I’m confused. Isn’t that line referring to a time before her operation when Dr. V was a troubled man?
Why is it wrong to tell the truth about Dr V’s lies to the victims of the fraud? These people invested tens of thousands of dollars with a con artist and telling them about the fraud was the right thing to do. To know about the fraud and not tell the victims would have been wrong. It would have made him complicit in the crime.
The term “outed” here specifically refers to Dr V being transgender, as that’s the common use of the term. You may want to reconsider your response in that light.
Right, this is what I meant. If Hannen had told the investors “she lied to you, she doesn’t have the impressive credentials she claimed to have, she’s just an auto mechanic” then that’s fine. I don’t think anyone would disagree with him doing that.
What Hannen did was more like saying “she lied to you, she doesn’t have the impressive credentials she claimed to have, she’s just an auto mechanic. Also, she was born a man.” The second part is what people are upset about.
I feel horrible for pointing this out, but the above is not true. The scholarly article the above link is taken from reported that 41% of trans men had attempted suicide, while 20% of trans women had done so. Somehow that was reported as 41% of all transgendered persons in the news media.
I say this not to attack anyone. Suicide is known to follow persons in clusters. When I found out 25% of people with my mental disorder (bipolar II) had attempted suicide, I was extremely depressed (even though I’d tried before and should have been clued in). Honestly I think we should be looking at ways of preventing suicide, not telling people bad information in the hope that, somehow, those not under a specified condition might prevent those who are from killing themselves by hearing sad bad information. But that’s me I suppose.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the story, Hannan bears no resposuibility for “Dr. V’s” death, and Bill Simmons is a contemptible wuss for groveling and apologizing.
Not what I got out of that at all. As I read that, the chill was because of such an unexpected and unusual turn in the story. Obviously, YMMV.
Wasn’t it to just one investor? And it wasn’t that he was outing her, he was asking/informing about all the various fraudulent things he’d found out about Dr. V, as I recall.
Then she should have told him to fuck off and written the story herself. The notion that anyone except their editor or publisher could tell an author what to write about is absurd. And I don’t see why this is even brought up, since AFAICT the story wasn’t published until after she killed herself.
Besides, how do you know she killed herself because people found out about her gender? It seems far more likely that she killed herself because she now knew that people she had bilked out of tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of dollars, not to mention preying on their reputations and connections were on to the fact that she was a complete and total fabrication.
ETA: I just read Una’s post above and I appreciate the perspective.
Don’t feel bad about pointing it out, I’m sorry to put out bad information. The real numbers of 20% of trans women and 41% of trans men is better than 41% of all transgender people, but still terrible and depressing.
My point was that transgender people have much higher rates of suicide attempts than the general population. Some people might hear stories like this and think something like “I was embarrassed when my work colleagues found out that I lied about a project I worked on but I didn’t kill myself. She should have been tougher.” I know I can’t ever completely understand since I’m cisgender (meaning opposite of trans: I am a woman and I was born a woman) but I do know that being revealed to be transgender is different than being revealed to be a résumé fraud. It’s possible that people who have lied about their credentials and are discovered have a higher rate of suicide than the regular population, I don’t know for sure, but I know that transgender people definitely do.
I agree that we should try to find ways of preventing suicide. One small way is to help correct or prevent misconceptions about trans people. They are not liars or freaks, they just want respect and to be accepted like anyone else.
I’m not sure why the article set me off, but it did. That was before I checked around to see what others on the internet thought.
One point brought up is the story was researched and rewritten over the course of a year or more and during that time Chelsea Manning publically transitioned and journalists the world over were stepping on their dicks with pronouns and things, and there are style guides readily available for journalists reporting on transgender subjects, but this clever little dick somehow missed the whole thing.
Turns out despite my own best intentions I’ve been screwing up by using “transgendered” with the -ed, which is incorrect. I’ve also been using “he” for pre-transition time periods and “she” for post transition which is also incorrect. So I learned something too. I’m not even a journalist. So, at least some ignorance is getting fought, if nothing else.
Another good example, with major news sources outright saying they refuse to use proper pronouns, and others even going for outright insulting like a pissy internet commentator. Really, this is just another brick in the issue of “journalists can be major jerks when it comes to this stuff” wall.
