The New York Times’ War on Trans People
The New York Times has systematically weaponized its coverage to undermine the trans community and its access to healthcare.
Over the past few years, The New York Times, especially their science reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, have repeatedly amplified talking points from fringe anti-transgender organizations and sources. The paper’s Science desk has devoted extensive resources to what it frames as “debates” around transgender youth healthcare, often elevating discredited perspectives to the front page. There has been no worse offender of the weaponization of the Times coverage than Azeen Ghorayshi who has authored and informed many of the articles on gender affirming care for trans youth. Despite severe push-back, the Times continues its campaign against the trans community and recently announced that they would be releasing a 5-part podcast series produced in part by Ghorayshi.
The Times has not lacked for substantial criticism for their coverage. An open letter signed by over 100 organizations, and another by hundreds of Times contributors, admonished the Times for “platforming the voices of extremist anti-LGBTQ activists” who traffic in inaccurate, harmful misinformation. Indeed, time and again the Times has presented the medical consensus on gender-affirming care as just one side of a “fraught debate,” granting undue legitimacy to sources tied to anti-trans groups. It's no different than legitimizing climate change deniers and saying it is a "fraught debate." The asymmetrical advantage of weaponized skepticism is welcomed by Times' editors.
A clear example is the Times’ uncritical use of claims from groups like the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). SEGM, a pseudo-scientific organization opposed to gender-affirming care, has heavily influenced anti-trans legislation by promoting the idea that care for trans youth is experimental. Rather than treat SEGM’s assertions with skepticism, Ghorayshi and colleagues have often echoed them. Ghorayshi's articles have cited cherry-picked studies (some funded or promoted by SEGM) that question the benefits of puberty blockers or hormones, without full context. In doing so, the paper has omitted crucial information about sources’ biases, for instance, failing to note when an interviewee is affiliated with an anti-trans lobby. As GLAAD noted, One prominent piece profiled a woman who detransitioned, neglecting to mention she was actually the president of a gender-critical activist group. Such lapses violate basic journalistic transparency and bolster a false narrative that a broad “expert” groundswell doubts gender-affirming care, when in fact this view is relegated to a few ideologically driven outliers.
This troubling pattern extends to the figures the Times chooses to platform. Ghorayshi’s reporting has frequently leaned on voices like Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish psychiatrist known for opposing affirming care for minors. Kaltiala has claimed, contrary to evidence, that most trans-identifying youth eventually desist and that medical transition is “pushed without evidence," talking points eagerly seized by anti-trans figures. By repeatedly quoting and featuring such controversial, anti-trans voices, the Times lends them a veneer of credibility they have not earned. The cumulative effect is coverage that skews public understanding of trans healthcare, as the Times is an accomplice to those trying to roll back trans rights.
Misrepresenting Science: The Dutch Protocol, Puberty Blockers, and “Social Contagion”
The Times’ reporting has distorted core medical facts, starting with how it portrays established treatment protocols. Ghorayshi and others habitually invoke the original Dutch Protocol (the seeming inspiration for their upcoming 5 part podcast series) the 1990s pediatric treatment model from the Netherlands, as the de facto standard, only to suggest that today’s practitioners fail to meet its exacting criteria or that today's trans youth are a different patient profile. In one front-page story, the Times stressed that the Dutch researchers had carefully vetted a small number of teens for puberty blockers and subsequent hormones, implying that the rapid growth in trans youth seeking care now is inherently suspect by comparison. The reporting fetishized the “Dutch Protocol” as the one reliable approach, while insinuating that clinics elsewhere are taking dangerous shortcuts, a framing that is misleading. They also use that protocol to argue that today's patient profile is different and thus those results cannot be applicable today. In reality, the Dutch team’s success has been replicated and built upon across the world, with refinements in care over 30 years and new research confirming long-term benefits. By treating the Dutch work as a sacred relic and everything after as an unproven deviation, the Times paints a false picture of a field in disarray rather than one where global knowledge has expanded and solidified best practices.
