Don't say transphobia: from Nex Benedict to Brianna Ghey, why is the media unable to report effectively on queer hate crimes?
The media continues to profit off the "spectacle" of transness while doing nothing to highlight the real oppression and danger faced by trans people.
CW: this article discusses violence, murder, suicide, and transphobia.
One of the most incredible things about the transgender community is its diversity. Everyone’s story is different, depending on our backgrounds, cultures, world views and experiences. There is, however, one thing that unites us all: reading the news and feeling absolute, earth-shattering horror and grief at story after story of members of our community being beaten and murdered for their transness.
This despair is worsened by the failure of journalists to identify the transphobia that underpins these cases: instead, they search each case for any cause other than transphobia.
One of the most prominent recent examples of such failure is the media’s reporting on the murder of Brianna Ghey. Brianna’s death was widely reported on in international news, including Australian media. Notably, the ABC came under fire when they published Brianna’s deadname in their report - while they later removed this detail, it stands to reflect the general standard of reporting when it comes to hate crimes against transgender people.
The Australian media seems to have been uncertain of how to handle this case at all, particularly Brianna’s transness and its role as a motivator in the murder. 9 News, the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald, among others, parroted the British police’s conclusion that the murder was not linked to Brianna’s transgender status, despite one of the perpetrators making overtly transphobic comments about her, including referring to her as “it”, and some extremely gross comments about her body. While the judge of the case classified transphobia as a “secondary motive,” the media has utterly failed to report on this element.
Despite the rise of transphobic hate crimes over the last decade, the Australian media has completely failed to contextualise Brianna’s murder within this larger trend of both transphobia and a rise in anti-LGBTQIA+ violence.The word “exceptional” has cropped up a lot in the reporting, often in reference to the brutality of the act, but also with regard to the context of the crime.
Brianna’s mother has pointed to social media as a driving factor in her daughter’s vulnerability, a sentiment that has quickly been picked up by the media to direct the conversation towards the issue of internet access. She further blamed the internet for the killers’ obsession with violence and crime. This latter elements was a major factor in their trial, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting that:
“The trial heard that the pair were intelligent and had a fascination with violence, torture and serial killers. They had planned the attack for weeks, detailed in a handwritten plan and phone messages found by detectives. They also had discussed killing others, which had prompted police to rule out transphobia as a motive behind Brianna’s murder early on in the investigation.”
There is a clear desire to identify and cling to any other reason for Brianna’s death other than the actual cause: transphobia.
Brianna was not vulnerable to random violence because she used social media - she was vulnerable to transphobic violence because she was a trans woman.
While the killers considered a number of potential targets for their violent desires, it is unavoidable that Brianna was among these — and ultimately, their victim — because her transgender status made her an easier target.
Hate crimes against trans people is rising
Last year, the United Kingdom’s Home Office reported that between 2022 and 2023, recorded hate crimes against transgender people rose by 11%. Notably, this only includes figures reported to authorities - it is impossible to say how many incidents occurred without being officially reported.
It is clear that crimes like those that took Brianna’s life are not exceptional, and are in fact part of a horrifying, growing trend. So why has the media failed to report on this context?
One major factor in the media’s failure is culpability. That is, if the Australian media is to acknowledge rising trends in transphobia and the direct link to violent hate crimes, then they must admit their own roles in fuelling that transphobia. As Junkee reported in 2019, reporting on trans issues in Australia skews heavily towards platforming anti-trans lobbyists. More recently, my colleague Natalie Feliks reported on the persistence of transphobia in Australian journalism. If the media was to acknowledge the rise in transgender hate crimes and the violence faced by transgender and non-conforming Australians, they would have to acknowledge how they have contributed to the platforming of the ideologies that result in such violence.
Biased reporting such as this does not exist in a vacuum, no matter how much the media wants it to. It is undeniable that platforming these ideologies has a direct link to violence against the transgender community.
Yet from the perspective of media companies, transphobia is wildly profitable due to its sensationalised nature. This provides them with an incentive to present biased reporting on the topic, frequently failing to appropriately platform or represent the transgender community in stories that are about us. This is most evident in their reporting on violent transphobia.
