The next day, New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn circulated a newsroom memo defending the Times and chastising the contributors who spoke out against it.  “Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy,” Kahn asserted.  “We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups.”  (The very same day the Times published an anti-trans op-ed entitled, “In Defense of J.K. Rowling”).

After the New York Times Guild President responded to Kahn’s memo by reminding the Times that it would be a violation of federal law to punish employees for signing onto the letter, a prominent group of reporters doubled down on Kahn’s defense of the paper.  Critiques of the Times’ coverage “suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of our responsibilities as journalists,” the defenders wrote.  “Our duty is to be independent.  We pursue the facts wherever they may lead.  We are journalists, not activists.  That line should be clear.”

Our duty is to be independent … We are journalists, not activists.  This article deconstructs these statements which supposedly justify the Times’ anti-trans reporting.  “Neutral reporting” and the “line” between advocacy and journalism are slippery, hollow, and self-serving concepts.  They are labels that outlets like the Times apply inconsistently and disingenuously. (Consider, for example, the long history of biased reporting by Peter Barker, one of the signatories of the We-Are-Journalists-Not-Activists rebuke).  And the Times’ commitment to an empty conception of “neutrality” — and their belief that journalists who call out editorial bias should be dismissed as “advocates” — helps to blind readers to the systemic influences that shape news coverage in our for-profit media ecosystem.

The Self-Serving Fiction of Neutrality

The first pitfall of the Times’ neutrality defense is the fiction that reporting can ever embody an objective “view from nowhere” perspective.  As explained by Maximillian Alvarez, Editor-in-Chief of the Real News Network, as a matter of principle “there’s no such thing as objectivity in journalism because we are all human beings with a limited perspective.”  Drawing from an argument made by Michel-Rolph Trouillot in Silencing the Past, Alvarez offers a simple example to illustrate this point.  “Imagine you are a sports caster trying to report on the game that’s in process,” he suggested.  “You are in the stadium, and the game is going.  There are tens of thousands, if not over one-hundred-thousand people in that stadium.  There are concessions people.  There are fights breaking out.  There are people on the bench.  You’re not going to report on everything that’s happening in that stadium.  By narrative necessity, you’re going to make choices about what to focus on.  You’re going to make assumptions about what your audience believes is important and is worth reporting on, so on and so forth.  The New York Times, just like every other outlet, makes those very same choices.”  

Thus, the Times — just like any other outlet — necessarily makes an array of choices that impact the story it is telling.  The most obvious non-neutral choice made by the Times is the choice to make concerns about trans youth a constant front-page news story.  Reporter Tom Socca called the Times’ pattern of reporting “pretty obviously — and yet not obviously enough — a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade.”  “Month after month, story after story,” Socca explained, “the Times is pouring its attention and resources into the message that there is something seriously concerning about the way young people who identify as trans are receiving care.  Like the premise that the Clintons had to have been guilty of something serious, or that Saddam Hussein must have had a weapons program worth invading Iraq over, the notion that trans youth present a looming problem is demonstrated to the reader by the sheer volume of coverage.  If it’s not a problem, why else would it be in the paper?”  

Writer and columnist Arwa Mahdawi offered a simple thought experiment to illustrate the same point.  “[I]magine if an alien managed to avoid getting shot down by the Biden administration and landed its UFO safely in the U.S.,” Mahdawi started.  “Imagine if it picked up a year’s worth of copies of the New York Times, the paper of record, in order to do some due diligence on how us earthlings live.  What would it come away thinking about life in America?”  “I’ve got a feeling the poor alien might get the impression that every third person in the U.S. is trans – rather than 0.5% of the population,” Mahdawi reasoned.  “They might get the impression that women’s sports have been completely taken over by trans women.  They might believe that millions of children are being mutilated by doctors in the name of gender-affirming care because of the all-powerful trans lobby.  They might come away thinking that JK Rowling is not a multi-multi-multi-millionaire with endless resources at her disposal but a marginalized victim who needs brave Times columnists to come to her defense.  None of that is true, of course, but you’d understand why they might get that impression.”  As Socca explained, “when a publication fixes its attention on a subject and keeps it there, it is making the case that its attention matters.”

