On Friday, November 21, the New Times published a story by Ray Stern headlined “’Pregnant Man’ Thomas Beatie Stalked Estranged Wife With GPS Tracker, Cops Say”. The story was about the criminal actions of Thomas Beatie, as well known for his domestic discord as he is for becoming pregnant after transitioning in the late 1990s. In the very first line of the story, Stern identifies Beatie with the sobriquet “Pregnant Man” and then, in the second paragraph, there are very conspicuous quotation marks placed around the word “He”.
I’m sure that it’s probably a coincidence that this story ran at the tail end of Transgender Awareness Week and just two days before about sixty people gathered in front of the Capitol in the chilly twilight to observe the Phoenix Transgender Day of Remembrance. The TDOR is an annual memorial to all transgender people worldwide murdered in the previous year, many of those victims slain with a callousness and brutality that is, despairingly, the norm in anti-transgender violence.
Often referred to only in conjunction with the lesbian, gay, and bisexual population in the acronym “LGBT”, the transgender population is among the most scorned and misunderstood demographic in nearly every society around the globe, and the statistics bear this out. Subject to an abysmal level of legal, medical, and social discrimination, transgender people are victims of the inexplicable phenomenon whereby a congenital physiological condition is treated as a moral failure. While it would be inconceivable to ridicule and judge a diabetic (“Sinner! Your pancreas has been possessed by Satan!”) in the same way, far too many people have no problem acquiescing to the ridicule of the transgender population.
I am a fan of the New Times. Quite often, their reporters shine a spotlight on uncomfortable situations in a way that outlets like the Republic would never do, particularly when it comes to issues like immigration and the lives of the undocumented. Their writers have a well-earned reputation for grittiness and honesty that keep the public reading. However, there seems to be a blind spot when it comes to the LGBT that is disturbing. The above-referenced article about Thomas Beatie is a perfect demonstration of that.
Not content to stick with a reporting of the facts related to criminal activity by Mr. Beatie, Stern leads with bigoted language all too familiar to the transgender community. Last year, during the Appropriations Committee hearing for what was popularly known as the “Bathroom Bill,” State Rep. John Kavanagh referred to us as “so-called transgender people,” completely dehumanizing the majority of the people in that committee room in just seven syllables. Placing quotation marks around “He” in Stern’s story was no less deplorable or offensive than Kavanagh’s placing quotation marks around our lives.
When reporting anything about Sheriff Paul Babeu, it seems to be a habit of the New Times to refer to his being gay. This is almost always done in a way that is not relevant to the details of the story but only to make light of the fact he’s gay, as if it is expected that the majority of readers will also believe that being gay is, in and of itself, risible. It’s cheap and inflammatory, and the treatment of Beatie’s gender identity is no different. Stern goes out of his way to invite comment not about Beatie’s criminal actions but ridicule about the fact that he is transgender and judgment about how he deals with being transgender.
Would the editorial board of any reputable publication permit the publication of a story peppered with ridiculous, outrageous stereotypical references about any other demographic? I doubt it, and yet, if the bigotry in print is about someone’s sexual or gender identity, it is, apparently, okay at the New Times.
Earlier this year, there was a story that made national headlines about an inventor who lived in Gilbert, Essay Anne Vanderbilt. She had received recognition in the golf world because of a putter she invented. In the course of researching a story about the putter, a reporter for the website Grantland, Caleb Hannan, discovered that Vanderbilt had transitioned from male to female years earlier. Hannan, writing a story about a putter for a primarily sports-related website, became fixated on Vanderbilt’s being transgender. When he confronted her with evidence he had discovered about her past, she pleaded with him to leave her gender identity (information not relevant in any way to a story about a putter) out of the story. Hannan refused and let her know that he was going to make that part of his story. Shortly afterwards, Essay Anne Vanderbilt took her own life.
Vanderbilt was 60, and she grew up in a generation where anyone LGBT had every reason to fear for their physical safety should their gender or sexual identity be discovered. To review media treatment of homosexuality and gender dysphoria from the 1940s through the 1970s is to relive an era of ignorance that is difficult to imagine today. Growing up transgender in that era meant living with a strong fear that was sometimes impossible to shed. Vanderbilt had paid a heavy social and personal price for being transgender, and, at a time when she should have celebrated professional success, she was forced to relive that ugliness by being outed against her will simply because a reporter found it interesting.
Hannan and Grantland were grossly negligent in their treatment of Essay Anne Vanderbilt, and Ray Stern and the New Times are no less negligent in their treatment of Thomas Beatie and, by extension, all transgender people in making anything about his gender the subject of ridicule.
The metro Phoenix area is home to a vibrant, active, inspirational community of transgender Arizonans. We work in every field, at all professional levels, and we do so largely in the background, happy to defy the negative stereotypes that continue to be perpetuated about us. But that happy defiance does not – and will never – tolerate the callous irresponsibility of using us as a source of humor.