If You're Reporting on Trans Kids and Gender-Affirming Care...

Here's how to write more accurately

Photo by Laura Rivera on Unsplash

It’s finally happening! The mainstream and left media are covering controversies around trans kids, adolescent sex changes, and what to teach about sex and gender in schools!

Kind of. They’re trying to, anyway, but if reporters are new to these topics, they are likely coming from so far behind, fact-wise, that it’s hard to catch up. It’s my suspicion that many news rooms have been affected/tainted by groups like the Trans Journalists’ Association, which put out a style guide “teaching” people how to write about this subject—or teaching them how to censor themselves to uphold and not question certain ideas.

You’ll notice tremendous overlap between the TJA style guide and, say, the GLAAD open letter to The New York Times, demanding that they control media coverage of gender dysphoric youth. The TJA guide has plenty of reasonable suggestions, like hire trans journalists (why wouldn’t editors?) and talk to trans people as sources (of course reporters should—they have many different views on these subjects!).

It also cautions “do not emphasize detransitioning” and says “disinformation around so-called ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria’ harms young trans people and fuels the far right’s attacks on trans children.”

It suggests we change the meanings of words and terms we use. “Instead of simply writing ‘men’ or ‘women,’” they suggest, try “people with ovaries, people with prostates, people who can get pregnant.”

Also: “avoid giving a platform to TERFs or so-called ‘gender critical feminists.’”

There’s a lot more on the list, and you’ve probably already seen a lot of newsrooms take these censorious suggestions to heart. Not all of them are bad, though. In fact, there are some good general ideas in there, like “cover stories beyond trans pain.” But this is not an accurate or appropriate way to handle a deeply complex issue, by encouraging journalists to see and consider only one side.

Reading this story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today, which had a few errors, I thought how much better it would be if reporters could write more accurately. I’ll use some sentence fragments and phrases from the piece to suggest some different approaches. They require more words, and we always want to use the fewest words possible in writing. But for this subject, we may need a little extra space.

Media phrase: Medical treatment of transgender adolescents
Revision: Medical treatment for gender dysphoria.
— One way to conceive of these interventions is that one becomes transgender, or a transsexual, after undergoing those treatments, which are designed, in theory, to alleviate gender dysphoria. Phrases like “treatment for transgender kids” assumes that the condition of being transgender requires treatment, but many activists assert that not everyone who identifies as trans wants or needs transition, so this linkage is misleading.

Media phrase: Gender-affirming care
Revision: Adolescent sex changes, or medical changes to secondary sex characteristics.

Media phrase: Parents who oppose transgender care for minors.
Revision: Parents who advocate for better research and better care for kids with gender distress

Media claim: Major medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society, endorse [blockers, hormones and surgeries as] best practices in the treatment of transgender youth
Revision: In countries like Finland, England and Sweden, which have nonpartisan governmental agencies to conduct systematic reviews of evidence, those groups found the evidence to be of such low quality that they worried risks outweighed benefits, and revised guidelines to be much more cautious than those endorsed in the States by partisan advocacy groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society. Those groups have not conducted systematic evidence reviews or revised guidelines based on the growing numbers of detransitioners or the shifting cohorts of children seeking secondary sex characteristic changes.

Media claim: Gender identity is unrelated to sexual orientation. They are “distinct aspects of being a person,” according to the American Psychological Association.
Revision: Gender identity is a concept from the 1960s about why some people with intersex conditions or gender dysphoria felt like they were or wanted to be the opposite sex. It is only a theory, not a fact. Many people reject the notion; others believe in it deeply. Some research shows deep overlap between childhood-onset gender dysphoria and later homosexuality.

Media claim: Puberty blockers are fully reversible.
Revision: “Puberty blockers,” a class of drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, often used to treat prostate cancer, delay the development of
secondary sex characteristics in young people. It’s thought that puberty will resume as normal if a child goes off them, but there may be permanent effects on bones, brain development, sexual function, fertility and height. Little is known about the longterm affects. Some younger children who used the drugs for precocious puberty have gone on to sue for permanent bodily harm.

It’s important to note that these drugs are also used to treat sex offenders.

At this point, we’re well aware that puberty blockers are not fully reversible, and they’re not benign. Take the story of “Jacob” in Hannah Barnes’ absolutely devastating book, Time to Think, about the downfall of the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service for children (GIDS).

Jacob was pleased when he heard about puberty blockers. He was a realist, but these sounded great. ‘I was relying on the so-called experts to give me information,’ he says, and they had given him this option. ‘A cure is how they sold it to me.’

But:

The puberty blockers affected Jacob in other ways he wasn’t anticipating, and which he says he hadn’t been told about before starting treatment. He experienced a range of intense and unpleasant side effects, as he tried different doses. ‘On one of them I had really bad insomnia. And another one, I had really bad anger problems.’ The anger didn’t feel normal. ‘I actually broke my knuckle while I was on the blocker,’ from punching something, he says.

Then there was the depression. ‘Your mood goes like it’s a roller coaster,’ he explains.‘There are moments when you’re euphorically happy. And the next day, you crash really bad and you are exhausted. And then you’re really, really depressed, like, suicidal depressed.’ Jacob says he had felt depressed before starting on puberty blockers and had experienced anxiety. These had made him ‘feel low’ but nothing compared to his temperament on the blocker. Jacob’s physical health suffered too. He gained ‘tons of weight’, so much so that he got stretch marks.

Then there was the problem with Jacob’s bones. They kept breaking.

Well, there’s a story we’ve heard in, say, the Swedish media, but we haven’t heard a lot of that over here.

As always, I’m happy to speak with journalists and writers wading and weighing in here. I was afraid to tell the complicated truth for many years, until I felt that ethically I had no choice. Drop me a line. And if you have suggestions for other style guide revisions, please leave in comments. I think this is actually an important project and I’d like to really create such a guide.