What the National Review Won’t Tell You About Iszac Henig

Iszac Henig told his own story in the New York Times. A conservative columnist wants to erase his story and replace it with her own.

by Evan Urquhart

stock photo of a male swimmer

The fine art of cherry picking is one all propagandists carefully hone, and transphobes are among the most dedicated practitioners around. They’ll discard 100 studies that contradict their worldview in favor of some obscure bit of research that seems to support them. Still, even among transphobic propagandists, you’ll rarely see anything as breathtakingly dishonist as an essay published today, in the National Review, by Madeline Kearns. Kearns took a powerful first person essay by transgender male swimmer Iszac Henig in the New York Times, cut out the parts she didn’t like, and turned it into a completely different story. The result is a fantasy of Kearns’ own making, unsupported by the text while being supplemented by out-of-context quotes.

Kearns, of course, is under no obligation to agree with Henig’s choices, or to support transgender rights. If she written she disagreed with Henig’s decision to transition, misgendered him, and bemoaned the loss of a “woman” in college atheletics her essay would just be one more bit of transphobic pap to fill the pap-dispenser known as the National Review. Kearns, however, did not stop there. Her distortions of Henig’s story are so blatant they have to be seen to be believed.

Three paragraphs in, Kearns presents herself as summarizing Henig’s story, using quotes from Henig’s own words as they appeared in the New York Times:

screenshot from Kearns’ essay in the National Review

This paragraph is, to put it bluntly, a complete fabrication using out of context, cherry-picked quotes. Let’s look at them each in context.

Here’s the source paragraph for Kearns’ first quote:

screenshot from Henig’s essay in the New York Times

Henig writes that he started feeling different in fourth grade, but it wasn’t until he met a trans man in person as an eighth grader that he finally had words for what that difference was. Only then did he begin to research trans men online, becoming confident enough to tell his mother he was trans. However, he goes on to say that he did not come out as trans at that point. In the next paragraph he explains that he returned to the closet and tried for many years to live as a woman, only returning to a trans male identity much later on.

Here’s the source paragraph for Kearns’ second quote, about internalized homophobia:

screenshot from Henig’s essay in the New York Times

Henig is very clearly saying that his internalized homophobia drove him to a feminine presentation. Kearns, on the other hand, falsely claims that Henig “struggled with same sex attraction” (Henig never describes anything of the sort). She implies that this had some bearing on his decision to transition, but Henig clearly says above that the pressure he felt was to present himself in a traditionally feminine way.

Kearns’ final distortion is even more blatant than the earlier two. She writes, “Later, in the locker rooms, [Henig] worried that [his] ‘sexuality made others feel uncomfortable.’” But Henig simply doesn’t say this. He says, “I thought that my unease came from worry that my sexuality made others uncomfortable.” Here’s the full paragraph:

screenshot from Henig’s essay in the New York Times

We’ve only dissected one representative paragraph of Kearns’ essay, but she plays the same games with Henig’s words over and over again throughout her piece. Why? If Henig’s story failed to fit the conservative narrative about trans men, Kearns didn’t have to write about it at all. Instead, she twists Henig’s words and removes them from context, so that it seems as if he’s said the kind of things Kearns wishes he had said.

It’s normal for people who come from different perspectives to interpret the personal stories of others through their own lens. For example, an atheist might hear the conversion story of a Christian and disbelieve that God was speaking to them through signs, instead believing that coincidence and wishful thinking could explain the same experiences just as well.

Kearns, however, is not interpreting Henig’s story differently than people who support trans rights. She’s not accusing Henig of lying, either. Instead she has carefully and intentionally misrepresented Henig’s story to her readers, hoping that none of them will click through to the New York Times and read it for themselves. These sorts of shenanigains demonstrate that Kearns is not a good faith actor, writing the truth from a conservative perspective, but a shoddy propagandist, willing to blatantly and knowingly distort the truth.