In a Twitter thread (2/25/21), Ari Drennen pointed out that news reports on the Equality Act amplified bigotry but not trans voices.
Despite the increased societal acceptance of people in the LGBTQ community, 29 states have failed to pass anti-discrimination laws to protect them. To address this, the Equality Act—a federal bill to provide national protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, public education, federal funding, credit and the jury system—passed the House of Representatives for the second time on February 25. However, the media coverage of the bill has underrepresented LGBTQ people and propagated narratives that are harmful for the same people the Equality Act seeks to protect.
As Ari Drennen, a communications staffer at the Center for American Progress, pointed out in a Twitter thread, several major outlets failed to quote even a single trans person in their stories. Her list included the New York Times (2/25/21), the Washington Post (2/25/21), CNN (2/25/21), NBC (2/25/21), CBS (2/25/21), The Hill (2/25/21) and USA Today (2/25/21). (The Washington Post later added a quote from Virginia Delegate Danica Roem, one of the country’s first openly transgender elected officials.)
“Shutting trans people out of mainstream discussions of our rights means these conversations are missing their most moving element,” Drennen explained in a tweet. “I have friends who’ve been denied jobs or housing for being trans. They need protection, but you wouldn’t know it from the news.”
Other parts of the LGBTQ community fared only slightly better in most coverage. Although Rep. David Cicilline, an openly gay co-sponsor of the bill, was quoted in most breaking news articles in major outlets (though not necessarily with any identification of him as gay), he was often the only one. USA Today (2/25/21) was one of the only major outlets to push beyond this apparent invisible limit and quote three LGBTQ people. Those included Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California—the first openly gay person of color in Congress—and Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first LGBTQ woman elected to Congress in 1999 and to the Senate in 2012. Both congressmembers emphasized how important the bill is for ensuring the rights of LGBTQ people.
While sidelining LGBTQ sources, journalists focused on the Republican opposition—which meant that rather than hearing about the content of the bill and how it could codify millions of Americans’ civil liberties and concretely impact their lives, readers were treated to largely unchallenged reprintings of the GOP’s hateful and dangerous rhetoric on the issue.
Politico (2/25/21) regrets that the “antics” of open haters like Marjorie Taylor Greene have deprived more decorous Republicans of the ability to “sensitively communicate” their opposition to human rights protections.
A Politico headline (2/25/21) put that approach on full display: “Historic LGBTQ Rights Bill Passes—After Exposing GOP Divisions.” The piece, by Olivia Beavers and Melanie Zanona, highlighted the Republican Party’s newest attention-seeking conspiracy theorist, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whose anti-trans harassment of fellow Rep. Marie Newman, who has a transgender daughter, drew widespread condemnation. “Some Republicans,” Politico reported,
worry that [Greene’s] controversial antics…have stomped on their attempts to sensitively communicate why they are opposed to the LGBTQ rights bill. Most Republicans say they oppose the measure due to its perceived infringement on religious freedom, not out of discriminatory sentiment toward LGBTQ people — a fine line that Greene has effectively erased.
But Politico did its best to help out the GOP’s attempts to “sensitively communicate.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was described as opposing the bill based on “its effects on religious liberties and women’s sports,” saying it is part of a Democratic “onslaught against freedom of religion—for girls’ sports as well.” Politico allowed him to make these claims without a shred of evidence.
Trans women and men have been participating in sports, and efforts to exclude them are not about “protection” but rather control, and the ongoing effort to erase trans people from all facets of society. In fact, scientists have repeatedly stated that there is no single biological determinate for sex, and a person’s sex assigned at birth does not innately yield them advantages or disadvantages in any manner of competition.
The piece also quoted Rep. Chris Stewart, author of a “compromise” bill “aimed at protecting LGBTQ rights as well as religious freedom”: “‘It isn’t an either-or,’ Stewart said, referring to protecting LGBTQ rights and religious freedom. ‘We believe it can be both.'”
But alas, Beavers and Zanona wrote, “that message has been complicated by Greene”—not, apparently, by the fact that civil rights and LGBTQ groups have pointed out that Stewart’s bill is “deeply dangerous” and would not just “essentially licens[e] discrimination against LGBTQ people and women,” but also “erode protections that already exist for people based on race, sex and religion,” a stance only briefly and vaguely referenced in the article.
Politico wasn’t alone in its problematic approach to the Equality Act. CNN (2/25/21) reported that “opponents say [the bill] would force women and girls to share private spaces with men,” and that “critics also say the bill could facilitate men participating in women’s sports if they identify as female”—formulations that accept the transphobic misgendering of trans women, akin to reporting that “critics of the Civil Rights Act say that it would give subhumans the same rights as people.”