Nowhere has the Times’ slant been more evident than in its discussion of puberty blockers. In late 2022, a much-publicized Times article bore the headline “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” — seizing on the concept of blockers as a “pause button” on adolescence. Puberty-suppressing medications (GnRH analogues) are often described by doctors as a reversible pause, meant as a compromise for more time instead of starting trans youth immediately on hormones which aren't nearly as reversible. Yet the Times coverage managed to misrepresent this well-established treatment in two damaging ways. First, it adopted a skeptical, alarmist tone about blockers’ safety, suggesting grave trade-offs without evidence of widespread harm. Second, it reduced blockers solely to the notion of a temporary delay, sidestepping their proven mental-health benefits for the youth who need them.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) was so disturbed by the Times’ one-sided portrayal that it issued a rare public rebuttal. In a three-page tear-down, WPATH condemned the article for fueling “misinformation and subjectivity” around trans healthcare. The Times, WPATH noted, advanced “inaccurate narratives” that puberty blockers are conclusively harmful to bone health and that many trans teens later regret transitioning, while failing to state the well-documented benefits of treatment. Despite what the Times reported, research shows that for appropriately selected patients, blockers alleviate anguish and lower suicide risk by preventing unwanted physical changes. But readers of the Times heard little of that. Instead they were treated to cherry-picked anecdotes of side effects and insinuations that “pausing” puberty might be perilous, a gross distortion of the medical consensus that the potential harms of blockers are rare and outweighed by their benefits.
Perhaps most irresponsibly, the Times has resurfaced the long-discredited “social contagion” theory of transgender identity. In a Feb. 13, 2023 article, Ghorayshi drew a link between teens coming out as trans and the spread of tic-like behaviors on TikTok, effectively comparing gender identity to a peer-driven social fad. This notion, often packaged as repeatedly debunked “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD), posits that vulnerable adolescents, particularly girls, are catching trans identities from friends or the internet. It’s a theory without scientific merit, originating from a single flawed 2018 survey of parents recruited on anti-trans forums. That paper’s author, Lisa Littman, has been widely criticized, and her work was never peer-reviewed as a valid diagnosis. In fact, the American Psychological Association and 61 other healthcare organizations formally denounced ROGD as invalid back in 2021. Subsequent research in the journal Pediatrics found no evidence of any “social contagion” effect, trans teens did not come predominantly from friend groups, nor were youth assigned female at birth over-represented as the ROGD panic claims. As Scientific American summarized, fears of “social contagion” are not supported by science. Yet the Times gave this fringe theory a sympathetic airing, lending undue credence to the idea that increasing numbers of trans youth might be a “craze” or mistaken trend. By amplifying a moral panic akin to gay conversion therapy advocates once claiming peers or media “turned” kids queer, the Times helped inject ROGD into mainstream discourse. Indeed, anti-trans politicians have gleefully seized on these articles to justify banning healthcare, citing the Times’ own words as proof and legitimization for their work to ban gender affirming care. It is hard to imagine a greater journalistic failure than reviving a baseless theory refuted by every major medical authority, under the guise of impartial reporting.
“Europe Is Pulling Back” – The Myth vs. the Reality
A centerpiece of the Times’ transgender coverage is the claim that Europe is retreating from gender-affirming care, and that the U.S. should perhaps follow suit. Ghorayshi has repeatedly written about policy shifts in Sweden, Finland, and the U.K., often framing these moves as part of a “big shift” away from affirmation. At first glance, the narrative sounds plausible: for example, England’s National Health Service recently limited youth access to hormones outside of research settings, and Sweden’s medical board issued new guidelines emphasizing caution. But this simplistic storyline omits critical context and exaggerates the degree of change. The Times coverage often fails to note that no European country has “banned” gender-affirming care outright; rather, some have tightened protocols or moved specialized services to hospitals. In Finland and Sweden, youth still can receive puberty blockers and hormones – the treatments are still legal and available, just under stricter clinical oversight. By contrast, the U.S. states passing bans are outlawing care entirely under criminal penalty, a draconian step unmatched in Europe.
