Excerpt
The media kicked off 2013 with a number of high-profile failures in coverage of trans people and trans issues. On January 6, model Carmen Carrerra and Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox had to explain to Katie Couric why it was dehumanizing and transphobic to ask about their genitals on live television. On January 15, sports and culture site Grantland published a story, “Dr. V’s Magical Putter,” about a trans woman named Essay Anne Vanderbilt who committed suicide after the story’s writer, Caleb Hannan, outed her to colleagues and refused to sign a statement prohibiting him from disclosing her personal information, from which she may have reasonably assumed he would do so in the article. Following a massive outcry, Grantland editor Bill Simmons admitted that no trans people had been consulted during the story’s reporting or editing process. And, on February 5, Redefining Realness: My Path To Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More author Janet Mock was invited back for a second interview with Piers Morgan, where he shouted at her for subjecting him to “cisphobia” because she’d critiqued the show’s choice to describe her as “born a boy.”
To talk about why this coverage is so flawed and what can be done to make it better, In These Times assembled a panel of experts, including Jos Truitt, co-executive director of Feministing.com; Katherine Cross, Ph.D. Student at the CUNY Graduate Center, who wrote an elegy for Dr. V on Feministing; and Emily McAvan, editor-in-chief of Global Comment.
I want to start by talking about the tragedy that prompted this roundtable: Grantland's coverage of Essay Anne Vanderbilt, and her death. The story was widely called out for being insensitive and dehumanizing; it framed Vanderbilt’s gender and trans status as a “mystery” to be uncovered by the reporter. Even her suicide, which came at the end of a long process in which Hannan outed her to colleagues—by which point she probably assumed, rightly, that he would do so in his piece—didn’t seem to spark much compassion or guilt in Hannan. What struck me, reading it, was that it was obvious neither the writer nor the editors had thought to consult any trans colleagues in the media throughout the process (which Grantland editor Bill Simmons later confirmed). What are the conditions in the media that led us to this point?
Katherine Cross: What's remarkable about that case, among many things, is not that the editorial staff did not consult a trans person, but that such would even be necessary in order to remind them that Dr. V was, above all else, a human being. The piece turned Dr. V into a fictional character in someone else's story, mirroring patterns of dehumanization that occur with countless other marginalized groups.
“Transgender” or “transsexual”mean “sensation” to many in the press, which already puts the people those terms describe at a certain remove from human dignity. When that collides with other odious forms of marginalization—say that imposed on sex workers, the working poor, and/or people of color—what results is a terrifying vortex of Othering. Each facet of identity presents journalists with another stigma they can exploit, not only for the sake of sensationalism, but also to write the story for them.
Many cis people think they know trans people's stories, and the trope of the trans sex worker, regurgitated through countless police procedurals, is one they think they know especially well. When a journalist is presented, then, with a dead trans woman of color, what results is less investigation and more recitation of received wisdom that fits with what the journalist thinks they already know. All these are the conditions that not only made the Dr. V tragedy possible, but also much of the terrible journalism on trans women's deaths in general.
I agree with you on reporters “thinking they know,” on some level, what a “trans” narrative is and how to put it together. What strikes me about this Othering is how it leaves trans people out—as sources, as media creators themselves. And that creates a sort of self-perpetuating knowledge gap. For example, I've had conversations with really progressive editors about what the word “cis” means. How can we close that gap?
Katherine: Closing the gap comes from remembering that we are not an alien species; the language of respect used amongst cis people works well for us as well. On a more practical level, ensuring that editorial codes at various press agencies make provision for trans people and answer the “frequently asked questions” of journalists trying to find their way on these issues could go a long way towards ameliorating the problems that gave rise to the Dr. V spectacle. There is only so much that “codes” can solve, however.
A bigger part of the solution lies in enlisting trans people to write and report on these issues themselves. That won't fix everything, but in pulling down the barriers that separate trans people from the nation's newsrooms, it'll be a worthy start.
Jos Truitt: Trans women are incredibly marginalized in every aspect of our culture, including employment, and including employment as journalists. Hiring trans women and learning from our experience will of course improve newsrooms. Of course, this requires the will to treat trans women with respect. It's very difficult to assume good faith when the press does already have guidelines for reporting on trans people, which aren't perfect but are certainly better than the coverage we typically see.
Katherine has pointed out that hostile coverage of trans people, and particularly trans women, ties into larger structures of misogyny. I'd love to explore those intersections.
Jos: Part of what's so tragic about the Dr. V story is that it could have just been about a golf club. Hannan and his editors made a deliberate decision to pursue the story in a way that sensationalized Dr. V's trans status. We see this time and again in the press, particularly with trans women of color who've been murdered and might have done sex work: the New York Times had a particularly prurient frame for what should have been an obituary for Lorena Escalera, a woman who was murdered more than a year ago. [The story began, “She was 25 and curvaceous, and she often drew admiring glances in the gritty Brooklyn neighborhood where she was known to invite men for visits to her apartment.”]
Katherine: It is also worth mentioning that so much of the dehumanizing sensationalization accrues to trans women precisely because of pre-existing misogynist biases in the press.
If you look at the way trans women's stories are told, whether it's the Dr. V case or the tragic murder of Lorena Escalera, what links the coverage is a prurient focus on physical features. It is not uncommon for news stories to rather lavishly describe a trans woman's breasts, hair, makeup, figure, walk, and so on in order to tell their story. The “camera” of newsprint draws the reader into an objectifying gaze where trans women are concerned, and this mirrors some of the tropes deployed against cis women as well, from celebrities to politicians. It's quite reasonable to suggest that the same standards of reporting that lead to objectifying coverage of cisgender women also lead to similar coverage for trans women.
[The difference is that] when Hillary Clinton's cleavage was turned into a Washington Post news story, there was a national hue and cry (as well there should've been). For trans women of color, there is an overriding sense among both journalists and the public that such lurid and quasi-pornographic descriptions are not only seemly, but deserved, often justified with the idea that they brought both death and objectification unto themselves.
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