On Not Being Newsworthy

[bcholmes]

From an article someone forwarded to me.

"Never have pronouns been so provocative."

So begins a column in the San Francisco Chronicle about the difficulties journalists had writing about Gwen Araujo, the transgender teenager killed in Newark, California, in October. In their quest for accuracy, reporters stumbled over pronouns, some calling Gwen he, some she, while others dodged the issue entirely by referring to her as simply "Araujo."

As the Chronicle columnist put it, "Our problems with pronoun use are just one manifestation of lives not written about."

She's right. Unless they are killed, transgender people almost never make the news.

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Gwen's being female, right? "She". Easy.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

easy for you, but apparently hard for newspaper reporters.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Yeah... And this is one of the places where I'm certainly not going to get a hell of a lot of disagreement...

I've probably got the wrong background for this, as I've got the wrong background to understand a lot of issues of sensitivity and identity. I grew up in a very homogenious culture, in the upper midwest part of the United States. The biggest differences between the groups of people were between Lutherans and German Catholics. There wasn't enough of anyone else around to form an identification of a category or class. Malcolm was a kid in school who had really dark skin, but that's not enough to connect him with the class of "blacks" that the people on television talked about, because the there too little to else to categorize him with. Synagogs looked like the Methodist churches with different decorations, and the Methodist Churches just looked more like the Lutheran churches than the Catholic ones. Assorted and sundry freaks like hippies and homosexuals were afforded pretty much the same level of respect or apathy; differences are rare and basically ignored out of politeness.

Anyway, the point of the rant above is pretty simple: I've got a great deal of difficulty comprehending a lot of modern issues because I don't have the background and history of categorizing people into classes the same way that it seems that most of the rest of the world does. Someone introduces herself as "Gwen", then she's female. I don't care what's in her pants until she wants me in them. Hopefully by the time that issue comes up, there's enough trust and mutual respect that any complications can be dealt with in considerate and compassionate ways.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

how about the german lutherans and the norwegian lutherans? huh?

more seriously, which part of the upper midwest? i'm in minneapolis and grew up in the suburbs of the twin cities.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

East central Wisconsin, between Green Bay and Lake Winnebago.... Sounds like you understand exactly what I'm talking about though, where the "Lack of friendliness" of the Midwest that people from other places see is actually polite respecting of boundries.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Unless they are killed, transgender people almost never make the news.

I'd like to say Ah, maybe they make the news for other reasons but it's just not relevant or news-worthy that they're transgender ... but I'm sure I'm wrong. All the examples I can think of, though, it's somewhat relevant that they're transgender: parent loses child-custody case by judge who comments on transgender issue, volunteer turned away from work on rape-crisis hotline, sport governing body disputes athlete's eligibility to enter single-sex event ...

At lunch today, some people were talking about alternatives to male pronoun use in formal speech and writing. Some reactionary made a facetious comment about expecting transgender activists to protest the exclusivity of "he or she". Then I got wondering. Is it exclusive? Is there any organization that attempts to address this in its formal writings? Do you think this is likely to change in the future? (in the way that expectations of pronoun use in formal institutional writing have already changed in the past 20 years to include women more explicitly)