Contacts: Riki Wilchins ( 202) 309-1416 TransTeensMatter@gmail.com
Lori Perkins (212) 279-6418 Lori@RiverdaleAveBooks.com
“A much-needed book that only becomes more necessary by the day, Wilchins’s BAD INK presents an unflinching, clear-eyed analysis of the Times’ role in reversing the course of trans rights.” — Herron Walker, W Magazine
“I can’t stop reading this book! BAD INK is the clearest, most coherent dissection of the Times’ decision to trade journalistic integrity for clicks at the expense of trans kids. Every mainstream reporter should read this book.” — Kate Sosin, The 19th News
“The Times’ crusade against transgender youth will go down as one of the journalism scandals of our age. But we don’t have to wait for history’s verdict—thanks to the timely, essential work of Riki Wilchins’s BAD INK.” — Evan Urquhart, Assigned Media
July 8, 2024 – New York Bad Ink by award-winning trans author/activist Riki Wilchins is being published by Riverdale Avenue Books. Bad Ink is the definitive inside story of how and why the newspaper of record suddenly became the nation’s leading voice for attacking transgender kids.
Wilchins documents out how—beginning in 2015 just as A. G. Sulzberger was taking the reins of Publisher—the Times shifted from its historic support for transgender rights to suddenly embark on what Popula’s Tom Scocca called “a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade” that consumed nearly 70,000 words in dozens of articles—many splashed across its front pages.
The Times relentlessly attacked trans teens’ right to transition, to medical care, to sports participation—even the idea they actually were trans. But as Bad Ink shows, all this wasn’t based on new studies or fresh reporting, but on pseudoscience and disinformation manufactured by Christian nationalist hate groups just as they and their MAGA allies in state legislatures were introducing over 1,000 bills criminalizing nearly every aspect of trans kids’ lives.
Bad Ink makes the case that this was all apparently part of Sulzberger’s plan to remake the liberal rag for the digital age by appealing to a fast- growing right-wing readership.
And unfortunately, it worked.
Get an advance copy by contacting TransTeensMatter@gmail.com
Other books by Riki Wilchins:
Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender
Gender Queer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary
Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer
Burn the Binary!— Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer & Nonbinary
TRANS/gressive: How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, & the Media
When Loving Your Kid Is a Crime: Parents of Transgender Youth Speak Out
When Texas Came for Our Kids: How Evangelical Extremists Launched a War on Transgender Teens
Gender Norms & Intersectionality: Connecting Race, Class & Gender
The Broken Places: Trans People Speak Out about Addiction & Recovery (Oct, 2024)