The New York Times has been accused by its own writers of fomenting “bigotry and pseudoscience” against trans people in the latest controversy to grip one of America's biggest-selling newspapers.

More than 180 contributors, including Sex and The City actress Cynthia Dixon, writer Lena Dunham and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, have penned a letter raising “serious concerns” about the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people.

The letter, addressed to associate managing editor for standards Philip B Corbett, cited requirements in the New York Times’ editorial guidelines that reporters “preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias”.

But it said the newspaper had “treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources”.

Signatories said: “Some of us are trans, non⁠-⁠binary, or gender nonconforming, and we resent the fact that our work, but not our person, is good enough for the paper of record.

“Some of us are cis, and we have seen those we love discover and fight for their true selves, often swimming upstream against currents of bigotry and pseudoscience fomented by the kind of coverage we here protest.”

It added that the New York Times had published more than 15,000 words of front-page coverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children in the last eight months alone.

The writers pointed to the use of the term “patient zero” to refer to a trans child, which they said vilified it as a “disease to be feared”.

They also criticised a reliance on sources opposed to trans issues and a failure to explain their links to hate groups.

The letter warned that this editorial approach had already started to influence legislation.

Three separate New York Times articles were cited in a recent legal filing in defence of a law that would make it a crime punishable by 10 years in prison to give gender-related medical treatments such as puberty blockers to a minor.

The signatories drew comparisons between the newspaper’s current coverage of trans issues and its previous reporting on homosexuality and HIV.

They wrote: “You no doubt recall a time in more recent history when it was ordinary to speak of homosexuality as a disease at the American family dinner table – a norm fostered in part by the New York Times’ track record of demonising queers through the ostensible reporting of science.”

It is not the first time the newspaper has been riven by factionalism. In 2020, the writer and editor Bari Weiss quit the New York Times over allegations it fostered bullying and an "illiberal environment" following a backlash from staff when it published an op-ed by a Republican senator.

The latest revolt echoes a transphobia row at the Guardian in 2020, when more than 300 staff members signed a letter of complaint over a column written by Suzanne Moore.

Ms Moore left the newspaper in the wake of the row, saying she had been bullied by colleagues for her views and accusing Guardian editors of “utter cowardice”.

The New York Times has been contacted for comment.