CNN went on to quote Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, who called the bill a “devastating attack on humanity,” and claimed that it “recklessly requires girl’s and women’s restrooms, lockers, gyms or any place a female might seek privacy, to surrender that privacy to biological males.”
The only rebuttal CNN offered to these gross misrepresentations came in the form of vague quotes from Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, calling Republicans “mean” and emphasizing the need for “pride.”
NBC (2/25/21) offers three paragraphs of transphobic propaganda from the Heritage Foundation—but no rebuttal from trans people.
NBC (2/25/21) quoted the website of the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank at length, giving a platform to baseless claims about what would result from the bill’s passage—from stating that people might lose their jobs or businesses if they don’t “conform to new sexual norms,” to asserting that the bill would “leave women vulnerable to sexual assault.” The network’s choice to regurgitate the think tank’s claim about sexual assault is particularly abominable considering trans people face staggering, unconscionable rates of violence, including sexual assault and murder.
The Hill (2/25/21) also quoted lies about the bill without offering any rejoinders. It printed a lengthy excerpt from Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who made many aggressive claims about abortions, surgeries and gender identity during his floor speech about the bill. That quote followed several paragraphs stating similar conservative claims about freedom and religious liberty; the paragraph after it merely mentioned a number of large companies that support the bill.
Each of these outlets offered influential platforms to Republicans to lambast the bill and vilify the LGBTQ community with antiquated and deeply harmful talking points. Crucially, opponents were given space to make false or misleading claims about the impact of the bill, while proponents were rarely given a chance to offer a vision of what they hoped the bill would accomplish.
What those advocates have made clear, outside of these articles, is that the Equality Act would finally expand and codify the tenuous anti-discrimination protections LGBTQ people currently have, making them significantly harder to take away. As Imara Jones, the creator of TransLash Media and a trans woman of color, explained on MSNBC (2/28/21):
As long as people can use their own discrimination as a basis to deny us equal access to housing, to education, to health care, to the full range of things that everyone else has, makes the case that we need the Equality Act.
That lack of equality, she said, “underscores that the work of this country remains fundamentally undone.”
The Guardian (2/25/21) was able to cover the Equality Act without spreading falsehoods about trans people.
International news outlets like the BBC (2/26/21) and the Guardian (2/25/21) have done a significantly better job of covering the bill’s passage. “Equality Act: US House Passes Sweeping LGBTQ+ Rights Bill,” read the Guardian headline above a piece that focused on the bill’s real implications. The article quoted a diverse set of LGBTQ people, including Janson Wu, executive director of GLAAD and a gay Asian American—though it failed to quote a trans person in its reporting.
The British paper also mentioned the Republican opposition and the uphill battle the bill faced in the Senate, but, importantly, it did so without giving a platform to unsubstantiated claims and hate speech. By withholding that platform, it also protects LGBTQ people. US outlets should take a cue from their British counterparts.
Featured image: Photo of rainbow flags accompanying a BBC story (2/26/21) about the Equality Act.
Not even “false balance” here
Just falsehoods given free reign
shut up chatbot
What? No reply to girls robbed of scholarships by genetic boys? No reply to the girl whose state record just got beat by a genetic boy? No reply to women in safe houses who don’t want to sleep next to a man? No reply to the workers facing jail time for not using the “right” pronoun? No reply to employers who turn off customers by having to hire a person who doesn’t meet their presentation? No reply to those of us who refuse to say that a man just had a baby?
The Chatty, “I’m so compassionate. I’ll support laws that help out transsexuals. Never mind the consequences. I’m a good person. Be damned those cis gendered people. They’ve had enough privileges. I’m a great, caring person. Those battered women are just bigots. Look at how compassionate I am toward transsexuals. Aren’t I a great person? “
“tim”:
Fuck what you think.
The good news is that you have no defense for all of the harm you are creating. Only your fellow virtue signalers will agree with you. Not because it’s logical, but because you’re both too far into this to say, “I think we made a mistake.” I would have respect for you if you just said, “I’ve given this some thought. It is wrong to upend all of these other people’s rights and protections for the tiny number of trannies.”
If you can’t be man enough to say that, then defend each point:
1) Girls losing to trans girls
2) Girls losing scholarships to trans girls
3) Women being forced to sleep next to trans women in a battered shelter
4) Jailing workers for using the wrong pronoun
If you don’t defend each point, I know that you are a heartless individual who doesn’t care at all about women’s issues. Oh, you’ll say you do, but your actions speak louder than your words. Does that make you a closet misogynist? I think it would!
