The Toast’s archive of trans* related stories can be found here.
Last week, Grantland published a feature by Caleb Hannan about the “scientifically superior” Oracle GX1 putter and its reclusive inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt.
During the course of his reporting, Hannan uncovered inconsistencies within Vanderbilt’s official backstory. Some of these were germane to the story, like the fact that the impressive work and education credentials touted by Vanderbilt appeared to be fabrications. The other discovery was irrelevant, invasive, and irresponsible for any media outlet to print without the expressed consent of the subject: Vanderbilt’s consciously-hidden history as a transgender woman.
Hannan published both the germane and irrelevant information, framing these facts as part of a larger fraud. Prior to publishing, Vanderbilt committed suicide.
Being transgender is not a form of fraud or deception. In fact, calling a transgender person fraudulent couldn’t be further from the truth. I am a transgender woman, and I’d like to say, I am authentic, and I am human. My fraudulent years were the ones in which I was trying to suppress the person that I was, the years that I tried so very hard to just “be a guy.” That was fake, but now I’m free. I imagine that Vanderbilt sought that same sort of freedom.
I am an openly transgender woman. I embrace this fact, and I’ve made a conscious decision to share this detail about my personal history with the world. It was my choice, and mine alone, bringing with it all of society’s misconceptions, institutionalized discrimination, and threats of physical harm. I felt it was important for me to step forward and try to confront some of these larger issues. The decision to come out as transgender was extremely personal.
While I never met Vanderbilt, I can relate to what she must have gone through, agonizing over whether it was safe and healthy to be out as a trans woman. On one hand, by being open about one’s past, you can speak freely about your experiences. On the other, significant challenges await those who are open about their trans status. Both choices, to be openly transgender or to remain “stealth,” are equally valid.
What are some of the challenges associated with being open, and how might that have impacted Vanderbilt’s decision to remain an extremely private person? For one, it’s physically, financially, and emotionally dangerous to be openly trans. According to a report released by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, transgender people face significantly higher rates of assault, harassment, homelessness, and job loss. Transgender people are four times as likely to live in a state of extreme poverty, compared to the general population. 90 percent of trans individuals have reported being the subject of workplace harassment, and the unemployment rate for trans people is nearly twice that of the national unemployment rate.
Additionally, right around the time Hannan was reporting on Vanderbilt, the Arizona state legislature was considering a bill that would criminalize the use of public restrooms by transgender individuals. Being from Arizona, herself, and being forced to hear public officials engage in debate over the authenticity and humanity of people like her, I can empathize with the anxiety and stress she must have endured.
According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, nearly 41 percent of all transgender people will attempt suicide at some point during their lives. Knowing this statistic, I find it extremely hard to deny anyone their right to minimize their own exposure to conditions that may lead to self-harm. If, as is the case for many stealth trans people, remaining anonymous to the world is what’s needed to do that, then by all means, they should follow that course.
I can provide first-hand information on what it’s like being openly trans. I watch this play out on a regular basis. I may meet someone, whether it be a co-worker or acquaintance, and be treated with the same casual attitude I imagine they treat everyone. Then, should they find out that I’m trans, conversations start to take odd turns. Suddenly, the topic of my genitals becomes fair game in their minds. Suddenly, they feel the right to ask what my “real name” is. Suddenly, pronouns start slipping, and I find myself called “he” by these people who had just been referring to me as “she” five minutes earlier. Suddenly, I’m no longer a human being, but rather a biological freak show.
Is that something you’d like? For every conversation to veer away from you as an individual and to instead focus on one singular part of your history? As a writer, as an author, as an activist, this is a choice that I have made for myself. I am willing to endure the awkward questions, the stares, the misgenderings, and the gawking. I do this in an effort to urge society to come to terms with the fact that transgender people are just like anyone else. I do this because I choose to. Essay Vanderbilt did not choose to put her trans status front and center, and taking that from her is not journalism, but rather a betrayal of her right to privacy.
