Opinion | New York Times’ anti-transgender articles act as accomplice to horrifying legislatures
Despite Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), New York contributors and hundreds of organizations’ pleas, The New York Times continually produces anti-transgender pieces. Unsplash
Hannah Smith, assistant news & politics editor
In 2021 alone, legislatures in 22 states introduced bills to ban best-practice medical care for transgender youth. In 2022 and 2023, The New York Times was cited as a source to back ensuing anti-trans medicare legislatures.
For instance, Emily Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” Azeen Ghorayshi’s “Doctors Debate Whether Trans Teens Need Therapy Before Hormones” and Ross Douthat’s “How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War” were all used as supporting evidence in an amicus brief supporting Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.
The 2022 Alabama legislature made it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment, for any medical provider to administer gender-affirming medical care to a minor.
A June 2022 New York Times Magazine article was cited by the state of Texas to further target families of trans youth in court documents over their private, evidence-based healthcare decisions.
According to former politics editor for Slate and author Tom Scocca, The New York Times’ front cover stories alone have accumulated more than 15,000 words with one similar theme: “whether care and support for young trans people might be going too far or too fast.”
This does not even account for similar coverage in the opinion section and New York Times Magazine. The Times has repeatedly called transgender youth an “existing threat” to their public readers, writing articles that antagonize access for transgender youth to necessary medical care.
A Feb.13 piece by Azeen Ghorayshi attempted to link social contagion, the spreading of fads and functional tics, with gender identity. Her September 2022 piece attempted to position trans youth as somehow “regretting receiving” medical care.
According to Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a media publication dedicated to inclusive representation of the LGBTQIA+ community, a November 2022 story by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett got the science of healthcare for trans people so wrong that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) had to write a multi-page teardown explaining how The Times misrepresented the facts at every turn.
In May 2022, The Times published an article by Michael Powell that asserted being trans was a choice. In January 2023, The Times boasted about hiring David French, an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom: an anti-LGBTQIA+ hate group that actively spreads misinformation about LGBTQIA+ people and pushes baseless legislation and lawsuits to legalize discrimination.
Even when GLAAD, alongside over 100 LGBTQIA+ advocacy organizations and leaders, signed a coalition letter in protest of The Times’ irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender individuals, the newspaper brushed it off its shoulder like bothersome dust.
The Times even received a letter decrying the paper’s transgender coverage signed by more than 180 of its own contributors and still stood behind its own reporting. In a statement to The New York Daily regarding the coalition letter, Times’ spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said, “We understand how GLAAD sees our coverage. But at the same time, we recognize that GLAAD’s advocacy mission and The Times’s journalistic mission are different.”
Stadtlander continued saying that The Times’ journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society, and that “Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it.”
Not only did The Times produce anti-trans articles to back anti-trans legislatures, dismiss GLAAD and the more-than-hundred organizations’ criticism, but they claimed to be “proud” of it.
GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis replied to The Times’ dismissal response in a statement saying, “It is shameful that the Times’ response blatantly ignores today’s letter from 180+ of their own contributors and does not address the 120+ organizations and leaders who signed the letter alongside GLAAD.”
According to the American Psychiatric Association, some people who are transgender will experience “gender dysphoria,” which refers to psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. Though gender dysphoria often begins in childhood, some people may not experience it until after puberty or much later.
Furthermore, according to research by Stanley R. Vance and Stephen M. Rosenthal, gender-affirming health care can be lifesaving, with dysphoria shown to cause depression and suicidality. Transgender youth have the best chance to thrive when they’re supported and have access to the health care they need, like any other child.
How in their right minds can legislatures continually produce bans on health care that is life-saving for minors? Even worse: how can The New York Times morally continue to add fuel to legislatures’ conservative fire?
The New York Times had over 130 million readers alone in 2022… How could this publication produce factually false and antagonistic articles to their large readership base? It is unacceptable.