For more than 50 years, members of the LGBTQ+ community have had the Advocate to turn to, a publication dedicated to issues central to their lives and safety.
But it’s not enough to expect one single outlet to be a voice of reason and fair treatment for the community, and reporters in other mainstream outlets need to pick up the pace and learn how to properly cover the LGBTQ+ community, especially now when their lives are under political and real threats.
Entertainment media has done a better job in recent years showcasing members of this community, but “people are not very familiar with transgender people,” says John Casey, who was recently named the Advocate’s senior editor after a long career in public relations. “Most people know someone who is gay or lesbian or bisexual, but it’s a small sliver of society who knows someone who is trans.”
When it comes to covering trans issues, media has been missing the mark. Casey admits to his own learning curve, something he addressed in a column for the Advocate a few years ago.
“It all came down to one thing: They’re human beings. They have families —some of them are ostracized from their families. They have lives, they have loves in their lives, they have jobs, they’re part of communities, and yet so many have to hide or come to terms with who they are so late in life because they struggle so much,” he says.
Instead, when covering issues pertaining to the transgender community or the drag community that have been under so much attack this year, reporters are covering it as a political issue instead of a human one, Casey says.
“They are covering it as a political issue and not a human crisis, which is what’s going on. I’m hearing more and more people who are deathly afraid of coming forward and living their lives because they’re under assault, particularly in red states, even in some blue states. There was a poll out last week — while they don’t like that trans people are under assault, they agreed, a majority agreed, there should be some anti-trans laws. That’s absurd, especially when it comes to children. I know some children, now 15 and 16, who realized they were trans. It’s a major process to get them to the point where they can be who they are. There are therapy sessions. The parents aren’t pressing a button and one day the child is a boy and the next day he’s a girl. That’s not what happens.”
When Budweiser sent a can of its beer to Dylan Mulvaney this spring, who posted the can on her social media profile with 10 million followers, it set off a wave of backlash against the company. Mulvaney was celebrating one year into her transition and many of her followers are also transgender young people.
“What the media did, they went right after what the far right was doing, Kid Rock firing guns. The right isn’t being hurt, it’s trans kids. Budweiser left her hanging dry, there was no support for her, they just cut her off. They allowed the hate to continue without saying stop the hate.”
Casey wrote about this for the Advocate and reached out to reporters from major outlets explaining that they were missing the point and the impact of their coverage in the eyes of trans kids.
“They were not looking at the human cost of what they were doing to the trans community.”