The Times made a choice to spill considerable ink over concerns about trans youth’s access to gender affirming care despite widespread agreement among every major medical association that gender-affirming is safe, uncontroversial, and effective.  This choice legitimated the anti-trans movement’s argument that transness poses a threat to children.  And it indicates to readers that they ought to be concerned about that threat.  The Times further validates this assumption through other choices about whose opinions to spotlight, what questions to ask, what context to provide, and how to qualify or contextualize claims made or concerns expressed.  These choices matter tremendously, and they are made by every reporter who reports on the attacks against the trans community.

History also demonstrates why it is a mistake to buy into the fiction that journalism can ever be a neutral endeavor divorced from context.  “I studied the role media plays in shaping political situations in different time, different epochs, different countries, different historical circumstances,” Alvarez told me.  “And from that study alone, I came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as objective media — let alone objective journalism — because journalism always exists in the historical context that it’s reporting on.”  “Every publication knows this,” Alvarez argued.  “In fact, they value it.  And they may not say it publicly, but every publication from the New York Times to the smallest independent outlet — anyone who is seeking funding or trying to demonstrate the value of their work — is concerned about what we call impact.  The New York Times loves to claim that it has a major impact in the world.  And the Times knows damn well that its articles are being cited in state legislatures around the country as justification for the hundreds of genocidal, anti-trans anti-queer bills that are being introduced left and right,” Alvarez argued.  “I think, in one register, it doesn’t matter to them what the impact is, just so long as there is an impact.”

“The Times knows damn well that its articles are being cited in state legislatures around the country as justification for the hundreds of genocidal, anti-trans anti-queer bills that are being introduced left and right. I think, in one register, it doesn’t matter to them what the impact is, just so long as there is an impact.”

Alvarez is certainly not overstating things when it comes to the impact of the New York Times’ reporting on trans people.  GLAAD issued a report detailing on how anti-trans policymakers have utilized the Times’ misleading coverage to justify attacks on trans rights.  “Prominent frontpage coverage has frequently missed the big picture of the trans community, choosing instead to hyper-scrutinize essential and mainstream medical care, undermining its support among readers who know next to nothing about this care, while laundering extremist talking points as legitimate concern,” the organization explained.  “The Times’ coverage has elevated critics without alerting readers to their anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans histories and their coordination and connections to longtime anti-LGBTQ groups.”  GLAAD concluded that, “In its most prominent … coverage of transgender people and our essential healthcare, the New York Times has empowered the already powerful to do even more harm.”

Image by Nicole Powell.

The proof is written in black ink on the pages of anti-trans bills and policies across the country.  Take, for example, the New York Times Magazine article by Emily Bazelon entitled, ‘The Battle Over Gender Therapy: More teenagers than ever are seeking transitions, but the medical community that treats them is deeply divided about why — and what to do to help them.’  In her article, Bazelon referred a trans child seeking gender-affirming care as “patient zero,” which other Times contributors later called out as “a phrase that vilifies transness as a disease to be feared.”

The Texas Observer reported that, “since its publication, transgender-rights advocates, medical experts, and other journalists have condemned the article for inaccurately portraying [gender-affirming] care as controversial, misrepresenting scientific research, and quoting anti-trans activists without proper context.”  Like much of the Times’ reporting, Bazelon’s article “repeatedly and inaccurately treats the widely-held consensus in the medical and science communities as a ‘side’ to be debated with anti-LGBTQ politicians.” 

There is a direct line from the discourse to these policies.

