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Piers Morgan claims he’s a ‘victim of cisphobia’ after transgender community blast his ignorance on Twitter

A social media row was sparked after a controversial interview with transgender advocate Janet Mock was aired on his CNN chat show

Jenn Selby
Thursday 06 February 2014 13:18 GMT
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#8 - Piers Morgan, 3.6m followers.
#8 - Piers Morgan, 3.6m followers. (Getty Images)

Piers Morgan has claimed to be the “victim of cisphobia” after several members of the transgender community blasted his ignorance on Twitter.

The social media row was sparked after the CNN host aired an interview on Piers Morgan Live with transgender advocate Janet Mock last night. Mock had agreed to appear on the show to promote her new book, Redefining Realness.

During the interview, one of the subtitles that appeared on the screen falsely read that Mock “was a boy until age 18″.

Morgan’s sensational line of questioning also suggested that Mock had misled a number of people she’d previously dated about her gender identity.

After watching the interview back, Mock was incensed at how the programme had been edited.

Tweeting at Morgan, she wrote the following:

Morgan’s response to Mock (he’d “deal with” her, he tweeted, before – surprise, surprise – he invited her back on his show to settle the “debate” tonight) caused an outcry from LGBT groups, who condemned the former tabloid editor’s use of derogatory language to describe transgender people, and labelled him ‘transphobic’.

So, Piers Morgan being Piers Morgan, he decided the retweet their tweets with sarcastic comments such as "fabulously dim" edited into the start.

Then, in a final bout of incomprehension, he used yet another derogatory term to claim that he was the victim in the whole debacle:

The term “cisphobia” appears to have been coined using the prefix ‘cis’ in reference to ‘cis people’, which is a historically privileged group of people. ‘Trans’, on the other hand, has been used as the antithesis of ‘cis’ in the past, to describe a historically oppressed group of people.

Mock has since agreed to return to Piers Morgan Live to further debate the issue tonight.

The debacle marks the second Morgan-related war of words on the microblogging site in 24 hours.

Matt Prior responded angrily to Morgan's accusation on Twitter that he had stabbed sacked England batsman Kevin Pietersen in the back.

Read more about that here.


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