"'We're being pressured into sex by some trans women'" is the original title of a BBC News article written by Caroline Lowbridge and published on 26 October 2021.

Produced by the BBC's regional service in Nottingham, the article reports that lesbians are being pressured into sex by a small number of transgender women and non-transgender 'activists'.

It drew particular attention for the inclusion of comments from American pornographic actress Lily Cade, who wrote a blog post after the article's publication calling for the "lynching" of high-profile trans women.

Her social media survey of eighty lesbians found that 56% were "pressured or coerced to accept a trans woman as a sexual partner"; four respondents' comments are quoted.

A New Zealand TikTok content creator reported receiving messages from young lesbians who are unable to break up with their partners because they are trans.

[12] Bev Jackson, a co-founder of LGB Alliance—an organisation founded after Stonewall announced it would campaign for transgender equality—said, based on people who contacted her, that "a sizeable minority of trans women ... pressure lesbians to go out with them and have sex with them", although she was unable to provide statistics.

[13] Lowbridge, the author, said that she began investigating the subject after being contacted by people who said that they were concerned by pressure to "accept the idea that a penis can be a female sex organ".

[6][16] James Kirkup, director of the Social Market Foundation, counter-argued in The Times that it was "bizarre" to criticise the article without "question[ing] the accuracy" of the source.

[17] Kirkup later wrote for The Spectator that the article's quote from Stonewall amounted to "the country's biggest gay rights campaign group suggesting that homosexual women who refuse to consider sex with people who have male genitalia is comparable to racism.

[3] However, a member of Trans Activism UK commented that the article omitted quotes from cisgender lesbians who had relationships with transgender women.

[19] The BBC was questioned by MPs about whether proper journalistic processes had been performed prior to the publication of the article and why no interviews with trans people were included.

[20] In the article, Lowbridge wrote that she had "contacted several ... high-profile trans women who have either written or spoken about sex and relationships", but said that "none of them wanted to speak to me."

[9] On 31 May 2022, the BBC stated that whether a particular trans person is "high profile" is "a matter of judgement, in which there may be a subjective element" and justified the wording used in the article by saying that it was not "a serious inaccuracy" to describe Poe as not being high-profile.

Poe, another pornographic actress, reported informing Lowbridge of those incidents, but the latter considered the topic irrelevant and all content from the interview was omitted from the final article.

Her blog also claimed that a paedophilic cult controlled the Western world and called George Floyd, an African-American man who had been murdered by a police officer, "an annoying piece of shit".

[25][26] In December 2021, the Council of Europe Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination had released a report that found that, in the UK, "anti-trans rhetoric, arguing that sex is immutable and gender identities not valid, has also been gaining baseless and concerning credibility, at the expense of both trans people's civil liberties and women's and children's rights.

"[27] Bethany Dawson of Insider Inc. said that "the UK government has estimated that trans people make up less than 1% of the population, but their sheer existence is a contentious topic for the media" and cited an LGBT Health study from January 2021 that found that "repeated exposure to transphobic content—such as articles that misgender people or trivialize trans issues—was associated with 'clinically significant' symptoms of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and global psychological stress.

Wells of rabble.ca wrote that "feminist-coded transphobia" rose in prevalence among UK mainstream media in 2017 after the Conservative government had a consultation into reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

[29] Writing for Refinery29, presenter of the BBC Three documentary Transitioning Teens Charlie Craggs also argued that the article "depicted trans women as sexual predators in a way that felt very reminiscent of how gay people were talked about in the media in recent decades.

"[30] Around 20,000 people signed an open letter by Trans Activism UK asking the BBC to apologise for the article,[6][3] while the corporation received around 5,000 complaints directly and 6,000 messages of approval.

[21] A figure from the transgender youth charity Mermaids commented that the article "contributes to the irrational fearmongering aimed at trans women, who have been relentlessly and systematically targeted by the media in recent years".

[3] A member of Trans Activism UK similarly said that the BBC had previously quoted anti-trans organisations and figureheads uncritically on multiple occasions.

According to PinkNews, McManus faced "resounding backlash" for the comparison, with Jones saying, "This is a BBC journalist comparing trans people to Jimmy Savile.

"[42] On 1 November, the BBC said that their article passed its editorial guidelines, replying to complaints that their "strong commitment to impartiality" necessitated "covering stories on any point of the spectrum of debate",[13][43] and that the report "looks at a complex subject from different perspectives and acknowledges it is difficult to assess the extent of the issue".