So I was actually blogging elsewhere...and it struck me I should add the post to my own meagre pileup here. The Nieman Foundation at Harvard (The Nieman Storyboard) asked me to weigh in on the whole Grantland debacle, and to whip up some guidelines for covering trans topics. The Trans Media Watch has already done the latter and I directed them there, but I had some thoughts on the Essay Anne vanderbilt story specifically. That post is below--but overall, the Storyboard, did a great job compiling thoughts and ideas about moving forward. Read that here Dr. V

New (Wednesday, 5 p.m.): We asked Cris Beam, who teaches writing at Columbia University and is the author of books including Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers and To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, for a few guidelines on writing about transgender issues. She recommended this checklist from Trans Media Watch. (Rule No. 3: “Avoid sensationalist reference to transgender persons or issues especially where their gender history has no direct bearing on the subject at hand. As a naturally occurring and well documented human variation, there is no reason for transness to be viewed as sensational per se.”) Beam writes:

When asked to draft some guidelines for writing about trans topics, I immediately thought of the ones writers use for any subject. I think that in general, it’s important to remember that the pursuit of truth isn’t license to be reckless. And while we always should be thinking deeply about the harm we could cause by disclosing facts about someone’s life, we also need to take the extra step to explore the cultural context in which that person is living. Because transpeople face tremendously high levels of discrimination in our culture right now, we need to be extra conscious that our reporting doesn’t add to someone’s trauma or risk, or contribute unnecessarily to negative societal attitudes. The way to do this, I think, is to make sure that every element you report is germane to the story at hand.

This is where I believe Caleb Hannan went wrong: His source asked him to “talk about the science, and not the scientist.” That request may be impossible to honor — if he’s investigating the validity of the scientist’s claims, he may also have to investigate the validity of the scientist’s credentials, and he owed it to her to tell her so. Hannan discovered Vanderbilt fabricated degrees and experience pertaining to the product he was covering. Was this relevant? Yes. He also discovered she was transgender. Was this relevant? No. If Hannan wasn’t sure, this is the point where he should have asked himself the tough moral questions about the pursuit of truth versus reckless harm. After all, “truth” is a slippery idea: Hannan’s truth wasn’t Vanderbilt’s. Hannan called her a man in the piece; by all available evidence, Vanderbilt never identified as such, so in fact he wasn’t reporting the truth at all.

If you’re not sure about what’s truth and what’s endangerment and what’s simply not related, ask your source, ask people in the trans community, ask and ask and ask. There are some excellent guidelines at transmediawatch.org, but in general, you should ALWAYS use the same pronoun and name that your source does. Read up on transgender stereotypes and make sure you don’t fall into them. And then, be flexible. I have a transgender daughter and a trans partner and I write about trans issues and every story is different. I once wrote a story about being a foster mother and my daughter read it before it ran and complained that I didn’t say she was trans. I didn’t think it was relevant to that particular essay, but she thought it was vital — to our relationship, to our history, to her truth. She read my omission as shame. I made a mistake with that piece, and thankfully was able to fix it, before publication. Essay Anne Vanderbilt wasn’t so lucky.