No, there was no pre-suicide ‘outing’. The article appeared a month after the death. It’s sad that someone was trying to turn their life around for all we know honestly, and then they gave up. But I don’t think the journalist has any culpability or could have reasonably predicted Dr. V would do what she did.
Not sure that the article states that anywhere. In fact, the evil author attributes his success with the club to something akin to the placebo effect. (And brings up some empirical research to support that notion.) That other people in the world of professional golf claim it is a good putter also means nothing in terms of whether the putter is actually any good.
the fraud itself.
once you go down that road, lying about WHO YOU ARE to provide credibility to a position that is financially profitable, all bets are off.
I think it is reasonable for you to claim that you wouldn’t out the person though they were lying about who they were, however I think it is not unreasonable for a journalist to do their job–uncover the facts.
Furthermore, it seems extremely clear that Dr. V realized the risk she was undertaking in fraudulently misrepresenting her credentials; a major part of the story has to do with Dr. V’s requirements that the journalist not discuss the person, only “the science” behind the putter.
what about being a woman provides credibility in this case?
the only bet that really seemed to be off was human kindness and/or possibly discretion.
I never said that being a woman does or does not provide credibility; lying about being a DoD-afilliated scientist does, and i feel that is sufficient justification for further investigation into a person’s history. If that investigation turns up that she was once a he, fair game. She was the fraud who brought it upon herself.
Like I said earlier, i think you would be reasonable for disagreeing that territory is fair game. However, it is likewise not unreasonable for thinking it is fair game.
journalism of this stripe has a purpose, and that purpose had little to do with the fraud, as several of the response articles said. and whether or not you believe “all bets are off” or that she’s “fair game” because of it, you ( or anyone who defends the author for this action) are coming off as disingenuous. journalism isn’t a permit to out people because you’re searching for the truth. the truth (as it was prepared) isn’t some catch-all shield for a lack of basic human kindness. and reason doesn’t make anyone less of an asshole.
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Why? Is a person’s gender their defining characteristic?
Willful ignorance. It is as if the thin veil of identity that Dr. V. seemed to have constructed around herself is somehow also wrapped round the people who obtusely insist that the depiction of Dr. V. as a fraud is somehow about her “transwoman” status and not about, you know, the actual fraudulent misrepresentation she undertook.
We refer to humans using gendered terms (unless a particular individual has declared otherwise). We refer to things as genderless, in English anyway. Referring to a person as if they have no gender, particularly a trans person, is dehumanizing.
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Treating transgender people as if their assigned or lived gender is a fraud is a fairly common transphobic stance, and is frequently used as justification for outing them, assaulting them, etc.
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The author of this piece conflates Dr. V’s actual fraudulent behavior (e.g. apparently inventing her educational history) with the discovery that she was assigned male at birth. Whether due to poor understanding of trans issues, transphobia (that “chill down [his] spine”), or poor writing, he mixes the strands of two completely unrelated issues until they are indistinguishable to the reader - “Dr. V. is not who she says she is!”
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It has been pointed out in multiple places in the media that there were potentially ways to handle disclosing the actual fraud without also outing her as being trans, but the author and his editors chose not to do so, again whether due to ignorance, malice, incompetence, or some combination thereof.
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The objectionable part of the article was the outing, not the research into the invented credentials.
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