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Michelle Goldberg vs. transgender people

Michelle Goldberg is an American author and anti-transgender activist. Goldberg helped popularize the “what is a woman?” trope and frequently platforms conservative trans people and anti-trans feminists.

Background

Michelle H. Goldberg was born on September 23, 1975 and grew up in Buffalo, New York. Goldberg’s parent Gerald was editor of The Buffalo News, and parent Carolyn was a math professor. Goldberg earned a bachelor’s degree from University at Buffalo in 1996 and a master’s degree from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 1998.

“What is a Woman?” article (2014)

Goldberg sympathetically profiled gender critical activists in a 2014 New Yorker piece on radical feminists versus “transgenderism.” The full title is “What is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.”

Those mentioned included Radfems Respond, Lierre Keith, Sheila Jeffreys, the signatories of a 2013 “Forbidden Discourse” open letter, conservative trans writer Snowflake Especial, ex-trans activist Heath Atom Russell, Lorene Gottschalk, Ray Blanchard, J. Michael Bailey, Janice Raymond, Thomas Szasz, Rachel Ivey, Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Lisa Vogel, and Sara St. Martin Lynne.

Goldberg outlined the 1970s controversy involving trans singer Beth Elliott and interviewed Sandy Stone and Julia Serano for the piece. Serano wrote several critical responses, sharing all email correspondence with Goldberg. Serano was concerned about how Sheila Jeffreys misused passages from Serno’s autobiography to claim Serano was “autogynephilic.” Although Goldberg removed some of the passages in the draft after Serano objected, Serano wrote that Goldberg “casually mentions that Jeffreys (who is depicted as a sympathetic, if eccentric, character in the article) considers me to be an “autogynephile” without mentioning any of my arguments against the theory and Jeffreys’s hypocritical appropriation of it.”

In Columbia Journalism Review, Jos Truitt sharply criticized Goldberg’s framing:

To any observer aware of the conflict, the article reads like a push piece for Jeffreys’ book: It accepts her framing on a number of issues, and the only trans woman voices, included at the end of the article, are women trans-exclusionary radical feminists have attempted to discredit, quoted using trans-exclusionary feminists’ framing. Goldberg establishes that trans identities should be up for debate by first quoting a trans-exclusionary radical feminist using male pronouns to refer to trans women, and then using male pronouns herself.

“Apostates” article (2015)

Goldberg sympathetically profiled conservative trans and gender diverse people in Slate, including Miranda Yardley, “Helen Highwater,” Corinna Cohn, “Snowflake Especial,” “Gender Minefield,” and Aoife Assumpta Hart of Gender Apostates.

References

Fradella, Henry F. (2024). The Imperative of Rejecting “Gender-Critical” Feminism in the Law, 30 Wm. & Mary J. Race, Gender, & Soc. Just. 269 (2024), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol30/iss2/3 full text:: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1618&context=wmjowl

Scocca, Tom (January 29, 2023). Why Is the New York Times So Obsessed With Trans Kids? Popula https://popula.com/2023/01/29/the-worst-thing-we-read-this-week-why-is-the-new-york-times-so-obsessed-with-trans-kids/

Urquhart, Evan (January 24, 2023). Michelle Goldberg is Better Than Nothing. Assigned Media https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/michelle-goldberg-better-than-nothing

Awkward-Rich, Cameron (Summer 2017). Trans, Feminism: Or, Reading like a Depressed Transsexual. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2017, vol. 42, no. 4] https://doi.org/10.1086/690914 PDF: https://wgs.fas.harvard.edu/files/wgs/files/awkward-rich.pdf

Serano, Julia (December 10, 2015). Michelle Goldberg’s relentless anti-trans bias. Whipping Girl https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/12/michelle-goldbergs-disingenuous-attack.html

“Highwater, Helen” (October 27, 2015). “Trans women are women” is a lie that is as dangerous to transwomen as it is to women. Transavant https://transavant.tumblr.com/post/132016557177/trans-women-are-women-is-a-lie-that-is-as [archive]

Serano, Julia (August 8, 2014). Final thoughts on that Michelle Goldberg article, faux journalism, and recognizing bias. Whipping Girl https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/08/final-thoughts-on-that-michelle.html

Kennedy, Natacha (August 14, 2014). Making trans-hate sound reasonable. TransAdvocate https://www.transadvocate.com/making-trans-hate-sound-reasonable_n_14336.htm

Truitt, Jos (August 6, 2014). Why The New Yorker‘s radical feminism and transgenderism piece was one-sided. Columbia Journalism Review https://www.cjr.org/minority_reports/new_yorker_feminism_transgenderism_jos_truitt.php

Jacques, Juliet (August 6, 2014). On the “dispute” between radical feminism and trans people. New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/08/dispute-between-radical-feminism-and-trans-people

Serano, Julia (August 5, 2014). Op-ed: An Open Letter to The New Yorker. The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/08/05/op-ed-open-letter-new-yorker

Ginelle, Leela (August 4, 2014). TERF War: The New Yorker’s One-Sided Article Undermines Transgender Identity. Bitch Media https://bitchmedia.org/post/terf-war-the-new-yorkers-one-sided-article-undermines-transgender-identity [archive]

Tannehill, Brynn (July 29, 2014). New Yorker Shamefully Cites Anti-LGBT ‘Researcher.’ The Bilerico Project http://www.bilerico.com/2014/07/new_yorker_shamefully_cites_anti-lgbt_researcher.php [archive]

Brighe, Mari (July 29, 2014). The New Yorker’s Skewed History of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism Ignores Actual Trans Women. Autostraddle https://www.autostraddle.com/the-new-yorkers-skewed-history-of-trans-exclusionary-radical-feminism-ignores-actual-trans-women-247642/

Serano, Julia (Jul 28, 2014). two articles (plus thoughts on autogynephilia as the transgender equivalent of slut-shaming). Whipping Girl https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/07/two-articles-related-to-femininity-and.html

Selected publications by Goldberg

Goldberg, Michelle (January 23, 2023. Trans Kids Deserve Private Lives, Too. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/trans-kids-privacy-gender-identity.html

Goldberg, Michelle (December 9, 2015). The Trans Women Who Say That Trans Women Aren’t Women: Meet the apostates of the trans rights movement. Slate https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/gender-critical-trans-women-the-apostates-of-the-trans-rights-movement.html

Goldberg, Michelle (July 28, 2014). What is a woman? New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/woman-2

Resources

Michelle Goldberg (michellegoldberg.net)

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

X/Twitter (x.com)

New York Times (nytimes.com)

Facebook (facebook.com)

Slate (slate.com)