All the News that Fit to Jack Off To (Because that's What Dead Women are For)

[steepholm]

If I posted on every transphobic article or incident I heard about, there'd be little room for anything else on this blog, so mostly I don't. Luckily, in this country there's a very helpful organization called Trans Media Watch, which monitors these things and works to educate journalists and broadcasters. It's a case of two steps forward, one step back, but in the three years they've been in existence, I think they've made some progress. While everyone slips up, when newspapers get it grossly wrong these days, they're usually either local papers or else the kind of sensationalist rags you'd expect. (There was a period just after TMW gave evidence to the Leveson enquiry when the Daily Hate made a point of writing a lurid trans story pretty much every day for a fortnight.)

They order these things differently in the United States, however, and it takes me aback to see a newspaper of the New York Times's reputation get things horribly wrong. There was that article on Tiwonge Chimbalanga a couple of years ago, of course, but - well, that was in another country, and besides the wench is... no longer news. And to be fair, the Times was far from alone in screwing up on that occasion, although probably the crassest offender. But what could have possessed them to print something as scurrilous as this piece of victim-blaming, sexualizing, disrespectful, exploitative shit?

I can't even be bothered to deconstruct it, but luckily GLAAD (and others) have done that for me. I've just come here for a little rant.

Comments

[sheenaghpugh]

Alas, it wants me to log in in order to read the article.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the NYT article? It let's me in without, so that's strange. You could try the link from within the GLAAD piece, I suppose?

[sheenaghpugh]

Yes, it did work from there, thanks!

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unfortunately just because NYT is big doesn't always mean it has even the beginningest clue. So many things wrong, including choosing those particular quotes for printing, and all the blame, and all the well she may possibly have been a sex worker so she's less of a human who has died.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yep, and the fact that the NYT journalists went picking through the burned pile of the victim's belongings looking for suitably titillating "colorful items" (including, gosh, shoes! And bags!).

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Totally. She owned SHOES: how lurid and colorful. Horrible.

[grrlpup]

That "article" is truly sickening. I've seen some NYT fail but this is the worst ever.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know about things cis people get wrong. (Somebody I have never met coming as a house guest next month, and I don't want to trample inadverently over someone who has been utterly rejected by their family since they transitioned.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the question, though I'm sure there are other people better qualified to answer it, and I sincerely doubt you're the trampling kind.

There are 101 lists out there, such as this one, but I think a good rule of thumb is to ask: "Is this something I'd ask of a cis person?"

For example:

a) Would I ask a cis person I know as well as this trans person about the configuration of their genitals and/or their sexual preferences? If not, then don't.

b) Would I ask a cis acquaintance intimate details about their family situation (and other potentially painful matters)?

c i) Would I offer a cis man or woman unsolicited advice about how to be a man or a woman better?

or conversely

c ii) Would I demand of a cis man or woman that they break down the gender binary at every moment of every day by (not) wearing a skirt, (not) painting their nails, (not) binding their breasts, etc.?

I suppose the other general advice is, if you slip up (e.g. on names or pronouns), just correct yourself and move on, rather than making a big deal of it.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Okay, good. I would never ask anyone any of those questions, unless we had already gotten so close that they offered the data. So that's good. But I have worried about pronoun slippage as I already have wiring (dyslexia) problems. But what I am taking away from your comment is don't burden anyone with my stuff, if I do slip up, but apologize and move on.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

MANY thanks!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I'm glad if that was any help, though I'm sure it's superfluous in your case.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Every time I assume something superfluous, I fall on my ass. The things I've heard about colonial attitudes of late have been salutary--me, who always thought herself so liberal and anti YSA rah rah. But it's larger than Yank obliviousness.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I saw a good example today, in a different part of the forest, when a friend noted on Facebook that he'd been "waiting to discover the significance of Saga's facial scar in The Bridge, only to discover the actress, Sofia Helin, has it for real... Duh!". That's the kind of mistake I can easily imagine myself making. But while it offers a salutary corrective about one's tendency to make normative assumptions about appearance, it's not necessary to give oneself a prolonged beating up over it.

YSA? I've googled it, and none of the answers seems at all plausible!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

USA--me being dyslexic! Sorry.

[sheenaghpugh]

I'm amazed that anyone ever asks those questions of anyone! They all fall into the category of Things I'd Rather Not Know.

[sovay]

I can't even be bothered to deconstruct it, but luckily GLAAD (and others) have done that for me. I've just come here for a little rant.

It is an entirely justified one.

The woman owned shoes. How shocking.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

If she had been a flamboyant cis-woman prostitute the coverage might have been almost as bad.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it would have been just as bad in some respects. You and I are about the same age, I think, so I'm sure you'll remember the way the press used to distinguish between the Yorkshire ripper's "innocent" victims and the ones who were prostitutes.

There are important differences too, though. I'm not sure whether the victim in this case was a prostitute (all we know is that men visited her), but I doubt whether the journalists would have made such a big deal about her possession of shoes or even wigs had she been cis, nor would they have begun a paragraph "Called Lorena, ..." (with the implication that that wasn't her real name). In fact, it's a good example of intersectionality: she was a woman, trans, non-white, (possibly) a sex worker... None of those things operated independently in the way the reporters felt entitled to present her death as so trivial and lubriciously amusing. She was treated as less because of the sum of her parts.