Published January 13, 2025

Content warning given with loving concern: references to suicide and suicidal ideation, hate speech and anti-trans campaigns. Protect your peace.

Note: PDF and audio versions of this story will be on my LinkedIn and Bluesky accounts if my website crashes.

Here is the audio version in my voice:

 

♥

Whatever’s next, my life is pretty much over anyway. The New York Times and The Athletic helped ensure that.

I work for the latter and get paid by the former. They decide who matters and who doesn’t, who’s a person and who’s an “activist,” who can speak out on their own behalf and who can’t.

I’m not fine with that. I’m not fine.

My answers on suicide-related questionnaires set off alarms for my healthcare team. I’ve had a breakdown. I wake up screaming because of my nightmares.

Imagine that a company buys the company you work for and is the biggest, most impactful enabler¹ of groups that don’t want you to exist — and it doesn’t allow you to speak out. How is anyone supposed to endure that for three years? I’m barely functioning, unsure I can work or trust again.

This is my story. It took two months to write. My hands shake, my body convulses, trembles. As a transgender person, I am in danger.

It’s Week 8 of a 12-week job-protected leave from my role as staff editor at The Athletic, where I’ve worked since late January 2021. The Times bought the company a year later, beginning my nightmare as a trans woman under Times control.

 

I spent two months trying to build the one sentence that makes people realize I am a person, that I matter. Somewhere between one sentence and dozens, I hope there are at least a few words that elevate me from political talking point to human being.

Life was finally worth living.

I was hurting no one.

Who does this to people for merely existing, for finally finding joy?

What’s happening to me and my trans sisters, brothers and niblings, to nonbinary people, is criminal. In this, the Times cannot claim some mythical, noble neutrality.

I tried to pull myself together — posting, from bed, unused material from an ambitious project I’ll never finish, to try, in a “fake it till you make it” way, to force healing and create the illusion of being fine. I’m not. I can’t see a place for myself in this world. Two months ago, my country told me I wasn’t worth protecting, that trans people are expendable.

For the first time, a plan

When they find my body, they’ll see paper in a pouch on a lanyard around my neck. That’s to keep blood off the note. I’ll be in a patch of grass I’ve chosen so there’s no mess in my apartment or car.

My name, address and state ID (F for female) will be inside, with names and numbers to call, including my employer. “Carly Dubois wanted you to know she’s dead.”

For too many years, I went to sleep expecting nightmares and putting a wish out into the universe that I’d never wake up. But when I came out as a transgender woman in 2017, I finally wanted to live.

What a gift to myself.

Now, though, thanks to a well-funded anti-trans movement, the revival of debunked talking points and the willingness of the Times to give them unmerited oxygen, my joy has vanished. For the first time, I have a plan for ending my life.

I’m a nobody from nowhere. But if I were one of the people who steer these newsrooms, I might think I should reflect on why an employee would entertain death as a better option than returning to the prison I’d helped put her in.

Take your time

This story’s long, but how many words is my life worth? Is it worth the word count of a fawning feature story about an athlete or coach? Or a trend story on the latest splurge for people with more money than they’ll ever spend?

A week from Inauguration Day, are trans lives worth any words at all?

The more inept the incoming administration and its stooges prove to be, the more likely they’ll continue to torture trans people to make it seem they are capable of doing something. I don’t foresee anyone protecting us.

Take all the time you need to get through this story, one section at a time. It’s not going anywhere. I, on the other hand, feel like I’m getting this in just under the wire. If I knew a short way to describe a three-year nightmare, I’d do that. But I don’t.

If your first reaction to this story is to say it’s too long, relax. That’s a clear sign that you’re not the target audience. The right people will read every word.

Trans kids are being beaten and denied life-saving healthcare. The march toward banning trans adults’ life-saving care is gaining traction. People feel more emboldened than ever to act on their hatred of us. I can’t be silent any longer about any organization that helps them feel more comfortable doing so, even if it pays my salary. The forced silence is one of the worst parts of my nightmare, sucking the air out of my life day after day.

How would you feel?

A Supreme Court justice repeats disinformation about trans people after the Times gives it legitimacy and new life.

Vatican leaders, Vladimir Putin, Republican lawmakers, the incoming president and far-right leaders around the world demonize you. Democrats abandon you. SCOTUS justices display ignorance as they decide your future.

President-elect Donald Trump says, “With the stroke of my pen on Day 1, we’re going to stop the transgender lunacy.”