I don’t believe that’s the context from my reading. But let’s assume I’m incorrect - surgery doesn’t define the boundary of gender identity. This is a rookie mistake the reporter made if one is going to call out the transgender status of the subject of your story. One which he could have fixed by doing no more than reading a Wiki article.
I sure wouldn’t have a problem. I dislike science frauds no matter what their gender.
I don’t feel horrible at all pointing out you may be mixing studies up which had coincidental numbers. 
The 41% number which has been omnipresent in transgender press releases for the last year comes from:
The 41% is the result of a semi-scientific survey of 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming study participants (semi-scientific meaning, it was not completely random). The full quote is:
Mind, I don’t assert anything. She could very well have committed suicide over fear of being a transwoman in prison, or going to prison regardless, or she could have just been really seriously messed up. All I’m trying to add is it’s very believable to me, based on my experience and my experience with hundreds of transsexuals I know (living and dead by their own hand), that it’s well within the realm of possibility that outing alone could have done it.
But only she knew why she really did.
I’m not really familiar with transgender issues, which I imagine shows in my previous posts here. Having read comments from those who are, I’m inclined to change my opinion on the propriety of revealing the name that would indicate Dr. V was “born a man.”
Now I’m looking at this part of the article: “I could fly to Arizona and meet with Dr. V at her attorney’s office, where she would show me proof of her degrees from both MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. V then got on the phone and added another detail. Once I saw the documents I would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring me from revealing any of the details I’d learned about Dr. V’s past…The ‘deal’ was one I could not accept…”
While I remain extremely skeptical that there was genuine proof of said degrees, I wonder if a deal could have been reached about what was revealed. I think prohibiting all of the details of her past was too much to ask for. It would have been more reasonable to request to withhold those details that indicated the transgender situation, assuming that was Dr. V’s main concern. The reporter may have been willing to accept that stipulation. If so, Dr. V may have shot herself in the foot with the magnitude of the restrictions she proposed.
If the case were that she was hoping nothing of her past would come out so as to hide her dishonesty on several points, that was not a realistic thing to seek.
I believe both Dick Boy and his editors agreed to Vander-fake’s terms of focusing on the science, and not the scientist. Once the fake bona fides surfaced, the “journalist” and his editors perhaps rightly said “deal’s off.” But, the story was basically a boring non-starter until the con-artist masquerading as a she/he/it who killed his/her/itself angle came along and suddenly the editors were all over it. Let’s publish!
What was the point?
Why did she kill herself? No one will ever really know and likely there is no simple single answer. Did the reveal of her past gender contribute to it? If anyone here says they know not then I’d say they are full of shit. I’d guess yes.
The article seems to present the transgender status as gratuitous titillation and as a fraud. The death as a curiosity. All are inappropriate.
The woman deserved to have her false credentials revealed. Revealing her past gender status to investors was horrific.
After the death a serious article could consider the transgender status. Could explore the possible culpability they may have shared for the woman’s death. Could discuss the suicide rates among the transgendered. Could explore if the credentials SHOULD have mattered if the product was good and why the woman decided to lie about them. Handling it like that? Fine. As it was handled, less so.
Pretend I don’t know anything about transgender issues, why is it wrong to refer to a woman as “he” when you’re recounting events from before she transitioned? If you’re writing an article, isn’t it easier to read by writing something like:
“From his birth until 2001, Dr. V was known as Steve So-And-So. He graduated from Harvard in 1962 and got a job working at a power plant. [Something something something, transition to using the word “she” for all events after 2001]”
I’m just not seeing anyway this story could be responsibly reported without mentioning past names. Read any news story about a con artist and they always list aliases that were used. They also list the individual’s birth name. It’s standard reporting and that information comes out in the trial.
Being transgender doesn’t mean the facts should be hidden from the public. I guess they could list the birth name and aliases with no comments about gender. Let the reader infer whatever they want.
When Sally Ride died in 2012, her obituary was the first time most people learned she was a lesbian. We talked about itin several threads here.
There were many comments about how Ms. Ride liked to keep her private life private, and there were many comments about the news not making any difference in people’s opinion about her, but there is not a single post that complained about her being outed in articles written after her death.