Transgender people want is to be held to the same standards as everyone else, treated with dignity and humanity. My hope is that in the wake of this tragic story, an illustration of what happens to those whose right to privacy is denied, we can come to better understand the inner struggle that comes with being transgender. Until issues surrounding employment, housing, and medical discrimination comes to an end, and until society begins to accept us for who we are, how can you mandate this level of openness?
Tags: grantland, lgbt, parker molloy, the trans* series, trans* issues
This was a great piece, Parker. You’re a good writer.
It seems to me as if people feel… entitled to this information. ‘straight, white, cis, able-bodied and neurotypical’ are the default ‘normal’ and if you don’t conform, of course they have a right to pick apart your identity as if were a chicken carcass.
They see their desire to know things as more important than the safety and dignity of others, and I really don’t know what can be done to fix that.
Agreed! It’s so awful that people think it’s alright to quiz someone about their genitals! Can you imagine how quickly you’d be marched down to HR if you went around the office asking people how big their penis is or what their vagina looks like?
People = More than just parts.
Very true.
On a practical level it must be enormously difficult to be “stealth” though, right? Given the ease with which a journalist (or really, anyone with a credit card who can do basic internet research) can uncover the background of pretty much anyone in the US? Being trans shows up in the public record (name changes/different names, change on birth certificates/licenses/passports, etc, probably more things I’ve never thought of) in a way that being gay doesn’t.
That’s not to say that being stealth isn’t a valid choice — it is, absolutely. But someone can always find out if they dig, can’t they? That’s terrifying.
It’s super weird too when you do something simple like change car insurance providers, and they’re like “um, ma’am… it looks like we had you in the system as male before. maybe that’s how they put you in since you’re in a lesbian marriage.”
my response was just to laugh, and say, “well, you’d better get that fixed.”
(inner-head voice, “fuck yes, he didn’t clock me as trans.”
Stealthiness enabled by call center workers who are too underpaid to give a fuck. Hey, whatever works!
Hey there! You bring up a point that I meant to address: Yes, being stealth is an extremely difficult process. For one, some trans people simply aren’t “passable” (I haaaaate that term). Second, most individuals can’t abandon their job, and just show up somewhere else without any sort of work history. Third, typically (sadly…) most states require that anyone legally changing their name needs to publish a notice explaining what they’re changing their name from –> to. If anyone happens to be a fan of legal notices, maybe you’ve seen these.
Anyway, the logistics aside (in general, the logistics of being trans is pretty much bonkers, anyway), it’s up to the individual as to who knows and who doesn’t. For example, I don’t mind people finding out that I’m trans incidentally (Google my name, I couldn’t escape this if I tried…), but at the same time, I would be really embarrassed if someone outed me in front of a crowd of strangers. Basically, there are different levels of stealth, and having the media put your trans status on blast to hundreds of thousands of readers probably ranks as one of the least stealth planes of existence.
Anyway, I hope I addressed some of your comments.
thanks for your response (and confirming what I suspected.) I didn’t mean to imply that stealth is all-or-nothing — obviously trans folks are not obligated to be out as trans to everyone once they’re out to one person. (Or out to all coworkers once they’re out to one coworker. Or out to everyone on the softball team once they’re out to the third base person. Or whatever metaphor you’d like.) I was just thinking about how different it is to be in the gay closet, where you can be actively, enthusiastically homosexual and yet leave no trace in public records, which is just not possible for trans folk who chose to legally transition.
I am wondering if there are primers on the ethics of reporting on/writing about trans people that you would recommend? I suggested the GLAAD guide to someone today (we were discussing this issue) but is there anything else you would suggest?
You bring up an excellent point that is a whole article in itself: the language and framing of “stealth” as inherently deceptive.
It was only by watching “Sister Wives” that I learned some (many?) people find any sort of name change suspect, if marriage isn’t somehow involved. (The newest sister-wife has a terrible credit history.) If not for that, I’d recommend changing one’s name twice, pre- and post-transition, with a gender neutral name in the middle, to make both stages less awkward. Our laws just don’t take trans people into account.