“tim”,
This is why chatbots are idiots.
Anyone with access to a search engine can debunk every point the chatbot “tim” brought up.
Notice how “tim” didn’t give a single example from empirical reality where any of the shit “tim” posted actually occurs? Not a single by-name example in any of its filibustering nonsense.
This is all the shitposting chatbot “tim” is good for:
Flooding the system with shit to see what sticks.
To tim,
“The strawman fallacy is a form of argument, and an informal fallacy, of having the impression of having refuted an argument; whereas the proper idea under discussion was not properly addressed.” -from Wikipedia
The strawman argument must be the only technique, that is able to be algorithmically transcribed into English text, so that a chatbot can appear to be “arguing”.
Notice how “tim” didn’t give a single example, not one by name empirical case in reality where any of the hateful shit it posted occurs….why is that?
All of this transphobic rhetoric of tim’s is bullshit that’s why. “tim” repeatedly ducks and dodges, and now tim thinks it has won because it has built up a mountain of straw and has burned it all down, and pointed “see look it is burning.”
Nice try idiot.
Which of my ideas were strawmen? You just can’t justify being harmful to women. I noticed you didn’t go after Terri. She said exactly what I said, just not with the details of the harm you and this author represent.
“tim” said – “Which of my ideas were straw men?”
Answer: ALL OF THEM
If tim cares so much about women, why didn’t tim quote a single women who was harmed by a transgendered person?
Not one.
If tim can’t name one case where a “a girl was robbed of scholarships by a genetic boy” – tim is spouting textbook STRAW MAN nonsense. NY Post articles, and anything mishandled and misreported by right wing “tabloid infotainment” that acts like news: DOES NOT COUNT EITHER.
As for all of the rest of tim’s right-wing Heritage Foundation talking points, they too, are nothing but hateful rhetoric masquerading as caring for women.
If “tim” cannot cite the passage in the fictional California law, that says state workers face prison for failing to use the correct pronoun, tim is fluffing up yet another pile of straw to burn.
Hateful, bigoted bullshit, by any other name, even calling it ‘strawmen ideas’ obfuscates the real world damage, that such cruel, mean, cowardly and heartless fake virtue signaling causes.
CA bill HSC § 1439.51 Signed by Jerry Brown.
https://www.outsports.com/2021/2/24/22298858/biden-justice-connecticut-trans-student-athletes-federal-lawsuit-adf-terry-miller-andraya-yearwood
https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/09/30/anchorage-settles-case-on-transgender-access-to-womens-shelter/
Get educated. You are harming women with your stupid ideas.
Either you are naive or you’re a misogynist. Pick your title.
You’re wrong about most of your ideas (this and others). Not entirely your fault, you’ve been brainwashed since kindergarten. Look for the truth, not confirmation on your ideology.
tim,
– I have read up about HSC 1439.51,Fox News or wherever tiny tim scavenged that bs, lied. The state law does not threaten imprisonment for using the incorrect pronoun.
– Politico ran a piece debunking this “prison for wrong pronoun” bullshit.
– The story about the Anchorage “women’s battered home shelter” I read, said that Anchorage had to pay out damages of $100, 001 for denying transgender women access.
– Thethree Connecticut female athletes did not file a “suit”, you knob. They filed a discrimination complaint about some shit they couldn’t prove and it was dropped.
– Once again, “tim” brings nothing but right wing tabloid infotainment garbage that fronts as “news”.
tim,
Oh so now I’m the one with “ideology”? Bullshit.
It’s tim, or your third person handlers from the Charlatan Death cult of the Evangelical Christian Right who are the weirdos.
Why are you or your programmers so obsessed with LGBTQ and specifically transgender women?
You are a weirdo.
“You’re wrong”..”conformation ideology”
Says the self deluded solipsist who thinks he is a libertarian.
Well homie, at least I’m not the one being a nosy, hatefully-intrusive, anti-libertarian. At least I don’t adhere to a political party and movement literally obsessed with eliminating diversity, in order to homogenize consent and free will. It is ya’ll on the right who are in fact supporters of laws that promote and legalize discrimination and disenfranchisement of whole populations of people.
You are an anti-democratic, anti-social cultist, a hypocrite, one who wishes for nothing more than to make us all robotic worshippers of your neolibertarian solipsistic nightmare. That’s you and your ilk.
You’ve made it your personal mission to constantly appear on FAIR to browbeat the diverse group of contributors, anyone of color, anyone who is female and anyone who writes in support of the LGBTQ community.
You attempt to spread your old played out stank religio-cultural hate, lies and right wing propaganda, and most choose to ignore you.
Not me…My theory is that you may not even be an actual human, just some planned oppositional chatbot…
Of course I could be wrong, and if you are indeed human, empirical reality, ie; the here-and-now is not your high suit:
“you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, constantly pissing on the present.”
Your obsession with the mythical past of America, and the Biblical End of it all if we don’t “morally fly straight”- all of it is nothing but fake-ass fear-driven talk about shit that never was and shit that never comes to be – it makes you weirdos the dogmatists, the hyper extreme cultists, who are squandering the great gift of the eternal now.
Whatever “tim”, do your thing, keep being a creep, keep snooping into other people’s lives, keep hating and punching down if it makes you happy.
The one thing that is crystal clear to me, is that you and people like you are on their way out…good riddance.
tim don’t try to deflect this toward Terri.
I guess since tim is a “genetic boy” he’d like nothing more than for a female FAIR commenter to take some heat for a change, eh? Is this not a kind of misogynist jack move in and of itself?
Where I grew up, if ever a man tried to blame a nearby women to wiggle out of some shit the man started…..we”d forever think of that man as a Mark-Ass Buster.
Ha ha ha tim is a jack, a mark and a buster! I knew it.
HSC § 1439.51
https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/09/30/anchorage-settles-case-on-transgender-access-to-womens-shelter/
https://www.outsports.com/2021/2/24/22298858/biden-justice-connecticut-trans-student-athletes-federal-lawsuit-adf-terry-miller-andraya-yearwood
Just read. Educate your self. Truth over ideology.
I replied last night. My comments were “moderated” out. Why FAIR is afraid of truth speaks volumes about FAIR.
Read HSC 1439.51
Read about Anchorage’s women’s battered home shelter
Read about Connecticut girl who had a suit until Biden’s DoJ dropped the suit. The suit was over a tranny who got a scholarship that she would have likely received if he hadn’t competed.
tim tells me to “Just read educate yourself.”
tim and its isomorphic irony with such clearly solipsistic, inhuman drivel, totally indistinguishable from a computer program masquerading as a human being.
tim what reason do I even have to believe any of what is printed here under the moniker “tim” comes from a human being?
If you are indeed an actual person, why are you so obsessed with transgender women?
tim,
– I have read up about HSC 1439.51, and Fox News or wherever tiny tim scavenged that bs about prison-for-wrong-pronoun, has lied. The state law does not threaten imprisonment for using the incorrect pronoun.
– Politico ran a piece debunking this “prison for wrong pronoun” bullshit.
– The story about the Anchorage “women’s battered home shelter”, said that Anchorage had to pay out damages of $100, 001 for denying transgender women access.
– The three Connecticut female athletes did not file a “suit”, you knob. They filed a discrimination complaint about some shit they couldn’t prove and it was dropped.
– Once again, “tim” brings nothing but straw, from right wing tabloid infotainment that fronts as “news”.
Do I have to do everything for you? SB 219 codifies the punishment up to one year! Dolt.
Anchorage is still correct! Abused woman? Sleep next to a man!
Oooh, I used the wrong term. You didn’t put your comma inside the quote. Are we going to play that game? They filed a complaint. It was dropped by Biden’s DoJ.
Let’s face it, you don’t care about women. You’re a misogynist!
“a person’s sex assigned at birth does not innately yield them advantages or disadvantages in any manner of competition.”
Then why bother having women’s sports at all?
Agreed. What scientist would say something this dumb? Where is the common sense? EVERYONE (except these scientists that are useful idiots) knows that in general, men are stronger and faster than women.
It is amazing that an article can include statements that stupid. It is equally amazing that people will defend this article. Ideology apparently trumps wisdom and common sense.
FWIW, I would have no problem with a separate category in sports – the tranny category. Same with bathrooms, same with shelters. Unfortunately, the people that agree with this article would then force all companies to have a third type of bathroom (economically unfeasible for many businesses and buildings). It’s always first order problem solving with that group though. Who cares about the consequences. They’re only interested in virtue signalling.
To tiny-tim:
Nobody gives a shit about the trash you post here. Get it?
tim,
tim said:
“Everyone knows in general men are stronger and faster than women.”
Below is an example of why “tim’s” comment is fallacious:
“Everyone knows, in general, that cops are racist.”
Just as it is false that every transgender athlete has an unfair advantage, it is also false that every individual cop is racist.
UserFroendlyyy,
Here’s the full quote, so that others can see how nonsensical your out-of-context comment was:
“In fact, scientists have repeatedly stated that there is no single biological determinate for sex, and a person’s sex assigned at birth does not innately yield them advantages or disadvantages in any manner of competition.”
Within the sentence, the words “repeatedly stated”, were highlighted—hyperlink text—and led to other information. Did you even bother to click and see what scientists have repeatedly said?
You probably don’t care, and left off the beginning of the sentence, because your intention was to make the quote appear ad hoc.
You must have a hard time understanding the difference between qualitative categories of information, and quantitative categories of information.
Either you do not realize there is a difference, or you are trying to fool others (like tim) into thinking such differences are trivial when they are the entire point in contention.
The voices being left out are those of women whose sex based rights will be lost if gender ID is written into law.
Terri
What are “sex based rights”?
Which rights get lost? We talking Bill of Rights rights?
What are “gender ID laws.” Can you name one?
You seem to be saying, that somehow it diminishes the rights of women, if we outlaw the discrimination of transgender women.
Maybe you mean how the rights of white people were diminished when it was outlawed to discriminate against people of color? Oh okay.
By your logic, a Federal law that outlaws the discrimination of people of color, and mandates the equal protection of people of color, in 29 states that do not have such laws, is a “racial ID law”, eh?
You seem to have missed this part in the above article:
“….formulations [of the bill’s press coverage] that accept the transphobic misgendering of trans women, (are) akin to reporting that “critics of the Civil Rights Act say that it would give subhumans the same rights as people.”
Terri, if you are hurt fully and hatefully claiming that transgender women are somehow inauthentic women, masquerading for play, or not to be considered the voices of women on principle, then you are making the author’s point.
The real question to ponder here, is why tim is so obsessed with transgender women?
tim
Unlike “tim”, I will actually post a reference for readers to see for themselves the shit tim posted about “jail for incorrect pronouns” is baseless, bogus and false.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/sep/26/claims-mislead-about-california-bill-forcing-jail-/
An important clarification:
timid tim is conflating – there is no compelled jail time for accidentally using the incorrect pronoun. Such cases are not equal to the willful and repeated discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sex and gender.
In any state where there are anti-discrimination laws, it absolutely is a prosecutable offense to purposefully violate a person’s human rights on the basis of their sex or gender.
Here is a quote from the Politifact article linked to above:
“The bill is very, very clear that what is prohibited is the willful engagement and repeated engagement in discriminatory conduct against LGBT seniors. So, if someone makes a mistake or doesn’t know what a person’s gender identity is and uses the incorrect pronoun that is not a violation of the statute,”
– Courtney Joslin (a quote from the article)
If you haven’t seen it yet, the documentary “The Lady and the Dale,” is an HBO documentary series about a transgender women who got railroaded by a transphobic misgendering corporate media bigot (Tucker Carlson’s father – go figure) and a justice system skewed by the same endemic bias.
The misogynist with no name (aka the coward),
“You’ve made it your personal mission to constantly appear on FAIR to browbeat the diverse group of contributors, anyone of color, anyone who is female and anyone who writes in support of the LGBTQ community.”
Greg Shupak, Josh Cho, Jim Naureckas, Ari Paul are people of color, woman or LGBTQ supporters? When I criticized their articles, I was browbeating women, people of color, or people supporting the LGBTQ community (even thought the articles weren’t about that)?
So you want diversity of thought, except for conservative thought. That’s the one type of thought that’s not allowed? What you’re saying is, “I just want to read stuff I agree with.”
Are women not allowed to be debated? Are they too frail? Blacks? Too weak, too stupid to be debated? I treat all of them the same. Learn what a T Test of two means is and come back and show me that I treated these groups differently. If so, I will apologize. If not, you owe me an apology (I won’t hold my breath).
You’re upset that I read articles that I disagree with and then post my disagreement? Is the purpose of a comment section to only write praise? I would be thrilled if you read conservative articles and then posted where they are wrong. Only through public debate with reasonable people (which the “coward” is not) can the truth be discovered.
To “chatbot tim”,
EGO = Edging God Out
tim is so predictable, now all of a sudden it’s tim who is the victim? Ahhhh, I see. Go ahead “tim” keep pointing that finger, keep ducking and dodging, keep blaming all of us out here, when it’s all of that in there – which really ails you homie.
Every time you point a finger, you have three pointing back at your self, foolio.
It is tim who is the coward, tim who is the intolerant bigot, tim who is taking the easy way out, and tim who ALWAYS refuses to see past his/it’s own ego defense mechanisms.