The reaction to this article is really interesting. I'll copy the latest twitter thread from the writer, addressing 'criticism' (you can imagine what most of that consisted of).
twitter.com/emilybazelon/status/1539621289295495168
I think an important point has gotten lost in the Twitter din over my
@NYTmag
piece on gender therapy for teenagers. (For the record, the response has been far different in NYT comments and very positive feedback from readers, including trans people & practitioners in the field.)
I have zero appetite for Twitter combat. It’s been horrifying to me to be called a murderer and compared to Nazis for writing about a debate that is happening, with consequential effects, within the field of gender-affirming providers.
I’m responding in this thread to criticism, not really expecting to persuade anyone to change perspectives, but to make some basic points about journalism that apply in this case and others, I think.
- Criticism: The timing of the story was wrong because of the right-wing assault on trans rights. --My editors and I talked a lot about the political backdrop, which is threaded through my story and has deepened divisions in this field.
We decided the conflict makes WPATH’s Standards of Care, issued for the 1st time in a decade, more important. The Standards are the story's focus and the source of the points that have caused controversy here, about how teens should be evaluated & the role of social influence.
The Standards at issue in my piece have the consensus support of the working group that wrote them and of WPATH's leadership. Those groups include trans and non-binary practitioners.
- Criticism: The framing of the story was wrong because it didn’t center the trans community. --No group of millions of people has a single community. It’s true that this story didn’t center trans activists or trans kids. (Though I did quote them at length.)
Those are also good stories, which the NYT has told and will tell. But this one is primarily told through the eyes of clinicians in & around WPATH. It’s about a scientific debate. Trans providers express every point of view the story contains about gender-affirming care.
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Criticism: The story doesn’t include trans kids who are doing well. --False. Two kids in the story, nicknamed Tori & Charlie, are medically transitioning & thriving. Two adults (Yael & F.G.) speak to how critical transitioning in adolescence has been for their well-being.
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Criticism: The story "platformed" the wrong people. --The story, in a total of 11,400 words, includes 363 words from the perspective of parents who are skeptical of medical interventions for minors. Some are affiliated with the group Genspect.
I made it clear what Genspect stands for by including comments of members & a post on strategy from an affiliated Substack. Skeptical parents are politically active, testifying in statehouses in favor of banning medical interventions for minors. Leaving them out of the story ...
... would deny that reality, which would be a disservice to readers who want to understand the full landscape.
- Criticism: There’s no evidence that substantial numbers of kids are transitioning without the kind of diagnostic assessments or process WPATH recommends. --No one is tracking this. Anecdotally, many clinicians—not one or two & very much including trans clinicians—told me ...
... they are aware of this happening. I heard firsthand accounts—from teenagers as well as parents—of clinics offering medication during a first brief session. I did NOT hear of this in states that are proposing bans, where care seemed to be more conservative.
Parents can say no to medication. But doing so when a provider is offering it can cause serious conflict within families. I’m surprised to see journalists who have not covered this topic dismissing the assessment issue out of hand when it is a focus of WPATH's Standards of Care.
- Criticism: Patient Zero is an offensive term --I referred to F.G., the first Dutch patient to take puberty suppressants as a teenager, as Patient Zero because the Dutch used that term for him & he used it in our interview.
Readers have pointed out the term is associated w/ communicable disease. Because of how the Dutch use it, I didn’t think of that association. Neither did anyone who read the piece before it published, including our outside trans readers.
In the context of my story, Patient Zero means the first adolescent to receive gender-affirming medical treatment.
tl;dr: Much of the criticism of my piece reflects a profound disagreement over the role of journalism on a controversial topic involving a vulnerable group.
To me, being a journalist means following the facts where they lead. It isn't advocacy. I didn’t know where this story would go when I started reporting eight months ago.
---(That was weirdly difficult to c&p so hope I haven't lost anything)