The Age apologises over transphobic ‘Jenner bender’ tweet
Jenner with his daughter Kendall. Source: Facebook
The Age has issued an apology after a transphobic tweet about Keeping Up with the Kardashians reality star Bruce Jenner transitioning to a woman was made from the The Age’s official Twitter account this morning.
The Tweet was headlined “Jenner bender” and linked to a story about Jenner’s reported transition to a female sexual identity. Jenner is an Olympic gold medal winner for the USA, but is best known as the former husband of reality star Kris Jenner who is the mother of Kim Kardashian, having appeared on the show Keeping up with the Kardashians.
Within minutes of the offending tweet The Age was inundated by incredulous Twitter users questioning the wording, with Crikey’s Sophie Benjamin calling for a “guide to non-transphobia for scribes” and another labelling it “transphobic”.
The Age was quick to delete the offending tweet and issue an apology on Twitter saying: “Apologies to those offended by our Bruce Jenner tweet. Feedback noted. No offence was intended. We have deleted the tweet.”
The treatment by the media over Jenner’s alleged transition has raised questions over how it handles the issue confronting transexual people and the ethics around reporting sexual identity.
The situation came to a head in January when US Gossip magazine InTouch photoshopped an image of Jenner into a woman on its cover along with a story using ‘insider reports’ about his alleged coming out as a woman, garnering backlash from a number of media outlets including the Daily Mail and Buzzfeed.
Jenner has never publicly stated he is transitioning to a female sexual identity.
In October last year News Corp title The Courier-Mail’s coverage of the murder of a Brisbane transgender woman drew ire of the community, referring to her as a “she-male” among other offensive terms in coverage that was widely criticised, including in Fairfax’s own The Brisbane Times at the time.
A request for comment has been made to Fairfax Media, parent company of The Age.
Robert Burton-Bradley
How disappointing from TheAge. I expected this from the Hun, but not them….
Even the Daily Mail is approaching this with care.
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Is gender-bender a derogatory term?
Who knows what is appropriate? The PC lobby allows nothing to be remotely askew even when the correct terminology remains unclear. And even then it is fluid.
Wikipedia is not likely to be insulting and says “Gender benders may also self-identify as transgender or genderqueer, feeling that the gender assigned to them at their birth is an inaccurate or incomplete description of themselves; some are transsexual.”
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Firstly, who cares? Why is this gender change a story in the media in the first place? No one reports on this man because of his athletic achievements. Regrettably, his fame now only extends to raising several vacuous offspring. The attention this family receives for publicising the minutiae of their lives is honestly sickening.
Secondly, the ‘Jenner Bender’ comment is tasteless sure but does it warrant being labelled highly offensive or ‘extremely transphobic’? Rar rar political correctness etc.
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has it really come to this?
do we have to be outraged and offended by everything with a hint of meanness in it towards a particular group.
dear oh dear
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I’m with @World Gone Mad and @fleshpeddler
The madness is that anyone saying anything remotely, slightly ‘negative’ against a ‘politically-correct’ term or issue is lambasted by others wanting to appear as “doing-the-right-thing”. Most of these “doing-the-right-thing”-ers are probably doing it cos they think they should just for the sake of it.
Everyone has an opinion, but it seems that if the opinion is not the opinion of the (politically-correct) masses, it’s all-out-war. Ridiculous.
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Good luck Bruce.
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Man in cage burned alive. Twitter in outrage about UN-PC tweet.
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Further proof Fairfax is just as bad as News Ltd. newspapers when it comes to portraying transgender people.
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It’s just a little play on words. Nothing to get your gender in a twist about.
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“Transphobic”? Now I’ve heard everything.
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Everyone, can we all think about Bruce for a minute here?
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