Matthew Ericson is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. He was named to the masthead as Assistant Managing Editor in 2018, amid a significant increase in anti-transgender coverage.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Ericson graduated from University of Iowa in 1996. He worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1996 to 2003, when he joined the Times. His background is in infographics, the subject of this project.
Davy, Lynn Anderson (February 16, 2017). Top âNew York Timesâ editor visits UI for annual Informatics Showcase. Iowa Now https://now.uiowa.edu/2017/02/top-%E2%80%98new-york-times%E2%80%99-editor-visits-ui-annual-informatics-showcase
David Rubin is an American marketing executive. He was responsible for communications at the New York Times during its sharp increase in anti-transgender coverage.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Rubin earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale in 1993 and an MBA from Wharton in 1999.
He joined Unilever in 1999, rising to vice president for its US hair brands. He joined Pinterest in 2014 but left 18 months later.
Rubin joined the Times in 2016. He is responsible for communications, enterprise-wide brand strategy, creative, and media, as well as audience definition, strategy and targets.
Hannah Poferl is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. Analysis shows that recent Times articles on transgender issues are approvingly shared by conservative and gender-critical readers, and direct reader feedback on their articles is more conservative than general feedback, in large part to their catering to older readers with less evolved views on sex and gender.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Hannah A. Poferl was born December 12, 1982.
Poferl earned a bachelor’s degree in international studies from St. Thomas University in 2005. She did analysis at HID Global, Threespot, and HUGE before joining the Times in 2014. She was named Chief Data Officer, Head of Audience, and Assistant Managing Editor in 2021 amid a surge in anti-transgender coverage.
Philip B. Corbett is an American executive involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. He was Associate Managing Editor for Standards and recipient of protest letters sent to the Times in 2023.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Sam Sifton is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. Sifton joined the masthead in 2020 as lead for features coverage, amid the paper’s surge in biased coverage of transgender issues.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Let’s hope Sifton has the courage to change the things he can.
Background
Sifton was born June 5, 1966. His father, Charles Proctor Sifton, was a federal judge, and his mother, Elisabeth Sifton, was a publishing executive and author.
Sifton joined the Times in 2002 as an editor in Dining, moved to Culture as a deputy, and then was named Culture editor. From there he served as restaurant critic and National editor. He is founding editor of NYT Cooking, a major success for the paper.
Sifton authored the books See You on Sunday (2020) and Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well (2012). The New York Times Cooking: No-Recipe Recipes (2021)
He and his wife, theatre producer Tina Fallon, have two children.
Charlie Stadtlander is an American executive involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. He was Director External Communications, Newsroom in 2023.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Patrick Healy is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. Healy served as Deputy Editor of the Opinion section during its anti-transgender coverage crisis of the 2020s.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. As of 2023 there were no trans journalists on staff, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. At the same time, Healy helped beef up anti-trans staff, including bringing in David French.
Background
Patrick Durham Healy was born on August 31, 1971 to Carol Ann Higginbotham Healy (1936â2023) and Gerald T. Healy, Jr. (1934â2021). Healy has an older sibling and grew up gay in a conservative Catholic household. Healy earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1990, and a second bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in 1993.
After reporting in local New Hampshire papers, Healy wrote for the transphobic Chronicle of Higher Education from 1994 to 2000. From 2000 to 2004, Healy wrote for the Boston Globe, then joined the New York Times in 2005.
After about ten years as a political correspondent, Healy held editor roles in the Culture, Politics, and Opinion sections. Healy reports to anti-trans ringleader Kathleen Kingsbury as well as to Charlotte Greensit.
Healy has made television appearances as guest host of The New York Times Close Up with Sam Roberts on NY1 News and as an analyst on CNN.
Healy married physician assistant Raymond Alejandro “Ray” Delgado on October 1, 2022.
Staff report (April 8, 2005). The Mayor Gets Sound Advice, But Will He Pay Attention to It? The Quotidian / New York Civic http://www.nycivic.org/QLIST/050408.html [archive]
Michael Slackman is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. He was named to the masthead in 2019 amid the paper’s surge in biased coverage about trans issues.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Michael E. Slackman was born in July 1961. Slackman graduated from the Northeastern University School of Journalism in 1984.
He covered the New York City suburbs before joining Newsday. While he was working there, Newsday won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for spot reporting.
He left Newsady in 2001 for the Los Angeles Times, where he was Moscow bureau chief until 2003.
Slackman joined the Times in 2003 as a reporter on Metro before being named bureau chief for Berlin, then Cairo. He was named to the masthead in 2019.
He is married to multimedia artist Wendy Vissar. They have an adult son, Nikolas.
SaidIt is a social media platform created as an alternative to reddit. After many “gender critical” users and groups were banned on reddit for anti-transgender hate speech, some of those banned users moved to SaidIt.
SaidIt claims it has less censorship than reddit and claims to be “one of the safe havens for truth seekers, alt-historians, and conspirophiles in an increasingly globally thoughtpoliced state.” It is a toxic online community and a service of choice for online anti-transgender content.
SaidIt’s 2022 Google results show two anti-transgender subsaidits among the top results.
