Blog Post #2

After the recent events happening with Donald Trump sending missiles into Syria, it seems as though no other news exists. It was a lot harder to find more information on the transgender bathroom issue now than it was a couple weeks ago, but after digging a  little deeper, I found a couple more articles on the issue. 

I found the article “What the Trump Administration’s Bathroom Memo Means for Transgender Kids” by Mahita Gajanan on time.com. Similarly to the CNN article that I talked about in my previous blog post, they used a lot of emotion in their article. This article took a quote from the legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, in which Sarah Warbelow stated, “We worry that it encourages states and local governments to behave badly towards transgender people” (Gajanan, 2017). The Human Rights Campaign is an incredibly liberal organization, seeing that I receive emails from them almost everyday saying to sign some petition against Donald Trump for taking away LGBTQ rights. The author of this article used a quotation from a person that they knew would back up their argument. You won’t find a quote from anyone from the Human Rights Campaign in an article written by someone who is against transgender rights. Also in the CNN article that I referred to in my last blog post, Caitlyn Jenner was quoted about how she is disgusted with how transgender people were being treated. In the Time article, they used a real, non-celebrity transgender person to touch the emotions of the reader. I think that it was strategic of them to wait until the end of the article to use the story, that way the reader ends on an emotional note. The author writes, “Holly Montemayor, a transgender student in Minnesota who dropped out of school because of continuous bullying, is worried that the Trump administration's letter will make things worse for transgender kids” (Gajanan, 2017). The author did not have to include the fact that Montemayor dropped out of school due to extensive bullying, but it added an extra emotional fact to make it a more powerful statement. 

On breitbart.com, I found an article entitled “Donald Trump Junks Barack Obama’s Pro-Transgender Policies” by Neil Munro. Just from the title of this article, you could tell it is more insensitive compared to the Time article when the author says “junking” instead of using a term like “revoking”. The first sentence of this article states “The policy reversal will likely protect single-sex civic groups and institutions...” (Munro, 2017). As for the Time article, the first sentence was “The Trump administration’s letter this week revoking protections for transgender students...” (Munro, 2017). The other article did not speak of protecting single-sex people, rather they spoke of the fear they had for transgender students not being protected. This article speaks of a Supreme Court case involving a transgender person wanting to be considered a male, but was born a woman. In any liberal news platform, like how the Time article referred Montemayor as a woman even though born a male, they would give this person the respect of calling him a he. However, in this article, they refer to him as a “young woman” and a “she”. 

It is clear that these two articles clash in how they present this story. The Time article does not present facts like how the Breitbart article does about how many people actually have changed their names from one sex to another (about one in 2,400 Americans). They want to make it seem like there aren’t a lot of transgender people in the United States, so their rights don’t matter as much as non-transgender citizens. The way they talk about transgender people and how they identify them is different also. I would say that the Time article is more sensitive and emotional, while the Breitbart is more blunt and factual. 

Works Cited

Gajanan, M. (2017, February 24). What the Trump Administration’s Bathroom Memo Means for Transgender Kids. Retrieved April 8, 2017, from http://time.com/4681072/transgender-students-bathroom-donald-trump/?iid=sr-link3

Munro, N. (2017, February 21). Donald Trump Junks Barack Obama’s Pro-Transgender Policies. Retrieved April 8, 2017, from http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2017/02/21/trump-junks-obama-transgender-policy/

     There are many controversial topics this day in age in the political world. One of these controversial topics are the rights of the members of the LGBTQ community. The liberal side of the spectrum tends to support these rights, where the conservative side tends to be less accepting (although this does not apply to every individual that identifies as a liberal or conservative). I am probably a little bit bias on the topic, given that I am gay, but I am not here to talk about whether they should or shouldn’t have certain rights. 

Recently, our new President, Donald Trump, has revoked the transgender bathroom guidance in schools. Former President, Barack Obama, made it acceptable to use the restroom for the gender in which the student identified with. The transgender community saw this as a huge win. Knowing that Fox News was a conservative based news source, I checked their website for what they had to say on the topic, and how they wrote about it. I did not see too much of a bias in their article,Trump administration revokes Obama-era transgender bathroom guidance for schools. They stated their facts for the most part, and showed views on both sides of the story.

CNN is widely known as a democratic news source, so I headed over to their website to see how they published this new event. I immediately saw the tactic they used to draw people in. The title of the article was, Caitlyn Jenner to Trump: 'This is a disaster’. Caitlyn Jenner is very well know for being transgender, (formerly Bruce Jenner), so I did not even have to read the article to know that it was going to be about this issue. The article primarily focused on Caitlyn’s tweets, saying “Republicans need help understanding LGBTQ  issues and I'm here to help!” and “Well @realDonaldTrump, from one Republican to another, this is a disaster. You made a promise to protect the LGBTQ community. Call me.”. The second tweet also had a video attached to it, telling transgender kids that they are winning and calling out the bullies for preying on the week. It is clear that she and CNN and taking the emotional route on delivering and reacting to the revocation of these transgender rights. Using the emotional route is a great way to persuade people because people usually react on emotions first rather than facts. Not only did they use emotion, but they used a celebrity name that many people know to draw people into their article to begin with. People want to hear what celebrities have to say, so this is another persuasive tactic that they used. 

To be quite honest, I did think that Fox News would have been more opinionated about the topic. They did not particularly use a lot of emotion in their writing, staying relatively close to the facts and storyline. I would say that they were a little cold on the topic. I expected CNN to be more emotional on the topic, and they met my expectations. They also used Caitlyn Jenner as the focus of their news story to get more people to read the article. I’m sure there are more right or left leaning news sources, but I figured these websites were the most trustworthy and most well-known.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/22/trump-administration-revokes-obama-era-transgender-bathroom-guidance-for-schools.html

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/23/politics/caitlyn-jenner-trump-transgender-trnd/index.html