More importantly, the “Europe is pulling back” narrative ignores that many European and international health authorities continue to emphatically support gender-affirming care. For instance, France has not embraced any “ban” at all – quite the opposite. In December 2024, the French Society of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetology released France’s first national consensus guidelines on trans youth care, which explicitly denounce the so-called “wait-and-see” approach. As Erin Reed reported, the French experts warned that delaying affirming treatment,sometimes euphemistically called “gender exploratory therapy,” “does not reduce psychological distress” and instead “increases the risk” of self-harm and suicide. They likened prolonged denial of care to a form of conversion therapy that tries to force youth to be cisgender. Far from retreating, France is moving forward with robust, evidence-based support: its new guidelines endorse puberty blockers to prevent the distress of unwanted pubertal changes and reduce the need for future surgeries. They also support hormone therapy for adolescents who meet appropriate criteria, all within an individualized, case-by-case framework. This stance aligns with the practices of every major medical association in the U.S. and worldwide, which view gender-affirming care as safe, effective, and often life-saving.
A similar story emerges in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where recent developments flatly contradict the Times’ gloomy narrative of backlash. In 2023, a coalition of 26 medical organizations from those three countries produced a comprehensive new guideline for adolescent gender dysphoria – over 400 pages of analysis. These German/Austrian/Swiss guidelines make the situation crystal clear: “no proven effective treatment alternative” exists for persistent gender incongruence aside from gender-affirming medical care. They give a strong recommendation that when a trans teen is facing irreversible changes (like an impending deeper voice or breast growth) that cause distress, puberty blockers should be offered promptly to “avert…health damage” from forcing the wrong puberty. Far from rolling anything back, the German-led review sharply criticizes England’s Cass Review, the very report the Times often cites as emblematic of Europe’s “shift.” German experts found “numerous methodological shortcomings” in Cass’s process and noted that no relevant medical societies were involved in that British review. In essence, Germany and its neighbors have doubled down on support for trans youth, explicitly rejecting the U.K.’s more conservative experiment. “Europe” is not a monolith moving in lockstep. If anything, the weight of European medical expertise remains on the side of affirming care, with a few isolated systems (in Scandinavia and the U.K.) taking a more cautious route that is itself under fierce debate and already being challenged by specialists in those countries. The Times failed not only to note this in their coverage, they neglected to cover the reviews by Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland etc. at all, despite giving breaking news push notifications and fawning coverage to the UK's Cass Review.
The false narrative of a global retreat falls apart even more once you look beyond Europe. Australia, another Western country often invoked in these discussions, has not reversed course on trans healthcare. Australia’s national health authorities are currently undertaking a review of treatment guidelines for trans youth, set to report interim findings in 2026. A two-year systematic review commissioned by the Utah health department following a ban on care "concluded that the state's ban on gender-affirming pediatric care 'cannot be justified' by science". Utah's 1000 plus page report found that "the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric [gender dysphoria] patients". It also concluded that "the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer". The report explicitly stated that "policies to prevent access to and use of [gender-affirming hormone therapy] for treatment of [gender dysphoria] in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future". Crucially, it found that "Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult" , highlighting the benefits of early access to care. None of that was covered or even mentioned by the Times in its reporting.
The New York Times Meta-Narrative Bias
The New York Times gave unusually prominent treatment to the April 2024 Cass Review. On May 13, 2024 the Times published an interview (by Azeen Ghorayshi) with Dr. Hilary Cass, the author of the UK’s Cass Review, under a sensational headline (“Hilary Cass Says U.S. Doctors Are ‘Out of Date’ on Youth Gender Medicine”). The Times not only ran the Cass interview as a major story but even sent a “breaking-news” push notification to subscribers when it appeared. By contrast, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), wrote a response which supports gender-affirming care, was given scant attention. The response letter from AAP president Dr. Benjamin Hoffman was buried as the final of six letters on the opinion page (under an unrelated headline about President Biden), and received no push notification or other prominent placement. In short, The Times treated Cass’s criticisms as “major breaking news” while “deprioritiz[ing]” the AAP’s reply.