How would you feel? Day 1 is a week away.

We’re worried about dying. Being “eradicated.” Ended with the stroke of a pen. They’re worried about “unsparing criticism.” I’ve never worked for a Times-owned company during a Trump administration. I’m frightened.

How would you cope with this every day? Ask yourself what the next four years will be like for trans people. Ask how you’d feel working for people who let those planning your demise have a voice in the matter but won’t allow you the same.

What you should know

If you search our suicide statistics, know that we don’t kill ourselves because we’re trans. It’s because of how the world treats us. Also, statistics are lacking. If a trans person dies by suicide before transitioning, a coroner’s report won’t say they’re trans.

Right now I’m still here, still visible. I’m a person, not a culture war — not a thought exercise for terrible opinion columnists. I exist. I bleed, cry, dream and hope, though hope is effectively gone. I’m not a statistic — not yet. But I’m running out of reasons to stay.

“Culture war” is a bullshit term for what anti-trans people do to us. It’s one example of the lazy ways the Times uses language in covering us and politics.

They might fire me. They might try to discredit me. They’re always right, of course, and their critics are always wrong. I don’t know how to fight that. But whatever they throw at me, I have receipts.

International Transgender Day of Visibility is every March 31. Easter moves around the calendar. In 2024, Easter fell on the same day as an annual awareness event for trans people. Maybe the Times will frame it properly when it happens again, in 2086.

It might seem minor to you, but the Times helped enable the shitstorm that followed. The Times is good at that.

The election destroyed me

I haven’t worked since Nov. 3. After an all-nighter two days later to watch election results, I emailed my boss and HR to say I’d be unable to work that night. Then I slept for 16 hours. Every day. For a month.

From that email:

Every network I saw last night mentioned that Trump spent more money on anti-trans ads than on any other issue. And that it obviously worked. Let that sink in. We are about 1-2 percent of the population. And now we are more vulnerable than ever.

Whether it wants to admit this or not, The New York Times played a significant role in this outcome, allowing bad-faith actors’ propaganda into its coverage of us, which has led to Times articles being official court documents in legal cases in states passing bans.

I’d hoped to wake up to a brighter future in a better country. Both were worse than I’d been counting on, my future and my country. I was shattered. Still am.

Three people at work checked on me after the election. We have hundreds of employees. One family member checked on me. Maybe the lesson is, most people don’t care. Maybe they approve of what’s happening. Or, maybe people don’t know what’s happening. The Times and legacy media share some responsibility for that.

What’s certain is, employee rules denied me a voice as a citizen. I’m losing my life, and the people I work for are helping that happen while silencing me.

I slept away the rest of 2024 and had to scrape myself off the floor to do anything. That includes putting my head back in the monster’s mouth to write this. This story is for people even more vulnerable than I am, especially trans women of color. This story is for people who think “picking our battles” is how we escape fascism.

The Athletic editorial guidelines

This is from the section Political Opinions and Participation in Public Life:

Athletic journalists can take part in religious, charitable and local or community affairs, and vote in elections. … But you should always take care to ensure that your involvement does not raise questions about The Athletic’s reputation, integrity or journalistic independence. That is especially the case when it comes to political or other topics that are in the news, including international affairs.

It’s me. I’m a trans woman, a “political” topic.

Journalists have no place on the playing field of politics, which increasingly intersects with the sports world.

You can donate to anti-trans political candidates, but I can’t donate to pro-trans candidates.

In particular, Athletic staff members should not express political opinions on social media or any other platform. Staff members may not give money to, or raise money for, political candidates.

The guidelines allow an employee to be active in a church or religious group that opposes trans rights and helps anti-trans campaigns, maybe even donate to that cause.

Staff members can contribute to and volunteer for religious or charitable causes, although if a particular cause becomes newsworthy for The Athletic, that staff member may be forbidden from covering it.

The same rules, retooled after the Times bought The Athletic, don’t allow me to speak publicly against those groups and anti-trans politicians, on my behalf.

Staff members may not march or rally in support of public causes or movements, sign ads or letters taking a position on public issues, or lend their name to campaigns, benefit dinners or similar events if doing so might reasonably raise doubts about their or The Athletic’s ability to cover the news impartially.

Someone will challenge these Times-mandated restrictions in court. Discovery would be illuminating.

How it started

The Athletic offered me the job, and I accepted, on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the insurrection. A text message from my future boss had a 50-50 chance of leading to good news, and the call I placed confirmed the best news: I was one of three hired from among 446 applicants. My miracle had happened.