Because of these flaws, Bazelon’s article has had tremendous impact.  Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey cited the article to justify an emergency order banning healthcare for transgender people of all ages in Missouri.  Texas lawmakers quoted the article to justify launching investigations into families of trans youth over their private healthcare decisions.  In fact, in a lawsuit defending Texas’ anti-trans policies, the state cited the article as evidence of the existence of “enormous controversy and disagreement among experts” regarding gender-affirming care.  As Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU, wrote while traveling to Texas to fight the state’s attempt to criminalize parents of trans youth: “[Texas] will defend this horrific policy by introducing evidence — which includes multiple NYTs articles. There is a direct line from the discourse to these policies.”  Afterall, why should it matter that every major medical association and world health authority affirms the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming health care when the New York Times presents the issue as “deeply divided”?

Screenshot of post by ACLU attorney Chase Strangio with added highlight.

Bazelon’s article is just one example of the material consequences of the Times’ reporting.  Anti-trans crusaders also cited a front page Times article on puberty blockers to require schools to out LGBTQ students.  They cited Times reporting on trans youth and the outlet’s reputation as the “paper of record” to justify a Nebraska bill criminalizing healthcare for trans youth.  And they cited three Times articles in a legal brief defending Alabama’s law which would make providing essential healthcare to trans youth a felony.

Like those journalists who signed the Journalists-Not-Activists defense of the Times reporting, Emily Bazelon deflected criticism of her article by emphasizing that she is not an advocate.  “To me, being a journalist means following the facts where they lead,” Bazelon tweeted.  “It isn’t advocacy.”  But what distinguishes journalism from advocacy if the reporting is purportedly neutral but laden with bias?

“The Times is hiding behind a veneer of objectivity while knowingly reporting in a way that harms people,” Alvarez argued.  “As long as they can say, ‘well, it’s not us that is harming people, it’s other people using our reporting to harm others,’ then that’s enough distance for them to still claim that they are maintaining that neutral stance.  But I think, to anyone watching, that’s transparently bullshit.”  

Heron Greenesmith — Senior Research Analyst for LGBTQ Justice at Political Research Associates — argued that, whether or not they admit it, Times articles like Bazelon’s are engaging in advocacy.  “The New York Times is claiming to be journalistically neutral while providing a much larger relative platform to anti-trans voices than they provide to trans people,” Greenesmith pointed out.  “Not even pro-trans voices, which far outnumber anti-trans voices.  But they don’t even provide platforms to trans people.  If the Times was truly ideologically neutral, if they truly didn’t care, then they would publish trans people.  Choosing to only publish and platform cisgender people is a clear ideology,” Greenesmith argued.  “And it strikes me as poor journalism.”

And of course, the idea that there is a clear divide between advocacy and journalism is itself fictitious.  “[T]here is no clear-cut line between advocacy and journalism,” Mahdawi explained.  “All media organizations have a perspective about the world and filter their output (which will, of course, strive to be fairly reported) through that perspective.  To pretend otherwise is dishonest.”  Alvarez holds the same belief, and that understanding guides his view of journalistic principles at his media outlet, the Real News Network.  “I believe that there are very important tools to doing good, rigorous, and responsible journalism,” Alvarez told me.  “And journalists apply those tools to areas that are important to them.  That’s something that all of us do.  Some of us are just more honest about it than others.”

At the Real News Network, Alvarez explained, “[w]e try as best as we can not to let our biases and principled political and humanistic commitments — you know, the things that shape our perspectives — we try not to let those obscure the facts of a story.  But we’re very open about the fact that we are going to apply the tools of rigorous, principled journalism to areas that we believe in because of our political commitments.”

Alvarez, whose reporting largely covers working class struggles and labor organizing, explained that “[i]t is not compromising my journalistic principles to say that I care about working people having a better life … I think when people hear ‘biased reporting’ or ‘un-objective reporting,’ they tend to think that it’s just someone speaking their ideology out loud.  And they think that the stated ideology is warping the facts of a story.  But if we were all just honest with each other and ourselves we would recognize that our biases are guiding us in the stories that we believe are important and worth covering.  And if we stay committed to reporting factually and accurately but we report on those stories that matter to us, I don’t see why that should be a bad thing.”

