Death by Journalism

I'm going to tell you a story. You may have seen in mentioned in your circles, or maybe caught a stray mention of it while catching up on news on the net. But most likely, it has flown under your radar, as its subject is not one that would normally make the evening news or mainstream newspaper readership. It is the story of all things a journalist's investigation into the claims made of the makers of a putter. Yes, a putter. A golf club. But because of the complete ignorance and unrecognized privilege of the author and his editors, specifically, and the complete and utter lack of value that society places on one segment of our society, this seemingly innocuous subject led directly to the death of the club's designer.

The story was written by Caleb Hannan (@calebhannan) for the pseudo-news ESPN imprint Grantland. It was entitled "Dr. V's Magical Putter." The link to the story is here, and I encourage you to read the story, not to give Grantland any further undeserved clicks for this horrible excuse for journalism, but just so you can get a sense of how Hannan portrays himself as somehow the hero of this story and how little the revelations made about Essay Anne Vanderbilt, which led to her suicide, had to do with the actual story, and how completely unnecessary they were.

To cut to the chase, Essay Anne Vanderbilt was a transgender woman. She was biologically born with male reproductive organs, but was unquestionably a woman. She lived with her female partner, a retired securities analyst with Bank of America, and together they invented the putter that was initially the subject of the article.

There were several legitimate topics of the investigation (why any purported news organization would grant eight months to a reporter to investigate a putter is beyond my understanding, but it's their publication). It appeared that Dr. V as Vanderbilt was known, had allegedly falsified her academic and professional credentials, and that her claims as to the efficacy of the putter were questionable. Fair enough.

However, the bombshell of the piece was that Dr. V was transgender, or as Hannan puts it "was born a boy." This was portrayed by Hannan as just another "lie" that Vanderbilt told. Not only had she made up her degrees and experience, but get this -- she's not even a "real" woman, guys!

Not only did Hannan make it known to Vanderbilt, who had repeatedly insisted that she and her personal life not be the subject of the story, that the focus remain on the putter, but he told one of Vanderbilt's investors that she was transgender.

Hannan reports this fact in his story, and then claims, again making himself the main subject of the story, how difficult it is to "eulogize" the subject of your story.

There is no doubt that Hannan's overly aggressive tactics in reporting this story and revealing a very personal fact that Vanderbilt had chosen to keep private, as is her right, led directly to her suicide. Why Grantland would choose to run the story, revealing her private personal facts to the world posthumously and further smearing her name is a question that I still can't quite answer. Bill Simmons the creator of Grantland tries to offer an explanation here. But, this explanation, really more of a CYA from Disney's legal department than an article, really doesn't answer that.

As I read the story, then followed much of the outrage that was filling up my twitter feed over the weekend, I found myself having a palpable visceral reaction to the story. I became filled with anger and outrage and was on multiple occasions nearly brought to tears reading the reactions and stories from transgender men and women across the world.

I asked myself why this was happening. Why was something that had so little to do with me causing me such consternation. I know that I get outraged whenever I see an injustice (it's the '70s Catholic upbringing I guess -- Liberation Theology and all). But, what was it about this that was effecting me so deeply.

When I took time to analyze what was going on, what I feel really affected me and caused me to feel this great outrage was the fact that the author of the piece and his editors simply never took the time to think of Vanderbilt as a human being. And, in addition, this is the theme that was coming over and over as I read the stories of trans brothers and sisters across the internet. That we, as a society, somehow fail to recognize that they are human. That somehow by being born trans, they are somehow automatically thought of as less.

Why do we place such value on our gender? We all know the stories of boys on the playground belittling their classmates with taunts of "faggot" and "sissy" on the playground, and these terms have become less and less acceptable as the success of the gay and lesbian rights movement has grown. But, if you ask any boy or man what the worst insult that they could have, if they are honest, it isn't "fag," it's actually to be called a woman or a girl. We see coaches intimidate and antagonize their teams by calling them "ladies" or "girls." We see fraternity hazing rituals in which pledges are forced to dress in women's clothing. We all laugh and giggle at "Womenless Beauty Pageants" where high ranking men in the community demean themselves by dressing up in women's clothing and makeup in order to raise money for a charity.

Even in the gay community, there is often tremendous discrimination against transgender men and women. Much like the LGBT acronym, the T is often at most an afterthought, grudgingly accepted as part of the overall movement, but rarely, if ever, the focus. Even in gay rights publications and websites you will see transgender jokes and insults accepted as if they are the norm, and comments sections full of vitriol against transgender people, similar to the attacks you see on twitter and in mainstream publications against women who dare to speak out.

All of this, again, comes back to thinking of trans people as somehow less than whole, less than deserving of the same rights and acceptance that all of us have by mere fact of being born. The fact is that Dr. V and the rest of the transgender community were born how they are. Their struggles in dealing not only with the spectrum of sexuality (to whom they are attracted) but with their very gender (who they are) are monumental and deserve not the derision and dismissal that they often provoke, but instead deserve deep respect, acceptance, and understanding.

Dr. V and many other transgender men and women get nothing of this. Just like in Hannan's article, the fact that someone lives the gender that they are rather than the biological anatomy with which they were born is seen as a lie, or a fraud, or even treason against their sex. All of this is ludicrous. It is a disease, a mental illness from which our society suffers, much like any other hatred of others different from what society considers the "norm".

It is my hope that this horrific story will be a chance for many of us to stand up and start fighting back against the burdens that our society places on transgender men and women. Perhaps this will be the spark for many of us, who have remained silent on transgender issues to speak more forcefully about them, to educate, to learn, to show more respect. Because until we do, and until all of us start seeing transgender men and women as equal human beings worthy of the same respect and rights as any of us, we will see many, many more endings like Dr. V's.

And we can't afford that.