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Choire Sicha vs. transgender people

Choire Sicha is an American writer and anti-transgender activist.

While running the New York Times Style section, Sicha claimed, “We will aggressively cover politics, gender, sexuality, health, crime, shoes and contouring,” but the only notable gender coverage was a piece by John McDermott sympathetically profiling numerous anti-transgender public figures.

Background

Choire Arthur Sicha was born November 19, 1971 and grew up in Southern California, according to self-reports.

Parent Jeffrey Sicha (born 1940) is a Rhodes Scholar and philosopher who currently lives in Atascadero, California with Sadie Kendall, creator of Kendall Farms CrĂšme FraĂźche. The elder Sicha occasionally publishes philosophical texts. Sicha’s other birth parent is often mythologized in various origin stories and appears to have been the primary caregiver. Sicha graduated from Evanston Township High School in Illinois in 1989.

From 1991 to 1997, Sicha did HIV/AIDS activism at organizations including Larkin Street Youth Services, People with AIDS Coalition, HIV Law Project, and Visual AIDS. From 1997 to 2003 Sicha was director of Manhattan art gallery Debs & Co. During that time Sicha reportedly shared a “shitty East Village rabbit warren with Dale Peck” and was a key figure in developing “blog voice,” the snarky Gen X tone that further metastasized into millennial Twitter and Tumblr voice.

On October 22, 2011, Sicha married commercial real estate executive David Michael Valdez. They spend much of their time in the Hudson Valley north of New York City.

Gawker

Nick Denton founded Gawker in 2002 and appointed Elizabeth Spiers editor. When Spiers left, Sicha served as editor for a year before Jessica Coen replaced Sicha in August 2004. While Sicha was editing at Jared Kushner’s New York Observer from 2005 to 2007, then writing for Radar, the Gawker feature “Gawker Stalker” became more and more invasive. Sicha returned to Gawker and continued ramping it up:

Gawker had always sold itself as mean but it now became, actually, very mean. Sicha, who liked to pretend to be a news organization, had sent “correspondents” and “interns” to official media events. Coen found more of them, and she sent them not only to launches and readings but also to private parties, where they took embarrassing party photos. This was the important development: the decision to treat every subject, known or unknown, in public or private situations, with the fascinated ill will that tabloid magazines have for their subjects. Spiers had invented the best-known element of Gawker, “Gawker Stalker,” which compiled reports of celebrity encounters. Really this had started as a support group for CondĂ© Nast assistants, who wrote in to say what it felt like to see Anna Wintour in person and, also, what she was wearing. As the feature expanded, under Spiers and Sicha, it remained a record of that nice New York moment: seeing a Hollywood face. During Coen’s tenure, Gawker Stalker morphed from a list, to a list with photographs, to an interactive map that tracked its subjects through Manhattan with unnerving immediacy.

Sicha later called Gawker Stalker “the bane of my existence.”

Libertarian anti-trans activist Nick Gillespie named Sicha one of the “50 Most Loathsome NYers.”

When Spiers left, […] she handed the reins to Choire Sicha (yes, folks, that’s pronounced “Cory”, and yes, it’s a dude) who turned Gawker into an unreadable circle-jerk for the cream of New York City’s wannabe media asshole crop. To read Gawker now is no longer an enjoyable five minutes in the morning; it’s stumbling into a horrifying online cocktail party hosted by a humorless, obnoxious prick and attended by his even less interesting obnoxious prick friends.

The Awl and 2013 book

Sicha co-founded The Awl with David Cho and Alex Balk in 2009 and edited there until taking the Style section job at the New York Times. The Awl folded in 2018.

Sicha authored the 2013 book Very Recent History.

2019 New York Times piece

Sicha claimed on many occasions that gender would be covered at the Times:

“[The] Style desk covers change, it covers generational change, it covers change in how we talk about gender, it covers young people. It covers technology, and it covers love, marriage and how we look. Those are all things that are incredibly fraught at this time, and they’re supposed to upset people.”

Bienaimé (2019)

Gender was conspicuously absent from subsequent coverage, with one notable exception. Sicha greenlit and published John McDermott’s 2019 puff piece about gender critical media figures. Sicha and McDermott interviewed zero trans people or media watchdogs critical of these bigots.

