Misleading coverage of trans youth

Trans youth may support each other, but they do not infect each other.

By Noah Berlatsky

The first time my daughter realized she was trans was when she was a freshman in high school. She went on the front porch in the middle of the night and had an out-of-body experience, looking down on herself.

“I realized that the vague dissatisfaction which had possessed me since starting puberty had a single, simple explanation,” she told me. “I was portraying the wrong gender.”

My daughter mentioned her realization to a couple of friends at school. But she didn’t feel that they took her seriously. She didn’t tell anyone for two years of increasing sadness, anxiety, and dysphoria.

The second time she admitted to herself that she was trans was in her junior year. She had found a number of trans friends, and after a lot of talks with peers about gender and identity, she came out to us. We were able to get her health care. Now she’s her happy, curious, outgoing self again.

My wife and I were very supportive of our daughter’s transition. And adolescents do look to parents for guidance. But they also rely on friends for emotional affirmation, and to tell them that they’re normal, brave, lovable, and attractive. For trans kids, having a community of other trans kids is incredibly valuable.

Young people benefit from having supportive friends. This is fairly obvious. And yet, it’s an insight that is missing from some of the most high-profile coverage of trans youth in the media.

Trans people are a small, misunderstood, and often despised minority. Unsurprisingly, reporting on trans teens and young people often picks up on societal prejudices.

Media stories about trans people and gender identity often advance misleading and biased narratives that make it harder for trans youth to access health care or to come out safely.

One narrative that is reiterated again and again is the idea that social contagion is a key reason why youth question their gender identities.

One narrative that is reiterated again and again is the idea that social contagion is a key reason why youth question their gender identities.

Articles about trans children sometimes present trans friends or peers as a vaguely — or not so vaguely — ominous threat, who lead cis children into disobedience, confusion, and mental illness.

Trans peers are not a source of comfort, information, and support in these articles.

Instead, they are a vector for “social contagion” — a term that is supposed to be a neutral descriptor of the spread of ideas, but which, in the context of homophobia, suggests good cis girls and boys are being infected with trans ideology and creeping trans identity.

You can see one important example of this bias against trans peers in an influential 2018 Atlantic cover story by Jesse Singal. He argues that “social forces can play a role in a young person’s gender questioning.”

Singal then tells the story of a young girl who called herself Delta (a common name among trans youth, my daughter tells me). Delta had many trans peers, and for a while identified as trans. This is framed as a kind of social contagion, even though the girl at the end of the interview sounds like she may well be nonbinary, despite considerable pressure from her parents to be cis. (“I didn’t want anything to do with gender labels—I was fine with just being me and not being a specific thing.”)

Singal does not even consider the possibility that Delta’s peers provided her needed support in the face of parental disapprobation.

Editor’s note: Although the author thought the teen might be non-binary because she said she wanted nothing to do with gender labels, the teen has since told us that she identifies as female.

Articles about trans children sometimes present trans friends or peers as a vaguely — or not so vaguely — ominous threat.

A similar example is this 2013 story by Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker.

Talbot talks to one mother, Melissa, who is supportive of her trans child, Skylar. As a result, Talbot is able to accompany Skylar to a support group and see how his friends cheer for and support one another.

Talbot also talks to another mother, Danielle, however, who is unsupportive of her child’s transition. The child did not want to be interviewed, and no peers were available.

Danielle talks broadly about youth, framing trans identity as a trend or a fad. “The kids who are edgy and funky and drawn to artsy things—these are conversations that are taking place in dorm rooms.” She then compares trans identity to “drug culture” of the sixties and to the “sexual culture of the eighties, with AIDS.”

Neither young people nor experts are given a chance to respond to the suggestion that trans people are an addiction or a disease.

Neither young people nor experts are given a chance to respond to the suggestion that trans people are an addiction or a disease.

A more recent example of this media bias is an op-ed in the Washington Post. It’s written by Laura Edwards-Leeper, founder of a pediatric trans clinic, and clinical psychologist Erica Anderson.

Edwards-Leeper was a major source for Singal’s Atlantic article, and has been arguing for years that trans youth are transitioning too quickly and that doctors and therapists need to reduce access to interventions like puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery.

