Matthew Yglesias vs. transgender people

Matthew Yglesias is an American author and anti-transgender activist.

Background

Matthew George Yglesias was born May 18, 1981. Yglesias’ parent Rafael Jose Yglesias (born 1954) is also a writer. Yglesias’ parent Margaret Karen Joskow (1951–2004) was a graphic designer. Nicholas Yglesias (born 1985) is Matthew’s sibling.

Yglesias attended the elite private Dalton School in New York City, then earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 2003.

Yglesias is a 2014 co-founder of Vox.com with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell.

Yglesias and spouse Kate Crawford (born ~1983) married in 2012 and have a child named Jose Yglesias Crawford born in 2015.

Anti-transgender activism

Ryan Cooper listed several “useful idiots” fueling the right-wing transphobia panic, including Bari Weiss, Jamie Reed, Jonathan Chait, and Yglesias.

Critic Andrea Long Chu also cites Yglesias as a key figure in the trans agnostic reactionary liberal (TARL) group of anti-transgender activists:

The Times is not alone; it is one of many respectable publications, including The Atlantic and The Economist, engaged in sanitizing the ideas promoted by TARLs in the more reactionary corners of the media landscape. Here one finds journalists like Singal, Matthew Yglesias, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan, Helen Lewis, Meghan Daum, and, of course, former Times staffer Bari Weiss. Many of these writers live in self-imposed exile on Substack, the newsletter platform, where they present themselves as brave survivors of cancellation by the woke elites. But they are not a marginal force.
Chu (2024)

References

Chu AL (March 11, 2024). Freedom of Sex: The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies. New York https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trans-rights-biological-sex-gender-judith-butler.html

Cooper, Ryan (March 2, 2023). The Useful Idiots Fueling the Right-Wing Transphobia Panic. The American Prospect https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-03-02-right-wing-transphobia-panic/

Staff report (September 4, 1977). Miss Joskow Fiancee Of Rafael Yglesias. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/04/archives/miss-joskow-fiancee-of-rafael-yglesias.html

[Death notice] (June 24, 2004) Joskow, Margaret Karen. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/classified/paid-notice-deaths-joskow-margaret-karen.html