The aftermath of last week’s Toronto protests against controversial writer Meghan Murphy placed a glaring light on how the mainstream media is failing the trans community.
A group of protestors, opposing a Murphy speaking event hosted at a Toronto Public Library location, booed exiting attendees, according to coverage in The Globe & Mail.
Murphy is a self-proclaimed feminist who has been labelled by some as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), and holds views considered by some to be transphobic.
Following the protest, a wave of columns written by cis people, such as Rex Murphy and Barbara Kay in The National Post, dominated the online mastheads of numerous other media giants.
The fact that much of the online conversation following the protests have been cis columnists supporting Murphy is not the only example of how trans people are excluded from conversations about them.
A study published in the International Journal of Communication showed between 2009 and 2013, four of the most popular American media outlets published 144 articles about gender diversity, but only 18 per cent of their sources were trans people, compared to 55 per cent being expert sources.
It’s not that people who aren’t trans can’t weigh in on these issues. But it’s important to notice when there is under-representation, especially when it impacts the people who are being covered.
This serves both the coverage and the trans community, because who knows better about their own community than trans people themselves?
File photo.
