In the modern metropolis that is New York City, it’s easy to forget that some of the progressive values that hold precedence here have only recently taken shape. The Gay Rights Movement specifically, has seen tremendous progress in the last two centuries, even though homophobia still dominates in many regions of the world. Even gay marriage in the US was legalized only six years ago. Many LGBTQ+ rights continue to be stripped from members of the community everyday. The following four sources of different mediums discuss these situations.
In her newspaper article “Republican State Lawmakers Push Wave of Bills Targeting Transgender Youth” for US News, Claire Hansen discusses the progression of transgender rights in Congress over the last decade. At least 28 states are currently in the process of barring transgender youth from receiving medical treatment from physicians or from participating in sports. The author, Claire Hansen, is a writer who typically covers immigration, gun policy, marijuana policy, and general news. Her audience for this article is the average US citizen. Newspaper readers are most often adults hoping to stay informed about the world around them. She uses language that a typical newspaper reader would be familiar with, making her article appropriate for people with a high school reading level or above. Hansen’s purpose is to act as an outlet of information regarding transgender youths in an unbiased manner. It is evident through her language that she is purposefully avoiding inserting her own opinion: “‘Forcing transgender children to play on teams according to their sex assigned at birth, rather than the gender they live in, also puts their physical and mental health at risk,’ the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement” (Hansen). Hansen avoids stating her own opinion on the matter of transgender youth playing sports; rather, she pulls facts from credible organizations to prove why barring this group from activities may be harmful. She never explicitly takes a stance on the issue. She makes it especially clear that her primary purpose is to provide factual information for her audience when she ends the article by stating, “Alabama is also poised to pass into law both a bill restricting athletic participation and a measure that would make it a felony for medical professionals to provide gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 19” (Hansen). She did not bring her article to a close with an empowering message, or a call to action for transgender youths. Hansen’s last sentence acts as any other sentence in the article does: it provides information about the country’s current events. This showcases her unbiased and professional tone. This tone and writing style is also consistent with other news articles. The newspaper genre as a whole serves the purpose of providing facts for readers without the writer shining light on their personal opinions about their topic.
Matt Bernstein, in his Instagram post captioned “Is Gen Z the Queerest Generation Ever, Or Were You Just Never Paying Attention?”, addresses claims he’s heard that more and more kids are “turning gay” in Generation Z than in any previous generations. He does so by including multiple slides in his post, some with text responding to this insinuation, and also a compilation of tweets and memes humorizing the subject. Matt Bernstein is a social media activist that most commonly makes educational and comical posts on LGBTQ+ issues and Jewish rights. His purpose in making this post is to prove that queer people have always existed, but more people feel comfortable enough to realize and come out as queer than ever before: “what IS happening is that more people are choosing to live authentically” (Bernstein 3). His audience for this article is primarily young people browsing social media. This is evident through the inclusion of memes, funny tweets, and emojis. One of these twitter memes reads, “I told my dad I was gay and he was like ‘we all have sexual feelings towards men it’s just a fascination’ like” followed by a picture of celebrity Skai Jackson standing next to a sculpture of the word we. The humor here is that the dad is in denial of his sexual feelings towards men, and that he himself may belong to the LGBTQ+ community. Bernstein targets both LGBTQ+ allies and anti-LGBTQ+ young people in his post, as he addresses claims of anti-LGBTQ+ individuals, and also provides funny, perhaps even relatable content for allies. His tone is comical as well as candid, because he makes jokes that reflect on the situation he is discussing; however, he also has a slide in his post that directly responds to the claims he is refuting. He does not include unnecessary details and is straight to the point in his response. He uses simple language that most people on social media would understand, including youth. His medium chosen is very specific to his audience, as the majority of young people are active on social media, and allows him to include a myriad of creative colors in his post, which makes it eye-catching. It also allows him to include images of memes that are meant to be comical.
