PBDWake said:
I do believe some of the backlash was a bit aggressive, fwiw. It's hard to wade into a pool of unfamiliarity and manage to walk a fine line. But, to be blunt, you did fail. You may not realize it, but you led with an insult. People are going to be upset with that. If I were to say that I was tired of dealing with "homophobes, bigots, and ConigliarosPotential" with this argument, you'd be justifiably upset. Why? Because in that context, you're being put into an equal category with homophobes and bigots. And when you talk about fabrications and half truths with her degree, work history, and gender, you're equating her status as a trans to a doctored lie of equal weight to the others. If you've ever seen Clerks 2, you were basically Randall lobbing "porch monkey" around in front of a black family without understanding the real meaning. And for the record, I don't think you're prejudiced or a bigot. I also don't have the expectations of knowledge for you that I would expect from a mainstream journalist writing a piece where he plans to talk openly about someone being a trans. Which is why this piece was garbage, in the end.
I agree - I did fail. And I understand why I failed now. And hopefully I've learned from my mistakes - I certainly feel as though I know a *lot* more about transgender issues than I did last week, thanks largely to the many insightful posts I've read in this thread.
Let me pose another hypothetical - I know the analogy I'm about to present is flawed, but hopefully you'll be willing to run with it and not immediately be offended by it. Suppose that instead of having a transgender identity in her past that she was trying to run from, Dr. V was a soccer goalkeeper, a hobby/pursuit about which she was very passionate. (Bear with me...) Hannan does his reporting, and discovers Dr. V's goalkeeping past: he knows that as a group, goalkeepers have a reputation for being somewhat odd and eccentric loners relative to the soccer-playing population at large, and he thinks this might in some way explain Dr. V's own eccentricities. Hannan mentions to Dr. V that he knows she used to be a goalkeeper, and Dr. V has a similarly violent reaction (warning Hannan that he was about to commit a hate crime in reporting that she used to be a goalkeeper, etc.), and the story snowballs from there in similar fashion. Then, after the story is published and you yourself read it, you discover that actually, the urge to be a goalkeeper is genetic, and that many former goalkeepers try to hide their goalkeeping past, and that the suicide rate amongst ex-goalkeepers is astronomically high, and that Hannan's reporting may have contributed to Dr. V's death.
Now...I know that on its face, this analogy is completely ridiculous. But here's why I've suggested it anyway:
1) Presumably it would come as a complete surprise to everyone here to discover that soccer goalkeeping was a genetic predisposition, and that the community of goalkeepers had certain traits which demanded special consideration from the journalistic community. Quite a few people here seem to be completely conversant with and comfortable discussing transgender issues; the analogy tries to level the playing field and bring everyone down to the same level of ignorance, to help the informed understand what it feels like to be similarly ignorant.
To put this another way: go back and read the first page of comments in this thread. Drocca was queasy from the outset about the article, but the list of those who supported it at the outset include some of SOSH's most respected posters. And it took three days before someone other than Drocca to voice any criticism about it - it isn't as though the story's transgender problems were readily apparent to everyone. I think the last two pages of this thread would look rather different if we had collectively discovered that goalkeeping was a genetic issue: there would have been far less outrage, and far more bewilderment along the lines of, "Gosh...I had no idea that ex-goalkeepers felt that way!"
(FWIW, I for one paid very little attention to the Chelsea Manning story, so all of this is pretty much completely new to me, but I suppose that's a flaw in the analogy - there had been some public spotlight shown on this issue already.)
2) The analogy may provide a clearer insight into why Grantland's reporting and editorial process failed. Wade Boggs Chicken Dinner posted, "It is unfreakingbelievable that none of these people could have thought for one second to seek out people who might have a different POV." If we'd been talking about soccer goalkeeping...well, the analogy may fail because Grantland is a sports website and someone might have had both the contacts and the brainwave to show the piece to another goalkeeper. But presumably your instinct would be to say, "Dr. V was a con artist who lied about her entire life; goalkeeping is just one more area of her life she's trying to hide from everyone. After all, it's only goalkeeping we're talking about here. Should I really stop writing this story because she's upset that I'm reporting she used to be a
goalkeeper?" To ask the necessary questions - questions which may seem entirely obvious after the fact - you need to have the first scintilla of understanding that goalkeeping may be an issue so far beyond your own frame of reference that you're not qualified to understand it without first speaking to a goalkeeper.
To me, the most damning thing about Grantland's editorial process is that nobody thought to mention Christina Kahrl's name during the vetting period - they had the *perfect* person close at hand to give them the advice they needed, if only they had thought to ask her. But maybe the fact that she was there all along and still a wide range of experienced editors and journalists never thought to ask her perfectly demonstrates the point I'm trying to make. I was moved by Kahrl's article, but I also thought Simmons' own article was compelling in its own way. If you were knowledgeable about transgender issues before reading Dr. V's story, then I can see why Simmons' mea culpa may seem incomplete or self-serving...but for me, as someone who is learning more and more about transgender identity as the reaction to the story gathers pace, I strongly identify with Simmons' own perspective.
[Disclaimer: Of course I know there's no real-life comparison to be made between goalkeeping and transgender identity. Just to make that clear...this is analogy is meant for illustrative purposes only. And to be perfectly transparent, I'm an ex-goalkeeper myself.]