Background
SaidIt was founded in 2017.
Moderators
magnora7 (Texas)
d3rr (California)
TheAmeliaMay (Arkansas) aka conservative transgender woman Amelia May Johnson [resigned]
In the past, when the saidit.net domain was shut down, the domain would sometimes redirect to the SaidIt subreddit (r/saiditnet). Calculating the Jaccard index of posts, participants on the SaidIt subreddit accrete into five reddit community clusters:
Helen Lewis is a British author and anti-transgender activist who launders gender critical extremism into mainstream media. Lewis is a sex segregationist who claims to be writing from a feminist/leftist viewpoint. Lewis demonstrates that anti-trans sentiment extends into every political point of view and movement.
Lewis’ anti-trans views center around:
Challenging legal recognition of trans people in systems developed on the basis of sex, particularly opposing the UK’s Gender Recognition Act
Maintaining systems of sex segregation, particularly in matters of law, public accommodation, prisons, sports, and other sex-segregated institutions
Maintaining the strict gatekeeping of trans healthcare via government control, developed under nationalized heath systems (so-called “gender clinics”) in the 20th century
Maintaining medico-juridical control over trans and gender diverse people though disease models and medical requirements for legal recognition (sterilization requirements, etc.)
Maintaining non-affirming models of care for gender diverse youth, developed last century for “the prevention of transsexualism” and now widely outlawed
Background
Lewis was born in 1983, grew up Catholic in Worcester, and attended St Mary’s School there. Lewis then read English at St Peter’s College, Oxford, followed by a journalism degree from City University London. Lewis no longer identifies as Catholic.
After graduating, Lewis worked at the Daily Mail, then joined the New Statesman in 2010. Lewis married designer and creative director Matthew “Matt” Hasteley in 2010 and wrote professionally as Helen Lewis-Hasteley from 2010 until their divorce in 2013. During the marriage, Lewis met and got involved with someone else, eventually leaving the marriage. Like many gender-critical public figures, this starter marriage seems to have had a significant impact on Lewis’ views about sex and gender.
Lewis married Guardian digital editor Jonathan Haynes in 2015. In 2019 Lewis joined the staff of The Atlantic, which has never had an out trans person listed on their masthead in its 160+ years of existence. In 2020 game developer Ubisoft removed Lewis’ voice from in-game audio in Watch Dogs: Legion due to transphobic views.
2017 Times op-ed
Lewis has been critical of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act, claiming that what used to be called the “real life test” that lasts for two years should be required for anyone to be legally recognized as their gender. In a piece titled “A man canât just say he has turned into a woman,” Lewis wrote:
What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now itâs a question of an internal essence â a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a womenâs changing room? Thatâs why feminists have raised the alarm over the move to self-identification, along with some older trans people who fear that âtrendstersâ will erode the goodwill they have worked hard to acquire.
2018 New Statesman op-ed
Lewis was accused of laundering transphobic talking points into a major media outlet around the topics of sex segregation and trans healthcare for youth.
Want to talk about how letting people self-define their gender might affect female-only spaces such as prisons and changing rooms? Then youâre a bigot, cloaking your bigotry in the language of âlegitimate concernsâ. Want to discuss whether we are rushing to medicalise gender non-conforming children because they and their desperate parents have been sold the idea there is a universal âfixâ for their profound, genuine unhappiness? These are yet more âlegitimate concernsâ that can be dismissed, even as medical professionals warn that not every gender non-conforming child will benefit from puberty blockers and (later) medical transition.
We should all be in favour of the right of transgender people to live their lives free of discrimination, harassment and abuse. […] But the right of someone who has been through male puberty, with the consequences for skeleton and muscle development that brings, to compete in womenâs sports that depend on raw strength? Thatâs more difficult. […]
Our ideas about gender are undergoing a profound shift. I hope that they will end up in a place where a boy can wear a princess dress without people assuming he is âreallyâ a girl.
2018 GQ interview of Jordan Peterson
In September 2018, Lewis interviewed fellow anti-trans activist Jordan Peterson for GQ. It quickly turned into a tense but civil debate that went viral. One of the few times they agree in the 90-minute conversation is on what Lewis calls “transgender issues.” At about 1:09.45, Lewis’s views overlap significantly with Peterson’s anti-trans viewpoints. Lewis repeats the unsupported generalization that “transgender activists” believe they have a “female soul.” Lewis also believes “We are very quick to diagnose and treat children in a way that I find â and not waiting for the research â and that I find concerning.”
Lewis, Helen (July 2020). Why Millennial Harry Potter Fans Reject JK Rowling. [stealth edited to How J. K. Rowling Became Voldemort] The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/07/why-millennial-harry-potter-fans-reject-jk-rowling/613870/
Lewis, Helen (April 2021). What Happened to Jordan Peterson?The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/what-happened-to-jordan-peterson/618082/
Lewis, Helen (26 October 2021). In Defense of Saying âPregnant Women.âThe Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/pregnant-women-people-feminism-language/620468/ [headline stealth edited to Why Iâll Keep Saying âPregnant Womenâ]