The Times’ “neutrality” defense is also undermined by the fact that the creation of moral panic is a power-centered, politicized, and inherently non-neutral action in and of itself.  Likewise, resistance against moral panic is an inherently non-neutral action.  Pretending otherwise presents an inaccurate picture of what’s actually happening.

The concept of neutrality rings hollow when it merely means highlighting two sides of an issue without looking at who the parties are and what is motivating them.  “The Times claims to be providing fair and balanced differing perspectives, even though some of those perspectives are people trying to survive as themselves in a hostile culture and the others are incredibly well-funded, right-wing, shadowy groups with a very clear political agenda and a huge war chest to advance that agenda,” Alvarez observed.  “The New York Times likes to presume its objectivity in “both sidesism” terms without really providing its readers with accurate and proper research in context to understand, frankly, whose voices should have greater standing and how readers should interpret the different biases, aims, and agendas of the voices that are being platformed.  This is to say nothing of the voices that are not being platformed at all,” Alvarez argued.

“The creation of moral panic is a power-centered, politicized, and inherently non-neutral action in and of itself.  Likewise, resistance against moral panic is an inherently non-neutral action.  Pretending otherwise presents an inaccurate picture of what’s actually happening.”

Greenesmith highlighted irony of the Times claiming to be objective by treating fringe anti-trans medical opinions as equally authoritative as the global consensus of leading medical authorities that supports gender-affirming care.  “When they do this ‘both sidesism’ stuff it is terrifically unjournalistic,” Greenesmith argued.  “It is unjournalistic to compare organizations that have twenty doctors to the American Medical Association which has hundreds of thousands of doctors.  That’s not both sides.”  It is the antithesis of objectivity to treat these things as equal.

The assumption that equal airtime translates to neutrality obscures the structure of the playing field, the power dynamics at play, and the anti-trans movement’s strategic misuse of information itself.  Journalists need to take this kind of context into account for their reporting to be accurate and informed.  But instead of recognizing this context and explaining how it influences the facts on the ground, outlets like the Times embrace simplistic rules like giving equal space to “both sides” as a metric of neutrality.  In doing so, the Times can claim neutrality while making choices that overwhelmingly favor one angle over another.  At the same time, the Times can claim neutrality without considering the situational influences that impact its own reporting — like the fact that, by giving considerable space to transphobic myths without countering or contextualizing misleading claims, the Times drives up panic, clicks, and profit that ultimately benefits its bottom line.

A helpful way to situate critiques of the New York Times’ self-proclaimed commitment to neutrality is to consider two models of what journalism could be.  The first model sees journalists as neutral translators of an infinite amount of information, where the information they are summarizing and distilling for the reader is weighted according to newsworthiness.  “Newsworthiness” is construed here as a reflection of how many people seem to care about the story, seem to be activated by the story, or seem to be speaking about the story.  Under this model of journalism, the journalist is searching for which people are saying what.  Being “neutral” by covering both sides of a story might seem like like a valid starting point under such a conception of journalism.  

The assumption that equal airtime translates to neutrality obscures the structure of the playing field, the power dynamics at play, and the anti-trans movement’s strategic misuse of information itself. 

However, we could easily imagine a different model for journalism where “newsworthiness” is determined, not by the ideas floating around in the ecosystem of information, but by identifying what stakeholders are promoting certain stories, what the consequences of the promoted ideas are, what the purposes are of those who are promoting them, and how reliable, valid, and truthful the stories being told are in light of that context. Under this second model of journalism, journalists are not seeking neutrality across groups with the money and influence to promote certain stories about minorities.  Instead, journalists are trying to sort out an already-distorted information pool.  Journalists under this model acknowledge the factual reality that the information pool in the public discourse is already the product of all kinds of outside forces and agendas.  From this perspective, the role of the journalist is to determine not just who is saying what but also whether what is being said is true and what the motivating forces are behind certain stories.  

