FL: How Propagandists Report on Blocker Ban
A case study in the misinformation and bias that infects coverage of major news events impacting the trans community.
by Evan Urquhart
In our coverage of the proposed ban on all gender affirming care for youth in Florida, we’ve decided to focus on a single Daily Mail article, one that represents the absolute epitome of biased and misleading coverage of trans issues masquerading as an honest news story.
The Daily Mail is a UK tabloid which is notorious for publishing lurid transphobic stories, often ones containing outright falsehoods. In this it’s much like the NY Post or the Washington Examiner in the US. (An important bit of context for Americans: TV news in the UK is generally considered more fact-based and resposible, while print is trashier, more of a free for all. The opposite is generally true in US media.)
The article in question has an anti-trans, pro-ban slant, which is to be expected from this outlet. What’s more interesting is to look at how the piece misuses anecdotes, graphs, and statistics to present a false picture to its readership which can seem plausible to those unfamiliar with the evidence. For example:
The graph above represents the total number of chest surgeries on transgender youth in the entire US, and is sourced to the American Medical Association (most likely based on this research letter). It shows chest surgeries increasing from 100 to 489 between 2016 and 2019.
There are over 25 million minors in the United States. 100/25,000,000 is 0.004 percent. 500/25,000,000 is 0.002 percent. Estimates of the prevalence of gender dysphoria in the population vary, but a good guess for the total incidence of medically transitioning people in the US would be around 0.5 percent.
While we shouldn’t expect all trans people to undergo medical treatment as children, numbers drastically below 0.5 percent are perhaps best contextualized as being a fraction of the number of people who will at some point in their lives pursue a medical transition. The Daily Mail is lying with statistics when they present a modest increase such as this, one likely fueled by increased availability of treatment and increased insurance coverage, as an explosion.
The Mail presents this and another (far less well-sourced) graph as evidence that banning evidence-based treatment is a sensible course of action for the Florida Medical Board. They also present the testimony of anti-trans detransition activists, anecdotes that are not even representative of people who detransition, much less having a bearing on the roughly 99 percent of trans people who do not detransition. We also noticed an interesting contradiction in the copy about puberty blockers.
Here, the text admits these drugs are well known, not experimental, and considered safe to use for this age group even by the Florida Board of Medicine who are banning them in gender affirming contexts. But further down:
The above suggestion, that puberty blockers may cause permanent hormonal changes, is not supported by any evidence, and directly contradicts the use of these same drugs for intersex youth and youth who have precocious puberty (“precocious” or “early onset” puberty is a harmless condition that is treated solely for its mental health impacts).
In short, the exact same misinfo that resulted in unprecedented bans on the gold standard of care for a very difficult to treat condition (one which causes a host of negative outcomes and can in rare cases be fatal), is being used to sell these bans, and blind people to the risks they introduce for children who might otherwise thrive with well-managed, individualized gender affirming treatent.
For more depth on the Florida Medical Board hearing and its implications, follow this link to read researcher Zinnia Jones’ live reactions.