The latest transgender media fail, brought to you by AP

Members of the press are generally terrible at covering stories involving transgender people, the biggest error being incorrectly identifying folk’s genders. This regularly comes up in stories about the murders of trans women (sadly a big chunk of the media coverage our community gets) who are way too often initially reported to be men. I found it interesting to see a similar error that could have very easily been corrected early on appear in a not very newsworthy story that was picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted in many publications that use their coverage.

People complained to the police because a group of sunbathers at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware were topless. Not exactly worth the AP’s coverage, except the individuals involved are transgender, which makes this filler story titillating to media outlets. That’s annoying enough, but of course the AP manages to get their coverage totally wrong:

Rehoboth Beach in Delaware isn’t a topless beach – but a few transgender men caused a stir by treating it like one. Police say passers-by complained after the men removed their tops and revealed their surgically enhanced breasts over Memorial Day weekend. A lifeguard asked them to put their tops back on. The men initially refused, but covered up before police arrived.

Even if they hadn’t, though, Police Chief Keith Banks notes the men were doing nothing illegal. Since they have male genitalia, they can’t be charged with indecent exposure for showing their breasts.

The mistake in this article seems so obvious I want to be amazed none of the media outlets who picked up the story noticed. Passers by complained because they saw exposed breasts, and the article explicitly says these breasts were “surgically enhanced,” so, um, why are we talking about transgender men? Isn’t this obviously a story about transgender women? The local coverage that led to the AP picking up this story makes this fact pretty obvious:

“Passers-by came up to the lifeguard and said they were alarmed and unhappy with the females showing their breasts,” Police Chief Keith Banks said. “The lifeguard responded and saw that they were males.”

Yep, we’re talking about folks who are presenting as female but who the police have assigned a male gender to. (Some trans folks, including myself, consider “male” and “female” to be terms that refer to gender while others are OK with talking about trans women having a male sex. Regardless, the police and then the press are clearly conflating sex with gender and suggesting these women are really men.) Really this is just a story about women sunbathing topless at a beach where they’re not allowed to. Except the police got all confused by their transgender identities and then I had to read a silly article.

It’s frustrating that this story that certainly didn’t need national media coverage follows the same pattern as so many stories about violence against trans folks: the police screw up identifying folk’s genders and the media lazily follows suit. The reporters’ error is so frickin obvious from the very fact that got this story news coverage: exposed transgender breasts. Yet the press seems totally fine identifying these women as transgender men. Is it because the writers and editors believe they are really men and should be identified that way, or because they’re too ignorant about basic facts about trans folks that they don’t even realize an error has been made? I think the second is true, and while it’s not as directly malicious as the first possibility, it is pretty sad. Correctly following the AP style guide’s entry on “transgender” wouldn’t fix this mistake either. The AP only offers guidance on the use of pronouns, which obviously isn’t enough.

In this story, trans folks — specifically trans women’s bodies — are an amusing sideshow attraction, some light and entertaining beach season “news,” but not worth actually understanding or writing about correctly.

Update: Commenter i-revolt pointed out the update to this Feministe story, where someone who says they know the folks involved says they are actually transmasculine/genderqueer. Basically, none of the “facts” about these people’s identities make any sense as conveyed by the police and media, both groups that generally need a lot of education around trans issues.

Boston, MA

Jos Truitt is Executive Director of Development at Feministing. She joined the team in July 2009, became an Editor in August 2011, and Executive Director in September 2013. She writes about a range of topics including transgender issues, abortion access, and media representation. Jos first got involved with organizing when she led a walk out against the Iraq war at her high school, the Boston Arts Academy. She was introduced to the reproductive justice movement while at Hampshire College, where she organized the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program’s annual reproductive justice conference. She has worked on the National Abortion Federation’s hotline, was a Field Organizer at Choice USA, and has volunteered as a Pro-Choice Clinic Escort. Jos has written for publications including The Guardian, Bilerico, RH Reality Check, Metro Weekly, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos completed her MFA in Printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute in Spring 2013. In her "spare time" she likes to bake and work on projects about mermaids.

Jos Truitt is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Development.

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