The Mission of the Trans Journalists Association | This Way Out Radio Episode #2011
Abigail DeRoberts speaks with Tre’vell Anderson, executive director of the Trans Journalists Association, about challenging media bias, supporting trans journalists, and transforming how transgender lives and communities are represented in the news. The program also features transgender person speaking from a 1968 KPFA broadcast preserved by the Pacifica Radio Archives.
In NewsWrap, protests erupt in Taipei following police raids on LGBTQ+ venues; openly LGBTQ+ candidates make gains in Brazil’s elections as the right-wing Liberal Party strengthens its congressional position; LGBTQ+ voters prepare for the U.S. midterms amid debates over transgender rights; advocates spotlight the challenges LGBTQ+ survivors face in seeking domestic violence support; and a record number of school book bans puts LGBTQ+ stories among the targets of growing censorship.
Featured speakers: Reuters Policy Reporter Leah Douglas, activist Rashad Robinson, Tre’vell Anderson
Credits: Associate Producer Lucia Chappelle, Producer/ host Brian DeShazor, News writer Jeb Backe, the feature was produced by Brian DeShazor and Lucia Chappelle, NewsWrap reporters Tanya Kane-Parry and David Hunt. music: Bobby Sanchez, our theme music was written and performed by Kim Wilson.
All this on the October 12, 2026 Edition of This Way Out!
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This Way Out
NewsWrap
Program 2011 Distributed 10/12/26
Taipei protestors took to the streets on October 4th following a police raid on a BDSM-themed gay bar the previous day. Despite Taiwan's legal and social support for LGBTQ+ rights, the Commander D bar was busted up by police with a search warrant for alleged, “offences against public morality.” The bar’s owner was arrested alongside 51 patrons who were taken in for questioning. Two other queer Taipei venues were targeted on October 3rd.
The LGBTQ+ Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association condemned the raid. It quoted on-site witnesses who charged that “officers refused to present the search warrant to individuals subjected to inspection, ordered all patrons to squat, prohibited communication and mobile device usage, made derogatory remarks directed at individuals with disabilities, subjected patrons to verbal abuse, and forcibly escorted dozens of citizens to the police station for interrogation. “
The Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights saw the raid in the context of a history of injustice. The organizations said in a joint statement, "This was not a case of individual officers misspeaking or a single instance of excessive enforcement, but the resurfacing of long-standing homophobia, discrimination and abuse of power within the police enforcement system."
Taiwan enjoys marriage equality, including adoption rights, and bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender characteristics in education. These legal wins over the past two decades came in the shadow of frequent police harassment of LGBTQ+ people and establishments throughout the 1990s– harassment that clearly echoes into today.
Voters in Brazil elected at least 32 openly LGBTQ+ candidates to the country’s federal and state legislative bodies, that’s according to news outlet Agência Diadorim. Winners hailed from the Workers’ Party, the Communist Party of Brazil, the Socialism and Liberty Party, and the Green Party to name a few – most of whom are allies of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
One of them was Thabatta Pimenta, the first out transgender representative elected to the Brazilian National Congress from the country’s Northeast. Pimenta was preceded by the election of fellow trans lawmakers Erika Hilton and Duda Salabert in 2022. As a member of Brazil’s Partido Verde, or Green Party, she is the first transgender representative to be elected from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte.
This year, Brazil saw 529 openly LGBTQ+ candidates on the October 4th ballot. Although the national election saw a shift toward the right, Rio Grande Do Norte favored left-wing candidates. Overall, former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal Party or “PL” will increase in the House and Senate— making them the largest party in both chambers of Congress. Bolsonaro's son Flavio serves in the Senate and challenged Lula for the presidency. He won more votes than the incumbent, but not enough. A runoff will be held on October 25th.
When it comes to voting in the U.S., LGBTQ+ turnout is giving the elderly a run for their money— that’s according to new Human Rights Campaign research. HRC’s 2026 Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey found that 87% of respondents definitely plan to vote in this year’s midterm elections. Historically, those aged 65 and over have been the demographic with the highest voter turnout rate– 71% for the last presidential election.
