The right thing to do journalistically

Brother’s visit was a good one. While he was here we went to supper with Sister and two nieces, one bringing her wife, a pleasant time. It’s been a week since I last posted. In that time I accumulated more than 40 browser tabs of stories to share. That brings me to 187 tabs after recently saying I had never gone over 175. Maybe I’ll get to them over the next week and maybe I’ll decide they’re no longer worth discussing. So don’t keep count. More than a week ago I was in the midst of a debate with my friend and debate partner. He doesn’t actually debate me all that often. It is a friendship that has spanned 30 years. Many months can pass between “debates,” which is usually him sending comments by email (never an actual comment in the blog) in response to something I wrote. Sometimes I see it is important to whatever I wrote – usually a rebuttal – and worth sharing. There had never been three debates within ten days (with my reply now delayed by a week). That’s a long way of saying my friend responded to my post “Freedom to oppress...” I had written about GLAAD’s criticism of the New York Times for the portrayal of transgender people in some of the opinion pieces. Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos complained about one op-ed piece by Times columnist Pamela Paul. She wrote in defense of JK Rowling, who many call a transphobe. Part of what I wrote was that because of what I read in Kos I don’t trust the Times and how Paul’s article (as reported by Higgins) didn’t change my opinion. I scanned my posts and see I first referenced Kos back in 2008 shortly after I started this blog. I took a break from Kos in 2010-2013, but it has been a primary source of news for the last nine years. I’ve mentioned or discussed articles I read in Kos a few hundred times. My friend avoids Kos the same way I avoid the Times. He did venture into Kos in response to my previous post to read what Higgins wrote. From his perspective he sees plenty of reasons to keep avoiding it. He described it as, “Too many right answers, not enough questions. The basic mistake of nearly all religions.” I think he happened to visit the site at a time when the sidebar of recent and recommended posts included debate between atheists and believers written by the Kos community and not produced by Kos staff. I’m sure that bit of info won’t encourage my friend to visit again. Friend did list several things he hopes we can agree on: In the US and many Western European countries the attitude towards LGBTQ people has change dramatically towards one of acceptance as full humans. Even so, many religious groups locally and across the world keep their traditional condemnation of homosexuality and other kinds of sexual and gender variation. Because of that many families reject their LGBTQ family members and one political party is championing LGBTQ oppression. And these unchanged people have far too many guns. In addition, many other countries, especially Russia, still criminalize and oppress LGBTQ people and many remain closeted. Friend then said that because so many people (and the institutions and government they control) have not yet come to accept LGBTQ people and not yet understand our full humanity, we and our allies are engaging in destructive behavior. That is we – people like Higgins – “demand that our institutions ... behave as if the revolution is complete and in place, all controversies resolved, the doubts of all citizens erased.” This is “leftist bullying” as bad as conservative bullying. Friend also found Paul’s article on the Times website and sent the text to me. The text says to find it online here. He listed what he believes are the many assumptions Higgins wrote that he said are just not true. I’ll mention one example. The rest are incidental.

The Times failure to treat a topic according to Higgins' preferences constitutes the spreading of misinformation. That can only be true when you accept only one side of an incomplete revolution.

So I looked at the way the Times, in particular Paul, treated the topic. It is a lot milder than I thought it might be. Paul begins by quoting some of the pro-trans things JK Rowling has said. I’m glad Rowling said them. Then Paul wrote what is at the core of Higgins’ complaint.

So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think. The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people. You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population. But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.

Good to hear Rowling does not dispute gender dysphoria, that she does approve of transgender people’s right to exist, to approve of transition, to support equal pay and housing, and is not putting trans people in danger. Good to see Paul recognize that. But Paul, who does not say she is transgender or a part of the LGBTQ community, does not get to decide whether Rowling is transphobic. Transgender people do. That’s in the same way that white people do not get to decide whether they or other white people are racist – there are many things white people don’t recognize as racism that black people experience as oppression. And from the trans person’s point of view Rowling making a distinction between “biological” women and trans women and saying one needs space that excludes the other is transphobic. Denying self-declaration as sufficient to determine if someone is trans is transphobic. Supporting people who are transphobic is transphobic. Though I’m not transgender I am part of the LGBTQ community. Even with that deciding what is transphobic isn’t up to me. Alas, I don’t have a trans co-author, so I’m giving an idea what trans people likely think of what Paul wrote. Higgins’ point, and that of everyone else who signed the letter condemning the Times, including me, is that the Times and its columnist made an error in deciding for trans people what transphobia means. In other similar situations we call it “mansplaining.” What the letter is calling the Times to do is hire some actual trans people to avoid these sorts of errors in the future. Friend wrote:

It is foolish for its advocates to feel entitled to support and agreement from everyone else. That behavior is destructive – it prevents the winning of new allies.

