On Tuesday, the last day of Pride Month, 50 journalists launched a project to keep with the momentum of the month: the Trans Journalists Association. …
The organization offers professional support to trans journalists around the world, who are often underrepresented in newsrooms and misrepresented in news stories about them, Ashley Dejean, a founding member of TJA, said.
“Someone tweeted, which broke my heart, that they wish that this happened 15 or 20 years ago and they might still be in the industry,” Dejean said. “This is long overdue. Right now we’re seeing that current organizations that are supposed to represent LGBTQ people really don’t think about trans people, or make us an afterthought.”
Dejean said that when they first came out as trans, they couldn’t find a group that centered on trans journalists.
TJA is unique for several reasons. One of them is that membership is free. Dejean said it didn’t feel right to ask members to pay when so many trans journalists are freelancers. While other affinity groups allow folks from outside a specific identity to become members, TJA is only accepting membership requests from trans people, and not anyone who exclusively identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.
It’s also non-hierarchal, and that’s by design. There’s no executive board or formal leadership roles. Dejean believes that nonprofit structures fail communities and their membership when certain power dynamics are created, and TJA didn’t want to replicate that. They cited issues with the Center for Transgender Equality, which fostered “a culture of racism,” according to reporting by Jezebel.