The Paper of Record Must Side with the Truth

 

There is no way to "both sides" whether someone should exist or to negotiate their existence in a way that doesn't offend others. The New York Times has tried to appease the transphobes by featuring articles that ask "questions": they question the reality of trans experience and the necessity of treating trans people medically and socially, like people who should be recognized and given space to be themselves.

What good ever came from a question of whether people should exist, or leaving the determination of how they should to random others who don't know their lives? 

It is not just activists saying this, but other people who have written for the New York Times and don't dismiss the value of the journalism it otherwise provides. In a moment when trans experience is under incredible threat by state legislatures all over the country, when trans youth are threatened in their schools, when we still every year mark a Trans Remembrance Day to memorialize human beings who have fallen to anti-trans violence, how dare word games be played with the actual safety of marginalized people? 

The truth is, trans people have been documented as existing throughout time. Many cultures respected their existence, and we have long understood that there is no harm in letting people present as their preferred and validated selves. And giving medical care to people who would otherwise be in psychological distress, even experiencing suicidality, is simply logical. 

As for myself, one day I will be considering HRT for gender affirming care despite my genetics: I might choose to go on estrogen therapy for menopause. Do "we" feel uncomfortable with how long I might take hormones to feel like myself? (Is it anyone's business but my fifty-something self?) Once, I took hormones to simply not be pregnant (and also to regulate some very weird periods), and many straight or men-loving female-bodied people take them for a good long while to also stave off pregnancies. People have taken them for dysmenorrhea and acne. It is a drug--a treatment. Not a value-driven signifier. 

How in the hell with my experience am I denying anyone HRT, especially something as benign as puberty blockers? (It's used often enough for precocious puberty.)  It's a trade-off and doctors should always inform their patients about what to expect, but the patient has a right to something so obvious as the right to bide their time to not experience a physical transition that would cause mental harm. 

As for LBG without the T people--you do know the wedge that splits off trans folx is coming for you, too, right? I am only marginally queer, the straight-appearing bi chick in a opposite sex marriage, and I know the trans discourse is coming for all of us. Why don't you? They want to ban books mentioning us. They want to have "Don't ask, don't tell" in classrooms, but how soon will it be any workspace? As for feminists who claim supporting trans rights hurts women--why don't you understand intersectionality? My feminism to quote Flavia Drozdan, is intersectional or it is bullshit. It doesn't care if you had a penis. If you are walking in these shoes, welcome to the fucking sisterhood. It doesn't care if you were recognized as female at birth and recognized you were masculine--you still get my support because the binary is bullshit and you belong where you want to be. 

We can't afford "just asking questions" to be an "objective" pose. It isn't. And it rarely stops with gender gatekeeping. We need sound journalism to point out who is fronting the transphobic movement--the right wing provocateurs and religious right. We need those people to be recognized as not dissimilar from the Klan regarding race. And we need people who think they want to be an ally to not ask "Shall I?" You just get in there. It isn't a journalistic failure to side with the truth. 

We need truth in reporting. Anti-trans bias is not based in truth, but fear and suspicion and we need better, and journalism can do better.