susanna Reid. Routinely, he has placed transgender women and children in his cross-hairs, telling guests like Munroe Bergdorf that “Gender fluid people are a farce.” He also claimed that there was a “Creeping war on the words ‘Men’ and ‘Women’.” He accused parents who are raising non-binary children of influencing them to identify as non-binary for attention saying, “This is being driven by adults in the household, not by the children.” He has attacked transgender athletes who participate in professional sports suggesting that Men intend to self ID as women to dominate women’s sports, enrich themselves, then return to assuming a male identity once they’ve achieve wealth. He has labeled gender neutral individuals as “ridiculous” and “Clowns” in a rant in November, 2017 stating “You can’t be a man anymore, It’s over! No more men, no more women! as his co-host Reid pleaded with him, “And yet the world continues to turn! Give it a rest, no one can get a word in edgewise,” before adding, You’re the only one obsessed with this.”

In the same year, he railed against activist Juno Dawson for supporting gender neutral categories in awards such as the Oscars and Emmys. He looked at Dawson, who had previously explained she was a transgender woman twice, and spat “Are you a man or a woman?” And she went on to become yet another guest who attempted to explain to him the difference between sex and gender. In this same interview, he contested Facebook’s decision to include 71 new gender identification options for users, deeming it “A load of nonsense.”

Good Morning Britain spends an inordinate amount of time debating Trans and Non-binary lives, inviting activists on for Morgan to shout down and degrade rather than let them speak on the topic they’d been invited to discuss.

As early as 2014, when Morgan has his now defunct show on CNN in America, he seemed obsessed with Transgender identities, famously challenging award winning author, activist and filmmaker Janet Mock who he dead-named, made repeated inquires about her surgeries and exclaimed “I would never have known looking at you that you were born a boy!”

More recently, Morgan openly mocked singer Sam Smith who came out last month as non-binary, preferring They/Them pronouns. Morgan stated, “He can’t work out what he is. I now identify as Sam Smith so I can get his royalties,” deliberately misgendering them. This led to activist Jameela Jamil taking him to task for his callous remarks via twitter:

To which Morgan responded mockingly;

Historically, Morgan has developed a notorious reputation for his belittling and harassment of trans and non-binary individuals. Even high profile trans woman Caitlyn Jenner, when joining him on his ITV special ‘Piers Morgan’s Life Stories’- the same network that airs Good Morning Britain- for a candid interview where he made a joke regarding her genitalia. Jenner stopped him and said “That, to a trans person, is disrespectful. You don’t make a joke about that. It’s not funny, it’s life. It’s part of my life. It’s a very serious part of my life. Out of respect to myself and the community, it’s not something you joke about. People die over this issue. It’s not a joke.”

Last month, Morgan went on another tirade against trans and nonbinary identities. When co-star Charlotte Hawkins said that people should be what they wanted to be, Morgan insisted that “no they can’t” and then announced that he would now be identifying as a Penguin.

“I’m a penguin! Identifying as a two spirit penguin! Everyone happy with that? Two spirit, gender neutral pan-gender, gender fluid, femme penguin.” -Piers Mogan

Morgan then changed his twitter profile photo… to his head imposed upon a penguin. Unsurprising, given in the past when attacking a non-binary couple he identified as black.

This insult fetched a response from many activists and allies, including actor James Moore who replied;

The constant haranguing of trans and non-binary people by Piers Morgan- platformed by ITV and Good Morning Britain- finally culminated in a petition to see the host fired from the show he has been central to since 2015. It quickly raked in over 25,000 signatures, and rather than address the issue with an ounce of sincerity, the producers of Good Morning Britain, along with Morgan himself, capitalized on it with the show running its own poll asking “Should he stay or should he go?” that backfired massively when the overwhelming response was in favor of his dismissal.

The hashtags #FirePiersMorgan, #SackPiersMorgan and #SavePiersMorgan were trending on the Twitter platform for two days in the US and UK as many wondered if his years of trans and non-binary rhetoric would finally face some long over-due accountability.

In the aftermath of the poll, however, Good Morning Britain producers and Morgan took to the airwaves the following day to laugh at viewers who thought he would actually be fired, referring to them as “Snowflakes.” The glib Morgan called the viewers “Very very demented, hysterical people” who “Genuinely think they’re going to get rid of me and that’s what makes this all the funnier. You’re not going to get rid of me” He went on to boast “If you think by making me trend worldwide two days in a row, making me the most talked about breakfast presenter in the world that is a way to get rid of me. Let me tell you what you’ve done… you’ve helped me get a pay raise.” Co-Host Reid explained “I just want to point out, if you hate Piers Morgan, the idea is to not make him trend all over the world. He has an ego the size of the London Eye.”

Reid, who is often caught in Morgans cross-fire with guests and capitulates to his noxious opinions as he bellows beyond her to whichever unfortunate trans or non-binary guest they’ve invited, took to twitter to distance herself from his toxicity.

It cannot be denied that both the hosts and makers of the show itself used the contentious scenario to further mock and laugh in the face of his detractors in a grotesque, public display of indifference to Morgan’s long running assault on the trans community. Good Morning Britain effectively used the poll, and the outcome, as another means to troll socially conscious twitter users and even posted their clips of Morgan making fun of it on youtube.

With hate crimes against trans and non-binary people spiking to record highs throughout the UK in just the last year alone, it would be reasonable to expect the show and it producers would recognize that Morgan’s volatile, bigoted opinions regarding a vulnerable minority class has likely been formative in the aggressive anti-trans media concert that has plagued the community.

Instead, they have been, and remain, complicit in endorsing his behavior and his ongoing campaign of misinformation and humiliation of those who are different than himself.