Transgender Journalist Says She Was "completely dehumanised" at an Xbox One event

[Siren]

At the Eurogamer Expo 2013, a transgender journalist is claiming that she was "completely dehumanised" by an Xbox One presenter.

Laura Kate Dale, a transgender journalist is claiming that Fraser Millward; a British comedian and actor who was hired for the event, humiliated her by referring to her as an "it", "thing", "he" and "this one". Laura who made the announcement over Twitter stated that she "Hopes someone from Microsoft sees this" and said that people at the event "refused" to let her talk to the comedian after his comments were made and that they attempted to apologize.

Microsoft who is a supporter of transgendered individuals and even sent a Master Chief cosplayer and Warthog to Seattle's recent Pride parade issued the following statement, "We are aware of an incident yesterday on the Xbox booth at the Eurogamer Expo, at which an inappropriate comment was made, and we apologise for any offence caused."

The comedian in question, Fraser Millward also released a statement saying, "No offence was intended when I referred to Laura Kate Dale as ‘this person’ after I asked the audience to applaud her...

...and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any offence and hurt I may have caused.

There will be no further comment or response regarding this matter"

Since the story broke, Laura is also claiming that she has been receiving hateful remarks directed towards her on Twitter and she wishes that the story never made it public. She has asked websites like Kotaku to pull the story from their website to which Kotaku declined and issued a statement encouraging their readers "to remember that there are human beings on the other end of your online comments".

Eurogamer Expo are investigating the situation.

via Kotaku

Click here to view the article

[PeeKnuckle]

I watched that unfold over Twitter and that journalist had plenty of opportunities with the writer of one article. Each time he reached out to her, she had an excuse. When she finally tweeted (publicly) her email to him, she received many negative emails and tried to use that against him. She further dug herself into a hole by claiming she didn't say certain things, only to have her quoted words tweeted back or linked to her.

 

With all that said, I found it in poor taste that she was treated that way on stage, if what we know now is true. But even some or most of that is still in question.

 

It's a mess and this will keep happening whenever a matter that needs to be discussed privately is thrown onto social media. The original writer later that day had had enough and acted out a bit, but he originally started out fairly professional and offered her several chances to have her version of the story in his article. I can understand that she too had had enough by that point, but ducking the issue doesn't make it go away. Especially when you level that form of accusation at someone.

[ThermoNukePanda]

While I am 100% against discrimination I have to say that this all has been COMPLETELY over-sensationalized to the extreme.

[Siren]

When she started back peddling on things and saying that she wished it never went public; that was her doing.  Then asking for websites to pull the story down it is a bunch of bull.  I am not for someone being discriminated against in any way...but something about this is fishy.  Something clearly happened, however I think it was embellished a bit.

[ThermoNukePanda]

When she started back peddling on things and saying that she wished it never went public; that was her doing.  Then asking for websites to pull the story down it is a bunch of bull.  I am not for someone being discriminated against in any way...but something about this is fishy.  Something clearly happened, however I think it was embellished a bit.

 

There are a ton of attention whores lately.  I remember reading some story from this woman who blogs who said that this dude in Walmart freaked out on her for "her son wearing pink" or something like that and basically attaked them.  People called bullcrap on that too and it turned out it was. 

 

So much attention whoring lately.