Hoo boy, fewer things make me ragier than dealing with someone who thinks they’re entitled to information regarding the nature of someone’s genitals (I’ve has success in shutting that shit down with a shouted “why the fuck do you think you get to know what someone’s genitals look like” but I am cis, & thus don’t have to deal with nearly the same degree of fear of violence in calling out transphobic bs).
The idea of passing/stealth v. being out just illustrates what a shitty world we’ve created for trans* folks. Every option is terrible in different ways. We must do so, so much better.
A lot of people don’t realize this, but to immigrate here to the US, you have to pay for a USCIS-certified doc to physically see and touch your genitals to confirm that you are indeed the gender that you claim to be (eta: according to their framework, of course). The operative message being, I assume, that trans-gender people may not apply. (The physical I had for my green card lasted 45 seconds and cost me $400*.)
*In fairness, there was a second purpose for the physical– to ensure that I was of sound physical health– and that portion consisted in its entirety of walking forward and backward three steps while balancing on my heels.
WHAT that is crazy.
Wow, I didn’t know that. I wonder why/how this got started.
One of the worst parts of this story (other than the subject’s tragic death, obviously) is how many people read that story before they decided to publish it. Something like 15-20 people. It’s so sad it went through that many people and not one person said, “We 100% canNOT out this person.” Trans folks don’t even have the same legal protections as gay people, I don’t know what Grantland was thinking.*
*OK I do, and it’s that they weren’t. If anyone had been remotely smart, they would have researched the consequences.
even more ludicrous when you think that she killed herself *before* the article was published. which should have been a final, “fuck, we screwed up… let’s not publish this” to them.
Yup. I mean, you can never know for sure that the piece directly contributed to her death, but she still has family, and outing her has consequences for them too.
Yep yep.
And these sorts of things have the additional effect of making pretty much every trans woman I know super afraid, triggered, and upset.
AND after all that, the author never got to the point of the article – whether the g.d. putter worked. He ended up basically shrugging and concluding that putters only work if you think they’ll work. He completely failed to investigate the science of putters or anything ACTUALLY RELEVANT TO HIS INTENDED TOPIC.
Sorry for the shouting. Besides being ethically loathsome, it was a terrible bit of reporting.
Right, 20 people looked at this story and apparently not one of them was like, you know what the real story is here? Golf is fucking weird. Instead it was all OMG “fake woman” “lies” “deception” blah blah blah. And of those 20 people, none of them were sufficiently aware of the current state of discourse around trans issues to say, hey, it’s a terrible idea to publish this. That’s a HUGE professional failing. (That’s on top of the moral and ethical failings, of course.) Like, is your google broken? Jesus Christ.
While I agree in general (and “sent a chill through me,” UGH), in this case, wasn’t the fact that she changed her name germane to the story? The writer was trying to track down this person’s history because of the fraud she was associated with. Not being able to find any records before the relatively recent date she changed her name is an important piece of the story.
I completely agree that they handled it badly, but it seems like the reporting wasn’t journalistically unethical.
I think framing his outing her as “just reporting a name change” is a wee disingenuous but I’ll bite: When reporting on the name change would put the subject in physical danger, then yes, it’s unethical. What if she had changed her name to escape a violently abusive relationship? No one would be defending him then. The threat of violence is real for trans folks upon outing. Dr V was put in physical, economic, social danger. It’s inexcusable.
Also! It’s just a fucking golf club! No one’s getting nominated to the Supreme Court or something here!
ETA: Which do you think will happen first? A trans Supreme Court justice or The Singularity?
& even if reporting the name change is absolutely necessary (which is debatable) to expose this horrendous fraud of a person making a good golf club even though they don’t have a degree in golf club design or whatever, all you have to say is “it was difficult for me to find records because Dr. V had recently changed her name for personal reasons,” which explains your process without implying that being trans was a part of her grand scheme to hoodwink golf club enthusiasts
Did you actually read the story? It was sadistic, creepy voyeurism, not, “Oh this person got a name change and faked a resume, maybe their sciencey putter isn’t so sciencey.”
If she were a gay college kid and this story were an outing posted on youtube, people would be talking about hate crimes. But she was a trans woman and he is a journalist so we can sit back in our chairs with steepled fingers and muse about “professional ethics.”
