Nina-Bytes: Selling the Pogroms

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Mainstreaming Transphobia in the New York Times

If you’re committed to inciting an anti-trans pogrom that consists of criminalizing trans identities and support networks as a form of social murder, while actively inciting stochastic violence against trans people, in a society where that is theoretically illegal, you’re going to need a whole lot of mainstreamed propaganda and malicious discourse to justify that obviously fascist bullshit in real time. Naturally, the fash employ social media, conspiracy websites, and well-funded think tanks to push this propaganda, but nothing they pay for is ever going to be quite as valuable to them as having mainstream media outlets like the New York Times pushing over and over again the idea that fascists might have a point about trans people.

To demonstrate what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at this well-argued dissection of Azeen Ghorayshi’s recent, very transphobic article in the NYT. The takedown itself was written by Evan Urquhart over on Assigned Media:

 

NYT Treats Key Source’s Many Lies as an Aside in Latest Anti-Trans Smear

As one would expect from a piece debunking and critiquing mainstream transphobic propaganda disguised as rigorous investigation by a science-loving media that’s engaging in good faith discourse, Urquhart’s response is lengthy and quite detailed. The short story however is that The Times allowed Ghorayshi to write long form “just asking questions” story, to revive a six month old trans-panic controversy, based on the unsubstantiated and in some cases demonstrably false claims of Jamie Reed, an objectively unreliable “whistleblower” turned anti-trans activist.

This is despite noting that Reed is in fact a proven liar, and discussing the unsubstantiated nature of her claims before blithely going on as if they are objectively true; in fact, and as Urquhart notes, Ghorayashi even goes so far as to say *some* of Reed’s claims can be substantiated even though they can’t, and actively misrepresents evidence in her own right. The whole thing amounts to presenting the TERF Island-style “gender-critical” (and inherently transphobic) argument for blocking gender affirming care for trans children, in the best possible light, without so much as an attempt at providing honestly-presented evidence, or legitimate reasons to take these clearly reactionary positions at face value. From Evan’s takedown:

“Somehow, despite these major questions about Reed’s reliability, Ghorayshi largely seems to take Reed at face value, portraying her as a former supporter of gender-affirming care who began to question it due to what she saw at the clinic, rather than as an unreliable source who has lied or stretched the truth again and again and whose descriptions of everything, particularly her own motives, should therefore rightly be suspect.

While the Times highlights these two key places where Reed seems to have lied and/or presented information that did not turn out to be true, the story avoids some notable additional examples of times Reed seems to have contradicted herself or provided information that was not true. The Times never mentions Reed’s wild, totally evidence-free claim that children in St. Louis identified as inanimate objects. The only example of this Reed has ever given was a child who referenced being an “attack helicopter,” something Reed later admitted she knew was a reference to an internet joke despite relating it as if it were a belief about their gender a real child held.”

On the off chance you’ve been living in a cave, please let me remind you that this is hardly the first time the New York Times has pushed a fact-free, “just asking questions” bit of transphobic propaganda under the guise of rational concern; indeed, at this point it’s become so common that Evan is comfortable declaring “the New York Times has been on a crusade against transgender youth,” and I agree with him wholeheartedly. When a major national newspaper starts devoting that much time and energy to an ongoing campaign to concern-troll and “rationalize” gender affirming care for trans youth out of existence, despite the fact that every single shred of accepted medical and scientific evidence says denying that care is actively putting children’s lives in danger, I no longer have to pretend this is honest journalistic inquiry. Ghorayshi’s piece doesn’t contain a lick of journalism in it at all; it’s pure feelsball about why gender affirming care for kids is scary.

I don’t know if the New York Times is going after trans kids because they’re courting fascist readers, or because the paper has never encountered a fascist movement it didn’t adore, or because they’ve got an editorial board jammed to the rafters with outspoken transphobes, and quite frankly I don’t care. Whatever their reasoning, be it social, political, or economic, I’m tired of people pretending that the New York Times isn’t working constantly to kill trans children, and chase folks like me back into the closet. As a news organization, the Times is objectively no different in this regard than the openly-transphobic U.K Guardian; there is blood on their hands already, and that trend shows no signs of changing. Once again, from Urquhart’s piece:

“Taken together, there is no reasonable way a reader who was new to the subject could read this story and come away with an accurate understanding of the science behind gender-affirming care, the stellar reputation of the St. Louis clinic, the substance of the allegations made against the clinic, the credibility of the person making these allegations, why such false allegations may have been made, or the stakes for trans youth and their families when false allegations become conventional wisdom. It is a failure of journalism on a level that is difficult to fully comprehend, and this story has only skimmed the surface of the misdirection and mendacity employed therein. If there was ever a question that the New York Times has been on a crusade against transgender youth, and willing to distort the science and platform known liars in order to undermine the medical care of vulnerable children, this story should answer that question once and for all.”

“Rational” or “Scientific” transphobia has no more basis in science, and no more moral validity than “Rational” anti-Semitism, or “Scientific” racism had a hundred years ago; and propagating these ideas in the mainstream, the way the Times has clearly devoted itself to, will end in the very same places. In that light then, I’ll go farther than Evan would and just blurt out what we all know, but so few are saying; the New York Times is helping the fascists conduct a trans pogrom, and in the final calculation, there is no meaningful difference between a fascist and a fascist collaborator.

 

– Nina Illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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