We meant no harm

Our community may not be massive, but it certainly is diverse. And as a newspaper for our community, we do our best to include all aspects of it, and relate the news and views of as many sectors within our community as possible.

We go out of our way not to harm, hurt or offend innocent people, while still bringing you all the news and provoking conversation.

Sometimes, we may erroneously overstep the mark and hurt people unwittingly. This happened last week, when we ran an opinion piece that had a huge impact on the trans and gender-diverse sector of our community, whose members were incensed by what they believed was our insensitivity to them.

Those who contacted us believed the opinion piece – and by extension, the SA Jewish Report – to be transphobic and dangerous.

A respected psychologist in our community was the first to criticise it. I have always trusted her judgement and have sourced many articles from her, so you can imagine how surprised I was at her anger when she messaged me. She obviously has direct experience with this sector of the community, which I don’t.

She believed the piece was “destructive”, and could potentially “do great damage to vulnerable people in our community”.

I knew the piece was controversial. Although we don’t shy from controversy, I can assure you that we never meant to harm anyone with it. On the contrary, I imagined it would create debate and potential learning.

Clearly from the reaction that followed, we were wrong.

Try as I did to get someone knowledgeable about transgender issues to respond, I had no luck. The reaction I had was that too much harm had been done already.

An organisation called Shemah Koleinu appeared to be spearheading the campaign, insisting we retract the article and apologise. The leadership of this organisation sent out a message to its constituents, calling on them to add their voices.

“It’s the propagation of the ideas expressed in this article that lead, directly and indirectly, to homelessness, loss of opportunities, violence, and death amongst transgender youths and adults. The publication of such a piece, its unfounded assertions and arguments notwithstanding, represents a reckless and malicious attack on human rights and marginalised populations,” the organisation wrote in a statement to us.

Once again, this clearly wasn’t our intention. And if this is true, we apologise.

I’m far from being an expert in this area. I cannot tell you at what age a person would be sure that they are in the body of the opposite sex to what they should be. I’m in the dark here, and perhaps that’s why I’m 100% willing to apologise for any harm or anguish we caused by running this opinion piece.

It was however, just that, someone’s honest opinion.

The suggestion that anything we published could lead to people harming themselves or others is horrifying to me and to all associated with this newspaper.

I can say that we categorically meant no harm by it, and apologise to anyone harmed by us running that piece.

The chairperson of the SA Jewish Report board, Howard Sackstein, and I met with the leaders of Shema Koleinu this week to engage with them and try to understand why they were so angry with us and what harm we had caused. We met with Dr Anastacia Tomson, who is also a medical doctor who specialises in this area, and Jacqui Benson-Mabombo.

They insisted that we take the story off our website because it was doing harm. We agreed to do so, and it has been removed. We also agreed to apologise, which in truth, I was already planning to do, because I had heard enough to know that numerous people were insulted, hurt and angered.

After hearing the views of Tomson and Benson-Mabombo, we asked if they would write pieces that would give us insight into their experience. That way, they could help us and our readers learn more about their sector of our community.

We also asked that one of them write their own personal story so that we could all understand what it is they have gone through.

We were hoping we could right a wrong (in hurting them), and that by giving a real picture of the situation as it stands, we could turn the narrative from one of unnecessary harm to one that enlightens others about why there was harm done.

I always believe that it’s only ignorance that causes ugliness between people, so I hoped we could help each other to learn.

I use the example of our newspaper last week, in which we dug deep into the issue of abortion so as to help people understand it from all angles. We hoped we could do the same with the trans community.

However, after our meeting, the organisation’s leaders came back to us to say they wouldn’t be willing to write for us. “We will not be made to engage in a debate to justify our rights to dignity and equality, among others. We’re currently taking legal advice and considering our options.”

This is a pity; however, we respect their rights and their choice. We also continue to apologise for any harm done as certainly, no malice was intended by running that opinion piece.

Chicago’s pain

In terms of malice, we were shocked at how a celebratory Independence Day procession was turned into a horror show when a person opened fire into the crowds.

This was a particularly Jewish area of Chicago and, more than that, there are many ex-South Africans living there. We send our deepest sympathy to the community there. It never ceases to amaze me how the South African Jewish community has tentacles all over the world and when there’s an incident almost anywhere, there’s a South African Jewish person who can give us their perspective.

Shabbat Shalom!

Peta Krost

Editor