Yesterday, MSNBC news anchor Yasmin Vossoughian effusively praised Artemis Langford, the first ever transgender-identifying man to join a sorority, who is accused of engaging in threatening and disturbing behavior by six of his sorority sisters in the Kappa Kappa Gamma’s University of Wyoming chapter.
“It takes a very brave and unique person to do this — to be a first in a situation like this, and then to continue on,” said Vossoughian, praising the man accused of sexual harassment.
The interview comes on the heels of a ruling by Judge Alan B. Johnson of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, which permitted Langford to live in the Wyoming chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house this school year. Johnson’s decision dismissed a lawsuit brought forth by the six aforementioned sorority sisters, who alleged that in admitting Langford, Kappa Kappa Gamma did not follow its bylaws and breached its housing contract, among other things.
Johnson made his decision in part because the Kappa Kappa Gamma bylaws do not “expansively” define a woman. The sorority’s recently updated bylaws read that a woman is “defined as an individual who consistently lives and self-identifies as a woman.”
Even with the sorority’s woke-ified bylaws, however, Langford still appears to be in violation of the rules. According to the plaintiffs, Langford, who is reportedly 6’2’’ and weighs 260 pounds, has undergone no chemical or surgical interventions. Moreover, the women claim that Langford rarely attempts to even look like a female, which means he does not “consistently [live]” like a woman.
During the MSNBC interview, Langford and Vossoughian repeatedly claimed that Langford was targeted and attacked because of his “trans identity,” with Langford likening his experience to racial and religious discrimination.
This is false. The women did not oppose Langford’s admittance because he is trans-identifying; they opposed it because he is a man. “An adult human male does not become a woman just because he tells others that he has a female ‘gender identity’ and behaves in what he believes to be a stereotypically female manner,” reads the lawsuit.
More importantly, his admittance poses an immediate, serious risk to the women’s safety. Yet not once did Vossoughian report on the allegations in the lawsuit, let alone question Langford about them. Apparently, MSNBC has abandoned the “believe all women” mantra that it desperately clung to during the Trump years.
The lawsuit details how Langford does not appear to be a well-meaning, gender-dysphoric individual but a predator. The women accuse Langford of staring at sorority sisters without talking for hours, asking inappropriate questions, and at one point having “an erection visible through his leggings.”
The lawsuit states that during the recruitment process, Langford “avoided answering questions about his hobbies, passions, or involvement in other organizations.” Instead, he inquired about whether he could live in the sorority house and “talked about his desire to be near cadavers and to touch dead bodies.”
“One sorority member walked down the hall to take a shower, wearing only a towel. She felt an unsettling presence, turned, and saw [Langford] watching her silently,” the lawsuit states. The sisters also claim Langford “repeatedly questioned the women about what vaginas look like, breast cup size, whether women were considering breast reductions and birth control.”
During a yoga class with all the sorority members at the University of Wyoming, Langford apparently “sat in the back of the room for an hour and watched the assembled women flex their bodies.” The suit claims he also used his phone to secretly take photos of the sisters in the sorority house without their consent.
The stories shared by the plaintiffs took place last year when Langford was a member of the sorority but did not live in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house, and there is no telling what will occur this school year now that he is living with the women. However, the concerns surrounding the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sisters’ mental and physical well-being are not a concern of MSNBC, which is more interested in celebrating an accused sexual predator than truthfully reporting on the allegations made by terrorized, vulnerable women.