Dave Hewitt is also unimpressed by that dishonest Guardian news story on the Wi spa predator.
This piece contains new information that was first revealed by right-wing outlets, and serves to demonstrate how The Guardian – by doggedly pursuing a specific ideological angle and denigrating anything that does not fit – has become wedded to a pernicious false consciousness that prevented them from breaking this news themselves.
These two reporters, specifically. They’ve been on the story all along. I’m wondering if they have any editorial supervision at all, and if their editor is afraid of them, because surely it’s not good journalistic practice to refuse to specify the sex of the Wi spa predator when it’s the core of the whole incident.
At the start of July, they reported on the protests that the incident kicked off, which they framed as triggered by hateful, baseless, viral conspiracy theories. They made completely unevidenced and partisan statements, such as:
Calls to defend “female spaces” and “women’s shelters” have become rallying cries of anti-trans groups, who have falsely suggested that trans-inclusive policies endanger cis women.
Unevidenced, partisan, dishonest, misogynist. Women are not “cis” women, we are women. We are, and no one else is. “Cis” is a lie of a word when applied to sex.
They did another bad slanted story in late July, which was cheered by the usuals.
So the Guardian assigns the same reporters to cover the story when it’s confirmed that the Wi spa predator is in fact a predator.
That’s an embarrassingly bad call.
The Guardian here is acting not as a purveyor of balance or truth, but of equivalent, oppositional disinformation.
This continues in today’s story, which – despite finally conceding that the incident occurred and that it involved a male, repeated sex-offender – studiously avoids using the pronouns of the person at the heart of it, and returns focus to their initial obsession: that this propagated virally because of the far-right, proving their long-standing contention that those who are critical of self-id are at best far-right adjacent.
Actually they don’t finally concede that the incident involved a male. They contest it rather than conceding it.
It was not immediately clear if Merager had an attorney, and Merager’s gender identity was also unclear; an LAPD spokesperson said the department could not immediately comment on the suspect’s gender identity, and the Guardian’s attempts to reach Merager on Thursday were unsuccessful.
That’s not a concession.
Comments
3 responses to “A specific ideological angle”
The article covers something I touched on in another thread: the fact that this one single instance really does make self-ID indefensible.
This, though. I could write an essay about this:
This might be the most densely-packed vein of dishonesty I’ve ever seen.
* Putting “female spaces” and especially “women’s shelters” in scare quotes as though they’re not really a thing, are not necessary, are an invention of those horrible TERFS
* “Rallying cries”, in other words, they are being dishonestly used by TERFs to oppress trans people. TERFs aren’t really interested in preserving women’s spaces or shelters at all. And those things aren’t really real things anyway.
* “anti-trans groups.” Circular reasoning used to vilify anyone who disagrees with them.
* “Falsely.” Nope.
* “Suggested.” Nope.
* “Trans-inclusive policies.” No, just the ones that that in fact do endanger women and girls.
* “cis women.” Because these awful TERFs only care about cis women, who are all Karens anyway.
It’s like a masterclass.
Screechy Monkey and lastot have already commented how self-ID proponents have painted themselves into a corner here. The piece above by Dave Hewitt makes the same point in a longer form that I also found very convincing:
If this sexual predator had been living as a woman for a couple of years, with or without hormones, with or without feminine hair styles and dress, it still wouldn’t matter. He doesn’t become an “opportunistic liar”, “fake trans”, just by virtue of being a sexual predator. “Real trans”-identified men are still men, and are as likely as any random group of men to be sexual predators. If the response to the Wi Spa incident is to help distinguish “real trans” from “fake trans”, it strikes me like the Catholic Church cracking down on gay priests: inventing a problem and not addressing the real issue.