I'd spent four days in London covering a huge gaming convention called Eurogamer. On the show's final day I decided that, as I'd finished all my work, I'd go have a look around for something to do for fun. I eventually settled on spending some time at the Xbox stage.



Having walked past the stage repeatedly over the weekend, I knew the format. Every hour they were giving away a game console on stage. Each time, they brought six people up on stage: five men and one token woman to prevent sexism accusations. When they asked for volunteers, I was the first picked by the presenter to come up on stage. Jackpot.



He pulled four men up on stage with me and then started insisting that they needed a woman up on stage too. Were there any women in the audience who wanted to take part? My heart sank instantly. Despite my presentation, he was insisting to the audience that nobody on stage was female. I felt sick.



During the time I was on stage, he referred to me more than once as male. Once he realized his mistake, he switched to "er, that person" rather than use female pronouns like he did for the other woman on stage. Everyone else was either "gentleman" or "young woman." I'm just something that he was afraid to try to address.



I walked away pretty upset. I spoke to the staff manning the stage to tell them I was unhappy and asked to talk to the presenter. My requests were refused. I requested the presenter's name so that I could make a formal complaint. They refused. At this point I was fairly upset and angry. I made a complaint anyway, but I also took to Twitter to voice my anger over the fact that this man had upset me, yet I was not able to tell him directly and get closure. I decided to head home -- a trip of a few hours by train -- and thought nothing more of it. Click to expand...

Some tweets were supportive. Some were accusations that I'd made the whole thing up. Most of them were vile messages about how I am a man and a disgusting freak who would be better off dead. The number of death threats and dehumanizing comments I received was unbelievable. Being misgendered at Eurogamer was nothing compared with my punishment for speaking up about it. This is why trans people rarely speak up when these things happen. People tracked down my phone number. Hate flooded my work inbox. I had people threatening to track me down in person and attack me. People found my old identity and began to try to publicize it. I faced the darkest aspects of the Internet just for existing and speaking up. Click to expand...

Ricky Mensah, Event Manager for Microsoft, apologised for any offence caused by the stage show, before introducing us to the show presenter, Fraser Millward. In a short discussion with Mr. Millward, we showed him the accusatory tweets and asked for his response to the whole situation.

Mr. Millward stated that he agreed that he referred to Miss Dale as "this person" as with all the furore of dealing with 350 or so baying fans and trying to run a stage show, he didn't instantly recognise her gender. He states that "I should have said 'this person' and then gone on to the next person and also referred to them as 'this person' so as not to cause offence, but I was thinking on my feet. I wouldn't do the same thing again."

In direct response to the following tweet, though, Mr. Millward was a little more defensive in his comments.



"Staff apologised to her, but every single part of the first sentence of that tweet is made up. We called for more women so as to balance things up as there were mostly male gamers on stage, yes. There are ways of complaining in a mature way, but this is inflammatory and slanderous. 350 witnesses saw that this did not happen and that I didn't say those things. I would like to speak to her face to face to sort this out, but she's taken to Twitter and now I'm getting hundreds of tweets per minute." We asked what could have sparked these claims if this indeed did not happen, Mr. Millward said that "I referred to her as 'this person', at which point some of the crowd laughed. I should have diffused that situation, but I think that is what's caused this to happen. I did not refer to the woman as 'thing' or 'it' at any point."



Miss Dale claims that Microsoft's security staff prevented her from speaking to Mr. Millward, which Mr. Millward claims he was not aware of. Click to expand...

10/4 Update (joint statement):Laura Kate Dale and Fraser Millward have come to agree that the situation which took place at the Xbox stand at Eurogamer on Sunday 29th September was an unfortunate misunderstanding on both sides. It has now been made clear that Fraser did not refer to Laura as an 'it' or a 'thing' or a 'he', and these claims have now been fully retracted by Laura and she is sorry for the hurt this caused. Fraser caused offence to Laura on stage when he publicly misgendered her by addressing her as 'this person'. Laura was also upset by statements which she saw as suggesting that she was not female. Fraser is sorry he said this, and for the pain he inadvertently caused Laura. Both parties wish to put the situation behind them and consider this matter now resolved.10/3 Update (via Lexi):UPDATE: Eurogamer Expo are "Onto the issue". Also, for clarification's sake, the comedian does NOT WORK FOR MICROSOFT PERMANENTLY, he was hired to present a series of stage shows through the day to give away lots of prizes (hoodies, t shirts etc).Seems like this is developing at the moment, but a transgender journalist, Laura Dale, appears to have been humiliated on stage at Eurogamer Expo during a Microsoft stage event. According to her Twitter, this happened:"Most embarrassing moment of Eurogamer. Pulled up on stage for XB1 thing and called male twice and "it" twice."I was "he", "it". "Thing" and "this one". I was on stage and they still insist "we need a woman on stage, any women here""Hope someone from Microsoft sees this. Your presenter made completely dehumanised me in front of an audience. Ruined my Eurogamer""Staff on the stage refuse to provide a full name."She then goes on to say that she believes the presenter's name is Fraser Millward, who describes himself as a "character comedian", and that "People at the stage appologise (sic) that I was upset by his comments, refused to bring him out for me to talk to", and "Refused to appologise (sic) for his actual actions".The giveaways/stage events were usually held in front of a pretty sizeable crowd when I went on Thursday, this is a bit crap for someone to have to go through. To the Expo's credit, they've jumped on this pretty quickly on Twitter, but it looks like this could have some fallout. A few folks at the show have been quick to condemn Microsoft, including Mike Bithell, who referred to the guy as "A Microsoft rep"... Whilst the guy that said it probably isn't employed directly by Microsoft, you'd have thought they'd have been a bit more careful with their briefings!Screens of her twitter page (Most recent at top) :