Kulturkampf

[benji]

I haven’t worked since Nov. 3. After an all-nighter two days later to watch election results, I emailed my boss and HR to say I’d be unable to work that night. Then I slept for 16 hours. Every day. For a month.

From that email:

Every network I saw last night mentioned that Trump spent more money on anti-trans ads than on any other issue. And that it obviously worked. Let that sink in. We are about 1-2 percent of the population. And now we are more vulnerable than ever.

Whether it wants to admit this or not, The New York Times played a significant role in this outcome, allowing bad-faith actors’ propaganda into its coverage of us, which has led to Times articles being official court documents in legal cases in states passing bans.

I’d hoped to wake up to a brighter future in a better country. Both were worse than I’d been counting on, my future and my country. I was shattered. Still am.

Three people at work checked on me after the election. We have hundreds of employees. One family member checked on me. Maybe the lesson is, most people don’t care. Maybe they approve of what’s happening. Or, maybe people don’t know what’s happening. The Times and legacy media share some responsibility for that.

In February 2023, one year after the sale, I needed time off for mental health. The Times smugly rejected credible complaints about its coverage, dismissing trans journalists as “activists,” then a day later let trans people know what it really thinks of us. Its “In Defense of J.K. Rowling” column gutted me.

I emailed management:

In terms of scope and reach, I can’t think of an entity that has done more damage to the trans community in the past several years than the Times.

I referenced the column, which was bad enough then and has aged horribly (a common arc for Times opinions). She’s the villain we’ve always said she was.

Even if the timing of (the column) was mere coincidence and not a direct response to criticism, I wrote in my email, some decent human being in a position of power at the Times should have put that opinion piece on hold to avoid the appearance of giving an editorial middle finger to people like me. That no one stopped it was chilling to our community, but not a surprise.

My full email is in this post, but this part speaks to how beaten down I was:

I have never felt more alone, more isolated, than I do now, and the power imbalance in all of this, given the consequences to the trans community amid efforts to take away our healthcare and force us out of existence, is breathtaking in its own right.

The Times has been complicit in these efforts to do us harm, and trans journalists take offense at any suggestion to the contrary. … I don’t need to hear a lecture from anyone about how journalism works. This is my 40th year as a professional.

I took a month off. That was 23 months ago.

Feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler says, “Anti-gender is one of the vectors through which fascist passions are stoked and circulated, and those are passions that support increasingly authoritarian regimes that justify their wars and their acts of destruction by appearing as if they are putting an end to what threatens society with destruction.”

And from a November interview: “Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?”

We must stick together. Cisgender women, they’re coming for you too. Attacks on bodily autonomy attack all of us. I was never coming for you. My joy stole nothing from you.

The Times published the defense of the notoriously anti-trans Rowling on Feb. 16, 2023. I was diagnosed with heart failure two months later. My health nosedived. The diagnosis was later overturned, but the medical mystery remains. My body never got the memo.

They broke my heart. That’s my explanation.

That’s legal. They’re allowed to break my heart. Morally, they’re on their own.

There’s financial wreckage amid the debris of my lost years before coming out, so if I’m fired, without an income, my life would be over. If I stay silent, my life is over anyway. If I don’t stand up for my rights, who will? Almost nobody, 2024 showed me.

What life have they left me? When I’m out of legal moves and out of savings, what then? The world doesn’t need another homeless trans person.

I’m tired of men — most of them white, the majority straight, always cisgender, usually Christian, men who imagine they’ll be fine regardless — and women who uphold the patriarchy getting to discuss my life publicly while I don’t. White men: the original, all-time champion beneficiaries of U.S. “identity politics.” (I say this aware that for too long, as a journalist and male-presenting white adult, I was more problem than solution.)

Wake the fuck up, Times leaders. Wake the fuck up, journalism. Destructive politics like we’re seeing found America’s vulnerability: uncritical devotion to outdated ethics, norms and rules. The architects of this takeover identified our weakness and are using it against us. It’s you. You’re the weakness.

Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who knows what time it is, understands: “We cannot fight back against nefarious political forces without engaging in politics.”

In our dystopian future, those who foisted their rules upon me will be on the run by day, crouching in front of a fire by night, probably alone, muttering as they continue to search for safe drinking water, “At least I stayed off the playing field of politics.”

I didn’t ask for any of this. Didn’t ask the Times to buy the company I work for, didn’t ask for journalism, the industry I’ve given my life to, to betray me, didn’t ask to be trans.

I didn’t ask to be born.

What a bunch of fucking narcissism.