Transphobic RFT Reporter Strikes Again

At the beginning of this year, I posted about the criminal insensitivity of Riverfront Times reporter Chad Garrison.  Now he is at it again with this transphobic blog post.*

"Shemale" is an offensive term often used to describe transgender people.  The term is most frequently used in porn that fetishizes trans bodies.  Please comment on Mr. Garrison's post to let the RFT know that you do not appreciate transphobia in their publication.


UPDATE 12/21:  Thanks to your comments, Chad Garrison has changed the headline of his post.  I hope that he will continue to educate himself on issues relevant to the trans community, so that his writing for the RFT will be more sensitive in the future.


* Thanks to Anita Fitzwater for alerting me to this post.

Craig Cheatham vs Dick Fleming

Chad Garrison at the RFT flagged a pretty fascinating confrontation between KMOV reporter Craig Cheatham and Regional Chamber and Growth Association President Dick Fleming. Chad offers some color commentary and a poll about who makes out better, but all I really have to say is, "Wow."

RFT “Criminally Stupid” When Reporting on Mental Illness, Trans Issues

With all due gratitude to the Riverfront Times for featuring the Activist Hub as one of its favorite blogs and our beloved Adam Shriver as “Best Gadfly” of 2010, I feel the need to call them out on something. The RFT has been incredibly insensitive when reporting on people with mental illnesses and those who are transgender.

Take Chad Garrison’s recent article about a man—Trip Powers—shot by a police officer on Sunday after allegedly breaking into a Denny’s restaurant. The article is posted online in the blogs under the “Criminally Stupid” category. Garrison quips that the man was shot, “while seriously craving a Grand Slam omelette. Or maybe it was a Moons Over My Hammy?”

According to Powers’s mother, Teri Powers, a licensed clinical social worker, her son Trip is suffering from a mental illness, and he is not a criminal. “Everyone involved should recognize that keeping Trip jailed and without psychiatric treatment and medication is doing him an injustice,” Teri told me via Facebook message. Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is doing a respectful series on Trip Powers and his situation. So why the stigmatizing sarcasm from a reporter for the Riverfront Times?

This is not the first time that the RFT has ridiculed someone with a mental illness. Remember Susan Stone? She was also written about under the “Criminally Stupid” category.

Now, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty familiar with mental illnesses. I saw Stone at the Metro East Pride vigil in October. It seemed pretty clear to me then, based on some of the things she said, that she was suffering from some kind of mental illness.

While other local media showed disrespect to Stone, using her legal (male) name and referencing her with pronouns that do not match her gender presentation, the RFT went one step further by nominating her as “Ass Clown of the Week,” calling her “he/rself,” and “s/he” in that article.

It sounds to me as though the RFT could use some sensitivity training.

Shocker Michelle Malkin Uses Edit to Make It Appear That Tea Party Was Blamed for Attempted Arson

Michelle Malkin picks up on the story from the local tea party irresponsibly accusing someone of vandalism before the facts are out and falsely claiming that the media was "blaming the St. Louis tea party." I've already discussed much of this, so I'll just focus on her misleading edit.

Here's what Malkin quotes from Chad Garrison's post:

Police aren’t releasing the man’s name until charges are officially filed. No motive was given for the attack, though one could suspect that the perpetrator is not a fan of the congressman. Given what we know of him — 50, white, angry — he certainly fits the demographics of a Tea Party member.

Perhaps, he joined his fellow “patriots” earlier this year when they burned Carnahan’s photo in effigy or placed a coffin on the sidewalk outside his home.

And what was the very next line from Garrison?

On second thought, maybe he's not a Tea Party member. Firebombing your opponent's office seems a little too, um, sane for that group.

So uh, yeah, he didn't actually accuse the tea party of firebombing. But if the tea partiers want to go ahead and cry themselves to sleep about how unfairly they are victimized like they usually do, who am I to stop them?