By employing the first model of journalism instead of the second when it comes to attacks on trans rights, outlets like the New York Times impact the discussion insidiously by reproducing harmful ideas and presenting them as neutral and objective facts on one “side” of a debate.  In doing so, the reporting shapes the conversation according to narratives that stroke fear and panic while obscuring the interests promoting such narratives.  As journalist Adam Johnson explained, “the media charged with explaining the world and describing it in clear terms refuses to engage, much less center, the core bigotry animating these far-right incitement campaigns” against the trans community.  Readers are bombarded with misleading and arresting anti-trans talking points, but the Times coverage obscures context that is essential to understanding the bigger picture.

Professor Michele Goodwin, a leading legal scholar and public commentator on issues of reproductive justice, race, and bioethics, offered her insights on the approach to journalism reflected in the New York Times’ trans reporting.  “There is something to be said here about the role of a journalist,” Goodwin explained.  “If we accept the New York Times’ premise that journalists are not advocates, then that raises questions about what quality journalism looks like.”  To get to an answer, we must ask: “Is what we see being reported that which actually is the news?  Is it being selectively reported?  Are there certain voices that are elevated or amplified over others?  Are there certain stories that are centered more than others?  Are there angles of the story centered more than others?  From whose perspective is the story being covered?”

Consider a journalist reporting on a topic like slavery before the Civil War, Goodwin suggested.  “We can say that journalism covering a topic like slavery could be important, clearly.  But we know that there are a few different articles one could write to report on the topic,” she explained.  “If it is a story of slavery from the perspective of the planter, the story might cover how slavery helps to fuel the economy, how it has helped to lift up the banks, how it helps the insurance industry.  That’s an accurate story,” Goodwin reasoned.

“But there is also a different story that can be told.  If it is a story of slavery that is from the perspective of the individuals who are enslaved, it is a very different story.  That is a story about inhumanity, about violence, about abuse, about sexual assault, about kidnap, about being sold and bought, and about auction houses.  It is story of terror.”

“So those are two different stories,” Goodwin explained.  “And then there’s a third story in which a journalist might say, ‘We interviewed the planters, and here’s what the planters had to say and here is their perspective on the enterprise of slavery.  But when we then inspected the slave shacks where enslaved people are kept, and when we had the opportunity to observe what is happening and when we interviewed these individuals, this is what we learned.’”  That, once again, is a different story.  To Goodwin, the relevant question to ask is which story are we getting — version one, two or three?  “It seems to me that journalism today isn’t getting at the third story when it comes to trans people’s lives,” Goodwin concluded.

Profit-Driven Media

All of these choices, and the differing models of what journalism could be, are obscured by the Times’ self-serving claim that it is reporting neutrally, without bias, and without viewpoint.  The “view from nowhere” journalistic approach also obscures the situational influence with the most pernicious effect on journalism today: The profit-driven media ecosystem in which journalists are operating.

To understand the consequences of profit-driven journalism, it is worth rewinding and considering what journalism looked like in an earlier era.  “Most early American publications would not have survived,” Alvarez told me, “if it wasn’t for the discounted rates that they got from the U.S. Postal System.  That was, in effect, a form of public subsidy for media.  It was premised on the belief that a rich, diverse, media ecosystem was the Fourth Estate in a functioning democracy.  It was premised on the belief that you needed to have independent outlets informing democratic citizens about how to be more effective actors in the world that they inhabit and, in fact, be better stewards of democracy itself,” Alvarez explained.

The “view from nowhere” journalistic approach also obscures the situational influence with the most pernicious effect on journalism today: The profit-driven media ecosystem in which journalists are operating.

“But over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the deal with the devil that the American media ecosystem — especially journalism — made was to bind its fate to the prerogatives of advertisers and profit-seeking entities,” Alvarez noted.  “Especially with the Internet age, that model bottomed out and we’ve kind of been in a bit of a freefall ever since.”