I don’t see why they had to mention the reason for her name change/her previous name. People, especially women, change their names for non-nefarious reasons all the time. Hell, I know someone who changed their name because it was a reference to a character that they felt was “too hard to live up to”.
It seemed an awful lot like fears of a deceptive woman were driving the story before he learned she was trans, too. There was a basis of sexism going on before the even more hateful shit.
I don’t know. I’m still torn on this. Yes, reporting her transition in a way that made it seem part and parcel of fraud is wrong. And no, I didn’t mean it was “just a name change.” But would it have been right to say ok, she changed her name x years ago, before that she was a student at…etc.? What would happen if someone fact checked that? Would the journalist then respond with “we can’t tell you the name she previously used, you’re just going to have to trust us”? And yes, it is just a golf club, but does this mean that stories about trans people that mention the transition (and I agree, this piece went beyond “just mentioning,” but what about other potential stories) when they aren’t out are just off limits completely? Should the story be dropped?
I don’t think that’s a good direction to go in. Yes, the writers and editors should weigh a) the importance of the subject’s transition to the overall piece, and b) the importance of the story overall. So yes, you can certainly make the case that in the case of this particular story, the subject of possible golf club fraud was not important enough to unwillingly out someone as transgender. But it seems to me this (Parker Molloy) piece is making a larger argument that I’m not convinced of.
does this mean that stories about trans people that mention the transition…when they aren’t out are just off limits completely?
Yes. This is not as complicated as you want to make it.
“It is not possible for a journalist to ethically out someone. The case can sometimes be made for outing well-known, homophobic public figures, but that is far removed from the case at hand. It cannot, and should not, ever be done; this should be standard journalistic practice. Given that the writer knew his subject committed suicide during the reporting of this piece — it is impossible to know exactly how much the fear of being outed during Hannan’s reporting contributed to her death, but it cannot have helped — both he and his editor(s) ought to have realized that whatever value may have originally lain in his story was now outweighed by the outing and death of a private figure who never volunteered information about her personal life.” http://the-toast.net/2014/01/18/responses-to-gran…
Sadly, according to an by the Arizona Republic, the fear of the Grantland article being published played a pretty major role in her death.
Journalism ethics dictate that if you can’t verify something about a private individual (as opposed to public), and you don’t have other sources to back it up, you say that. For example, “Subject claimed they received an education from x, at press time we were unable to verify this detail.” That’s it. End of section.
If the search for background verification leads you down a rabbit hole that starts in talking to someone using air quotes around a pronoun and ends with you compromising an individual- stop. Just stop. Especially if you originally agreed that your article would focus on a product and not the person.
Hang on – if a person’s gender transition is genuinely relevant to their misconduct, then the outing is ethical. For instance, the Jim McGreevey scandal would have been totally impossible to report without mentioning McGreevey’s sexual orientation.
Well, it is a little more complicated than that… even if a journalist chooses NOT to disclose that a person has/will/is planning to transition, just gesturing at “name change” but not giving the previous name is enough to pique the interest of a reader with nefarious intentions. So a publication can have a “we don’t out trans people” policy that, when followed, can still lead to an employer/landlord/neighbor/whoever having the means and/or motivation to find out.
So, for example, as I understand the grantland piece (which, admittedly, I skimmed), the meaty part of the story is that a woman who was not a physicist/golf expert/etc deceived folks WITH REGARDS TO HER CREDENTIALS AND EXPERTISE in order to sell a golf club. Relatedly, golfers actually golf better when they think they’re using a club designed by a rocket scientist or whatever (which I actually think would be a really interesting story on its own.) So even if this story said something like “Dr. V does not possess the professional credentials that she claims to have and which have a bearing on her ability to design golf clubs” — which is true enough — any investors in her company, and any competitor, would immediately start digging through her background. The fact that she was trans is completely irrelevant to her professional credentials or lack thereof, but there’s no way that it wouldn’t come out once someone started digging.
