I’m tired of reading articles about transgender people where the writer ignores the gender expressed by the person they are writing about. That or they put it in quotation marks. Some people it seems let themselves make it to the news to use the old “we’re here, we’re queer”! And I respect that, people have to know that we exist as people and not sideshows. However, I wonder if the way the articles are written provides aid to the sideshow theory. When the public reads these articles it feeds them messages that say its ok to ignore expressed gender, its ok to ridicule and to disregard transgender people. I think that, sometimes, when reading newspaper articles the tone of the article forms the reader’s opinion of the subject. I know this isn’t always true, especially if the reader has pre-formed opinions or contrary knowledge. But most people don’t have positive pre-formed opinions of transgender people, if they have any at all, and the editors out there need to be more discriminating about the bias they let go to print. But hey, that’s journalism for you, the unbiased educator of the masses.
The Media
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