“In a system that bound the sacred and essential democratic function of a free press to the prerogatives of profit-seeking corporate advertisers, what you ended up with is an ecosystem in which the necessity of reporting on issues that mattered to the to the citizenry — exposing wrongs committed by the powerful, aiding the processes of justice and public accountability, etc. — all of that becomes tied in with the need to get more subscribers and to keep people to keep people’s eyeballs on your television channel or your homepage.  You’re inevitably going to get this sort of Frankenstein’s Monster when you’re trying to balance those two things,” Alvarez explained.

If people are kept perpetually afraid, if they are made increasingly mistrustful of their fellow citizens and their fellow human beings, then profit-driven outlets are going to insure a more captive audience that can support its news operation.” 

“And the way that you balance those two things is you out-compete your competitors for subscribers, for eyeballs, and for attention.  You go with the most sensational headlines.  You tap into the emotions and aspects that keep readers and viewers and listeners more plugged in to your outlet,” Alvarez observed.  “And the most effective way to do that is through fear and hatred.  If people are kept perpetually afraid, if they are made increasingly mistrustful of their fellow citizens and their fellow human beings, then profit-driven outlets are going to insure a more captive audience that can support its news operation.”  Alvarez argues that, when outlets like the Times manufacture moral panics, “they know it’s going to keep people’s attention.  It’s going to keep their publication’s name in people’s mouths.  It’s going to keep them in the driver’s seat of public discourse regardless of how many human beings it hurts.”

Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash.

Greenesmith agrees that, for those concerned about this kind of biased reporting, it is essential to reckon with the bigger picture of our media ecosystem.  “Newspapers around the world are privately owned.  By billionaires.  By the same people who are invested in building wealth, consolidating wealth and power,” they explained.  “We do not have a robust ecosystem of analytical journalism, longform journalism, or longitudinal journalism.  Both our news cycle and social media algorithms are physically stacked to prioritize conflict.”   These factors make it extremely difficult for individual articles to ever really disrupt the status quo, Greenesmith warned.

In other words, “there’s no magic bullet or [single narrative framework] will solve the problem with modern journalism.”  The solution, Greenesmith argued, “is building community power and taking privatized commons back.”  First and foremost, this means investing in local journalism.  “A locally owned paper is going to be different than a Rupert Murdoch owned paper,” Greenesmith pointed out.  If we believe that robust independent journalism is an essential ingredient of healthy democracy, we need to address the very real fact that local journalism around the country is dying.

Insidious Political Consequences

In the meantime, critics of the New York Times’ trans reporting must grapple with the myriad ways that this reporting influences politics in the United States.

“A locally owned paper is going to be different than a Rupert Murdoch owned paper. If we believe that robust independent journalism is an essential ingredient of healthy democracy, we need to address the very real fact that local journalism around the country is dying.”

Most directly, moral panic divides and distracts.  And fanning the fires of trans hysteria aids that division.  On his podcast Working People, Alvarez spoke with Gabbi Pierce — the first transgender person to serve on the Minnesota AFL-CIO General Board — and Martha Grevatt — the founding member of Pride at Work, an organization representing LGBTQ union members and their allies — about how anti-trans rhetoric is weaponized to encourage workers to “turn on each other and to see certain groups of their fellow workers as the enemy” as a means of manufacturing fear, hatred, and division within the labor movement.  Powerful interests “have been finding ways to divide us and conquer us since the beginning of the movement,” Alvarez explained.  Throughout history it has served those in power to promote narratives that vilify and deny the humanity of certain groups, “whether they be undocumented workers, whether they be newly freed slaves, whether they be Asian workers who have migrated over in the 19th century, [or] whether they be LGBTQIA+ workers” like we are seeing today.

Even when audiences don’t directly buy into the villainizing rhetoric being fed to them, there are dire consequences of reporting in a way that positions the humanity of trans people as a political debate.  To Alvarez, “one of the greatest crimes” committed by outlets like the Times “is that they accept the premise that the existence of queer and trans people is somehow a debate, and they present trans people’s humanity, their right to self-determination, and their right to live and be left alone as if these are somehow questions to be debated over and over again.”  