Before January ended, I called it my best month ever.

It was my last good month, but before things went bad, I was thrilled. I was the first openly trans person at The Athletic. No one blinked. It was no big deal. Though a hot mess, The Athletic felt like a startup with a heart, something I miss.

A year later, the Times reached an agreement to buy The Athletic. That terrified me, because I knew what was coming. The Times would continue endangering lives with noxious coverage of trans people. It would help put Trump back in the White House with irresponsible political coverage and commentary.

For three years, there has been no escaping it. But I knew about the Times a decade ago. That’s what made its acquisition of The Athletic in 2022 so terrifying.

The Times then bought Wordle, my favorite game, and slowly swallowed The Athletic. It swallowed my life. Today the Times feels heartless, sterile, soulless, and that’s reflected in how it’s changed The Athletic.

How it’s been going

In February 2023, one year after the sale, I needed time off for mental health. The Times smugly rejected credible complaints about its coverage, dismissing trans journalists as “activists,” then a day later let trans people know what it really thinks of us. Its “In Defense of J.K. Rowling” column gutted me.

I emailed management:

In terms of scope and reach, I can’t think of an entity that has done more damage to the trans community in the past several years than the Times.

I referenced the column, which was bad enough then and has aged horribly (a common arc for Times opinions). She’s the villain we’ve always said she was.

There are no trans kids. No child is ‘born in the wrong body’. There are only adults like you, prepared to sacrifice the health of minors to bolster your belief in an ideology that will end up wreaking more harm than lobotomies and false memory syndrome combined. pic.twitter.com/yyc4MxgfOk

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 28, 2024

Even if the timing of (the column) was mere coincidence and not a direct response to criticism, I wrote in my email, some decent human being in a position of power at the Times should have put that opinion piece on hold to avoid the appearance of giving an editorial middle finger to people like me. That no one stopped it was chilling to our community, but not a surprise.

That’s how that Times column hit: middle fingers raised to me and to the trans community, but instead of the fun pop-art look from my manicure, they were putrid, spiteful, sin-ugly old birds of hate flipped and approved by Times leaders.

I couldn’t bring myself to subject you to a representation of the ugliness I saw and felt when that column appeared, timing and context and all, so you get to see these. But I think you get my point. It was as big an editorial middle finger as I’ve ever seen.

(Those are my real nails, by the way. The strongest, most healthy part of me, and still a source of some of the only joy I have left in this life.)

My full email is in this post, but this part speaks to how beaten down I was:

I have never felt more alone, more isolated, than I do now, and the power imbalance in all of this, given the consequences to the trans community amid efforts to take away our healthcare and force us out of existence, is breathtaking in its own right.

The Times has been complicit in these efforts to do us harm, and trans journalists take offense at any suggestion to the contrary. … I don’t need to hear a lecture from anyone about how journalism works. This is my 40th year as a professional.

I took a month off. That was 23 months ago.

Flash forward to fall 2024

The week before the election is when I realized I don’t matter, that I’m not even an afterthought. I’m a neverthought.

A Times letter to employees urged caution in what they said, or even liked on social media. The Athletic forwarded it to us, adding: “As (the letter) pointed out, even personal messages shared by employees outside the newsroom can reflect back on our journalism, so please exercise your best judgment — especially in the coming weeks.”

Both letters asked us to support Times journalists. An unwritten subtext, which emerged in all-hands company meetings, was we needed to protect them.

Where was the letter on my behalf? The letter urging employees to be careful what they said publicly and privately, or liked on social media, about trans people? They know they employ some of us. Surely they saw the blitz of advertising by Trump and other Republicans making the election disproportionately about trans people. Where was the call for care on my behalf, on our behalf?

Can I ever speak up? Why can the awful men (and a few women) in the Times’ stable of dreadful columnists publicly discuss me and people like me, but I cannot? Why did the Times fail to quote a trans person in two-thirds of its stories about trans people over one year?

I’m just asking questions. Here’s another:

If companies won’t allow employees to speak out against a slow-moving authoritarian takeover of this country at any point between the start and its successful conclusion, aren’t those companies complicit in the coup?

Seeing that I don’t matter was a gut punch. My body’s still shaking so much that it’s hard for me to even type without dozens of mistakes.