Moreover, in that Times interview Ghorayshi largely echoed Cass’s framing. For example, Cass complained that the American Academy of Pediatrics “is… fearful of making any moves that might jeopardize trans healthcare right now,” implying U.S. doctors bow to political pressure. Ghorayshi then asked how U.S. pediatricians should “move forward” given this charged political climate, effectively conceding Cass’s premise. The interviewer made no effort to challenge Cass’s unfounded insinuation, for instance, that the surge in referrals to UK gender clinics reflects a mysterious “social contagion”. Ghorayshi’s line of questioning replicated Cass’s own narrative, casting trans-affirming clinicians as politically influenced, without interrogating the claim. Thus, the Times’ Cass story was framed almost entirely through the lens set by Cass herself, rather than balanced by evidence or alternative voices.This one-sided prominence effectively amplified Cass’s message while muting counter-evidence.
In each case, the journalist’s choice of sources and quotes tilted the narrative. Ghorayshi’s Cass interview quoted Cass accusing the AAP of political “duress,” but did not include any American expert or recent data to balance that claim. Similarly, her hit piece on Olson-Kennedy echoed anti-trans talking points but ignored extensive published findings such as better mental health for youths on blockers that would undercut the narrative. The Times’ overall editorial strategy , through headlines, choice of quotes, and use of alerts, repeatedly cast gender-affirming care as controversial or suspect, even though major medical organizations endorse it.
In contrast to the Times’s focus on Cass and allied voices, major systematic reviews and guidelines affirming gender-affirming care have received little or no coverage. As noted above, several countries and states such as Louisiana and Utah have issued their own reviews and each came away with the conclusion that the evidence supports the provision of this care. Each of these professional reviews was meticulously developed (often in consultation with trans health experts) and was covered by local media as good news for trans care. The Times, however, ran no stories on any of these European/Australian developments, even as it elevated Cass’s critical report. .
Similarly, U.S. evidence that supports care was downplayed. A new Utah state review published in 2025, mandated by a law that banned youth care, concluded that medical gender-affirming care produced “positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes” and that bans “cannot be justified” by the science. The Salt Lake Tribune reported these findings prominently (pointing out that Republican legislators, despite commissioning the study, were already dismissing it). Yet The New York Times gave no attention to this 1,000-page state report. Indeed, a pattern emerges: Times editors have energetically promoted the Cass Review (and other skeptical reports, like the new HHS/GPO review) via front-page treatment and alerts, while ignoring or burying large, high-quality reviews that show benefits of care. Those omitted studies included systematic reviews from Germany and France, the Australian government review, and U.S. state analyses like Utah’s, all of which strongly support trans-affirming treatment.
Erosion of Trust and Real-World Harm
The New York Times’ editorial stance on trans issues hasn’t just skewed public debate, it has shattered the trust of the very communities the paper purports to cover. Many transgender people, their parents, and affirming healthcare providers now regard the Times with deep skepticism, if not outright hostility. They have good reason. In case after case, trans sources who agreed to be interviewed by the Times have felt burned by the end result. In one particularly egregious instance, parents of trans youth in Missouri spoke extensively to Azeen Ghorayshi for a story about a St. Louis gender clinic that had come under fire from a so-called "whistleblower" Jamie Reed.
These parents only agreed to participate after repeated assurances that their perspective would not be twisted to smear the clinic, they wanted to defend the care that, for their kids, had been literally lifesaving. But when the article came out, it amplified Reed's sensational allegations, while sidelining or downplaying the parents’ positive experiences. The families felt utterly betrayed. As covered by Assigned media, Ghorayshi was confronted by the families she was covering, “You’ve betrayed us, Azeen. You have completely betrayed us,” one mother told the her in anguish. Another parent described feeling foolish for ever trusting the Times: “she really seemed to understand… we thought she could be trusted with our stories… I was so dumb,” the mother now says, recounting how her goodwill was abused. These are not just one-off anecdotes, they reflect a widespread sentiment in the trans community that the Times approaches trans topics with a predetermined narrative and will cherry-pick or skew facts to fit it.
