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gotta love the onion
Feb. 18th, 2023 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
virgosplainingFor those unaware, hundreds of contributors to the NYT wrote an open letter addressing concerns of the dangerous & biased way the Times has been been covering trans people. They, of course, take no responsibility and instead condescend to their own writers and readers about the "important journalism" they are doing. (Some have pointed out that it's always been trash when it comes to queer issues, as it came under similar fire during the AIDs crisis.)
Their self-importance has been satirized perfectly by The Onion, who was in truly incredible form that day:
It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible
Scathing. I love a writer with a solid crystal of salt in their heart. The entire thing is wonderful, and hey -- clicking on the link is the way they keep making money.
Footnote: the monthly social is still going through this weekend! ♥
Their self-importance has been satirized perfectly by The Onion, who was in truly incredible form that day:
It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible
“Quentin” is a 14-year-old assigned female at birth who now identifies as male against the wishes of his parents. His transition was supported by one of his unmarried teachers, who is not a virgin. He stole his parents’ car and drove to the hospital, where a doctor immediately began performing top surgery on him. Afterward, driving home drunk from the hospital, Quentin became suicidally depressed, and he wonders now, homeless and ridden with gonorrhea, if transitioning was a mistake.
We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.
We stand behind our recent obsessed-seeming torrent of articles and essays on trans people, which we believe faithfully depicts their lived experiences as weird and gross. We remain dedicated to finding the angles that best frame the basic rights of the gender-nonconforming as up for debate, and we will use these same angles over and over again in hopes that this repetition makes them suffer. As journalists, it is our obligation to entertain any and all pseudoscience that gives bigotry an intellectual veneer. We must be diligent in laundering our vitriol through the posture of journalistic inquiry, and we must be allowed to fixate on the genitals.
It is against free speech to stop us from fixating on the genitals.
Scathing. I love a writer with a solid crystal of salt in their heart. The entire thing is wonderful, and hey -- clicking on the link is the way they keep making money.
Footnote: the monthly social is still going through this weekend! ♥
