Finding Weird Criminals Among Ideological Opponents is Lazy Journalism
Some transphobes commit crimes. Some trans people commit crimes. It’s the law of large numbers, people!
by Evan Urquhart
One of the most irritating genres of news story are weird crime stories that makes a big deal over the gender identity of a suspect. These stories are a mainstay of right wing news, but none so typifies the genre as a recent story about a nonbinary DOE official who stole a lady’s fancy suitcase. So many people, including government officials, do absolutely heinous things and the right wing wants to make hay out of the gender identity of a suitcase thief? Come on!
So imagine my irritation today when I saw not one but two stories of this type… and one of those was from my compatriots in LGBTQ+ media.
First, the dumb right wing story I found. A trans woman, who is also a New Hampshire Democratic state representative, has been sent to jail for stalking. Stalking is extremely bad! People who do it should face serious consequences more often. However, there are over 7,000 Americans currently serving in state legislatures, and stories state reps committing crimes are not exactly a rarity. Don’t believe me? Here’s a link to a Georgia rep who was also a state rep who was sentenced to community service and probation for stalking and tresspassing in August. Ah, but there’s more. Multiple women accused a West Virginia rep of stalking and harassment just last month. (Both of these were cisgender Republican men, but I’m sure I could find multiple cisgender Democratic reps accused of stalking also. Stalking is a fairly common crime, there are a lot of state reps, every year some of them commit crimes like this.)
Now, I wouldn’t be a balanced and independent reporter if I didn’t occasionally both-sides something. Here’s a story I found in an LGBTQ+ media outlet today about an anti-gay state rep who’s been accused of wire fraud.
To be clear: Stories about state representatives defrauding the government are important for accountability. We need more local news to keep people aware of these sorts of transgressions. However, the Washington Blade is not local to Florida, and its coverage is based on the fact that Harding was the author of Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
I would generally defend a story outing an influential anti-gay politician as gay, and the same goes for most stories that would highlight such a person’s hypocrisy around matters of sex and sexuality. It’s big news when an anti-abortion politician is exposed as having paid for a girlfriend to get an abortion, and it should be, because politicians shouldn’t place themselves above the laws they advocate for. But wire-fraud? It’s not weird hijinks of some random ideological opponent, but perhaps it is a little small time for a non-local news outlet to highlight, unless there’s some wider pattern among anti-gay state reps doing this particular bad thing, or some other context that brings it national relevance.
In conclusion, there sure are a lot people serving as state representatives! Some small percentage of those folks are also wicked shady. Some of these shady characters are Democrats, some are Republicans. At least one was also a trans woman. What can we conclude from this? Absolutely nothing.