Chicago Sun-Times Pulls 'Transphobic' Piece Dissing Laverne Cox

A mean-spirited opinion piece deriding “Orange Is the New Black” star Laverne Cox and all transgender individuals as “delusional” that was published on the Chicago Sun-Times's website has been removed by its editorial-page editor, who also issued an apology for its “oversight” on Tuesday.

The piece, “Laverne Cox Is Not a Woman,” was penned by conservative correspondent Kevin D. Williams and originally published Friday in the National Review, where it remains. The column was his response to Cox’s appearance on the cover of the latest Time magazine as a civil-rights pioneer, and in it, the author stubbornly refers to the actress-activist as “he.”

“Regardless of the question of whether he has had his genitals amputated, Cox is not a woman, but an effigy of a woman,” Williams writes. “Sex is a biological reality, and it is not subordinate to subjective impressions, no matter how intense those impressions are, how sincerely they are held, or how painful they make facing the biological facts of life. No hormone injection or surgical mutilation is sufficient to change that.”

The piece, picked up by the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday, quickly ignited a firestorm of anger. On Monday, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbians Against Anti-Defamation) called for its allies to bombard the paper’s editors with email protests, and reached out directly to the newspaper, stressing that Williams is ill informed. A Change.org petition calling for a retraction received 1,000 signatures in a day (and has nearly doubled since).

By the end of Tuesday, Sun-Times editorial page editor Tom McNamee had taken down the story and issued a statement to GLAAD, which read, in part, “The essay did not include some key facts and its overall tone was not consistent with what we seek to publish. The column failed to acknowledge that the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have deemed transgender-related care medically necessary for transgender people. It failed as well to acknowledge the real and undeniable pain and discrimination felt by transgender people, who suffer from notably higher rates of depression and suicide. We have taken the post down and we apologize for the oversight."

Though GLAAD has not communicated directly with the writer, the organization’s spokesperson Rich Ferraro tells Yahoo Shine, “GLAAD welcomes the opportunity to start a conversation between Williamson and members of the transgender community, who face staggering rates of discrimination and violence each and every day, simply because of who they are. Williamson should know more about the people and lives he's devastating with misinformation and bias.”

Meanwhile, the whole ugly situation has continued to play out online, with Williamson getting snarky and going on the full-on defensive, responding to critics in two National Review blog posts. In the first, he takes his critics — and there have been many, including at the Telegraph and Slate — to task. Then he slams the Sun-Times and its editors, vulgarly noting, “Tom McNamee et al. are a disgrace to a proud newspaper tradition, and an unhappy reminder that post-operative transsexuals are not the only men who have had their characteristic equipment removed.”

And, on Twitter:

That comment, and the essay itself, prompted an onslaught of anger, with offended tweeters calling his words “hateful,” “violence,” "transphobic," “intolerant” and “transmisogynistic.”

On the Daily Dot, transgender writer Jen Richards delivers a passionate and articulate response to Williamson. “Believing that adults, or even children, who show no other signs of such purported delusion, are capable of defining the nature of their own gender doesn’t actually require any ‘magical thinking,’ as Williamson argues,” she writes. “Medical science, biology, psychology, and hundreds of thousands of human experiences over centuries, have already thoroughly confirmed the reality of transgender people.” Richards adds, “Transgender people aren't lies in the face of facts; we're facts that widen the truth.”

Cox, for her part, has remained gracious, tweeting, simply: