New York Times Contributors Slam Paper’s Trans Coverage

More than 200 New York Times contributors have signed a searing open letter conveying “serious concerns” about the ways the news organization has covered issues relating to transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.

An open letter also published Wednesday on the topic from GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy group, attracted signatures from dozens of organizations and celebrities, including Judd Apatow, Gabrielle Union, Jonathan Van Ness and Margaret Cho.

Outside the Grey Lady’s Manhattan headquarters, a box truck sat parked with glaring messages on all sides decrying the paper’s coverage, while a handful of protesters marched on the sidewalk.

“DEAR NEW YORK TIMES: STOP QUESTIONING TRANS PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO EXIST & ACCESS TO MEDICAL CARE,” the truck’s message read on one side.

“EVERY MAJOR MEDICAL ASSOCIATION SUPPORTS GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTHCARE FOR TRANSGENDER YOUTH,” another panel on the vehicle declared.

Both open letters called on the paper to implement immediate change.

The contributors’ letter, addressed to standards editor Philip B. Corbett, states that fair reporting on gender issues is “eclipsed” by deeply flawed stories and fretful headlines.

The “Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources,” the letter says.

Signatories include staff writers and accomplished authors like Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit and Jia Tolentino.

The contributors pointed specifically to two New York Times features: Emily Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” and Katie Baker’s “When Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Don’t Know.” They said the stories failed to give readers key information about certain sources’ anti-transgender bias.

The group also laid out how Times reporting has been used to advance anti-transgender policies in laws and courts, with some officials relying on the paper’s “reputation as the ‘paper of record’ to justify criminalizing gender-affirming care,” despite the fact that such treatments as puberty blockers have been the standard of care for decades.

That people who do not conform to gender norms exist in the world, and have for a very long time, was highlighted by an anecdote about 14th-century English police interrogating a queer sex worker.

“This is not a cultural emergency,” the letter said.

It went on to recount how The New York Times treated gay people in decades past, by withholding promotions for gay staffers and refusing to put news about the AIDS crisis on the front page until the disease had killed more than 500 New Yorkers.

“You no doubt recall a time in more recent history when it was ordinary to speak of homosexuality as a disease at the American family dinner table — a norm fostered in part by the New York Times’ track record of demonizing queers through the ostensible reporting of science,” the letter read.

The contributors called on Corbett to respond to their concerns.

The Times didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.