The local county board of supervisors is considering extending anti-discrimination rights to transgender employees. Liberals and conservatives are at odds, not surprisingly, and your assignment is to produce a TV news report about the controversy.
But who's a transgender person? Is he or she the same as a transsexual or a transvestite? Are all transgender people gay? And what pronoun do you use to describe a person who was born one gender and now prefers to be known by the other?
While the questions may be new, the concept of transgender people certainly isn't. Shakespeare pioneered the art of cross-dressing in theater, Harlem hosted drag balls in the early 20th century, and the public learned about sex-change operations in the 1950s and 1960s.
But only in the past several years have the various types of transgender people begun working together. They've gained a foothold in the popular acronym LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — but are still fighting to gain acceptance in both the gay and straight worlds.
Before you begin covering the transgender community, get a handle on the various terms. Just as "colored" and "Negro" are no longer acceptable ways to describe African-Americans, some words (such as "transvestite") will offend many transgender people.
Here's a brief run-down:
- Transsexuals make changes to their bodies — through hormones, surgery or both — to become the other gender. Typically, transsexuals are known as female-to-male or male-to-female, often abbreviated as FTM or MTF.
- Cross-dressers wear clothes usually associated with the opposite sex. They may do so privately or publicly. The word "transvestite," which means the same thing, is no longer considered acceptable.
- Drag queens are men who dress as women, often outrageously, and usually only part of the time. They frequently perform as entertainers in bars or clubs. Drag kings — women who dress as men — appear to be growing in number.
- Intersex people frequently have — or had — genitals of both sexes. Intersex advocates are pushing for doctors to not perform surgery on babies whose sex is not immediately clear. Intersex people are not necessarily gay, lesbian or bisexual, and some don't consider themselves part of the LGBT community.
If you're interviewing transgender people, don't be afraid to ask questions about where they fit in the spectrum. "In my experience, most people are open. If they weren't, they wouldn't be talking to a reporter anyway," says Diane Hutchinson, an M-to-F transsexual who lives in New Jersey.
But she advises journalists to be sensitive, especially when discussing topics such as anatomy and surgeries. "Use the same sense you'd use in talking to anybody else," she says.
If it's relevant to your story, you may also wish to ask transgender sources about their sexual orientation. Contrary to popular opinion, many are not gay. Transgender people aren't automatically attracted to one gender or another, although it's true that many drag queens and drag kings are gay or lesbian.
Perhaps the biggest debate over covering the transgender community is the matter of pronouns. Many journalists would agree that a person's gender is different after he or she completes surgery to become a member of the opposite sex. But what about when a transgender person hasn't completed the sex-change process — or hasn't begun it — but decides to leave his or her biological gender behind?
Consider the late Brandon Teena, profiled in the movie "Boys Don't Cry." Teena, a transgender teenager, lived life as a boy but was biologically a girl. How should journalists describe Teena and others who wish to define their gender?
One easy way out is to avoid pronouns entirely. The Associated Press recommends that reporters simply ask people how they wish to be described and follow their guidance.
Remember that many transgender people, such as Hutchinson, are appalled when they see journalists assign genders to people who consider themselves to be something very different. "To see something like that would just horrify me, to think that people could be that insensitive," she says.
When in doubt, consult your editors about your own news organization's policy. Do you follow AP style? Or do you have your own stylebook? NLGJA offers advice to our colleagues in NLGJA's Stylebook Supplement on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Terminology.
Whatever approach you choose, be ready for criticism. Some readers, listeners and viewers consider gender to be unchangeable and set at birth. Others see the world of gender as more flexible. Don't expect to make everyone happy.
(And if you do, let us know how you did it.)