Pierce emphasized how degrading the “debate” framing is from the perspective of those at the center of it.  “My transness isn’t some sort of debate or controversy like people are making it out to be,” she explained.  “I’ve seen the term ‘the trans debate’ floating around on the internet.  I’m like, what debate?  I’m just a person, and I’m just asking for my personhood and my humanity to be recognized.  Not just to be seen as valid and human, but to be able to live with dignity and respect.  We’ve got to get past this point of seeing transness as some sort of political debate,” Pierce asserted.  “I’m not trans because I’m trying to make some sort of political show or take a side in a debate.  I’m trans because I’m trans, that’s just who I am as a person.”

Johnson also zeroed in on the Times’ use of this dehumanizing “debate” framing.  “The quintessential New York Times headline, ‘Fears of Violence Rise on New Front in Gender Debate: Drag Shows,’ pushes the limits of what constitutes a ‘debate,’” he argued.  Look, for example, at anti-trans extremist groups’ increasing use of violence and threats of violence against drag show organizers.  From early 2022 to April 2023, GLAAD tracked over 160 instances of threatening drag protests.  In Tulsa Oklahoma, drag show protesters smashed windows and firebombed a storefront.  In Eugene, Oregon, drag show protesters brandished semiautomatic rifles and threw rocks and smoke bombs.  In Wadsworth, Ohio, drag show protesters used pepper spray and a flag pole as a weapon.  “What’s the ‘debate’ here exactly?” Johnson asked.  “One side has decided to wage a war against transgender people for simply being who they are, going to their spaces and threatening them — and sometimes actually carrying out — acts of violence.  Are transgender activists showing up to Tucker Carlson’s country club with assault rifles?  There’s zero symmetry, nor is it simply a ‘debate.’  It’s an incitement campaign by one group aimed at another.  Our media should say this in simple and direct terms.”

By presenting the attack on trans rights as one side of a neutral policy debate, outlets like the Times also lay the foundation for political strategies that dismiss trans rights as a culture war issue.  “One popular way of obscuring the power dynamics and harm being waged against vulnerable populations,” Johnson argued, “is to discuss not humans, or victims, or those under assault, but [to discuss] ‘issues’ to be ‘opposed.’”  The New York Times’ framing of trans people’s identity as an “issue” to be opposed or debated abstracts the conversation.  It obscures the fact that fundamental human rights are under attack.

“My transness isn’t some sort of debate or controversy like people are making it out to be. I’ve seen the term ‘the trans debate’ floating around on the internet.  I’m like, what debate?  I’m just a person, and I’m just asking for my personhood and my humanity to be recognized.”

The victims under this framework “are not people with lives and parents and friends and partners and humanity,” Johnson explains.  “[T]hey are simply the battlegrounds for these so-called ‘gender wars’ …  The human stakes are lost, and the cruelty and dehumanization being promoted [] is obscured in favor of anodyne-sounding policy ‘issues.’”  As a result, Johnson argues, “[o]ne reads these articles detailing plans to forcibly detransition and discriminate and it sounds like two city council members debating where to put the new post office.”

With article after article framing the attacks on trans people as sterile and abstract policy debates, the Times makes transphobic ideas acceptable to a mainstream audience. The Times “might think they’re not picking a side, but in not standing with trans people, they’ve already chosen,” explained Teen Vogue’s News and Politics Editor Lex McMenamin.  “As ‘respectable’ transphobia is sown into right-wing boilerplates to be easily copied into state-level bills, the ‘respectable’ Times is expanding the overton window of discourse to make transphobia permissible and normal.”  As Steven W. Thrasher — media analyst and expert on social justice in reporting at Northwestern University’s School of Journalism — noted, “Democrats don’t listen to Fox News, but they do listen to the New York Times.”  By peddling talking points that dehumanize trans people and question their right to live freely, the Times has facilitated the Right’s anti-trans crusade and lessened the Left’s resistance to the anti-trans movement.