HRC’s survey found that the issues that matter the most to LGBTQ+ voters are civil rights, economic stability, and government accountability. The civil rights of trans people in particular has been front and center for the latest election cycle. Reuters Policy Reporter Leah Douglas examined the split among midwestern Democrats regarding the trans culture war.
[AUDIO - REUTERS]
“When we spoke to transgender advocates, they found it pretty disappointing from Democrats. And candidates in Ohio and Iowa have faced criticism from queer constituents and progressive constituents who say you don't need to compromise on transgender rights and policy topics in order to win these elections. What voters are most concerned about is how expensive their groceries have gotten, the unbelievable spike in diesel prices. We heard from strategists for both parties that trans issues and trans policy is just not a major concern for most voters.”
Meanwhile, more than 300,00 transgender citizens will face barriers to their voting rights in the form of certain state ID laws and other restrictive policies according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. As some Democratic candidates acquiesce to anti-trans rhetoric and policy, advocates warn that they are losing the highly participatory LGBTQ+ voters.
Domestic violence has a unique impact in the LGBTQ+ community, and groups like the Survivor Justice Center are highlighting the issue for Domestic Violence Awareness Month this October. Intimate partner violence occurs at a rate much higher for queer and trans people as compared to their heterosexual and cisgendered counterparts,
According to a study last year from the Journal of Media Critiques.
Research on intimate partner violence for the LGBTQ+ community remains fairly scarce compared to the heterosexual and cis community. The information that is available has been ringing alarm bells for advocacy groups. That’s why the Survivor Justice Center is bringing attention to the matter this year. Its Community Investment Officer Dan Hanley wrote a guest column for the Los Angeles Blade. In his words, “Most survivors of abuse carry some baseline of shame and self-blame, regardless of identity. LGBTQ+ survivors often describe an additional burden: fear that disclosing abuse will reinforce harmful stereotypes about queer relationships or provide ammunition to those already hostile to the community. For some, acknowledging abuse can even feel like a betrayal of the community itself, as though speaking honestly about violence from within somehow validates the prejudice of others.”
Hanley encourages LGBTQ+ people to feel legitimate in their experience, affirming the value of seeking help. Meanwhile, advocates are calling for LGBTQ+ training in shelters and law enforcement. Rebecca Hobbs is Co-Executive Director of the domestic violence resource center Through These Doors. Hobbs told Uncloseted Media about the importance of inclusive environments in shelters, saying, “LGBTQ people will not come to us unless they see themselves reflected in our materials. [...] We want our advocates to be well versed in understanding the additional barriers and challenges that LGBTQ people might experience.”
Finally…
United States schools had a record number of books banned over the past school year, with LGBTQ+ content as one of the primary targets— that’s according to PEN America. The human rights and free expression group has been tracking book bans since 2021, and this year is their highest yet, with almost 12,000 books banned in public schools.
Texas and Florida made up the vast majority of bans. PEN America calls the dubious duo “blueprints for educational censorship, where special interest groups, state laws, and politicians have converged to pressure school districts to restrict and remove access to books.” The report shows a ripple effect from SB13, the 2025 Texas Law which banned whole categories of books from schools.
The American Library Association released a study earlier this year that tracked censorship of books and educational materials in schools and public libraries. Among the specific titles challenged last year, 39% represent the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and people of color.
Rasahd Robinson is an openly gay civil rights activist and former president of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. He spoke to WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, New York about why certain books are censored:
[AUDIO-WGRZ]
“Well, banning stories and banning ideas is about power and I want to help people understand that those who are threatened by our ideas, those who are threatened by what we hope for, we can't let them win.”
Full Interview Transcript with Tre’vell Anderson
ABIGAIL: What do trans people do when marginalized by the mainstream media? They create their own lane. This Way Out Radio spoke with Tre'Vell Anderson, Executive Director of the Trans Journalists Association, about how they support trans people in the media, both those behind the scenes and those in the spotlight.
