On a frigid day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2019, I sat at a cozy kitchen table with 7-year-old Wade, trying to get him to feel comfortable with the CNN crew pointing a camera directly into his face. His mom put out craft supplies, including a bottle of iridescent aqua-colored glitter, to give us something to do with our hands while I interviewed him.
At the time, Wade was going by Rosie, his birth name, and identified primarily as an intersex girl. Even though he was nervous, he wanted to talk to me for my report about intersex kids. Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe people whose sex traits or reproductive anatomy are perceived as differing from typical “male” and “female” categories.
Trying to get Wade to loosen up, I had the bright idea to smear glitter all over my face. His eyes lit up, hiding his sweet gap-toothed smile behind his hand and laughing at how silly I looked. Then, he took a handful and did the same. It was all fun and games until his mom, a nurse, saw what we were doing and hurried over, concerned about us getting glitter in our eyes.
It wasn’t my smartest moment, but Wade felt comfortable with me from then on, and the interview and resulting story were powerful. The report got 6.8 million views, and more importantly, was cited in witness testimony in California Senate hearings about a bill that would have banned cosmetic surgeries on genitals of intersex infants.
But by the time the story aired, Wade was already questioning whether he was actually a boy. Within a few months, he transitioned, choosing his new name from the Ryan Reynolds movie “Deadpool.” Today, Wade is a happy, well-adjusted 10-year-old in fifth grade who still loves art, especially drawing anime, and hanging out with his brother.
I’ve stayed in touch with the Lohman family over the years as Wade has grown up. When I found out Wade had transitioned, I worried that our somewhat-viral report was still out there online, using his deadname and presenting him as a girl. Did Wade regret speaking to me, on camera, for our CNN report? Had our story done more harm than good? I was scared of the answer, so until now, I didn’t ask.
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So far in 2023, lawmakers have introduced at least 487 anti-trans bills around the country, according to data collected by the Trans Legislation Tracker. Many of those bills criminalize aspects of trans childhood. In Texas, for example, Child Protective Services can investigate parents for providing gender-affirming care to their kids. In Florida, which just banned gender-affirming medical care for children, a proposed bill would allow the state to remove trans kids from their parents’ custody if they affirm their kids’ trans identity.
As trans and gender-fluid kids and their families are under increasing danger, journalists must confront a tough reality: How can we tell these families’ stories, and give gender-diverse kids a voice and agency when it’s too often stripped away, while also not furthering harm or putting them at risk?
It’s a question with no clear “one size fits all” answer.
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Cora Neas is a digital reporter for KXAN in Austin, Texas, a state considering dozens of anti-trans bills with many already passed into law. She is trans herself, so intimately understands the risk — and reward — of speaking out publicly. In a recent article, Neas chose to identify each gender-fluid kid with just a single letter that did not correlate to their actual name, and got parental permission for each interview.
“Anonymity was part of the conversation from the beginning,” Neas said. That decision also gave her access to kids who would have otherwise not consented to an interview at all.
“There was definitely a very real fear of retaliation from the state,” she said. “So (anonymity) really does help keep these kids as safe as they could be, while also giving them space to tell their story.”
In other cases, even if a source is willing to go on the record with their full legal name, sometimes, it’s up to the journalist to make the call for anonymity. For this piece, I spoke to Lauren, a trans nonbinary 17-year-old who lives in eastern Tennessee and has already published some of their own reporting online on anti-trans legislation.
“I feel like with every piece of legislation that goes out that claims that they are ‘protecting children’ from a transgender ideology, they are completely ignoring the thousands of people like me,” Lauren said. “Whereas there’s me, someone who is a trans child, and I am virtually brushed over or treated like I don’t exist.”
Reporting helps give Lauren agency in an area in which they feel largely out of control. They offered to use their full name for this article, even though their parents and many in their town do not know that they are trans nonbinary. You’ll notice I’m not using their last name.
Honestly, it felt a little paternalistic for me to overrule Lauren, especially when we’re talking about preserving their agency, but they are still a minor and I don’t want to put them in danger, and their last name really won’t add anything to my story here. So I’m not including it.
Lauren and I talked about why I made that call, and they ended up thanking me and seemed relieved that that was even an option. That’s the other thing: Sources, especially minors, often don’t know that anonymity or partial anonymity is on the table, and may think they have to risk their safety if they want to speak out for what they believe in.
It’s a false choice, and a damaging one if journalists want to fully, ethically cover the national attack on trans people. I absolutely understand the hesitancy of many journalists to include anonymous sources, concerned that it undermines our credibility. But I think the answer to that must be more education to our readers and the public, even by adding a sentence into the article explaining why you’re granting anonymity as I did above, as opposed to silencing a vulnerable population. Stories about trans people should include the voices of trans people, even if they need to be granted anonymity.
