Picketing the New York Times is proof that LGBT pressure groups have lost the plot  

Gore Vidal once said: “The brain that doesn’t feed itself, eats itself.”

But the same can also be said for left-wing America, which — judging by the recent spat between trans activists and the New York Times — is currently enjoying an all-you-can-eat buffet, Jeffrey Dahmer-style. 

What was once considered the broadsheet du jour has failed the latest progressive purity test; critics now believe the paper is aggressively transphobic for giving space to JK Rowling and questioning gender reassignment surgery in minors.

The drama reached fever pitch last week when thousands of activists, celebrities, and supporters, including staff writers, plus the likes of Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham, publicly scolded the editorial board. In an open letter they claimed there’s a pattern of “bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people.” 

A second missive from more than 100 groups, including GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, then accused the paper of publishing “fringe theories” and “dangerous inaccuracies.”

“We’ve had enough,” the HRC later tweeted, to myriad applause GIFs from anonymous accounts. 

A billboard truck was then parked outside the newspaper’s headquarters in Manhattan, with a message stating: “Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist & access medical care.”

Amazingly, the craven editors did not relent to such pressure. In fact, the following day they published an op-ed actively defending Rowling. In it, contributor Pamela Paul criticized a “noisy fringe of the internet and a number of powerful transgender rights activists and LGBTQ lobbying groups” of whipping up a “campaign against Rowling” that is “as dangerous as it is absurd.”

“There is no evidence that she [Rowling] is putting trans people ‘in danger,’ as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist,” Paul added.

The NYT’s executive editor, Joe Kahn, then defended his paper in an internal memo. “We realize that these are difficult issues that profoundly affect many colleagues personally, including colleagues who are themselves transgender,” he wrote. “Our coverage of trans issues, including the pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported and sensitively written.”

Of course, that didn’t quite diffuse the situation. Nor did it offer a solution.

The paper still remains in an impossible bind, and GLAAD continues to insist they “hire at least two trans people on the opinion side and at least two trans people on the news side within three months,” which sounds remarkably like a threat. 

As a journalist, I should probably feel a pang of sympathy for the New York Times’s predicament, but I don’t. Instead, I feel a warm sense of schadenfreude because they have only themselves to blame. After abandoning all journalistic standards to push a crazy woke agenda, not to mention the hiring of hateful people such as Sarah Jeong, they’re now experiencing liberal puritanism first-hand. And they’ve absolutely earned it. 

That being said, the allegations made against them are exaggerated.  

For example, back in November, they published a very pro-LGBT article entitled, “For Ghana’s Only Openly Transgender Musician, Every Day Is Dangerous.”

A few weeks later they published another sympathetic report: “There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America: The relentless attack on trans people is an attack on us all.”

Then, earlier this month, they ran a gushing guest essay with the strapline, “Anti-trans legislation in dozens of states is an attack on parental rights.”

If this is deemed transphobic then it’s not very effective. Which begs the question: might the pitchfork mob be going after the wrong ‘villains’? 

There’s no denying that trans people are still vulnerable. Only last week 16-year-old Brianna Ghe was stabbed to death in Cheshire, UK, which was horrendous. We still don’t know the motive for her killing, but we do know that transgender people are over four times more likely to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. 

Another study, by McKinsey, showed that trans people are also twice as likely to be unemployed, with 30 percent of trans Americans currently jobless.

This is, of course, worrying. And, yes, Rowling’s antagonistic approach isn’t helping. But neither her nor the Times should not be made scapegoats (I say this as someone who loathes the New York Times and is blocked by Rowling on Twitter).

Firstly, it doesn’t help trans people at a grassroots level. Secondly, it smacks of a coup-style takeover by organizations such as GLAAD and HRC, who’ve seemingly lost their minds to mission creep. 

This situation puts the New York Times at a major fork in the road. The board can either stand up for what is right, i.e., common sense, or succumb to the insanity being foisted upon it by activists.

For once, the question isn’t whether the so-called Grey Lady is a ‘real’ woman, but whether she’s a woman who can keep it real.