Niko Stratis is fed up with the media.
Stratis, a trans writer, recently published a piece in the Huffington Post criticizing the media’s portrayal of the Meghan Murphy protest on Oct. 29. Hundreds gathered outside a Toronto Public Library (TPL) branch that day to counter the self-described feminist’s anti-trans views.
But for Stratis, who spoke at the protest, the media categorically failed to cover the issue in a compassionate way.
“I’ve given hours of my life giving interviews to be one sentence at the end of an article,” Stratis said over the phone.
Stratis said trans voices were barely featured in the media coverage of the rally.
“It’s everybody talking about it without ever really speaking to us,” they said. “We’re always a blip. We’re always the background.”
Ask the experts
Stratis is not the only person concerned by how mainstream outlets reported on the protest.
Gwen Benaway, a trans woman and a PhD student in women and gender studies at the University of Toronto, said the media should have consulted more trans experts and women and gender studies experts.
“They asked us for our subjective emotional experience, but they didn’t ask us about any of the intellectual arguments that were being put forward,” she said. “I think that was a missed opportunity.”
Stratis agreed, adding that prominent voices at the protest were painted as hostile.
“We’ve been framed as angry and aggressive trans-rights activists,” they said. “For a good half hour, that gathering of people was reciting poetry to each other.”
According to Benaway, who won a Governor General’s Literary Award the morning of the protest, the absence of scholarly voices in media coverage of these issues is glaringly obvious.
“That’s allowed [the media] to continue casting gender critical feminist thought, Meghan Murphy, as a legitimate feminist, whereas I think most feminist scholars in Canada and abroad would frame Meghan Murphy as profoundly anti-feminist,” said Benaway.
She said feminist scholars and trans journalists could have situated the protest within a global environment that threatens trans rights.
“That’s the kind of work that actually needs to happen to contextualize what’s happening,” she said. “Not to look at [the TPL protest] as an event, but to see it as part of this broader political strategy.”
Fact and fiction
Mainstream media coverage of the protests has predominantly been commentary by cisgender opinion writers, supporting Meghan Murphy.
Benaway said these major publications should not be providing columnists such as Barbara Kay and Rex Murphy with platforms when it is clear they do not have a grasp of the issue’s details.
“They keep framing this issue around free speech and freedom of expression,” she said. “But that’s really not the issue here. It’s about the way in which these ideologies are starting to invade and take over public space with the way hate speech is being normalized.”
She said this coverage perpetuates a dangerous, false narrative about trans people.
“There’s been all this messaging about how we’re taking over spaces and driving people out, but really, we’re a very small group of people,” said Benaway. “We have very limited power, and we’re quite vulnerable.”
Stratis agreed, saying writers such as Marcus Gee and Sue Ann Levy complain about being underserved, despite taking up more space than trans people in the mediascape.
“It gets frustrating to see those voices time and again be given the most prominence, while at the same time everyone is decrying that they’re somehow being silenced,” they said. “They couldn’t be louder.”
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists such as Meghan Murphy should not be given public space to voice their hate speech, said Julia Sinclair-Palm, a childhood and youth studies professor at Carleton whose research centres on queer and trans youth.
“When we cast trans folks as the kind of problem that needs to be accommodated or removed from our normative society rather than addressing transphobia, we hurt everyone, but especially trans folks,” they said.
“There’s a way that media perpetuates these things by often setting them up as a debate on whether trans lives deserve respect and rights, and in that way, they dehumanize trans folks.”
Trans voices first
Fae Johnstone, a trans educator and master’s student at Carleton, said there is a lack of trans representation in mainstream media.
“I’ve seen countless National Post or Globe and Mail articles where somebody’s got a whole ramble on trans people, but there’s no actual trans person quoted in the piece,” they said. “Get trans folks to write about trans experiences.”
The absence of trans voices in news coverage transcends borders.
A study of American news media found that from 2004 to 2013, only 294 articles discussing trans issues and individuals were published among 13 of the most circulated daily newspapers in the United States. Within these articles, only 46 per cent of all paragraphs mentioned a specific trans person.
Another study found that between 2009 and 2013, four of the most popular American media outlets published a total of 144 pieces that centred on gender diversity. Only 18 per cent of the sources in these pieces were trans people, while 55 per cent were experts.
Johnstone said it is important to have trans representation across the board in mainstream media, not just with trans issues.
“A lot of trans folks do not want to spend their time talking about trans issues. I definitely don’t,” they said. “I have so much value to contribute beyond that.”
Johnstone said mainstream media needs to normalize the fact that trans people exist in the same spaces as cisgender people.
“Every time a trans person is interviewed, they’re constructed as a ‘trans rights advocate,’” they said. “Trans folks are writers, creators, engineers. We work at coffee shops, we are everywhere and we’re not necessarily activists.”
Shared responsibility
For Sinclair-Palm, the onus should not just be on trans folks to instigate change. Cisgender allies also have a role to play—though they should not speak for trans folks, they have a responsibility to defend trans rights.
“It’s important for allies to step up and take some of the labour,” they said. “The more that allies recognize and acknowledge the expertise of trans folks and support the work that trans folks are doing, the better—and that can happen in media as well as in other spaces.”
Benaway said issues like those surrounding the TPL protest are not as complicated as they may seem.
“We’re simply asking that people consider our humanity more,” she said.
Featured image by KC Hoard. With files from KC Hoard.
