Riki Wilchins - Bad Ink

2024, English, Riki Wilchins, USA,

Full title: "Bad Ink: How The New York Times Sold Out Transgender Teens" by Riki Anne Wilchins.

In Bad Ink: How The New York Times Sold Out Transgender Teens, award-winning activist and author Riki Anne Wilchins delivers a deeply researched, incisive, and unflinching exposé on how one of the world’s most respected newspapers abandoned its progressive stance on transgender rights in favor of what can only be described as a calculated campaign against transgender youth.

 

This book is not merely a critique of journalistic missteps, it is a bold indictment of systemic bias, media complicity, and the devastating impact such narratives have on the lives of vulnerable young people. Through clear-eyed analysis and chilling documentation, Wilchins shows how the New York Times became not just a passive observer of the backlash against trans rights, but an active participant. Wilchins traces the roots of this ideological shift to 2015, just as A. G. Sulzberger was rising to power as the new Publisher. Up to that point, the Times had been a relatively consistent supporter of transgender rights. But under Sulzberger’s tenure, something changed. The coverage took a sharp and disturbing turn.

 

Over the next several years, the Times would go on to publish nearly 70,000 words in dozens of pieces attacking trans youth. These articles challenged the legitimacy of youth transitions, raised alarm over gender-affirming healthcare, questioned whether transgender girls should be allowed in sports, and even scrutinized the very notion that young people could be transgender in the first place. Tom Scocca, writing for Popula, rightly described it as “a plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade.” What makes Bad Ink so compelling is Wilchins’s assertion that this campaign was not grounded in rigorous reporting or cutting-edge medical research. Rather, it was powered by talking points lifted almost wholesale from white Christian nationalist groups that have long sought to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life. These organizations, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council, frame transgender existence as a threat to children and traditional values. That the Times would echo these voices, consciously or not, is a damning reflection of how respectability politics and liberal institutions can end up legitimizing extremist views. The timing was especially egregious.

 

As the Times churned out articles casting doubt on the validity of trans kids’ experiences, MAGA-aligned politicians were introducing a record-breaking 1,000+ anti-trans bills across dozens of states. These proposed laws targeted every aspect of trans youth existence: access to bathrooms, participation in sports, name and gender changes, and most alarmingly, access to life-saving medical care. Wilchins draws a clear, chilling line between the Times’ editorial choices and the surge in legislative assaults on trans lives. In this context, the paper’s coverage didn’t just inform public debate, it helped shape the political landscape. Wilchins is uniquely qualified to make this case. A longtime trans activist and one of the most prominent gender theorists of her generation, she has been a trailblazer in the movement for gender justice for over three decades. From founding GenderPAC, the first national transgender advocacy group in the United States, to coining the term “genderqueer,” Wilchins has consistently been at the forefront of pushing the conversation around gender beyond the binary.

 

Her activism spans from street-level protests with the Transexual Menace and Intersex Awareness Day to boardroom-level policy consultations with major corporations and universities. Wilchins’s background also includes groundbreaking work documenting violence against gender nonconforming youth. In 1995, she helped publish the first national survey on anti-trans violence. A decade later, she co-authored reports like 50 Under 30 and 70 Under 30, which chronicled the epidemic of gender-based murders among youth. These reports became foundational in the campaign to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first federal law in the United States to include gender identity as a protected category. What sets Bad Ink apart from other media critiques is the care Wilchins brings to her analysis of how narratives harm people. She doesn’t merely chart the Times’s editorial decisions as though they were abstract policy shifts. She situates them within the lives of real people, trans kids who are already navigating stigma, isolation, and systemic barriers. 

 

Wilchins understands that stories shape public sentiment, and public sentiment shapes policy. When a publication with the reach and authority of the New York Times publishes stories that cast doubt on the legitimacy of trans identities, it lends credence to the belief that these identities are dangerous, misguided, or invalid. The book is also an indictment of how elite liberal media outlets often protect themselves from criticism by claiming neutrality. The Times, according to Wilchins, cloaked its campaign in the language of “balanced reporting.” But balance without context is distortion. Giving equal weight to fringe anti-trans voices and peer-reviewed medical experts isn’t journalistic fairness, it’s a failure of editorial responsibility. The result is a both-sidesism that privileges controversy over truth, and harm over healing. Bad Ink arrives at a crucial time. With trans rights under siege across the U.S. and Europe, and with mainstream discourse increasingly infected by disinformation campaigns dressed up as concern for “children,” Wilchins’s work serves as both warning and guide. It urges media professionals to consider the real-world consequences of their framing. It implores readers to look critically at how power and prejudice shape the stories we’re told. And it demands that we hold even the most respected institutions accountable when they betray the communities they once vowed to protect. 

 

For those unfamiliar with Wilchins’s broader body of work, Bad Ink offers an entry point into a lifelong mission to reimagine gender justice. Wilchins’s previous work, such as Read My Lips and Queer Theory, Gender Theory, helped lay the theoretical groundwork for today’s gender discourse. But Bad Ink may be her most urgent and accessible book to date. It’s a cry for accountability, a call to action, and above all, a defense of the humanity and dignity of transgender youth. By turning the lens back on one of the most powerful media institutions in the world, Riki Anne Wilchins forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth: that sometimes, the greatest threats to justice don’t come from the obvious enemies of equality, but from those who claim to be its allies.

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