Trans reporting fail, missing the point
Comments (12) There’s a story at the LA Times about a trans woman in prison who is suing the state to provide gender reassignment surgery and move her to the women’s jail (from her current housing in the mens’). Surprisingly, the article is pretty well done, as mainstream articles goes: it respects the prisoner’s pronouns and gender, and while it touches on trans folks’ assigned sexes, it doesn’t do so in a sensationalist way. For major news coverage, I was fine with it.
Not so coverage of the same story in Australia’s Herald Sun:
Lyralisa Stevens, who was born male but lives as a female, said in a suit filed in San Francisco’s 1st District Court that the removal of her male genitalia and subsequent transfer to a female prison were necessary to save him from the threat of harm, the Los Angeles Times reports. (Emphasis added)
Well, no, actually the LA Times said the suit claimed the surgery was necessary to save her from the threat of harm. But the token “her male genitalia” is the only nod the article makes to the prisoner’s gender – the rest of the article uses male pronouns, and even goes so far as to say “In supporting documents, psychotherapist Lin Fraser – referring to Stevens as “her” – said she held “grave concerns” for Stevens’ safety because the inmate “had been put alone in cells all night long with men who threatened and abused her,” the Los Angeles Times reported.” (Again, emphasis added.)
Fuck you, Herald Sun! Fraser is referring to Stevens as female because – imagine that – it’s the respectful thing to do!
But both papers avoid the larger question: should the court require state-provided SRS?
Themocracy