After a New York City woman was arrested over the weekend and charged after police say she went on an anti-white hate crime spree, several news outlets chose to downplay the fact that the woman was transgender.

That’s a problem for many reasons, which I’ll explain later in this piece.

First, the story. NBC News reports:

Tasha Heard was arrested Saturday evening in connection with at least two separate attacks, though police were reportedly questioning her about several other similar incidents. In one alleged incident, Heard, who is black is accused of approaching a white couple in their 50s on Friday afternoon while they shopped in the Bronx. She reportedly told the couple she hated white people before assaulting them.

There are seven other victims Heard allegedly pepper sprayed. All of them were white.

One of the most infuriating things about this story, beyond the fact that it’s obviously disturbing that anyone would do this, is how major news outlets like the New York Times downplayed the transgender aspect.

In their report it was not mentioned in the headline at all:

She Said She Hated White People. Then She Attacked With Pepper Spray.

The Times noted Heard’s transgender status later on in their reporting.

NBC News didn’t include it in their headline, either. In fact, you don’t find out Heard is a transgender woman until midway through their report. Their headline:

NYC woman charged with hate crimes after series of pepper spray attacks

Just going off those headlines alone, you’d think a woman went off the deep end and went on racially motivated attacks.

The NY Daily News was the only news outlet I saw that mentioned the transgender aspect in the headline.

Why is this so important? A lot of people don’t read beyond headlines or the first couple of paragraphs in a story. In our “insta-news” society, people expect their news in 140 characters or less. So in their minds, this story goes down as being about an unhinged woman who engaged in random hate crimes, when in reality it’s about a man identifying as a woman who allegedly went on this crime spree.

Beyond the deceptive reporting is the issue of crime statistics. Will these violent crimes in particular be recorded as being perpetrated by a man or as being committed by a woman? Laws in many states say a person identifying as another gender should be considered that gender under the law. Which means if a man identifying as a woman commits a violent crime, the crime stats don’t make the crucial gender distinction.

This also means that when a man identifying as a woman commits a sexual assault against an actual woman, he could be sent to a women’s prison, which could lead to more assaults (in fact, this has already happened).

So not only are the stats for crimes committed by transgender women dangerously skewed, but when men identifying as women are “breaking records” in women’s sports (demoralizing actual female athletes in the process), these aren’t actually women breaking records, but men breaking women’s records.

None of this is right. Not the misleading reporting. Not the skewed crime statistics. Not men taking over women’s sports. None of it.

Watch the PIX11 News report on Heard’s alleged crime spree below:

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—Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–