Is The New York Times Collaborating With Anti-Trans Lawmakers?

It is starting to feel like the New York Times is collaborating with anti-trans lawmakers to give platform to the lies and distortions that have enabled state legislative attacks on trans people to gain momentum over the past few years.

That may sound extreme and of course I don’t really believe that the Times is formally collaborating with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and their friends, but honestly, they might as well be.

Every day, it seems, the Times publishes a piece about trans people and restrooms that fails to debunk the “bathroom predator” myth, includes false information about the legal fight to protect trans people from discrimination, and creepily (and completely gratuitously) discusses the bodies of trans young people.

As Media Matters for America has repeatedly explained of Times coverage on trans issues: “the Times has failed to debunk the “bathroom predator” myth in its reporting on [North Carolina’s anti-trans law], choosing instead to create a false equivalency by uncritically presenting comments from both opponents and supporters of the law.”

In the past two weeks, Times coverage of trans issues has shifted from incomplete to completely inaccurate and horribly offensive.

On Twitter, Media Matters’s Carlos Maza highlights just how bad recent coverage has been:

In many ways this harmful coverage is not surprising given the investment of the Times in elevating horribly anti-trans voices through its opinion pages. From Elinor Burkett’s poorly written and offensive op-ed last June criticizing Caitlyn Jenner and simultaneously dismissing the basic humanity of all trans people to Richard Friedman’s op-ed a few month later attempting to legitimize harmful theories about medical treatment for trans youth to last week’s op-ed from Peter Schuck criticizing recent guidance from the Department of Education (ED) and Department of Justice (DOJ) on Title IX and trans students, the opinion pages have sadly given platform to some of the most harmful and tired anti-trans arguments that are out there. Thankfully these pieces have been effectively exposed as the garbage they are (check out Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello on Burkett, German Lopez on Friedman, Imani Gandy on Schuck). But the fact that they ran at all — and usually on Sunday, in print — is a pretty good indication of where the Times stands.

Given this investment in elevating anti-trans nonsense, I suppose it should come as no surprise that Times reporting on trans issues has failed so horribly.

But today’s A1 Sunday piece on trans people and restrooms really pushed me over the edge.

Four people by-lined the piece, “How a Push to Advance Bathroom Rights for Transgender Americans Reached the White House,” and yet, no one, it seems, took even a little time to research the subject they sought to address.

As exhausting as it is to continue to point out these problems, given the perceived legitimacy of the Times and the stakes of this so-called “bathroom debate,” I feel compelled to point out a few of the most egregious problems with this article.

1. The framing as a whole. The article completely ignores the development of the law prohibiting discrimination against transgender people, including students. Buzzfeed Legal Editor Chris Geidner breaks down this problem on his Twitter timeline and I suggest checking it out and reading the articles he links to that actually cover this topic correctly.

2. The way the article describes trans young people. The article describes “Student A”, a transgender high school student who filed a complaint against her Illinois school district for barring her from using single-sex facilities available to her peers, as “so intent on defending her privacy that she is known only as Student A.” Yes, she is known in the complaint documents as “Student A” because she rightfully feared for her safety and deserved to have her privacy respected, like we all do. Even without her name being disclosed in the complaint, she and her family have faced relentless harassment and now a lawsuit filed against the school and the Department of Education fixates on the very fact that others are disgusted at having to share restroom facilities with Student A. Yes, she wants privacy, but perhaps if you are going to comment with such derision on her decision to proceed anonymously, you might want to include information about the rates of violence, harassment and suicide in the trans community. Self-preservation is real but you wouldn’t know it from the framing of this piece.

3. Over-simplification of the movement for trans justice. This relates to the framing of the article as a whole and how it fails to mention the many legal developments over the past few years (indeed, decades) that brought us to the current moment in the discussion of how the law protects trans people. But beyond that, the article suggests that a few high school students and lawyers are the main people involved in conversations about trans rights. The four authors write, “How a clash over bathrooms, an issue that appeared atop no national polls, became the next frontier in America’s fast-moving culture wars — and ultimately landed on the desk of the president — involves an array of players, some with law degrees, others still in high school.” That is patently absurd and dismisses decades of action by organizers and other advocates who have been pushing for trans people to be seen and heard since Sylvia and Marsha led the resistance at Stonewall so many decades ago and probably long before that.