TRE’VELL: I am Tre'Vell Anderson, I use they/them pronouns, and I am Executive Director of the Trans Journalists Association. So the Trans Journalists Association was founded in the summer of 2020. I'm sure we all remember what was going on in the U. S. in particular. We call it the summer of racial reckoning now, right? And it was created by a coalition of journalists who happened to be trans, who believed that we needed a space and an organization that would be deeply concerned with our unique experiences in this industry, but also be about the business of working with mainstream news outlets and other newsmaking institutions to transform journalism into something that is a bit more hospitable for trans people when it comes to coverage of our rights in our communities. First four years of the organization, it was all volunteer-run, and then I was hired as the first staff member of the organization about a year and a half ago as Executive Director. And in that time, one of the ways I've described our work is that there's just like immense need, both among trans journalists who are doing this work of not just dealing with the press freedom issues, we'll call them, that are happening in the United States, but also dealing with the outright assault on our humanity.
Our mission is simple; we say we have a two-fold mission, which is to promote accurate, nuanced coverage of trans rights and communities in the media and to foster the careers of trans journalists. That looks like, you know, working with newsrooms to train their journalists on how to cover trans and gender diverse communities with care. That looks like a program that we have right now with the Canadian Association of Journalists which is a touring set of workshops, right, to help equip Canadian journalists with particular considerations that might show up in, as we know, the developing situation in terms of the assault on trans humanity that is popping up across Canada as well. We also have like a style book and coverage guide similar to the Associated Press guide, which is just like, you know, collection of coverage, guidance, considerations, reporting questions, definitions, strategies to help reporters as they're covering the gender identity beat, or even if they're not on the gender identity beat, but covering a trans rights issue pops up in their work, as we know it is happening more and more.
And then we have our work and our efforts specifically for our membership. You do not have to be trans to be a member of the Trans Journalists Association, but we do have specific digital spaces that are reserved for the trans and gender expansive members of our membership. We're currently just under 700 people across the United States, Canada, and increasingly the globe, including the UK, including Pakistan, and South Africa. Well, you know, I like to remind people that the foundation of the industry of journalism as we know it is one of exclusion. It's one of exclusion of a host of cultures and communities and identities, including trans and gender-diverse people. And so what we find in terms of the challenges and the reasons why the Trans Journalists Association was and is necessary is that some of these other spaces that have been created to support the professional development of journalists and storytellers, to affirm the unique racial or ethnic identities of journalists in this industry, sometimes those spaces aren't also trans-inclusive. And so the Trans Journalists Association becomes that much more vital when we know that not only are these other spaces in journalism not inclusive, not only do they not foster and support and center the unique experiences of trans and gender diverse people, but they also don't cater to our unique needs. What do I mean when I say our unique needs as trans journalists? I mean that, you know, the majority of trans journalists come into this industry without formal education or training The majority of trans journalists, our work in this industry is actually a response to the exclusion, the erasure, the violence, and the harm that our communities have historically dealt with when it comes to news.
So specifically for our members, we host monthly professional development workshops and trainings for them about a host of skills-building efforts. We also have a professional development stipends program, our Level Up program, which is providing direct investment into the lives, the careers, and the professional development goals of trans and gender diverse journalists, as well as other journalists who are about the business of amplifying the humanity of trans folks and accurately covering trans rights and communities. We also have a reporting fellowship that we unrolled this year, our first cycle of that reporting fellowship. We have seven fellows who are across experience levels in the industry, reporting stories for a variety of outlets that center and uplift trans joy, trans humanity, and the realities of our lives in this political moment.
We're excited to support those folks with mentorship, as well as a livelihood stipend to help offset some of the life costs that come with being a journalist and, more often than not, an independent freelance journalist. And one thing I'm particularly excited about that we're developing right now in response to the isolation so many of us feel, the lack of safety and support many of us have felt in these other journalism spaces. We're developing our own Trans Journalists Summit, which will be happening in March in Chicago. It'll be the first time on record that trans journalists are coming together, not only to invest in our professional development, but to also strategize as storytellers about what this moment means and looks like for us and what the next moment will mean and look like for us.
And so we're really excited about that. We're using it as an opportunity to reimagine what a journalism conference can be. We are covering a host of accessibility commitments, for example, which is covering the lodging of all the attendees, covering the meals of all the attendees, providing scholarships to support everyone's travel, being sure to center mental wellness and safety, and physical safety, especially in a moment like this. All of those considerations that become important for us as a gathering and a bringing together of trans people; we're excited by that challenge because we recognize how much it is an opportunity to be able to show up for our members in this way. At the Trans Journalists Association, one of the ways we think about that is both being concerned about the short term and the long term, which is to say, I am speaking to and engaging with your mainstream news outlets because I want them to get it right.