I actually don’t see a way to publish the story without effectively outing her, frankly. As someone noted upthread, it’s a fucking golf club — the world continues to turn if this story goes unpublished. Cut the writer a check for his kill fee and move the fuck on, grantland.
See, I don’t totally disagree with you, but I think there’s a distinction here (which Hannan shamefully failed to make) about her being stealth and her lying about her professional credentials. The fact that exposing the latter could indirectly lead to exposing the former is, to me, as much an argument against Dr. V as against Hannan. In other words, if she wanted to be stealth, she had ever right to do that, but if she wanted to build a business on fake credentials and lie to investors, she did not have the right to do that, and her trans status should not give her immunity from having it exposed. In fact, doing so was spectacularly ill-advised, since it just compounded the number of things she had to hide about her past, and made it more likely that the discovery of one would lead to the discovery of everything else (which is exactly what happened once Hannan started digging around).
In a vaccuum, I think “inventor of golf club touts fake credentials” is a totally legitimate story. In reality, I’m sympathetic to the argument that it had become such an ethical morass, especially after her suicide, that the decent thing to do would have just been to kill it. But I don’t think it’s a slam dunk either way.
(And just for the record, I’m talking about the debate over rewriting the piece in a more sensitive way vs. killing it entirely. I don’t think there’s any legitimate debate over running the piece the way they did, which was clearly out of bounds.)
Why would the reporter have to include her previous name, or the reasons for her name change, in the piece? “Eventually, I learned that Dr. V had recently changed her name. Wondering whether this was the reason I couldn’t find records of her education or previous employment, I searched again using her former name — and still found nothing.” The end.
A lot of the responses I’ve heard about this story centered on the fact that because Dr. V was deceitful about her professional life, that meant that she “deserved” to be outed because if you had a big secret you didn’t want others to find out, why create more lies that would cause people to probe further into your life? It really goes to show that whenever you’re part of the oppressed group, people don’t treat you as an equal, complex human being, with greatness and flaws combined. Dr. V might have been jerk or a liar, but she was still deserving of being treated as the woman that she was. She’s not exempt from bad behavior as a human being, and bad behavior does not negate her right to being treated by her actions only, removed from the aspect of herself that is dangerous to reveal. Another reason why being a model minority is bullshit.
I don’t think she deserved to be outed. Period. Full stop. I also don’t think she should have lied about her credentials. Period. Full stop.
I don’t view it as a “model minority” question, which implies that she shouldn’t have lied because that would reflect badly on the trans community. It’s that lying about her credentials, in addition to being ethically wrong, was not in her own interests. Imagine that you were Dr. V’s friend, and she confided in you her plans for building a business around fake credentials. Don’t you think one of the first arguments out of your mouth would have been, “Don’t do this! It will just increase the odds of you being outed”?
Society creates the situation where trans people have to hide, either for safety or just to get some fucking respect as the gender they are, then takes a literally homocidal glee in tearing trans lives apart.
On a different side of the same coin, I’ve often heard activists say that lesbian/gay/bi/trans people have an obligation to be out because it provides visibility for the community and encourages acceptance. While on SOME level I understand that people can change the hearts & minds of those close to them, I think it’s unacceptable to place that as a responsibility on someone, especially when they could face abuse for doing so. 🙁
It is totally unacceptable. I’ve always been supported by my parents and ‘safe’ – so able to be visibly, bullishly ‘out’ as bi.
But not everyone is safe or can be safe. In some parts of the world, being out could lose people their jobs, their homes, their lives. It is unfair to put that burden on a person who may be desperately unsafe.
Stealth shaming is a thing and a real problem. Outness is not equivalent between orientation and gender, for one thing, and for another the kind of “deep stealth” people are always thinking of when they imagine a glamorous life of trans intrigue just doesn’t exist.
Yikes, sorry, I didn’t mean to make an inappropriate/offensive comparison! Thank you for pointing that out.
Hmm? I was agreeing with you. It’s unacceptable to demand lgbt people be out, and also unacceptable to shame them for not being out. I just wanted to point out there are differences in what out means for lgb vs t, and that the sort of shaming one can be subject to can also differ.