“You have to talk to the experts. That’s the first thing,” said journalist Karleigh Webb, who is a Black trans woman. “And the experts are trans people.”
Journalists should especially seek out trans youth of color and, Webb said, voices that are often missing from conversations about anti-trans legislation.
“Most of the trans voices, when you talk to trans voices, they’re all white. That’s ridiculous,” she said. “We’re even more affected by it because a lot of these laws hit us double.”
Trans people of color of all ages are more likely to be victims of harassment, intimidation and violence. According to the National Center of Transgender Equality’s 2022 Remembrance Report, 47 trans people in the U.S. lost their lives due to violence in the previous year. 70% were Black trans women.
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Recently, I logged onto a Zoom call with Wade Lohman and his parents, and asked the question that I had been so scared of: Did they regret participating in my 2019 CNN report?
The short version? No, but they wouldn’t necessarily do it again now.
“We talked about it with him before” agreeing to the original story, Eric Lohman said. “‘How are you feeling about it? Do you want us to not do it?’” He and his wife, Stephani, felt it was important to speak out about their experiences parenting Wade, especially about declining non-medically necessary surgery on his genitals as an infant, so that other parents would know that was a viable option. Wade said it was fine with him if they did an interview, and when they gave him the option of also participating, he agreed.
“(But) he was smaller. He couldn’t really understand,” Eric Lohman said, becoming emotional. “He knew he was special in some way so that people wanted to know stuff about him. … Now, in retrospect, I know how scared he was and how much he didn’t like it. He’s just a shy kid.”
I definitely got a sense of that shyness at the time, hence the ill-advised glitter episode.
“But Wade is such a nice kid, so he would do it because he knew we wanted him to,” Eric said. “But I don’t think he ever felt pressured to. I think he understood that it was important.”
For his part, Wade remembers not loving a camera being pointed in his face, but said he had fun with me and really liked how the story came out. He even rewatches it from time to time.
“Every time I hear ‘Rosie’ from (the) old video or anything, it sounds weird, ‘cause now I know myself as Wade instead of Rosie,” he said simply, like he was discussing an old haircut or outfit. “So every time I hear it I’m like, Weird. That’s me. But not.”
He said he wouldn’t really want to do another video report now because he doesn’t like the idea of being on camera, but he’s still pretty unbothered about the old video existing online, especially because it’s under his old name.
“I only tell my close friends my deadname,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey, did you know if you look up that name, you can see me on Google?’ And they’re like, ‘OK …?’ ” He laughed telling me this. His other 10-year-old friends just don’t care. “I haven’t known anyone who actually looked it up.”
Wade is lucky, both to have an affirming family and affirming friends, and even so, his family was incredibly thoughtful about their original decision to speak with me. And the climate is different now, in 2023, especially during the culture war surrounding transgender children.
Most families with trans kids I’ve spoken with today say they’d be skeptical about exposing themselves to any media attention, anonymous or otherwise, that they’re just trying to batten down the hatches and survive the storm. Multiple parents told me that through tears, thanking me for writing this piece but declining to speak to me for it.
“Because if they haven’t been burned by a reporter, they’ve heard from people who have,” Karleigh Webb said. “And one thing about Mama Bears and Dragon Dads? They talk. Parents of trans youth talk to each other. It’s a survival instinct.”
That’s not overstating it: It’s truly a survival issue. According to a peer-reviewed 2020 study, 86% of transgender youth have considered killing themselves, and 56% reported they actually attempted suicide.
That’s what is at stake here. And maybe covering trans and gender diverse kids and families is harder than covering other topics, but I don’t think any of us became journalists because it seemed easy.
Wade Lohman has advice: “Listen to what the kids say. Don’t inflict a lot of pressure. Be kind about it.”
His parents have a more tangible piece of advice: Don’t ask a gender fluid kid what their genitals look like. And honestly, that seems like a good rule across the board, no matter a kid’s gender identity.
Cora Neas recommended remembering one simple truth: “These trans kids are still kids… I think most adults don’t really know how to be interviewed by a journalist,” she said. “You still want to tell their stories, but yeah, you don’t want to lead them into questions.”
“Make sure you’re actually listening to what is being said,” Lauren cautions. “The government really speaks over us and treats us like we don’t exist. And as long as you’re not doing that, I feel like you’re doing a great job at helping people feel more comfortable having a conversation about these things.”
“At the end of the day,” Cora Neas said, it’s about “safety, as opposed to my desire to tell a story my way.”
This article was made possible thanks to the support of the Gill Foundation.
