Let’s suppose, for a moment, that yesterday was the first time you heard that someone had opened fire on a church full of schoolchildren in Minneapolis last week. Like most of us, you’d probably turn to Google to get all the details. Predictably, you’d be met with a barrage of articles. You might even scroll down far enough to get to the Wikipedia page.
If you did that, you’d probably get the impression that the young man who perpetrated the shooting was just a mental case who chose to target a church full of innocent children for absolutely no reason — in fact, it’s quite possible you might not even know that the young man was a biological man.
The media powers that be have evidently determined that, given the furious discussion surrounding the heartless “thoughts and prayers” comment uttered by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, subjecting the whole story to the memory hole simply isn’t going to work — at least not yet. So, they’ve done the next best thing: They’ve decided to expunge any of the uncomfortable (and, in this case, important) details from the written record of the event. (READ MORE: Catholic School Shooting: A Message of Hope and Prayer)
Take, for instance, a “here’s-what-we-know” article that CBS News published on the subject, which shared the names of the victims, the number and medical status of the injured, and the history of the shooter’s association with Annunciation Church and School. Gone, however, was reference to the shooter’s transgender identity. He was identified as “Robin” — the name he chose after transition — and (confusingly) as “they/them” when necessary. All things considered, the article seemed to prefer merely calling him “the shooter.”
An ABC News article published on Monday, which reported that police added three more children to the tally of those injured in the shooting, didn’t bother to identify the shooter’s sex at all. There were no pronouns, no names, and no discussion whatsoever of the most striking thing we know about Robert Westman, namely that he was a dissatisfied and angry victim of transgender ideology. To its credit, a New York Times article did, briefly, mention Westman’s transgender identity but failed to mention his birth name while referring to him by feminine pronouns.
If journalism is the first rough draft of history, in the modern age, Wikipedia might very well be the second. You’d think the editors at Wikipedia would take that role somewhat seriously, but no.
Instead, they’re concerned about violating a stylebook rule.
A brief scroll through the article’s Talk page reveals extensive discussion on whether to include reference to Westman’s so-called “deadname,” which pronouns to use, and how relevant his transgender identity truly was to the event.
“It doesn’t matter how insensitive it is (trust me, I think she was a terrible human being); it’s Wikipedia’s job to get the facts straight. If she identified as a female, then that’s what what [sic] Wikipedia should reflect, no matter how disgusting of a person someone is,” one editor wrote.
“We should not include their birth name at all as they were not notable under that name. Also, including their birth name raises privacy concerns,” another explained.
“Why is there any concern about ‘deadname’ in this situation? … It is of absolute least importance, he tried to massacre people …. I don’t care about what he called himself, I want people to know everything about him. No narrative. Just facts,” one editor fired back.
Another defended inclusion of Westman’s birth name, pointing out that the media had already reliably reported it. “We have stepped into the absurd, friends. The utterly absurd,” he protested.
In another section of the Talk page, another editor argued that the shooter’s transgender identity was as unimportant as his height.
Currently, the article doesn’t use Westman’s birth name anywhere, and it uses female pronouns throughout. It does mention his transgender identity, but only briefly and primarily in the context of defending the transgender community. (READ MORE: Nobody Prayed)
The problem, of course, is that Westman’s transgender identity is critically important to this story (even if Minnesota officials and the media would like you to believe otherwise). As both Scott McKay and Melissa Mackenzie pointed out last week, his YouTube explainers and journal entries make that abundantly clear. After all, it wasn’t as though Westman was happy pretending to be a female: “I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself,” he wrote in his journal. “I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man.”
Obviously, failing to even acknowledge the role transgenderism played in the shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church does no good for those of us interested in preventing shootings like it from occurring in the future. Recent years have shown that there’s a very real association between transgender ideology and acts of violence.
Without that critical piece of the puzzle, our tendency is to view Westman as some kind of psychotic monster — a rare breed against whom there is no defense.
But that would be a mistake. Yes, he was responsible for a heinous crime. Yes, his actions were unbelievably evil. But he was also just a kid when he transitioned — a victim of a dangerous ideology. He snapped, and when he did, he took innocent life with him. The fact is, until our society comes to terms with the ideology and the demons that plagued him, bullets won’t stop raining down through stained-glass windows.
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