Ah, I thought you were agreeing but also saying “hey don’t compare those things.” Which I wasn’t trying to do. So I guess we don’t have a problem. I AM SO AWKWARD.
To be fair there was more context in my head than what I actually put in the comment. Don’t assume, self! It makes nice Toasties feel awkward!
To me, the most serious problem with outing someone as trans is that it can put that person in very real danger. The violence that’s committed against trans people is horrific. Would it be ethical for a journalist to reveal that someone was in a witness protection program? But also, being trans isn’t some sort of stance or preference. Is it ethical to reveal someone’s private medical history?
While I’ve never been in a dangerous situation (thank goodness), I’ve been fired from several jobs directly due to my transgender status. Two times, it was more subtle (a general shift in attitude towards me once I came out), and one time it was overt (though, I got relegated to being called a “fag”). It wasn’t until after I became “passable” (I agree with Parker that it’s a demeaning term), got my voice down pat, and changed my name that these workplace situations stopped. I still remain fairly out in my social, public life, but I’ve been burned too many times to ever come out in a work environment again.
Anyway, in all the Grantland coverage pieces I’ve read, I haven’t seen any mention of the methodology used to track down Vanderbilt’s credentials. While the verisimilitudinous statements lead me to believe that the Grantland writer did his homework, has there been verification that Vanderbilt had no credentials at all, not just under her current name?
I think there were a lot of problems with the original article and how it was researched – but if I understand the argument here, it is that Grantland was free to report that Vanderbilt falsified her credentials and changed her name in order to fool people into thinking she was a member of the famous Vandebilt family, but should not have mentioned that she was a transwoman. But realistically, how do you report that somebody faked their educational credentials and family history without identifying their previous identity? Every time there’s an article about somebody who falsifies educational credentials and family history, the person’s prior identity gets mentioned. So I’m not sure how that article can be reported without mentioning that fact.
Actually, Jon, I’m not entirely convinced that her credentials were faked. The original article by Hannan left me with several impressions of Ms. Vanderbilt:
– She was intensely private and did not want anyone to know her history.
– She worked security-sensitive jobs, the kind of which could not be verified no matter how many connections you have.
– She was so brilliant that she designed a golf putter that did what no other putter could do and included intuitive features that greatly increased its ergonomics without really being that much of a golf enthusiast. One such feature mentioned in the article is the ability to fetch the ball from the hole without bending down, which was based on volunteer work with veterans at Walter Reed Medical Hospital.
– She was extremely volatile, leading me to believe that she may have been bipolar, or had another kind of disorder (based on behaviors listed in the article, my own experience having bipolar, and how awful I was when I was navigating transition).
– Her use of language indicated a high level of education. McCord mentioned that the language was noticeably off-putting and just the way scientists talked. While the big words stood out, so did the variations in ending correspondence. “Toodle pip” is an archaic term with negative connotations and I think she was probably trying to make fun of Hannan’s “lesser intelligence” (at least, that’s how I’ve played with language when I knew it would be over someone’s head and I wanted to be mean without seeming so).
So, the putter was actually hailed as a brilliant achievement in science in relation to how the ball was hit and its advances in ergonomics. Videos captured in slow-motion that the science of the putter worked. David Frost took a one-hour putting lesson from Vanderbilt and tied the course record for lowest score four days later. Is it more believable that she just happened to create a brilliant putting device even though she was an auto mechanic like some sort of Good Will Hunting situation, or that she actually had the credentials and chose not to share them because they all led to exposing her as a transwoman? For the sake of argument, let’s assume the latter.