Trans journalists and media watchdogs have catalogued how the Times routinely relies on detransitioned individuals, anti-trans pundits, and scared parents to frame stories, while trans voices are marginalized or presented as biased “activists.” The result is that many trans people no longer feel the nation’s “paper of record” will give them a fair shake. This breach of trust is especially pronounced given the stakes: we’re talking about reporting that influences whether trans youth can get medically necessary care, or whether they’ll be painted as delusional victims of a craze. The community’s outrage is palpable and justified.
That outrage extends beyond feelings, it’s about tangible harm. The Times’ biased coverage has been weaponized by those pushing anti-trans laws across the country. In legislative hearings and court cases, Republican lawmakers and attorneys general have explicitly cited New York Times articles as evidence to justify bans on healthcare for trans minors. For example, Alabama’s court filings defending its felony ban on trans healthcare for youth quoted multiple Times pieces by Emily Bazelon, Azeen Ghorayshi, and even opinion columnist Ross Douthat to lend an air of legitimacy to their claims. Missouri’s Attorney General similarly cited the Times in an attempt to impose an emergency order stopping care for both youth and adults. The Times’ imprimatur gave a patina of objectivity to what were otherwise baseless, ideologically driven assertions. Anti-trans officials love to claim they aren’t bigots, they’re “following the science,” and then wave around the New York Times as proof that even liberal media see merit in their concerns.
The Times has helped normalize the idea that trans healthcare is controversial, risky, unproven, giving cover to legislators who want to brand loving parents as child abusers and doctors as criminals. The human cost of this cannot be overstated: families are uprooting their lives to move to jurisdictions where their trans children can still get care; clinics are shutting down or scaling back under political pressure; trans youth are hearing powerful institutions debate their very right to exist. The Times cannot wave this off as unintended. Its own journalists and contributors warned leadership in that February 2023 letter that “poor editorial judgment” on trans stories would end up in courtrooms and legislatures, and indeed “the natural destination” of the Times’s skewed coverage “is the court of law.” Now here we are, with the Times cited in legal briefs to strip away trans rights. It is journalistic malpractice with life-or-death consequences.
A Reactionary Centrist Agenda Under Sulzberger
How did the New York Times get here? The problem goes straight to the top with publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s stewardship and a broader ideological strategy at the paper. Under Sulzberger, the Times has been pursuing a “both-sides” centrism that, in practice, often bends over backwards to court conservative sensibilities. On issues from climate to racism to Trumpism, this approach has been one of “reactionary centrism,” the reflex to counterbalance any progressive idea with an opposing view, even if that view is in bad faith or fringe. On transgender coverage, this tendency has run amok. Sulzberger and executive editor Joe Kahn appear to believe that the “debate” over trans youth medical care is itself newsworthy and must be covered as a legitimate controversy, rather than as a settled matter with an overwhelming amount of evidence. In a defensive interview, Sulzberger insisted the Times must “reflect…the very real debates happening in the medical community” about youth transition, claiming it’s their journalistic duty not to “pretend [the] debate is not happening.” This framing is deeply disingenuous. Yes, there are some discussions among providers about optimal protocols, as in any field, but there is no genuine medical debate over whether gender dysphoria in youth should be treated at all. The only people questioning the legitimacy of gender-affirming care writ large are far right ideologues and a handful of outliers. By elevating that manufactured debate to front-page treatment, Sulzberger’s Times has blurred the line between scientific discourse and political propaganda.
Why would the Times do this? The answer seems to lie in a calculated bid to appeal to a certain segment of readers and donors. Sulzberger’s regime has been marked by efforts to shed the paper’s image as uniformly left-leaning and reclaim the mantle of “sober, impartial referee” of national issues. There’s a sense that trans rights were seen as an easy target for the Times to demonstrate its “independence” from liberal orthodoxy. In plainer terms, the Times under Sulzberger decided to cater to an older, more conservative readership who are skeptical of “woke” changes and crave validation for their doubts. By running story after story questioning whether trans teens are being rushed into treatment, whether trans identity is a social fad, whether parents and doctors are too affirming, the Times hit all the talking points of a reactionary moral panic, but under the respectable guise of concerned, highbrow journalism.
