Dear New York Times: Please Stop Publishing Terrible Journalism About Trans People

At a moment of increasing crisis, the paper is failing its readers over and over again.

(Photo by Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

You’ve probably noticed that anti-LGBTQ fanatics are becoming ever-more bold and violent. This month alone has seen a Drag Queen Story Hour in the Bay Area disrupted by fascists, white nationalists attempting to riot at a Pride parade in Idaho, and three people injured in a house fire in Baltimore across the street from where a Pride flag was burned. This is on top of the constantly escalating legislative attacks on queer people coming from politicians around the country, and the increasing eliminationist rhetoric against queer and trans people emanating from the most sordid corners of the pundit class.

It’s a five-alarm fire kind of moment, is what I’m saying—a “holy fuck something really bad is happening here” sort of moment. So within that context, I’m simply wondering: would it be possible for our biggest media outlets to, y’know, step up their game about this stuff right now, rather than traffic in the same lazy scaremongering that is only helping to fuel this backlash?

I’m asking this in the wake of a couple of recent stories in the New York Times, both of which seem determined to repeat mistakes that we’ve seen the mainstream media make over and over again when it comes to trans people.