4. The inaccurate discussion of the ED/DOJ Title IX guidance. Since the Times broke the story about the Departments of Education and Justice releasing guidance on Title IX as it relates to transgender students, they have screwed up the coverage at every turn. In today’s piece they do so by claiming that the guidance was a “sweeping directive” and that the “Obama administration order[ed] all public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice.” The guidance is not a directive and Obama didn’t order anything. The guidance is exactly what it says it is, which is guidance. It offers to schools, clarity on how the Departments of Education and Justice interpret and enforce Title IX.

So, since the Times cannot seem to get it right, again: the guidance issued by ED and DOJ on May 13th does not change the law. It reiterates the Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX, which the Department of Education has already been applying for several years (again, this is why it is so problematic that the article does not at least reference the historical development and enforcement of the law). The guidance affirms the position of those agencies with respect to Title IX and provides comprehensive examples for how schools can act to protect transgender students.

And a subpoint here about the repeated explanation of the guidance as being about transgender students using the restroom of their “choice.” Not so. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, including discrimination against transgender students when using restrooms and locker rooms that accord with their gender identity. It is not about CHOOSING which restroom to use, it is about all students — transgender and cisgender (non-transgender) — going to the restroom that matches who they are, that matches their gender identity. Someday we may just choose which bathroom we want to go to or maybe we won’t have gendered restrooms at all. But that day is not today — at least insofar as the guidance is concerned.

5. Discussion of anatomy. The word of choice for vague reference to genitals by the New York Times seems to be “anatomy.” Last week in an article about a trans student in Vermont, the Times gratuitously explained of the trans boy profiled that he was “still anatomically female.” Really no need to discuss a person’s body in that way, especially a young person in a conversation that is supposedly about protecting the bodily privacy of young people. Furthermore, he is not anatomically, biologically or otherwise female if he is a binary-identified boy. This misunderstands biology, anatomy, science and sex and oversimplifies the conversation in precisely the ways that opponents of trans people have conditioned reporters to do.

And then today, the Times did it again, explaining the “debate” over restrooms as being about whether “those with differing anatomies [should] share the same bathrooms?” As a threshold matter, the word anatomy is not a synonym for genitals and if they feel so compelled to talk about genitals then the authors should come out and say that. We all have anatomies that differ in infinite ways and have nothing to do with which bathroom we go to. So when it comes to writing/talking about genitals, say what you mean especially because it will sound a lot creepier and perhaps encourage people to STOP gratuitously writing and talking about people’s bodies. Just stop. If you wouldn’t write about a non-transgender person in this way, then don’t write about a trans person this way.

And maybe this conversation is, in part, about whether we are comfortable sharing space with people whose genitals look different from our own. But to the extent that is the conversation we should talk about it as such because it breaks down pretty quickly. Vaguely alluding to “different anatomies” is weird and inaccurate.

6. Other factual errors. The article is replete with other errors, which suggests that the Times is willing to publish an article in the Sunday paper about a topic, which it describes as “the next frontier in America’s fast-moving culture wars,” without so much as a basic fact-check. For example, the four authors write that the ACLU of Florida sued a school district the day before the guidance was released on behalf of a trans student who was barred from using appropriate single-sex facilities. But there was no such lawsuit. Rather, the ACLU of Florida had filed an administrative complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education. Even the article linked to by the Times explained it correctly but the Times didn’t bother. Words have meaning and legal terms are often terms of art so don’t just throw in a word that you think means the same thing as another word without checking to make sure you didn’t alter the entire meaning of what you are writing about. I am not a journalist but that seems pretty basic.

All this may seem trivial to some — all these errors and inaccuracies. But to trans people and those who care about us it matters deeply. It matters because the confusion, myths and lies that are put forth about trans people are the very things that contribute to the societal climate where over 45 anti-trans laws were introduced in 16 states during these past legislative sessions, where transgender women of color are being murdered in record numbers, where almost 50% of Black transgender women are incarcerated at some point in their lives, and where 41% of transgender people attempt suicide. It matters.

I am not here to say the Times should not give platform to voices that I disagree with. They should. It is not about disagreement but rather about rigorous investigation and accurate reporting. When a topic that implicates the survival of a group of people horribly mistreated by those around them is so consistently reported on with such inaccuracy by one of the most esteemed publications in the country, it makes you wonder if that publication is invested in contributing to that mistreatment.

You have to do better.