Want Responsible Journalism? JoeMyGod Tells Transadvocate, “Fuck Off”

Joe Jervis recently took to Twitter to argue against my entry debunking the lie that trans activists were responsible for the third Dan Savage glittering.

He writes, “They are self-described ‘trans activists’ which is exactly how I labeled them” before linking to the Xtra article. If this is true, we should be able to find the phrase “trans activists” being used to identify the activists somewhere in the article.

The phrase appears twice (bold mine). “They are building on the work of trans activists and friends of trans people who glitterbombed Savage at university appearances in Eugene, Oregon and Irvine, California, last November,” and, “In response to a written question from the Vancouver audience asking why he’s the subject of denunciation by some trans activists, Savage spoke of the ‘journey’ that society, including himself and other gays, have gone through in the two decades since he started his sex advice column.” Neither of these statements identify the activists as trans, and in fact, the first statement implies that they are not trans, because they are “building on the work of trans activists” as opposed to continuing that work as trans activists.

The word “trans” appears eight other times as the writer of Xtra includes information on Dan Savage’s responses to being called out for transphobia. “Transphobic” appears once, in a long list of items The Homomilitia is drawing attention to Savage for.

Never in the Xtra article, The Homomilitia’s press release, or The Homomilitia’s literature is the group identified as “trans activists.” In both the press release and the literature, the group is identified as “queers and allies,” while Xtra identifies them as “a group of six activists.” As has now been stated on multiple blogs, a writer for Xtra has confirmed that the group was not identified as trans. Yet, Mr. Jervis makes the jump quite easily from a group of six queers and allies to “transgender activists” and “the trans mafia.”

Oh my. Another GLAAD award-winner. Is this what GLAAD values and awards?–complete re-writing of facts to assign blame to the trans community? Mr. Jervis’ statements describing this incident as perpetrated by trans and transgender activists disregard fact and incite hatred against us (in the comments on his entry: “tranny” appears 19 times; “trannies” 8 times; and one DADT repeal activist is purposefully misgendered). Additionally, his irresponsible reporting evades talking about issues like serophobia, rape, sexism, racism, and other bigotries prevalent in our communities and non-LGBT+ spaces, by shifting conversation to railing against an oppressed minority.

Mr. Jervis’ slander explains why queers and allies resort to glittering as a tactic to draw attention to under-reported issues. Instead of describing the statement as “asinine,” tagging the entry “dumbassery,” or targeting the trans community (who still have no demonstrable connection to the incident), we could be talking about the content of the group’s literature and Savage’s attitudes about sexual entitlement and AIDS. Through the selective interpretation of the event in his blog entry, one could conclude that Mr. Jervis agrees with Dan Savage that people with AIDS are “deadbeat infectors” (as described in The Homomilitia’s pamphlet freely available online). If he didn’t agree, why would he label objecting to serophobic attitudes as “dumbassery” and “asinine” while seeking to shift blame to trans people?

Ho hum, indeed.

cross-posted from Trans Femmergy