Edwards-Leeper and Anderson discuss Patricia, a 13-year-old who was assaulted by an older cis girl, and later tells her parents she’s a trans boy. Leeper and Anderson link her trans identity to an “older girl who used they/them pronouns and introduced her to drugs, violent pornography and the notion of dissociation from her body.”

Edwards-Leeper and Anderson misgender the older nonbinary individual, and blame them for causing Patricia’s depression, though, again, she had been sexually assaulted by someone else. The trans friend was insulted and blamed in a national news outlet. No effort appears to have been made to get their perspective, or to ask if Patricia might have been looking to other trans youth for advice or help.

It’s true the older nonbinary friend is not named, and it’s true this is an op-ed. Even so, it is disturbing that the Post allowed adult journalists to make sweeping negative insinuations about a young person without question or opportunity for rebuttal.

Trans people are a small, misunderstood, and often despised minority. Reporting on trans teens and young people often picks up on societal prejudices.

Why is social contagion so frequent in media depictions of trans youth, while instances of supportive friendship networks are relatively unusual?

One reason for these failings is that most cis journalists (i.e., most journalists) see cis as the default, natural state. They ask why someone becomes trans, but not why someone becomes cis.

Another reason is that adult journalists center adult perspectives and adult choices. Almost all mainstream articles about trans youth are written not for the trans youth themselves, but for cis people, and especially cis parents, who want to understand their child’s gender identity – and often want to regulate it.

When issues affecting trans youth are framed as issues primarily affecting cis parents, young trans peers seem at best beside the point and at worst a potentially dangerous complication.

Almost all mainstream articles about trans youth are written not for the trans youth themselves, but for cis people, and especially cis parents.

So how can media outlets do better?

First, understand that trans youth may support each other, but they do not infect each other.

Biologist and trans writer and researcher Julia Serano has exhaustively documented the creation of the “social contagion” theory by anti-trans websites and parents over about six months in 2016. Queerness is not a disease, and those who frame it as such have an agenda.

In contrast, archival research by Jules Gill-Peterson shows that trans children have existed at least as long as we’ve had records. Trans people are more visible now because of greater acceptance and because the internet helps marginalized people find each other, as journalist Katelyn Burns explains at Vox.

More people identify as trans in part because of greater acceptance. But as medical writer Lindsey Tanner reports at AP, researchers are also learning to ask better questions in estimating trans populations. Experts now estimate that about .7% of U.S. youth 13-to-17 are transgender. But improved survey methodology alone is likely to boost that number in the future.

It’s also important to remember that trans youth are people and may even be readers.

Legally and ethically, it is often difficult to interview minors without their parents’ consent. If parents oppose their children’s transitions, it may be unsafe for young people to speak openly. Capturing the perspective of young people and their friends, especially if those perspectives contradict those of their parents, can be logistically impossible and even dangerous.

But that is all the more reason to be extremely careful about characterizing young people, and about allowing adults to paint them as a threat, without evidence or contradiction.

At the very least, journalists need to explain to readers why they are not able to talk to trans peers, or to explain the power dynamics that give adults so much more space in these conversations.

This isn’t to say that peers are always a positive influence, any more than parents are.

Trans peer groups “aren’t perfect,” my daughter says. “People suck. Even trans people.”

Trans youth can sometimes be unsupportive. They can sometimes be transphobic themselves. Community isn’t utopia.

But for my daughter, having a trans community was and remains a huge help. Parental support is great, but there’s no substitute for having peers who tell you that you’re not alone, not isolated, not unusual or broken.

“Without a circle of individuals who understand this very fundamental part of me,” my daughter says, “I’d be much worse off.”

Noah Berlatsky is a writer with bylines at the Editorial Board, NBC Think, Independent, Atlantic, Pacific Standard, and the Washington Post. You can follow him at @nberlat.

Journalist resources:
LGBTQ students deserve a voice. Here’s how education reporters cover them. (Poynter)
Negative Media Coverage of Transgender Children and Adolescents as a Barrier to Accessing Care (JAMA)
Style Guide (Trans Journalist Association)