The Day Transphobic Propagandists Took a Vacation

SNL writers are snubbing Dave Chappelle and a prominent trans woman was sent to a male prison, but the right wing media seems unusually quiet about all of it.

by Evan Urquhart

I was scraping up material for a post when it hit me that the real story was that, for the first time since I launched Assigned in late September, I was having to scrape around to find something to cover. It’s not that there’s no news, but right wing outlets which were steadily publishing an anti-trans story each day had none, and outlets which were posting multiple per day had one

I am, of course, not inside the head of the anti-trans propagandists I cover. However it seems, as an observer, that they’re not really lacking for material. There are at least four very biased stories in the UK tabloids, and there’s two reasonably big news items: Writers on Saturday Night Live are boycotting Dave Chappelle’s upcoming appearance, and a prominent trans woman influencer was arrested and sent to a male prison. On any day in the past seven weeks it feels as though multiple right wing US outlets would likely be covering both stories. Instead, I had to scrape to find how each was playing in the fringe-o-sphere.

Journalists (and pseudo-journalists), in the US are likely still recovering from of the Tuesday midterms/day after coverage, and stories about the surprises of the midterms and what it all means are still taking priority in most outlets. That said, it is interesting that outlets which seemed all in on transphobia before the midterms are more subdued today, after the Republicans’ red wave failed to materialize. It could just be the eye of the hurricane, but I’d love to have more days when I can post a sleepy dog picture, then knock off early.