The victims’ trans nature is key to the sensationalisation of these stories, yet it is entirely ignored as a factor in the crimes themselves. The media continues to profit off the spectacle of transness while doing nothing to highlight the real oppression and danger faced by trans people.
We're officially on Instagram! Follow us @nonsense.newsletter and be sure to share us with your friends.
A history of violence
On 8 February, transmasculine Choctaw teenager Nex Benedict was violently assaulted in an Oklahoma public school by a group of his peers - he passed away the following day.
Notably, Nex attended a school that had previously been targeted by Chaya Raichik (known online as Libs of TikTok), whose activities are often followed by violence against queer people. Her targeting of Nex’s school in January led to the resignation of one particular teacher who had offered support to transgender and gender non-conforming students. His death has been ruled a suicide, sparking outrage in the queer community.
Regardless of whether Nex passed away from his injuries or ended his own life, it is clear that violent transphobia was the cause. News.com’s report on the events troublingly begins by quoting a police officer’s assertion that Nex “essentially started” the fight that resulted in their death - an astounding example of victim-blaming, given that the other students involved had bullied Nex and their friends for some time before the altercation.
Despite this history of transphobic bullying, none of the articles by 9 News, Yahoo, or News.com contain the word “transphobia.” Once again, the media takes great pains to avoid acknowledging the glaringly obvious. These reports frame Nex as an inherently vulnerable young person, but fail to acknowledge that transphobia is what made them so vulnerable in the first place.
This lack of reporting on other transgender hate crimes, in combination with the fumbles of reporting on Brianna’s murder, highlights the lack of care taken by the Australian media in their attention to transphobia. Crimes against trans people are exploited for their sensational nature, appealing to reactionary narratives of the media’s own making.
At the same time, they utterly fail to identify why trans people are targeted, and the growing trend of violence against transgender and gender diverse people. This willful ignorance allows them to report on these events without actually engaging with the issues themselves; they continue to platform the kinds of voices that fuel these violent acts without drawing any connection between the two.
All of this speaks to an unsettling lack of integrity in queer reporting that has emerged in the last twenty years. The Australian media denies transphobia as a motivator in these crimes, offering little to no analysis or reflection.
In attempting to appeal to transphobic extremists, the media has thrown to the wolves not only transgender and gender non-conforming Australians, but also their own basic standards of journalistic integrity.
If the media cannot — or will not — identify patterns of violence against queer people, then how can we take seriously anything they have to say about our issues — or indeed, anything?
—
Maurice Alasdair Quirk (he/they) is an academic, activist and transsexual based in Sydney. He recently completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies. He writes about queerness, disability, cryptids, and whatever else crosses his mind. He posts on Twitter too much.
—
The LGBTQIA+ Media Watch Project is partially funded by The Walkley Foundation, and proudly pays queer writers, journalists and experts to write about LGBTQIA+ representation in media and culture. To support writer-owned, independent, queer-led media, please consider subscribing - this is how we pay our writers!
Further Reading:
A lot of Hurt and Anger: How the Queer Community Feels Let Down by NSW Police
Police Refused to Label Brianna Ghey’s Murder a Hate Crime. Why?
 | A guest post by
|
Thanks for this thoughtful analysis. It is, I believe, fundamentally, cisgender society's morbid fascination with our bodies (as exemplified in one of Brianna's killer's comments prior to her murder) that underlies the media attention on deadnaming. It is this 'big reveal' sexualising fantasy of many male journalists that leads to this outing behaviour. And media editors and owners know that 'the big reveal' sells. It always has. And it particularly sells when we look like attractive examples of our affirmed gender. I really think this kind of cis male morbid fantasy ought to be called out for what it is.
Great piece. I’m in the UK with a 16 year old trans daughter so this case hits hard. Her mother has been incredible. The press as you say seemed keen to promote any reason other than transphobia for the crime. Although I do believe it was highlighted during sentencing. Keep raising the profile of these injustices. Thank you 🙏🏻