The Stranger is an alternative newspaper based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1991 as a weekly print publication supported by coupon ads, it switched to a biweekly magazine format in 2017. It suspended print operations in 2020.
Transgender coverage
Since its founding, The Stranger has published a sex column by Dan Savage called Savage Love. Over the years, Savage has published a number of columns about trans and gender diverse people that have been criticized. In addition to work like the It Gets Better project that has helped some in the community, Savage has a long history of supporting and defending sexologists and journalists who have also been accused of bias.
In 2011, The Queer Issue edited by Christopher Frizzelle and Savage included a piece by Alice Dreger, who has long voiced opposition to the affirmative model of care for trans and gender diverse youth, especially any kind of medical options:
The great majority of young children who declare they are a gender that doesn’t match their birth sex grow out of the mismatch. […]
But somehow if we wrap these major interventions around gender identity, we’re supposed to believe they are not that big a deal in terms of planning for a child’s future? And the clinician who tries to get a gender dysphoric kid to learn to like her or his innate body really is a Nazi? Not buying it. […]
I am also sick and tired of trans-rights advocates acting like a certain current-day endocrinologist is ever-so-progressive because he essentially starts prepping genderqueer kids for surgery the moment they are presented by their distraught parents. Reminds me a little too much of Iran, you know?
The Stranger also employed Katie Herzog, whose article on “detransition” was sourced from a group of anti-transgender people associated with the “ex-trans movement.” The Stranger never updated that article to note that major source Ky Schevers has disavowed the views made in the piece.
References
Wood, Natalie (June 20, 2018) What Happens After the Person You Married Tells You They’re Transgender https://www.thestranger.com/queer-issue-2018/2018/06/20/27820946/what-happens-after-the-person-you-married-tells-you-theyre-transgender
Herzog, Katie (June 28, 2017). The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren’t. The Stranger. https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the-detransitioners-they-were-transgender-until-they-werent
Herzog, Katie (July 3, 2017). A Response to the Uproar Over My Piece, “The Detransitioners.” The Stranger. https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/07/03/25262759/a-response-to-the-uproar-over-my-piece-the-detransitioners
Savage, Dan (August 12, 2010). Golden Oldie. https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=4642012
Savage, Dan (August 12, 2010). Bad Tranny. https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=13054
Savage, Dan (March 26, 2009). Deep Thought. https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=1192438
Savage, Dan (June 7, 2014). About That Hate Crime I Committed at University of Chicago. https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/06/07/about-that-hate-crime-i-committed-at-university-of-chicago
Dreger, Alice (2011). Trans Advocates (At Least Where Genderqueer Kids Are Concerned). https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/trans-advocates/Content?oid=8743338