A transgender woman in Casper, Wyoming, was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting a girl in a restroom in a residence — but readers of some media outlets wouldn’t have been aware of that last crucial detail.
The Fox News article has since been updated to clarify that the event took place in a home, but in initially leaving that detail out, the news outlet left room for speculation that the attack had taken place in a public restroom — adding fuel to the already dangerous transgender “bathroom predator” myth.
According to CNN, 20 law enforcement agencies in states where transgender bathroom laws had been enacted said there had been no correlation between the laws being enacted and a rise in sexual assault.
By insinuating that Martinez’s alleged assault could have taken place in a public restroom, these media outlets’ reporting fuels transphobia and the myth that transgender individuals are the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of these public bathroom assaults — and with transgender individuals already at a far higher risk of being murdered than their cisgender counterparts, perpetuating that falsehood is a dangerous trend.
Read More: mic.com
Fox News misrepresents report of sexual assault by a trans person in a private residence’s bathroom
