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FAIR
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Trans Youth Targeted by Texas Are Marginalized by Corporate Media Ines Santos ([link removed])


Texas Gov. Greg Abbott put out a directive ([link removed]) on February 22, following a legal opinion from state Attorney General Ken Paxton, insisting families with transgender kids be investigated for potential “child abuse.” While not legally binding, the move provoked several investigations ([link removed]) into parents of trans kids.

It's one more state government assault in what’s beating 2021 ([link removed]) as the worst year for anti-trans backlash. The far right’s obsession with reversing LGBTQ progress is nothing new, nor is the gross conflation ([link removed]) of gender affirmation with harm to children. But the bigotry is experiencing an unprecedented mainstreaming—through the careful calculations of conservative media, and the callous indifference of centrist media.

FAIR (3/3/21 ([link removed]) , 3/12/21 ([link removed]) , 5/6/21 ([link removed]) ) has previously criticized corporate news outlets for their failure to respond to the vitriolic and well-funded ([link removed]) anti-gender movement ([link removed]) . In a new study of coverage on the Texas directive across six outlets, we found once again a dearth of trans sources and perspectives, treating those most harmed by the directive as subjects to be debated, not humans worthy of providing insight into their own lives.


** Amount of coverage
------------------------------------------------------------

Stories on Texas Directive by Outlet

FAIR counted news and opinion stories mentioning the Texas directive, as well as the types of sources cited, in the centrist outlets New York Times, Washington Post and Slate, along with the right-wing Breitbart, Daily Caller and Federalist, between February 22 and March 22. The majority of stories were text-based, but some of the results for Slate were transcriptions of podcasts. Stories in the Times were found using the Nexis database, while the other five were counted directly from the sources’ websites.

The conservative outlets published 33 stories on the directive, versus 38 in the centrist outlets. Breitbart alone covered it more times (23) than the New York Times and Slate combined (21). The coverage we studied included a total of 200 sources; 40% of these sources appeared on Breitbart, a measure of the far-right outlet's obsession with the topic.

It's a principle of good journalism that coverage should be centered on those most affected by an issue. As trans people were those most impacted by Abbott’s directive, one should hope they would be centered in news coverage of the matter. Yet of the 200 sources across all the outlets, only 30, or 15%, were identified as trans.

Cis vs. Trans Sources in Texas Directive Stories

Outlet by outlet, 27% of sources cited by the New York Times in directive stories were trans, and 26% at Slate. Breitbart had markedly less trans representation, with 11% trans sources—though this was more than the Washington Post or Daily Caller, which each had 8%. The Federalist, meanwhile, had no sources identified as trans in its stories on the Texas anti-trans directive.

A majority of trans sources were experts representing NGOs and media outlets, such as Chase Strangio and Gillian Branstetter of the American Civil Liberties Union. While excellent sources to inform the public on trans advocacy, they represent only a small part of the trans population. Trans people who aren’t affiliated with major organizations naturally may fear for their safety when speaking to the press, but there wasn’t even an effort to cite trans members of the general public anonymously. Excluding expert sources, trans people provided a total of 5% of sources across all outlets, while parents of trans children constituted 10%.


** Trans-suspicious ideologues
------------------------------------------------------------
WaPo: What I wish I’d known when I was 19 and had sex reassignment surgery

A trans woman embraced by the right for regretting gender reassignment was spotlighted by the Washington Post (4/11/22 ([link removed]) ) as well.

The Washington Post, though it cited seven parents of trans kids, notably featured no quotes from trans youth themselves, or from any other trans members of the general public. This choice is all the more disquieting, given the lack of diversity in trans perspectives that the paper has highlighted in its opinion section.

While there were opinion pieces (2/25/22 ([link removed]) , 3/2/22 ([link removed]) ) that were critical of the directive during the studied timeframe, none were by trans people themselves. But the following month, Corinna Cohn, a transgender software engineer, was given space to tell her own story. Cohn, who has become a fixture ([link removed]) in conservative media ([link removed]) as an ally to
anti-trans advocates, penned a mournful op-ed (4/11/22 ([link removed]) ) that expressed surgery-regret and alarm at “how readily authority figures facilitate transition.” She referred to her early transition self as a “callow young man who was obsessed with transitioning to womanhood,” and encouraged gender-dysphoric youth to take their time before making long-term decisions.

Conversations around regret ([link removed]) , risk ([link removed]) and the role of therapeutic interventions ([link removed]) are essential when it comes to trans healthcare, but they’re difficult to have when the ground is almost entirely ceded to conservative gender politics. The sole trans experience detailed in the Post in the two months following the directive produces an incomplete picture of what gender-affirming care looks like. The absence of direct accounts of trans joy, pride, and resistance promotes the notion that transition is a tragic outcome, that stories such as Cohn’s are the rule and not the exception.

According to biologist and trans historian Julia Serano (8/2/16 ([link removed]) ), outlets regularly employ “trans-suspicious” ideologues who, while expressing enough acceptance of trans people to appear moderate, or even being trans themselves, nevertheless partake in constant fearmongering over the rate of gender transition. Fellow trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson (New Inquiry, 9/13/21 ([link removed]) ) identifies this rhetorical strategy as “laundering extremism”: filtering anti-trans bigotry through "liberal" rationalism while still pandering to the far-right. Whether it comes from cis or trans voices, this handwringing implies that access to gender transition is too easy, and thus laws restricting access to it are justified—all the while ignoring the damaging impact
restrictive medical gatekeeping ([link removed]) has had.

The Washington Post, despite ostensibly being to the left of outlets like Breitbart, carries water for those actively fighting to ban and criminalize gender-affirming care when it fails to provide a greater breadth of trans perspectives.


** Deny and punish
------------------------------------------------------------
Slate: The Biggest Threat to Trans Kids in Texas Is Child Protective Services

Slate (3/2/22 ([link removed]) ): "The child welfare system..is a particularly potent tool for transphobic politicians because it was set up to surveil families that fall outside of the white, middle class norm."

The suspicion and concern around gender transition in the media belies the reality that it can be lifesaving for trans kids and adults alike. Trans healthcare is linked to better mental health ([link removed]) outcomes and lower suicide risk ([link removed](21)00568-1/fulltext) , while a lack of family acceptance drives the disproportionate rates of homelessness ([link removed]) among LGBTQ youth. The domino effect of denying care means trans young people will face exorbitant costs to transition in adulthood, creating even more barriers for a demographic that is 70% more likely ([link removed]) to live below the poverty line than cis people. Not every young person experiencing gender dysphoria may require medical transition, but to deny and punish those that would benefit from it is both classist and
anti-democratic, as it inserts punitive state authority between patients and qualified practitioners.

There were some notable exceptions to this framework. An episode of a Slate podcast (The Waves, 3/3/22 ([link removed]) ) featured several prominent trans journalists and researchers, including Gill-Peterson and Evan Urquhart. They provided essential context, including the overrepresentation of LGBTQ youth in foster care, and the lack of families willing to accept them. Another article (3/2/22 ([link removed]) ), by Roxanna Asgarian, took a deeper look than any of the other outlets into the carceral tactics of child protection agencies, such as their ability to investigate individuals and search their homes without alerting them of their rights, and the disproportionate targeting of poor, Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ families for problems that are often synonymous with poverty.

But overall, trans-centered perspectives were flashes in the pan, and hardly sufficient to counteract the present emergency plaguing trans people and their loved ones.


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