Well I read it all. The original 8,000 word essay. The Bill Simmons apology. The response from Christina Kahrl. That was a LOT of reading. It's rather horrific. The reporter had absolutely no right to out this person to the investor. That is the biggest blunder of this entire situation. The article published after their death is horrible. It's all very disturbing.
Why is it so hard for people to use the correct pronouns? It happens on this forum, and I have already pointed out previously how it is offensive. It's very simple. Follow the lead of the individual in question. Use the pronoun that fits their presentation. If you aren't sure, find a polite way to ask them. Treat people with respect. It should be simple.
I have mixed feelings about the entire incident.
Katie, I know that you know that I'm sympathetic to the transgender community and have no animus towards persons that are transgender. So please keep that in mind as I write this:
1. Investigations as to the person who invented the club were absolutely in-bounds. To the extent that the personal history of the inventor was put forward as a way to sell the club, that personal history was fair game to investigate.
2. That Dr. V had changed her name was relevant to the story. The reason Dr. V changed her name was not necessarily relevant to the story. I don't know that it's possible to write about the background of Dr. V without mentioning that history is difficult to find because of the name change. If you mention that Dr. V changed her name at some point without stating the reason why, the reader may draw their own conclusions (and they will probably conclude that Dr. V was a scam artist, but in any event none of the conclusions will be positive towards Dr. V). Certainly that appears to be a way to side-step the issue entirely. Reporters have a desire to report. Because the author knew the reason for the name change I'm not shocked he wrote why, and I think that impulse is defensible although unfortunate in this instance.
3. I think the social stigma of "outing" another person is close to being entirely eliminated. We're not there yet, but I think the language of "outing" is significantly undercut by the fact that the career and social repercussions of being outed as gay are becoming increasingly marginal. We're probably within a generation of it being near zero.
There are exceptions to this obviously. NPH appears to have a monopoly on being publicly gay but being accepted unquestioningly when he plays straight men in TV or film. Audiences appear to have no problem accepting publicly straight actors playing gay, or even transgender, so this is probably just a failure of imagination on the part of casting directors. But in any event, being outed as an actor may have detrimental effects on your ability to obtain straight romantic lead roles. This is just an example, but it's designed to illustrate how close I think we are getting to real acceptance for homosexuals. Using "outing" in this instance I think undercuts how scary coming out as transgender may be because the social stigma is basically a thousand times worse and knowledge is much worse about the subject. Because "outing" is so closely tied to gay experience I suspect that discussing it in terms of outing will lead many to believe this isn't that bad.
4. I do not believe that Caleb Hannan is, in any real way, responsible for the death of Dr. V.
5. I think we're playing the speculation game to large degree as to the extent that revealing Dr. V as transgender to an investor played a role in her death. To be honest, we're not entirely sure that she knew about it.
6. I suspect this incident, among those who are aware of it, is likely going to be net positive for transgender persons. I certainly can't remember any other incident on a non-niche forum that created such generally positive coverage related to transgender persons and that clearly articulated several issues in the community. That virtually every large web-magazine (Slate, MoJo, Gawker etc) covered it indicates that its visibility was relatively high.
7. I don't think it's fair to say that the article's quality is solely determined by its handling of this single subject. It's some of the most well-written reporting I've seen in the last few years. You could excise every reference to Dr. V being transgender and it would remain so. That's probably an argument for removal of the references but I'm saying that the references, taken alone, do not remove it from the camp of quality reporting.
8. Finally, I think the decision to leave the article up is the correct one.
In any event, it is certainly an interesting little cultural happening.
