Old Fashioned Tabloid Journalism
Tabloid News wasn’t always anti-trans—and Tabloids don’t have to be now, either.
by Evan Urquhart
We found this story by Emily Lefroy today in the New York Post, a right-leaning tabloid that often publishes transphobic propaganda. This, however, was a little different. The headline itself “He stuck by his man — and married weeks after he came out as trans” was still sensational. But the sensationalness behind it wasn’t wholly negative or transphobic. The sense was something more like: Wow! A cis guy proposed to his transmasculine partner even after knowing his partner wasn’t actually a woman!
Certainly the idea that no cis man could ever love a trans person throughout his transition isn’t entirely without transphobia. But there’s a distinct air of “gee whiz, look at these two crazy kids in love” to this entire Post story.
This isn’t a total outlier; if it surprises you, it really shouldn’t. Many people seem to think that ordinary people’s gut reaction to trans people is disgust, fear, or ignorance, and only through education can a person ever learn to tolerate trans people’s difference. But that’s not true, either historically or even today in trans people’s real world interactions.
Historically, trans stories were often treated much like this New York Post story treats the story of Elvis and Ryan, with an air of “gee whiz, isn’t this incredible!” The treatment also mirrors the reaction trans people ourselves, including this reporter, encounter when meeting ordinary folks who’ve barely ever heard about transgender people. It’s common for there to be a lot of curiousity, a lot of amazement, but very little judgement.
The culture we have now, where tabloids sensationalize trans people as being disgusting and dangerous, is very much an artificial product of anti-trans propaganda, a phenomenon going back decades and having its main roots in Catholic doctrine and a small, specific strain of radical feminist thinking. These anti-trans campaigners and their intellectual descendents have pushed the narrative that trans people are disgusting and dangerous relentlessly, for longer than most people have been alive. And so, to people in 2022 who have absorbed it, it may feel natural. This NY Post story, though, is an example of a different, older, more authentic reaction many people have to trans people if they’ve never been exposed to anti-trans campaigning. This reaction of openness, wonder, and harmless curiousity might be what we’d see if there had never been a concerted attempt to stigmatize transgender people.