It Took the New York Times Under 10 Years to Go from Championing Trans Rights to Throwing Us Under the Bus

In 2015, The New York Times ran a groundbreaking editorial series, The Quest for Transgender Equality. It was bold, urgent, and unequivocal: trans people deserve dignity, legal protection, and full inclusion in society.

As part of that series, the Times invited transgender people to share their experiences in Transgender Lives: Your Stories, an evolving collection of personal narratives that reflected the strength, diversity, and challenges of the trans community.

I contributed to that series.

Like so many others, I believed the Times was genuinely invested in telling our stories, in shifting public perception toward empathy and understanding. Back then, the paper seemed to recognize that trans rights were not just an abstract political issue but a deeply personal, lived reality.

That was ten years ago.

Last weekend, the Times ran another editorial on transgender rights. This time, it was in response to Donald Trump’s sweeping attacks on trans Americans — executive orders targeting healthcare, ID documents, military service, and even bathroom access. The editorial, Trump’s Attack on Transgender Americans Is Unconscionable, rightly condemns Trump’s cruelty. It describes the wave of anti-trans policies as “as direct a campaign against a single, vulnerable minority as we’ve seen in generations.”

And yet, for all its moral outrage, the editorial fails to acknowledge one critical fact: The Times itself played a role in shaping the discourse that made these attacks politically viable.

Over the past decade, the Times has gone from centering trans voices to treating trans identity as a debate. And that shift is not just disappointing — it is dangerous.
From Champion to Enabler

If the 2015 editorial was a call to action, the 2025 editorial is a passive lament. It describes the cruelty of Trump’s policies but does not own up to the fact that mainstream media, including the Times, helped create the conditions for these attacks to succeed.

Over the last decade, the Times has platformed — and, in some cases, legitimized — anti-trans rhetoric under the guise of “journalistic balance.” It has run op-eds questioning gender-affirming care, treating established medical consensus as if it were unsettled. It has entertained bad-faith debates about trans women in sports, fueling narratives that politicians now use to justify legislative bans.

The Times editorial board even acknowledges that Trump’s attacks are part of a long-standing political strategy — a tactic that has been used before against Black Americans, Indigenous people, and the gay community. But what it refuses to acknowledge is its own role in normalizing the very rhetoric Trump and his allies have weaponized.

When the Times gives voice to the idea that trans identity is up for discussion, it is not engaging in “discourse” — it is reinforcing the very talking points that now fuel executive orders, legislative bans, and political violence.

The 2015 editorial series recognized trans rights as a civil rights issue. The 2025 editorial recognizes trans rights as a controversy. That shift should concern everyone who claims to care about justice.

A Manufactured Crisis

Trump is not attacking trans people because there is some legitimate national crisis around gender identity. He is using trans lives as a political distraction, a wedge issue to rally his base while avoiding scrutiny of his own administration’s failures.

But his strategy only works because media institutions — including the Times— have primed the public to see trans rights as a “debate” rather than a settled question of justice.

The harm trans people are facing today is not just the result of Republican extremism. It is also the result of a mainstream media ecosystem that, for years, has treated trans lives as an intellectual exercise rather than a lived reality.

Screen capture from NYT

The Times Must Reckon With Its Own Role

The Times’ latest editorial expresses concern over how quickly and aggressively Trump is moving against trans people. But those of us who have been living through this escalation are not surprised.

We saw this coming.

And frankly, so should have the Times.

The real question is: Why didn’t they listen?

• Why, after advocating for trans rights in 2015, did the Times pivot to publishing stories that cast doubt on trans healthcare?
• Why did they allow bad-faith actors to frame trans existence as a controversy rather than a human reality?
• Why did it take Trump’s full-scale attack for them to recognize the danger they helped enable?

If the Times is serious about defending trans rights, it must do more than condemn Trump. It must acknowledge its own role in shaping the narratives that made these attacks possible.

That means:

• Ending the false equivalency framing. Trans existence is not a debate. Stop giving anti-trans voices a platform under the guise of “balance.”
• Owning up to past editorial choices. The Times has empowered anti-trans rhetoric over the years. It needs to admit that.
• Returning to proactive advocacy. In 2015, the Times called for change. It should do so again — before it’s too late.

A decade ago, the Times had the courage to demand justice for trans people. Now, it merely observes the carnage as if it had no hand in the story.

But the Times didn’t just witness this crisis. It helped build it. And now, it must take responsibility.