For too long, the media has published irresponsible, factually inaccurate and dehumanizing articles on transgender women. For many years, trans people appeared in print almost exclusively as dead bodies - almost always of murdered trans women of color, who face the highest rates of violence in the LGBT community.

Articles regularly use the wrong name and gender pronouns for these murder victims, and paint salacious pictures that suggest these women were sex workers who likely tricked men into sleeping with them and ultimately "had it coming".

The trans community has fought to end this negative press coverage – and for the media to actually write about the real lives and struggles of trans people. For too long.



Then, last week, Time published a cover story titled "The Transgender Tipping Point", featuring Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox and offering a broad introduction to transgender issues for the magazine's readers. Many trans advocates, including myself, think the article is imperfect – but it's also the best example of a positive, educational article on trans people and issues in such a high profile space.

So of course Kevin D Williamson at the conservative National Review felt it necessary to respond to this important moment in mainstream education by publishing an op-ed calling Laverne Cox "an effigy of a woman", referring to her with male pronouns, and claiming – in the face of scientific and medical consensus – that biological facts "prove" that transgender identities are invalid. Williamson also published a follow-up piece digging in his heels when his op-ed received the expected (and well-deserved) backlash.

That Williamson and the National Review would publish this click-bait hate speech is sadly no surprise. Then came an unexpected and considerably more disturbing turn: the Chicago Sun-Times chose to republish the op-ed over the weekend – and keep it up on their site until it was pulled on Tuesday after immense pressure from advocates, the trans community and other media organizations.

The paper released the following statement:

We try to present a range of views on an issue, not only those views we may agree with, but also those we don't agree with. A recent op-ed piece we ran online that was produced by another publication initially struck as provocative. Upon further consideration, we concluded the essay did not include some key facts and its overall tone was not consistent with what we seek to publish. The column failed to acknowledge that the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have deemed transgender-related care medically necessary for transgender people. It failed as well to acknowledge the real and undeniable pain and discrimination felt by transgender people, who suffer from notably higher rates of depression and suicide. We have taken the post down and we apologize for the oversight.

(Williamson, of course, wrote a second follow-up Tuesday night, decrying the Sun-Times's decision as "an unhappy reminder that post-operative transsexuals are not the only men who have had their characteristic equipment removed".)



While I'm glad the Sun-Times took down the article and released an apology, we never should have had to fight their publication of this op-ed. The paper's apology is particularly infuriating, as it implies that a range of viewpoints on the validity of trans people's existence are worthy of publication. While the editors acknowledge that the medical establishment considers trans healthcare medically necessary, and that we face extreme discrimination and violence, the Sun-Times fails to make a clear statement that trans people's identities are valid and that questioning this is not legitimate journalism.



It's not like this is the first time someone has had to correct journalists on these topics.

Only last year, when WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning came out as a trans woman, major media organizations ignored their own style guides, misgendered Manning, questioned her gender and ultimately made "the story" about the difficulties of reporting on trans people – despite the fact that most of them already had guidelines in place on how to do so respectfully. (Williamson published a hit piece on Manning at the National Review at that time that is very similar to his piece about Cox – questioning the legitimacy of trans women's identities is quite a pastime of his.)

In January, the website Grantland (which is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company) published an article – ostensibly about the inventor of a golf putter – that resulted in a prurient quest to uncover the subject's trans status, and which may have contributed to the article's subject's suicide.

Even incredible public representatives of the trans community like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock have been asked salacious questions about their genitals and transitions by journalists who seem more interested in talking about the particulars of our bodies than about our lives.

Each time the media fails so massively in reporting on trans people, advocates remind them that they already have style guides in place, and that organizations like Glaad provide glossaries that can easily give them the basics on trans issues. Yet time and again we see the same failures in the press, because far too many people in positions of power in media refuse to accept the existence of trans people and apparently think that, as journalists, they get to decide if our identities are valid or not.

Despite the positive publicity generated Cox's Time cover, trans women are still fighting for others in media to recognize our basic humanity. And there are very real consequences of this terrible media coverage: the trans community, particularly low-income trans women and trans people of color, face astronomically high rates of discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations; are far too often homeless or incarcerated; and trans women of color are facing a global epidemic of violence.

Publications could, in fact, fill their pages or websites with articles about the very real issues faced by trans people – and the work many of us are doing to end the injustices we all face. For instance, currently, a 16-year-old trans girl of color has been locked up in an adult prison for over 50 days without charges after already suffering abuse at the hands of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families – a gross case of abuse at the hands of the state. That story is undoubtedly more deserving of space in an publication than Williamson's stale, factually inaccurate rant.



The media has a responsibility to report on the world in a way that informs. But by spreading the same tired stereotypes about trans people, too many in the media are instead contributing directly to the kind of ignorance and dehumanization that breeds this discrimination and violence. Editors, columnists and reporters need to stop wasting space questioning trans people's right to exist. We're here, we're living, and we deserve to have our humanity recognized and represented.