NYT Columnist David French's Fake Empathy Can't Hide His Real Agenda

His latest column about Tennessee's trans healthcare ban opens with sympathy before arguing to deny care. But his long history of anti-trans writing tells the real story.

Yesterday, New York Times columnist David French opened his latest piece about Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth with a performance of deep empathy. "I cannot begin to imagine the pain," he writes, before predictably pivoting to argue why that pain should be allowed to be legally mandated by the state.

This isn't new territory for French—he's spent years writing about trans people's "troubled fantasies" while bragging about his refusal to use correct pronouns. Now, he's attempting to rebrand himself as a neutral legal observer. His history of anti-trans activism makes this supposed objectivity ring hollow.

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I wrote about French’s radical anti-trans views back when he was first hired by the Times, knowing that it was only a matter of time before he tried to play the role of a respectable, sympathetic man who feels compelled for one reason or another to take up the anti-trans position.

The New York Times Declares War on LGBTQ People With Hire of Anti-Trans Columnist

Let’s review a few of French’s greatest hits.

Whether he’s accusing trans people of being a “tiny, disturbed population” that suffers from “troubled fantasies,” acting performatively disgusted by a documentary featuring a trans woman discussing her dating struggles, or outright calling for the end of “transgenderism,” French hasn’t exactly been subtle. Additionally, it should be noted that French worked as a lawyer for the far-right anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom.

• “With blinding speed, the sexual revolutionaries are moving on from the cause of gay marriage to recasting and rethinking law, culture, religion, and biology for the sake of indulging the troubled fantasies of a tiny, disturbed population of transgendered, or ‘genderqueer,’ Americans.” [“Transgender Entitlement: The New Orthodoxy on Campus,” The National Review, 9/3/15]

• “The video below is one of the sadder short clips I’ve seen. In it, a teenage boy who calls himself Claire dons a bikini top, adopts exaggerated feminine mannerism, and hits the beach with friends to show the challenges of transgender dating. He apparently fools two straight guys into believing he’s a girl and he gets their phone number. Later, he laments that they lose interest when they find out he’s male. Claire says that ‘straight guys just can’t get over you having the male parts’ and expresses hope that when he ‘gets the surgery,’ his life will be better. Until then, he can’t ‘get physical’ with straight guys.” [“A Sad Video Highlights the Contradictions and Tragedy of the Transgender Moment,” The National Review, 5/12/16]

• “I can acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a ‘persistent aspect of humanity,’ but I will not concede that gender dysphoria trumps biology, and I don’t think our culture should cease efforts towards ‘ending’ the dangerous notion that men or women should amputate healthy organs in the quest to sculpt their bodies to become something they’re not. Gender dysphoria may not ‘go away,’ but transgenderism is something else entirely. Our culture is in the midst of a live and important dispute over the very nature of biological reality — and over the psychological and spiritual health of hundreds of thousands of precious souls — and now is not the time to abandon the field.” ["In the Transgender Debate, Conservatives Can’t Compromise the Truth,” The National Review, 5/9/18]

Photo by: William B. Plowman/NBC

These quotes paint a clear picture of French's actual views on trans people, and they help explain why his current attempt to frame Tennessee's healthcare ban as a neutral question of age restrictions falls flat. His core argument—that the law "applies to boys and girls equally"—deliberately obscures how the ban specifically targets treatments based on whether they align with someone's assigned sex at birth.

This selective application of "protecting children" is particularly telling. French, who has previously written passionately about parental rights and family autonomy, suddenly finds those principles less compelling when the families in question are seeking gender-affirming care. In his 2022 piece for The Dispatch, he argued that states should "leave loving families alone"—unless, apparently, those families are trying to access medical care he personally disapproves of.

The reality is that French's supposedly dispassionate legal analysis is built on the same foundation as his earlier, more openly hostile writing: a fundamental rejection of trans identity itself. When you start from the position that being trans is a "troubled fantasy" that needs to be eliminated, it's not surprising that you'd end up supporting laws that make transition-related healthcare impossible to access.

This matters because the Times continues to present French's views as measured analysis rather than what they are: the same anti-trans arguments he's been making for years, just dressed up in more respectable clothing. When major media platforms treat opposition to essential healthcare as simply another reasonable position to debate, they help normalize discrimination under the guise of thoughtful discourse.

French's attempt to sanitize his anti-trans views for the Times' audience is particularly cynical given the current landscape. His column lands at a moment when states across the country are rushing to pass increasingly extreme restrictions on trans healthcare for teens and adults. Tennessee's law isn't an isolated policy choice—it's part of a coordinated campaign to make transition-related care impossible to access.

The medical evidence French cites is just as selectively chosen as his legal arguments. He leans heavily on the Cass Review while conveniently ignoring that every major American medical organization—from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the American Medical Association—supports access to gender-affirming care for trans youth when clinically indicated. The "debate" he presents isn't actually happening within the medical community; it's being manufactured by political actors with a clear agenda.

What makes this particularly frustrating is the Times' continued insistence on presenting these types of views as neutral analysis. French isn't writing as an objective observer weighing competing interests; he's writing as someone who has explicitly called for the elimination of "transgenderism" itself. When he argues that Tennessee's law passes the "rational basis" test, he's not making a detached legal argument; he's advancing the same anti-trans positions he's held for years, just dressed up in the language of constitutional law.

The consequences here are real. While French wrings his hands about hypothetical future regret, actual trans youth in Tennessee are being denied access to medical care that evidence shows improves mental health outcomes and reduces suicide risk. His performed sympathy at the start of his column rings particularly hollow when you consider that he's actively advocating for policies that increase the very pain he claims to recognize.

So spare me your fake sympathy, David French. Say what you really mean.