And I want those outlets to become safer places to hold the stories of trans people and the experiences of trans people as employees, because some trans journalists want to work in mainstream news. And then we find ourselves in a moment where trans journalists, in response to the exclusion, in response to the anti-trans misinformation of mainstream media, in response to an ongoing disinvestment in our kinds of stories, they've started their own publications, their own Substacks, their own newsletters, their own worker co-owned publications that are servicing a need for their community, whether it's a community of trans folks or whether it's a local community. I'm thinking of Coyote Media, for example, which is one of the newer San Francisco area-based collectives that are worker-owned, super progressive, largely trans staff.
Our style book and coverage guide, it's similar to like the Associated Press style guide, except ours is better, if I say so myself, particularly when it comes to trans and gender diverse communities and the unique issues that many of us have to deal with. It is topical, it's searchable, and really, what we are trying to do with this resource that is free to anyone at transjournalists.org is provide a compendium for folks to be able to refer to in their reporting, right? We know that most newsrooms don't have, let's say, an LGBTQ coverage style guide. And of the newsrooms that do, their policies around covering trans people and gender diverse people are often a decade or two behind.
When I worked at the Los Angeles Times about 15 years ago, the LGBTQ style guide, which they did have, so kudos to them, it had not been updated since the 90s. And I don't have to tell anyone listening how much changed between the 90s and the 2010s, the early 2020s as it relates to just how we as a culture refer to LGBTQ people, let alone trans people. And so our style guide is a more recent updated option for these newsrooms and for journalists who don't have that in newsroom resources. And it's one of those like continuing education kind of tools. And so we start with a host of reporting recommendations and strategies at the top. Those are things just like when you're talking about issues that uniquely impact trans people, be sure to interview trans people.
Simple, but you'll be surprised at the research that we've done. We did a study with Berkeley Media Studies Group last year that looked at the mainstream media coverage of the anti-trans executive orders from the Trump administration within its first 100 days of the second administration. Of all of the coverage, 70% of that coverage did not include the voice of a trans person. Another reporting consideration we talk about is also being sure to interview trans people about things outside of our transness. So many of us have levels of expertise in other things beyond our gender journeys Prior to this job, prior to being what I call a professional trans person, I was a culture, I am a culture and entertainment journalist. I've been doing that for the last 15 years.
I've written two books. I've won an NAACP Image Award. You know, I can go down the list of accolades, but so often we as trans people never get to talk about those things because, one, folks aren't talking to us at all in the media. And then when they do talk about us or want to talk to us, it is about our traumas. It is about our tragedies. If I was giving a PSA to other media makers from TJA, I would say hire trans people One of the major realities that we are facing as a community of storytellers who are trans is a similar thing that most trans communities are dealing with, which is unemployment. And there are so many fallouts from not having trans people in your newsroom, on your storytelling team, both in terms of the coverage of trans rights in communities, but also in terms of the coverage of life in society writ large because of what our unique experiences bring to a storytelling effort.
We are in a moment and then there is an opportunity before us all to be more active in articulating and bringing about the world we say we want to live in And so for everyone under the sound of my voice, what can you do to make the space around you safe enough for the trans people who are already there? What policies can you suggest within your workplace? What strategies can you incorporate into your reporting? How can you just be a better neighbor and community member to the folks who live on your block? This is an opportunity for all of us to think more critically and more intentionally about the role we want to play in what's unfolding of our history right now. And I encourage folks to be active, to do something.
And if you start with your neck of the woods, if you start with the people in your community, and if I do the people in my community, okay, that's how we begin to build greater relationships with our neighbors that don't succumb to the rhetorical gains that conservative-minded and conservative-interested groups and individuals are trying to bring about. And we can really get to the commonalities within our lived experiences, the unique differences within our lived experiences that help make us all who we are and the benefits, right, because of that difference that we all bring to society and to our communities.
ABIGAIL: For This Way Out Radio, it's Abigail DeRoberts
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