Washington Post Data Spun by Tabloid to Justify Opposing Trans Healthcare
The Daily Mail spun a US survey conducted by the Washington Post that found most trans people in the US have not accessed medical transition to argue that medical transition is unnecessary.
by Evan Urquhart
The Daily Mail is a notoriously transphobic newspaper in the UK, and it had more than lived up to that reputation today with an article badly misinterpreting a recent survey of trans people in the US to suit an anti-trans editorial agenda. The Washington Post survey, which gathered information about adults who identify as transgender using representative sampling methods, has led to a number of excellent stories in the Post using data to discuss the realities and hardships of transgender life in the US. Among the fascinating pieces of information the Post turned up was the fact that most people who identify as trans feel their gender falls somewhere outside the traditional binary of women and men. 22 percent of the sample identified as trans women, 12 percent as trans men, a plurality of 40 percent identified as nonbinary, and most of the rest chose “gender nonconforming” as the option they felt was the best fit.
In the hands of the Daily Mail, this combined with the fact that a minority of those surveyed had accessed medical transition allowed the tabloid to paint a deeply biased picture of transgender identity, even going as far as writing, “in most cases, presenting as trans is only skin deep.”
screenshot from the Daily Mail
It has long been a talking point on the right, including in the Daily Mail, that transgender people are routinely rushed and pressured into medical treatments they may not need. However, when confronted with a representative sample of trans people that suggests this cannot possibly be the case, the Daily Mail’s spin is that the relatively small number of trans people accessing gender affirming care just goes to show that trans people don’t need gender affirming care.
screenshot from the Daily Mail
At most, the Washington Post’s data suggests that trans people are not getting unnecessary treatments, with only people who will benefit from major changes to their appearance taking the steps to access them. However, there is another interpretation, which is that barriers to transition, which include family rejection and discrimination as well as gatekeeping efforts by healthcare providers, are preventing many trans people from accessing the care they need. The Washington Post did not ask respondents who haven’t undertaken medical transition steps whether they hoped to access treatments in the future, but that question was asked as part of the US Transgender Survey in 2015. In that data, 49 percent of respondents had accessed hormone therapy, but 78 percent reported wanting to be on cross sex hormones. (The 2015 USTS data is even more granular when it comes to surgeries, for example finding that only 6 percent of non-binary people who had been assigned female had accessed a mastectomy, but a further 42 percent wanted it, and 31 percent were unsure. Only 21 percent of this group felt sure they did not want top surgery at all.)
Although the percentages were different and the USTS did not conduct a representative sample, that data showed, like the Washington Post’s, that a plurality of transgender people considered themselves nonbinary. An update to the USTS, using data collected in 2022, is currenly in the works.