So, let’s examine the lack of credentials and what evidence the article offered as proof. She was private. Intensely private. She did not want anyone to know that she was transgendered, which I can understand. Some transitions are so intensely awful – likely exacerbated by her mood disorder, if my theory is correct – that it stands to reason that she would want to forget them as much as possible. Throw in the discomfort with ever having been a man (something that sends shivers down my spine when I think about it for myself) and the way her family refuses to speak a single positive word on her behalf and you have the formula for wanting to bury your past. Let’s say that Hannan tried to verify Vanderbilt’s credentials under her current name and past names and came up blank. Well, seeing that Vanderbilt only ever wanted to be Vanderbilt, let’s say that she tried to scrub her past clean as thoroughly as possible. I’ve done the same (without as much intense fervor as what I’m suggesting would require). She calls up her old school and when they refuse to change her name, she gets litigious or raises a fuss, or just becomes a complete headache. The records then become sealed or expunged, whatever. Vanderbilt then never graduated from MIT, but neither did Stephen Krol. One way to prove this theory right or wrong would be to look for yearbook evidence of Krol’s existence at the institutions, which would be near impossible for Vanderbilt to expunge. If they were completely fake, why did Vanderbilt offer Hannan a chance to view the documents when things got really desperate?
What, also, of the employment as a Sunoco auto mechanic and the ensuing discrimination lawsuit? Well, this kind of comes with the territory of being transgendered. Discrimination is common and employment opportunities become scarce during the earliest part of transition. It really sucks. Also, the vocabulary and the genius can’t really be explained by a career as a life-long mechanic. The other job mentioned was as a manager for an LGBT bar in Kent, Washington. These were the only two verified employment positions Hannan mentioned, and an exact timeline wasn’t established. It’s possible this was around or near the start of her transition, which might explain the filing and then dropping of the lawsuit (harassment sucks, y’all). Without knowing when the employment history began or ended, it’s hard to determine if she was a liar anyway.
Anyway, this is a wall of text and I’ve blathered too much already. There are lots of glaring issues with the story that don’t vibe with the idea of faked credentials, but everyone seems to be content with the idea that “yeah, she’s a liar who happens to be transgendered”. The only person to really accuse her of lying is Hannan and that was one of two these people really clung to about Vanderbilt. Anyway, that’s all.
Aside from the facts of the case, as a matter of journalistic ethics, the general question still stands – in a situation where someone is also transgendered and also assuming a false identity (fake educational credentials, fake famous family) – is it appropriate in the story to “out” the person as transgendered, and if not, how is the story to be told in a way that establishes the actual fraud (not referring to the gender transition as a fraud, but the credentials and the name change).
It’s an interesting argument you are making about Vanderbilt perhaps not being a fraud, but I see a few problems with it. I suppose it is possible that one could have one’s records expunged from the MIT and UPenn databases – though I am not really sure if that’s so. However, given the amount of press this story has received, if Vanderbilt ever did attend UPenn or MIT under the name Stephen Knox, it’s extremely likely that one of her class mates would have seen this and spoken up by now.
My immediate reaction when reading Vanderbilt’s overly verbose email is that she would turn out to be a fraud (I read the article right when it came out so I did not know beforehand that this was how the article would go).
First, there are some pretty glaring grammatical errors in the email, leading me to question her education.
Second, physicists in my experience do not use archaic language unrelated to scientific terminology. It’s not like nuncupative is a word thrown around MIT physics departments all the time. Rather, use of archaic language is a great technique when you are desperate to convince people that you are highly educated. Of course, people with degrees from MIT and UPenn don’t tend to worry about that.
Third, even if she had picked up the habit of writing such emails at MIT, the practice would have been highly frowned upon at Wharton.
Fourth, the sentence “I have the benefits under the freedom of information act the same privileges as federal judges,” is totally meaningless. the Freedom of Information Act doesn’t protect classified documents, it requires disclosure of certain document. Also, the only people with the same privileges as Federal judges are Federal judges.
Fifth, people who work on classified projects don’t run around saying “I work on classified projects so please don’t ask me.” They just say nothing.
As for whether an uneducated mechanic could invent a great golf club – why not? The Wright brothers never graduated high school, Edison never went to college. Plus, she just designed a really good stick to hit balls with, it’s not rocket science.
This comes up so frequently with the transgender clients I work with – those who feel guilty for wanting to remain private about transitioning, those who feel frustrated by those who want to remain private… Your article provides an excellent resource for me to share with all of them to keep the conversation going. Thanks again!