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Transphobe MSM ‘Deadnames’ Nashville Shooter

‘Misgendering’ transgender people is the ultimate crime in mainstream reporting. Except when they shoot up a Christian school, of course.
  • Tamás Orbán
  • — March 28, 2023

Clad in a bulletproof vest and packing two ‘assault-style’ rifles, a 28-year-old stormed a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, March 27th, killing six people in the process, before being shot by the police. Even though the shooter went by the name of Aiden and used he/him pronouns, legacy media keeps referring to her as Audrey Hale.

Just to be clear, when discussing horrible tragedies such as school shootings, having to worry about appropriate pronouns in an effort not to insult the late perpetrator’s gender identity would be an absurd request at best. Yet, USA Today still managed to find time to correct any errors that may have occurred in their initial reporting of the attack, saying that it was the officials who originally ‘misgendered’ the shooter, a biological female who identified as a trans man.

In an act of terrorism, a woman murdered three children and three adults in cold blood today at a Christian school and our media is worrying about her “preferred pronouns.” Utterly insane. https://t.co/0FIUXwFnsV

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) March 28, 2023

But not all mainstream media outlets were so sensible. A quick look around at their reporting, including CNN’s, NBC’s, and The New York Times’, reveals that all recognized that the shooter was a female-to-male transgender individual, but still repeatedly used the shooter’s old, ‘dead’ name: Audrey Hale.

We all know perfectly well how serious a crime ‘misgendering’ is nowadays, precisely because legacy media keeps reminding us. So, how come, in this tragic circumstance, has it failed in its role as an ally for transgender people all of a sudden? I suspect the answer has something to do with this particular person being a mass murderer.

The evidence I sketch out above perfectly spells out the victim hierarchy of this twisted woke worldview. By deciding to use the shooter’s original name, mainstream media outlets basically admitted that they would rather have a woman portrayed in bad light than have a transgender individual named as the perpetrator of a violent crime. 

Furthermore, the possible motives behind the attack also warrant downplaying the transgender aspect of the story. Just think about it: an LGBT-identified person shoots up a Christian school; it could hardly be a worse narrative for the Left. 

I imagine if it was a religious institute belonging to any denomination other than Christian, and the attack had been carried out by a straight man, then the words ‘hate crime’ would be plastered all over the newsfeeds. Something tells me that even if the police unearth evidence showing that the attack was ideologically motivated, hardly anyone would run it as the headline.

With no manifesto found so far, we don’t know what truly prompted Audrey/Aiden Hale to carry out this monstrous act. Nonetheless, downplaying the possibility of the most obvious assumption (that the attack was ideologically motivated) is just disrespectful to the memory of the victims—three of them children—whose lives were cut short by a mentally unstable individual with a condition made worse by today’s toxic cultural environment. 

Portraying Christians as the direct enemies of LGBT people—and vice versa, for that matter—can and does have unintended effects. Once the tragedies happen, no amount of sugarcoating can change them. It’s time for all media to understand that.

Tamás Orbán is a political journalist for The European Conservative, based in Brussels. Born in Transylvania, he studied history and international relations in Kolozsvár, and worked for several political research institutes in Budapest. His interests include current affairs, social movements, geopolitics, and Central European security. On Twitter, he is @TamasOrbanEC.
  • Tags: Audrey Hale, dead naming, Nashville, school shooting, Tamás Orbán, transgender, U.S.

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Issue 26, Spring 2023

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