On the eve of the midterm elections, FoxNews.com published an article attacking Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her use of the term “people with a period,” falsely claiming that the year-old statements were “just released” as a “final midterm pitch to voters.” The fury over the benign comments began after anti-LGBTQ agitator Libs of TikTok posted an old video of Whitmer, resulting in a torrent of anti-trans rhetoric targeted at the governor a day before she is up for reelection.
Whitmer’s video, originally posted to TikTok in November 2021, features Whitmer discussing why she signed bipartisan legislation repealing sales tax on menstruation products. More than a year later, Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account with 1.4 million followers run by Chaya Raichik, tweeted the video, mocking Whitmer’s use of the gender-neutral phrase. Libs of TikTok also speculated about whether Whitmer “can answer ‘what is a woman?’” a likely reference to a line of questioning pushed by anti-abortion extremist and teen marriage advocate Matt Walsh in his recent documentary. Before tweeting the video, Raichik cut the original 40-second video in half, removing references Whitmer made to the role she played in passing the bipartisan bill last year.
The video was quickly picked up by right-wing media and political figures who falsely claimed that Whitmer refuses to use the word “woman.” FoxNews.com saw the banal attack as substantive enough to cover, publishing an article less than three hours after Raichik posted her tweet that falsely claimed Whitmer published the video Monday as part of a “final midterm pitch to voters.” In the article, FoxNews.com also claimed that “Democrats in Washington and across the country have come under fire for refusing to refer to women as such, often creating complicated definitions to include transgender people.” It took nearly 24 hours for FoxNews.com to correct the article, quietly editing the article after 1 p.m. on Election Day to reframe the TikTok as “resurfaced.”
However, the lie that the phrasing came from Whitmer’s final address before the election had already gained traction. Right-wing blog Twitchy published an article on Monday claiming Whitmer “recently released a video where she brags about all the financial savings ‘people with a period’ will enjoy under her leadership” and claiming Democrats were “afraid of saying women.” Conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch also repeated the falsehood on her show Tuesday, saying, “Your final pitch to get people to vote for you and you’re going to be all ‘people with periods’? They are women.”
Libs of TikTok has often functioned as a sort of wire service for Fox News, providing the network with the cherry-picked examples necessary to fuel its stream of anti-LGBTQ, and specifically anti-trans, rhetoric. Recently, Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured Libs of Tiktok on his show to attack children's hospitals.
Before FoxNews.com's article was edited, Tudor Dixon — Whitmer’s opponent in the governor’s race — tweeted it, claiming Whitmer “continues to devalue the existence and reality of women.” In reality, Whitmer used the phrase “people with a period” as a way of being inclusive to the many trans men and nonbinary people who still rely on menstruation products. As with the many other frequent claims that gender neutral terminology erases cis women, this attack is grounded in willful ignorance. In just the four days prior to Raichik’s tweet, Whitmer tweeted the word “woman” or “women” at least seven times, compared to Raichik, whose last tweet using either word prior to her attack on Whitmer was from September.
