Newsletter #2: Transgender Girls Volleyball
Tuesday | 10.4.2022
Assigned: Transgender Girls Volleyball
Our first big story has been a conflict over who gets to use the locker room on a high school volleyball team in Randolph, VT.
WCAX, a Vermont affiliate of CBS, interviewed a young cisgender volleyball player who objected to to a trans girl’s using of the locker room alongside her and the rest of the team. This quickly led to a right-wing media pile on which repeated, and distorted, the scant information that had been provided by local news.
Late Monday night, a Vermont alt-weekly interviewed the mother of the transgender girl, giving a first look into the other side of the story. Later, on Wenesday, NECN published a story which included a statement by a witness, a cis teammate who hadn’t been involved in the incident, who said the trans girl had been minding her own business, left the locker room when asked, and was being bullied by the girl whose story had ignited the frenzy on the right.
We’ll update you if the right wing sources correct the record for their readers, but we’re not holding our breath.
Wednesday | 10.5.2022
We Try to Have Some Fun
Covering anti-trans propaganda can be a huge bummer sometimes, but it’s not always gloomy over at Assigned. We used Catholic media’s disapproving stance towards schoolchildren’s nicknames to list as many nicknames of Catholic relatives as we could think of. We also found a gem of an opinion piece from a conservative talk radio host which included the phrase “wokeness eyes.”
Friday | 10.7.2022
We’ve Soft Launched!?!?
If you’re reading this, it means sometime during the week I went and pressed the button on the doohickey to start the thingamabob and a vast series of tubes has whooshed and gooshed my content on to the web.
I think you know who I am, and you must have already heard at least a little bit about the stories I’m hoping to cover with this newsletter, and the Assigned Media site. So I won’t rehash all that. I’ll just thank you, truly, for taking this journey with me.
Next week, we’ll have a longer piece delving into the concept of parental rights, the Kock-funded astroturf groups being used to push this idea, and the danger it poses to child welfare and youth in foster care. So stick with us, don’t be a stranger, cause we’re going on one heck of a ride.
-Evan