It’s part of a broader pattern: the paper gives generous space to anti-trans polemicists, from Pamela Paul excoriating inclusive language to Ross Douthat lamenting “L.G.B.T.Q. culture wars,” portraying them as reasonable voices, while sidelining trans voices as too “invested.” Sulzberger himself has shown complete indifference to the community’s critiques, flatly dismissing claims of bias as “demonstrably untrue” and cherry-picking positive articles in the Times’ archive to claim balance. He asserts that the Times “never questioned whether trans people exist” (which is a depressingly low bar) and implies that trans advocates just want the paper to ignore any complexities. In reality, advocates are simply asking that coverage be accurate, proportional, and informed by actual experts, rather than steeped in the fear-mongering frames of hate groups. But under Sulzberger’s leadership, the Times has largely turned a deaf ear. Internally, this stance has even been used to intimidate Times staff: management reprimanded and even suspended employees who spoke out against the paper’s trans coverage, sending a chilling message that criticism of the party line would not be tolerated. It’s an old tactic of institutional power, using a vulnerable minority as the foil to show the paper’s “toughness” and to clamp down on dissent within its ranks. In short, trans lives and dignity have been cynically treated as collateral in Sulzberger’s crusade to court the political center-right and assert the Times’ “objective” brand.
We Need Accountability and Reform
The New York Times likes to think of itself as eternally evolving, learning from mistakes like Judith Miller’s WMD reporting or the paper’s failures during the early AIDS crisis. Here, once again, the Times must confront a profound failure of journalistic integrity. The coverage of transgender people, especially trans youth, has not met the Times’ own standards of accuracy, fairness, or humanity. It has harmed those it should help, and emboldened those who seek to erase a vulnerable population’s rights. The first step toward repairing this breach is a frank acknowledgment by Times leadership that they got this wrong. No more glib defenses, no more hiding behind “just asking questions” while trans kids suffer in the crossfire. The paper owes its readers (and the trans community) a serious accounting: how did biased sources and debunked theories make it into so many stories? Why were basic facts omitted or spun? Who oversaw this focus and why?
The Times needs to take immediate action to reform its coverage. That means listening to the trans voices and reputable medical experts it has sidelined. It means hiring and empowering transgender journalists and editors, not as token placements, but in positions where they can inform the framing of coverage and catch mistakes before print. It means instituting rigorous standards for covering marginalized groups: for example, a policy that no source’s claims about medical care will be published without fact-checking against peer-reviewed research and official positions of major medical bodies. Balance in journalism doesn’t mean giving equal weight to truth and lies, it means giving weight proportional to credibility. The Times needs to rediscover this principle. If one doctor out of a hundred dissents from the consensus, that’s not a “side” deserving 50% of the story. The era of false equivalence needs to end.
Perhaps most of all, the Times’ editors must grasp that trans people are not an abstract “issue” to be coolly debated in newsprint, they are human beings. They and their families deserved better than what the Times gave them. A genuine public apology is in order, along with a commitment to do no further harm. Anything short of that only further erodes the paper’s credibility. The knowledge is abundantly available: the scientific evidence, the community feedback, the warnings from media watchdogs. It’s time for the Times to do better, to stop being a mouthpiece (unwitting or not) for anti-trans agendas and return to being a source of truth. Failing to course-correct not only betrays journalism, it betrays the very people whose stories the Times is responsible for telling. Trans lives are at stake, and the cost of the Times’ failures has already been too high. We demand accountability, we demand change, and we will accept nothing less than a New York Times that stands on the side of facts and human dignity, not fear and stigma. Transgender people, and the readers who value honest reporting, deserve nothing less.