In her magazine article “Pride Merch Won’t Save Trans Youth”, Katelyn Burns calls out major companies such as Walmart and Target for supposedly supporting LGBTQ+ people by creating inclusive merchandise, all the while supporting anti-trans legislators. Katelyn Burns herself was the first ever openly Capitol Hill reporter. She shines light on the fact that companies solely create these merchandise lines and support the LGBTQ+ community on social media during pride month, and proceed to forget the community exists throughout the rest of the year. Her purpose is to inform readers about the misguided actions these companies take, and also to target companies on the spot for viewing the LGBTQ+ community solely as a marketing statistic. In comparison to the news article, the language used in this article is less complex, and thus, could be read by a younger audience than the newspaper could. She writes, “In the past, Strangio said, LGBTQ advocates used every trick in the book to oppose bills similar to those that passed in Arkansas — including leveraging corporate partners to lobby against anti-equality legislation” (Burns). Her language in this sentence is easily comprehensible, yet very informative and to the point. She references a credible attorney, proving that she has done research into the topic. She also references tweets in her article from Twitter, a social media platform that many young people participate in. Burns adopts a professional, yet not scholarly tone in this article. Her chosen medium of a magazine article also allows her to not be overtly academic in her writing style. She is very informative, but her style is less formal than if she were writing in a newspaper article.
The scholarly article “A systematic review and meta-analysis of victimisation and mental health prevalence among LGBTQ+ young people with experiences of self-harm and suicide” aims to analyze the attempted suicide rates among queer youth. It also seeks to compare the ratios of LGBTQ+ youth that are victimized in their daily lives to the number of LGBTQ+ youth that experience mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. The purpose is to investigate the prevalence of risks among LGBTQ+ young people considering self-harm, mental health issues, and attempts of suicide. The writers and conductors of this research adopt a very scholarly tone in this article, and use sophisticated methods to conduct their research: “During March 2019, a literature search strategy was developed with an academic skills specialist at the University of Birmingham. An electronic search was conducted on the 31st of March 2019 using MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and Web of Science” (Williams, et. al). This article’s audience is fellow researchers that can understand the sophisticated nature of their research. The writers also make this clear because they state that they would want their research to be used and further explored in other parts of the world. They write, “Due to inconsistency of reporting, further risk synthesis is limited. Given the global inclusion of studies, these results can be considered across countries and inform policy and suicide prevention initiatives” (Williams, et. al). Most common people would not be able to understand the research presented in this article. However, this is consistent with the genre of a scholarly article. Scholarly articles are written with it in mind that only fellow scholars would be reading the information provided.
Across these four mediums — newspapers, social media, magazines, and scholarly articles — all writers aim to clearly illustrate their purposes, tones, and stances in their writing. However, different mediums allow writers to conduct this in different ways. Social media posts and magazines are typically allowed to be less formal, while newspaper articles and scholarly journals are held to more formal standards. Each medium tends to target a different audience, and writers must keep this in mind when choosing how they want to present their arguments. Newspapers target the average citizen; social media posts target younger audiences; magazines target younger audiences, but not necessarily as young as social media targets; and lastly, scholarly articles target academics and researchers. Newspaper articles also often do not allow writers to take direct stances on their subjects. Rather, they are solely meant to provide unbiased information for the readers. Social media posts, magazines, and scholarly articles provide more leeway for bias, with social media most likely being the most lenient. All these different mediums allow writers to have different styles and target different audiences.
Works Cited
Bernstein, Matt. “Is Gen Z the Queerest Generation Ever, Or Were You Just Never Paying
Attention?” Instagram, 17 Feb. 2021, www.instagram.com/accounts/login/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.
Burns, Katelyn. “Pride Merch Won’t Save Trans Youth — Corporations Should Fight Anti-LGBTQ Bills.” Vox, 25
June 2021, www.vox.com/22543423/pride-merch-trans-youth.
Hansen, Claire. “Republican State Lawmakers Push Wave of Bills Targeting Transgender
Youth.” US News, 9 Apr. 2021, www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-04-09/republican-state-
lawmakers-push-wave-of-bills-targeting-transgender-youth.
Williams, A. Jess, et al. “A systematic review and meta-analysis of victimisation and mental
health prevalence among LGBTQ+ young people with experiences of self-harm and suicide.” PLoS ONE, vol. 16, no. 1, 22 Jan. 2021, p. e0245268. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649336132/OVIC?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=92770925. Accessed 30 Sept. 2021.