I respected the boundaries of company policy in trying to rally support for trans people in our Slack channels. This is from October:

What, The Athletic’s bosses didn’t notice anti-trans ads dominating commercials during baseball’s postseason and college and pro football games? We cover sports and culture. It was in my face every day. No letter amid all that urging employees to be careful what they said or liked on social media about trans people?

This was a worse blow than the defense of Rowling. This was: Times journalists matter. You don’t.

Other vulnerable people work at The Athletic. They weren’t singled out to the extent that we were by these hate campaigns. The Times’ track record and fingerprints on our leadership suggest no one ever considered including me, us, in their plea for support.

Fascism’s portal

Feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler says, “Anti-gender is one of the vectors through which fascist passions are stoked and circulated, and those are passions that support increasingly authoritarian regimes that justify their wars and their acts of destruction by appearing as if they are putting an end to what threatens society with destruction.”

And from a November interview: “Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?”

We must stick together. Cisgender women, they’re coming for you too. Attacks on bodily autonomy attack all of us. I was never coming for you. My joy stole nothing from you.

Because I feared losing my job, I was silent for three years and let Times editors, reporters and columnists — including guests who could say whatever they wanted — shape my future. I did everything “right.” Where’d that get me? Where’d that get us?

The Times has people who do great work. Its leaders and editors, though, have long been going out of their way to protect something. Whatever that something is, it’s not vulnerable people, as we see in ewphemism after ewphemism (spelling intentional).

That’s hardly the biggest example, just one of the latest.

What I face

The Times published the defense of the notoriously anti-trans Rowling on Feb. 16, 2023. I was diagnosed with heart failure two months later. My health nosedived. The diagnosis was later overturned, but the medical mystery remains. My body never got the memo.

They broke my heart. That’s my explanation.

That’s legal. They’re allowed to break my heart. Morally, they’re on their own.

There’s financial wreckage amid the debris of my lost years before coming out, so if I’m fired, without an income, my life would be over. If I stay silent, my life is over anyway. If I don’t stand up for my rights, who will? Almost nobody, 2024 showed me.

What life have they left me? When I’m out of legal moves and out of savings, what then? The world doesn’t need another homeless trans person.

Journalism that leaves its own behind must take a hard inward look, but is anyone expendable for the sake of some “objectivity” that enables real harm? If you agree with the employee guidelines that say journalists have no place on the playing field of politics, answer this: Can you name anything important that isn’t political?

If you or your group are able to cordon off politics from the rest of your daily life, you might have unexamined privilege.

Things that Americans are urged to do to save this country? Times and Athletic rules bar me from almost all of it. If you disallow choosing a side in this fight, you’ve chosen a side.

Please get a clue

I’m tired of men — most of them white, the majority straight, always cisgender, usually Christian, men who imagine they’ll be fine regardless — and women who uphold the patriarchy getting to discuss my life publicly while I don’t. White men: the original, all-time champion beneficiaries of U.S. “identity politics.” (I say this aware that for too long, as a journalist and male-presenting white adult, I was more problem than solution.)

Wake the fuck up, Times leaders. Wake the fuck up, journalism. Destructive politics like we’re seeing found America’s vulnerability: uncritical devotion to outdated ethics, norms and rules. The architects of this takeover identified our weakness and are using it against us. It’s you. You’re the weakness.

Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who knows what time it is, understands: “We cannot fight back against nefarious political forces without engaging in politics.”

In our dystopian future, those who foisted their rules upon me will be on the run by day, crouching in front of a fire by night, probably alone, muttering as they continue to search for safe drinking water, “At least I stayed off the playing field of politics.”

A Times that doesn’t exist

Something curious happened with Times coverage before the election. It was like a basketball game with an imbalance of fouls before a flurry of late calls evens things out. The Times gets the clicks a four-year Trump administration guarantees, and it will point to its late makeup calls and suggest it was against him all along.

Times leaders are historically more or less fine with the regular Republican cruelty, but what’s coming might have them reckoning with their failures. They didn’t just put their thumb on the scale to help Trump — twice — they put down both elbows and leaned in.

News organizations love to report what people reveal about their workplaces. Editors rub their hands together and say, “Stories like this are why I got into this business.” It’s different when their employees turn the spotlight on them. Prepare for hypocrisy.

These should be the best years of my career. If they were still alive, my parents and my first boss would be tickled to see NYT on my paystub. But they’d be thinking of a New York Times that doesn’t exist.

If you need a breakout quote, here’s something I’ve said for years:

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world The New York Times has a liberal bias.

