L.A. Times re-victimizes TWOC sex worker.....

[terry_terrible]

TW: misgendering, cisexism, transphobia.

Be sure to prepare a bucket to vomit in after reading this disgrace of an article.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/04/local/la-me-western-bandit-20130204

You might want to email the author, Sam Quinones at: sam.quinones@latimes.com Be sure to CC the email to the ombudsman at readers.representative@

Comments

[slinkslowdown]

Link to the article doesn't work, it 404s and goes to http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb...andit-20130204

[cykotyks]

I think this is the article: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-western-bandit-20130204,0,2419106.story

[terry_terrible]

Just corrected it, thanks!

[sapphorlando]

Their Guidelines don't say anything about gender; that's convenient.

A 'correction' reads: " An earlier online version of this article contained a typographical error inserted during initial editing of the text, referring to Cassidy Vickers as "heshe." It has been corrected here and in the final print version."

Typo my ass. I'm an editor. A "typographical error" (typo) is a slip of the fingers on the keyboard, an accident -- that is, entirely unintentional. Anyone here buying that shovelful? And of course, they can't possibly bring themselves to acknowledge that someone "whose legal name was Nathan," even in the same breath while saying they're "transgender," might not have identified as a man. The presumption is very '60s here, that anyone not legally a woman is automatically a man, no questions asked, and 'transgender' just means fucked-up sissy-boys.

Assholes.

[venatorrooc]

All of this. I could barely get through the first couple paragraphs, holy fuck that's insulting.

[kittenmommy]

FOR THE RECORD:
An earlier online version of this article contained a typographical error inserted during initial editing of the text, referring to Cassidy Vickers as "heshe." It has been corrected here and in the final print version.

Oh, well, that gives you confidence!

His friends remember a funny, talkative and loyal gay man attempting to find his way in a tough town like East Palo Alto.

OK, I'm honestly not sure of the protocol here. When referring to a trans person before transition, do you use the pronouns for his/her gender ASAB, or do you use his/her correct pronouns?

Whatever the case, there's absolutely no excuse for this:

The last that Cassidy Vickers' street friends saw of him was about 10 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2011, outside the Donut Time shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.

What on Earth is wrong with people?? Maybe it wasn't my place, but I sent that Quinones person an e mail about this.

[aaskew]

Regarding pre-transition pronouns, it depends on what the individual prefers, I think. In cases where their preference is unknown, I don't really know. :/ For myself it depends on the context and whether my assigned gender was relevant to the specific past event being talked about; if so, I don't mind.

e.g. as a trans guy, if they were talking generically about my youth, then "when he was young"; but if something more specific that might be awkward with male pronouns, then it's ok, like "when she was a Girl Scout" (I never was a Girl Scout, but it works for the sake of an easy example).

Perhaps in this case if those friends in question had been unaware of her gender identity and genuinely remembered her as a funny etc gay man, then it might not have been honest to say otherwise, since they were asked about their memories. But the rest of the article has no excuse.

[kittenmommy]

Ah, I see. That all makes perfect sense! Thanks so much! :D

It's hard in situations where there's no "one-size-fits-all" rule... but since humans are so diverse, it's not surprising that that's the case.

Perhaps in this case if those friends in question had been unaware of her gender identity and genuinely remembered her as a funny etc gay man, then it might not have been honest to say otherwise, since they were asked about their memories.

That's what I was thinking. And we also don't know how the friends worded it when they spoke to the paper. They might've said, "I knew her at the time as a funny gay man" or something like that.

IDK, this whole article is just full of fail.

Thanks again for your help!

[aaskew]

...guh it says something about the standard of local articles on trans people (there was one that referred to a trans woman as a "sex change man") that I actually found that one relatively okay.

[cykotyks]

I came across one that was basically belittling a teenage trans guy because he aspired to look like a One Direction band member. Constant misgendering, no respect for the guy, and some rather flippant remarks about GID in general. The article was disgusting - and the comments were worse. Uhg. I'm getting pissed off just remembering it.

[aaskew]

D:

That's especially depressing because it reminds me of my teenage years spent desperately wanting to look like whatever male actor I was obsessed with at that time (well okay I still do that), and I went through a period of uneasy wondering if maybe I wasn't really trans, and was just expressing my attraction to those guys in an unconventional way or something. Except that my gender dysphoria had long preceded that, and had been what drove me in the first place to find famous male people I admired and try and live through them, because they were the sort of guy I wanted so badly to be.

I used to think that no 'real' guy would actually do that, but then my (cis, straight) brother got obsessed with David Tennant and wanting to look like him, so that proved me wrong.

[indnor]

One would expect the L.A. Times to be a little more progressive than this.

Conversely, one would expect that for a story about a minority group, a reporter that knows at least a little about the group would be assigned. Clearly being careful to avoid biases, but having an idea about the minority group's life should be necessary to write a news article about them. IMO anyway.

[terry_terrible]

The biographical sketch on the author's personal website says that he "lived with drag queens in Mexico" while covering a story on them, so this apparently isn't his first contact with trans people, you'd think he'd know better, but I guess not.