The United States has long had a paradoxical interest in freedom. While touting herself as the land of the free and home of the brave, she maintains massive mills of oppression, at home and abroad. In an oppressive society, writing is an incredibly powerful tool to either oppress or resist, with little gray area between. Journalists, as individuals with powerful voices, journalists must therefore be encouraged to take decisive stances in favor of freedom. As Elie Wiesel noted, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” However, in a time of persecution, many have done precisely what Wiesel warned against and chosen stances of purported neutrality over protecting a minority.
A contemporary example brought to the forefront of this paradox is the Republican Party’s attacks on transgender rights. For the last few years, Republican politicians have pushed aggressively anti-trans policies federally and within individual states, ranging from sports bans to banning life-saving hormone replacement therapy for minors and even adults. I have previously covered this in the Skidmore News, but over the last few months these attacks have intensified, with states outright banning care for large swathes of the population and conservative political figures publicly calling for the “eradication” of transgender people. The stakes are high, and while some journalists (largely trans people) have covered this issue/topic appropriately, many have not.
Over the past 18 months, major newspapers (including ostensibly progressive papers such as the New York Times and the Guardian) have treated transgender people as a debate, one in which both “sides” should be considered and treated equally. This framing becomes farcical when one considers the two sides. On one side are transgender people trying to live normal lives in an often hostile world. In addition, the overwhelming medical consensus is that medical transition and social acceptance are beneficial, including for youth; and there remains no evidence to support the idea that trans people or trans acceptance is dangerous to anyone else. On the other side are individuals who are not trans, who will never know what it is like to be trans, arguing that they know what is best for trans people and against the aforementioned medical consensus, who are not harmed in any way by trans people’s existence but still feel entitled to a world without us. Why should these two sides be considered equally? Why should people trying to live their lives be considered as having the same authority as people whose sole goal is to prevent them from doing so?
As Wiesel wisely noted, there is no humane way to remain neutral in matters of human rights, and framing trans people’s lives as a debate is not neutrality. All it does is further legitimize transphobia in an already transphobic society, and frame trans people’s existence as a political matter. Transphobia is a political stance. Existing while trans is not. To equate the two erases this important distinction.
Indeed, this biased-in-the-guise-of-neutrality journalism is already being used by anti-trans actors to advance their agendas. On April 13, 2023, the attorney general of Missouri signed an emergency rule heavily restricting transition for adults. The emergency rule cited an article from the New York Times by Emily Bazelon which framed youth transition as a debate among medical professionals, ignoring the overall consensus which finds it to be beneficial and safe. While those opposed to the existence of trans people will often frame trans healthcare as “experimental,” medical interventions for trans people have now been used for almost a century for adults and over 40 years for youth. They are no more “experimental” than antibiotics (most of which have existed for less time than trans healthcare), hormonal birth control, vaccines, or countless other now-common medical treatments and procedures. By positioning this as a debate, it allows a new avenue of attack on the legitimacy of trans lives and healthcare.
Journalists who engage in this practice are of course complicit as a result of their actions, however, none have been held accountable because trans people lack institutional power (regardless of what the more conspiratorially minded may say). It therefore falls upon readers to do their own research and be critical and mindful of the news they consume, which in conjunction with poor media literacy feeds the loss of faith in the media which is ongoing and harmful to democracy. At minimum, journalists who have done this should be ashamed of themselves. At worst, they have (or will have) blood on their hands.