Times leaders have to hear it at cocktail parties: liberal rag. We have to hear promises that we’ll be eradicated, and the bloodthirsty cheers that follow.

Treating “both sides” as equal in merit might work where people will be mostly fine either way, but I don’t live in that world. Maybe Times leaders do. But they’re not up to this moment in history. They haven’t been for a long time.

If none of this jibes with your view of the Times, you haven’t paid close attention.

I’ll have more to say about this in an upcoming story, but no newsroom I’ve ever worked in would have let this see the light of day. “That looks like a Trump ad,” someone would have said, “and along with the latte cartoon, it’s obscuring the news of the day. Find a more appropriate photo and rework the presentation.”

The worst is yet to come

Things will get worse. The Times helped bring it about. Remember when it had a respected, principled public editor? Who holds the paper accountable now?

As scattered pieces of the same oneness, we vulnerable people must connect ourselves to each other as best we can. Judith Butler has much to say about that. Listen.

Why am I allowed no real voice? Holding my employment over my head to keep me silent — with my ability to keep a roof over my head, feed myself and buy medications part of the bargain — is a particularly evil trap.

“Get another job” is easy to say when you don’t know our reality. I say that while acknowledging I’ve enjoyed more privilege than many trans people. As much as anything, I’m writing this for them. Most will still be here long after I’m gone (I hope!). I’d like to help them create a better world than the one I will leave.

I know how journalism works. I know what I’ve seen every day for a decade. What to leave in, what to leave out, how to frame things, it’s ultimately the say of who’s in charge.

I didn’t ask for any of this. Didn’t ask the Times to buy the company I work for, didn’t ask for journalism, the industry I’ve given my life to, to betray me, didn’t ask to be trans.

I didn’t ask to be born.

No other trans person knew this story was coming. It’s my fight alone until someone asks to join me. If people make their support clear, I’ll share links to their coverage. If no one supports me, that’s useful information. Right now I feel alone where I should feel supported.

Obeying rules accomplished nothing. I feel like such a fool for letting myself be muzzled.

Silent no longer

Roe v. Wade was overturned nearly 31 months ago. Republicans needed a new devil to keep donations pouring in. They targeted us. It’s part of the moral panic they’ve whipped up to seize power.

The Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party is insatiable. Your face might look pretty tasty to it someday.

I’m sad for young Carly, who somehow lived long enough to have a few years of joy as her authentic self. Assigned male at birth, she didn’t understand the assignment.

I had the privilege to mostly move through the world freely, safely, or safer than many ever feel in America. I understand their rage so much better now. Everyone should get to feel equally protected, but this country wasn’t built that way.

I wish I’d come to a better realization sooner.

The U.S. felt safe and just to me. Its power structure protected me enough to lull me into leaning into the punch. Perhaps too late, I’m over being asked to stay quiet and help sell myths of an America that never existed.

Nothing I’ve written here should be remotely controversial to anyone who’s been paying close attention.

Like the Times, The Athletic has some wonderful people. It also has men who betrayed my trust after coming from the Times. The Athletic protected me when it could, but 2024’s body blows were too much. I can take a lot of pain, but I’m past my limits.

The Times is a revealing daily reminder of who matters to this country and who doesn’t, especially if you know what to look for, including whose voices are left out — or given space akin to designated protest zones that ensure business as usual goes on.

If I live in fear of what these companies might do to me, I’ve got no chance against Trump and others who want to erase trans people. As long as my heart beats and I can reclaim my voice, I’m silent no more.

♥

Thank you for reading

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Photo of New York Times Building by Tada Images via Shutterstock.

Footnote

¹The creation of Fox News dates to a Nixon White House initiative to create a new form of political weapon. The channel is not an enabler, it is a central piece of a larger machine. It has always been in a different category than The New York Times and other legacy news media. Fox News tells people what they want to hear. Much of the Times’ damage occurs in the persuadable middle largely because of the imprimatur of its platform, and it bolsters the Fox crowd’s belief in what is not true. The notion that the Times is “a liberal rag” helps drive the anti-trans legislation. The implication of Times stories being part of the anti-trans argument in court is: If even The (liberal) New York Times is saying it …

The Tennessee case (United States v. Skrmetti) would have never made it to the Supreme Court if not for the Times. I’ll have more to say about this in follow-up stories about the Times, but the paper’s status as the biggest, most impactful enabler of anti-trans campaigns, in context, is secure.