Biles desire to be more than her accomplishments breaks longstanding American myths about who is deserving and undeserving of our collective help. It can be hard to believe that Simone Biles would ever feel undeserving. The most decorated gymnast in the history of the sport, the 24-year-old is an international…

It was maybe the third time I got champagne in my hair in a span of an hour. Walking through a jubilant and growing crowd outside the White House, popping corks and pot smoke flew through the air the way rubber bullets and tear gas had just five months prior…

The offensive mocking of Dr. Rachel Levine is both a rare example of public discourse wrangling with a transgender woman with power and an all-too-familiar example of the mistreatment faced by any other woman in power. My first interaction with Dr. Rachel Levine — Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health — came…

With minimal institutional power or presence in American newsrooms, how can transgender people shift public discussion about us? It is an assumed but rarely-noted fact that transgender people are rarely discussed as a people and more often spoken of as a thing that is happening. Not a cultural constant throughout…

“I’m sure there are many people in Washington who have envisaged their capital destroyed by a nuclear missile, a fate for which it seems almost expressly designed,” wrote the British travel writer Jan Morris in 1975, wandering the city’s post-Watergate cocktail set, “but I suspect there are few politicians who…

Tips and guidelines for covering transgender people with accuracy and sensitivity. Transgender Adults and Health Care Transgender Youth and Health Care Transgender People and Incarceration Introduction We do not need reporters to be activists; we merely need you to be right. According to a 2016 estimate by The Williams Institute, there are 1.4 million transgender adults in the United States. According to a 2019 study…

There are few people more vulnerable in American society today than a transgender person in prison. According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, transgender people are ten times as likely to be sexually assaulted by another prisoner and five times as likely to be sexually assaulted by prison staff in…

This article is one part of a series on recommendations for reporting on the lives and experiences of transgender people. For an introduction, click here. For a guide on covering health care for transgender youth, click here. Access to health care is one of the most consistent and widespread issues…

For an introduction to transgender people more broadly, click here. According to the Center for Disease Control & Prevention, one in 50 teenagers in the United States identifies as transgender. Also according to the CDC, these youth are among the most vulnerable members of the next generation: They are four…