As Melissa Gira Grant noted in The New Republic:

Conspicuously absent from the Times piece are quotes and stories from the people who have been deemed—both by the canceled and their chroniclers—supporting players in the culture war debate: the trans individuals the canceled have concerned themselves with, and whose lives and health are at stake.

Grant (2019)

People Sicha and McDermott profiled sympathetically include:

Vox Media

Sicha has had a relationship with Vox Media starting in 2016, returning to their property New York after the stint at the New York Times. Sicha profiled Daniel and Grace Lavery and their partner, Lily Woodruff in 2024.

Sicha has wisely deleted almost all tweets interacting with anti-trans media figures. Those have been left out for now as a courtesy.

References

Grant, Melissa Gira (November 6, 2019). Fixating on “cancel culture” in an age of transphobia. The New Republic https://newrepublic.com/article/155606/fxating-cancel-culture-age-transphobia

Staff report (June 7, 2021). Choire Sicha to join New York Magazine as Editor-at-Large. New York https://nymag.com/press/2021/06/choire-sicha-to-join-new-york-magazine-as-editor-at-large.html

Dean Baquet, Joe Kahn, and Sam Sifton (April 16, 2021). A New Role for Choire Sicha. New York Times Company https://www.nytco.com/press/a-new-role-for-choire-sicha/

BienaimĂ©, Pierre (December 3, 2019). New York Times Style editor Choire Sicha on covering boomers, Gen Z and the generations between. Digiday https://digiday.com/media/new-york-times-choire-sicha-style-generations/

Hiltner, Stephen (October 26, 2017). What constitutes style? Choire Sicha, our new Styles editor, answers your questions. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/reader-center/choire-sicha-styles-editor-q-and-a.html

Heinzinger, Kristen (September 21, 2017). Choire Sicha on his plans for NYT Styles, his Gawker days, and more. Fashion Week Daily https://fashionweekdaily.com/preaching-to-the-choire/

Moses, Lucia (27 April 2016). Vox Media’s Choire Sicha is the unlikely platform wrangler. Digiday https://digiday.com/media/vox-media-choire-sicha-unlikely-platform-wrangler/

Alpert, Lukas I. (February 17, 2016). Vox hires Choire Sicha to oversee partnerships with Facebook, Snapchat. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/vox-hires-choire-sicha-to-oversee-partnerships-with-facebook-snapchat-1455714001

Dzieza, Josh (July 9, 2015). Why are the most important people in media reading The Awl?”. The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/9/8908279/the-awl-profile-choire-sicha-john-herrman-matt-buchanan

Chafin, Chris (June 3, 2014). The Awl and the rise of downtown Brooklyn. Brooklyn Magazine http://www.bkmag.com/2014/06/03/the-awl-and-the-rise-of-downtown-brooklyn/

Gregory, Alice (August 13, 2013). Choire Sicha, the anti-blogger. The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/choire-sicha-the-anti-blogger

Wayne, Teddy (October 28, 2010). The definitive interview with Choire Sicha, Editor of The Awl, on the state of the media, writing, and New York. GQ https://www.gq.com/story/the-definitive-interview-with-choire-sicha-editor-of-the-awl-on-the-state-of-the-media-writing-and-n

Blumenkranz, Carla (Winter 2008). Gawker: 2002–2007. n+1 https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-6/reviews/gawker-2002-2007/

Selected writing involving Sicha

Sicha, Choire (July 13, 2004). Keeping Up With the Laverys: The Brooklyn literary power throuple all working and baby-raising from home. New York https://www.thecut.com/article/daniel-lavery-grace-lavery-lily-woodruff-brooklyn-interview.html

McDermott, John (November 2, 2019). Those people we tried to cancel? They’re all hanging out together. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/style/what-is-cancel-culture.html

Sicha, Choire (July 13, 2004). Stanley Crouch Punches Critic: The Literary Wars Turn Violent. Gawker https://www.gawker.com/topic/stanley-crouch-punches-critic-the-literary-wars-turn-violent-017590.php [archive]

Resources

Choire Sicha (choiresicha.com)

Twitter (twitter.com)

Substack (substack.com)

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

Instagram (instagram.com)

LinkedIn (linkedin.com)

New York (nymag.com)