A better world has to be possible because our lives depend on making that world a reality.  And we can win a world where no one’s humanity is up for debate, where we can all live truthfully and peacefully, free from hate and violence.

“Things are bleak right now,” Pierce acknowledged.  “Trans people are dying, suffering.  There’s a war waged against our very personhood.  But a better world has to be possible because our lives depend on making that world a reality.  And we can win a world where no one’s humanity is up for debate, where we can all live truthfully and peacefully, free from hate and violence.”  Professor Goodwin agreed that fighting for such a world needs to be an essential part of our larger democratic project.  “We have developed this lack of empathy towards the lives of people who are the most vulnerable in our society,” Goodwin observed.  “And amongst the various projects that would be important for American democracy is the ability to be able to see those individuals.  Period.  And then see them as deserving of the same constitutional protections and the same kind of dignity rights that are accorded to other people.”

Photo by Gavyn Alejandro on Unsplash.

On the other hand, there are grave consequences of continuing in the direction we are headed.  “I studied history,” said Alvarez.  “I know what happens when media and politicians and increasingly the general public feel that it is their right and, in fact, their duty to question the very humanity of their neighbors.  That way lies fascism.  And what we are seeing right now is explicitly fascist politics as directed at queer and trans people.”

Fascism.  Alvarez uses this word deliberately.  “I want to be as clear as I possibly can about that,” Alvarez explained.  “I know what I’m saying.  I know what fascism is.  I know what it looks like in different countries, and in different contexts.  I know the kind of language that fascists use to justify their politics.”  Powerful interests have long deployed fascist politics to break broad working class solidarity, Alvarez reminded me.  “They do that by marginalizing certain demonized outgroups and targeting those outgroups as the source of all of society’s ills.  And then they frame these groups’ eradication as the solution to all of society’s ills.  That is the direction that we are going in.  And anyone who is contributing to this unforgivable fallacy that we somehow have the right to put the humanity of our queer and trans neighbors and family members and fellow parishioners up for debate is contributing to that.”  

“I know what happens when media and politicians and increasingly the general public feel that it is their right and, in fact, their duty to question the very humanity of their neighbors.  That way lies fascism.  And what we are seeing right now is explicitly fascist politics as directed at queer and trans people.”

On the question of the culpability of institutions like the New York Times, Alvarez says that it comes down to a basic question about respect for your fellow human beings.  “Do you respect people enough to acknowledge that they — like you — are complex beings with agency, that you can’t control them, and that it is neither your place nor your right to deny their humanness or to put it under question,” Alvarez asked.  “Do you respect people enough to believe them when they tell you who they are?  Do you respect people enough to believe that they — like you — have a right to self-determination and to live freely and pursue happiness?  And is that reflected in the work that you do?”

“We are not being responsible journalists, we are not being responsible allies, we’re not even being responsible human beings sharing this planet if we are in any way engaging in the process of dehumanizing our queer and trans neighbors, our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings,” Alvarez asserted.  “There are billions and billions of people who have existed on this earth.  There is so much richness and beauty and life to learn from and learn about in the one time that we get on this planet.  And yet, we are so fucking sure that that we know what life is supposed to look like, that we know all that humanity is and can be and is supposed to be, when the entire world around us is living proof of change, of diversity, and of beauty that exists in life itself.”  In his concluding thoughts, Alvarez put his thumb on the real tragedy of the anti-trans movement and the profit-driven institutions that enable it.  “I think it’s a real crime and a real shame that so many of us are so thoroughly convinced that the world is so simple, and that people are so simple.  And worse than that, it is a real shame that we take it upon ourselves to try to force society and try to force other people into those simplistic boxes, even if it means committing horrendous violence to do so.  And as a journalist, and I won’t be a part of that.”

“Do you respect people enough to believe them when they tell you who they are?  Do you respect people enough to believe that they — like you — have a right to self-determination and to live freely and pursue happiness?  And is that reflected in the work that you do?”

Perhaps the Times should recognize that it does not compromise journalistic integrity for its journalists to say that they won’t be a part of that either.