I have a different take on this and imagine Higgins and other LGBTQ advocates do to. When a voice in the society speaks against us, or even speaks with incomplete knowledge, we demand they improve. This voice might be an influential news and opinion source, such as the Times, a celebrity with a platform that comes with being a celebrity, a corporate leader, a politician, or someone with a Facebook or Twitter account. Demanding they do better is how we improve the society’s perception of us. This is not bullying! It is not feeling entitled to support and agreement. Demands have been a part of the public protest language since protests began. When students were shot at Michigan State University they rightly demanded the Michigan legislature and the US Congress pass laws to stop these mass shootings from happening. Framing our complaints as a suggestion won’t get us anywhere. Constructive criticism will – especially when the letter sent to the Times includes details of what we believe is wrong with what they wrote and a list of ways to improve. I had written most of this post yesterday. During a break in writing I listened to yesterday’s All Things Considered on NPR. Host Michel Martin talked to their media correspondent David Folkenflik about this controversy at the Times. I think this story is balanced and without rancor. They mention the letter sent by trans activists, the support from within the ranks of Times journalists, and the response from senior editors, who are not backing down. Folkenflik, in his summary, said:

Yeah. I think it's, in some ways, about the Times present and some ways about how the Times will be looked back on in the role of journalism, right? So, you know, if you think back to how the Times covered gay rights and gay people, it was for decades dismissive, condescending, patronizing or antagonistic, hostile in a way that the Times ultimately had to grapple with a few decades ago and come to terms with and change the way they approached this. And a number of Times journalists said to me they don't want to have to look back on the way the Times has approached this now and think of this as a place that has cultivated a panic or contributed to a society that treats trans people as less than or less consequential than others. And yet the Times still wants to be able to say it's distilling these issues through a journalistic prism and not a political one. They don't want to take such care as a political stance or because of pressure. They want to do so because it's the right thing to do journalistically. Navigating that, I think, is going to be a very fine line for the Times as they see these voices inside and outside the newsroom raised in critique. ... The question of harm is an important one. You're hearing people who signed that letter, particularly people who are themselves trans people, say I'm being negated here because the overwhelming direction of coverage is raising questions about this kind of medical care without having an equal or greater amount of attention being given to, what are the repercussions if those youths are not given certain kinds of medical care? By the same token, I think there are a number of senior executives at the Times who are signaling they don't want to be intimidated from looking carefully at issues which are not yet settled, which do have implications even if the numbers are relatively small.

Note the phrase “not yet settled.” Trans people and their doctors say the issues and the science are settled. It is only conservatives, who want to demonize trans people, who say they aren’t. My Sunday movie was The Half of It on Netflix. The opening sequence describes the idea told by Aristophanes that at birth a soul is divided in two and many of us spend our lives searching for the other half to complete ourselves. Sometimes we find that half and experience love, sometimes we don’t. The story is a loose adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Paul, a high school jock not good with words, has a crush on Aster. But he want help to attract her attention. So he turns to Ellie Chu, a straight A student who writes other student’s papers for a fee. The complication is that Ellie also has a crush on Aster. Though Paul does send a few letters, a good deal of the help is through text messaging as Ellie monitors the date through the window. Aster may think she’s texting Paul, but it goes to Ellie’s phone, leaving Paul wondering what she said. There are some nice twists in the story, such as Paul and Ellie really caring for each other. All this takes place in the fictional town of Squahamish, Washington (there is a real town named Suquamish), though filming was done in upstate New York. It is is a sweet tale, well told. The ending is satisfying, but not what one expects.