The Washington Post is planning on eliminating its “gender columnist” position after the writer penned a piece that was ultimately scrapped by the paper’s editors, Fox News Digital has learned.
Monica Hesse, who made headlines in 2018 by becoming The Post’s first-ever “gender columnist,” will not hold that title much longer after writing a column about gender was “killed” by her editors, two sources tell Fox News Digital. It is unclear what Hesse had written in the column and what the editors objected to.
Hesse, currently a columnist for the paper’s Style section, is expected to be reassigned either to its Opinions section or remain in Style as a reporter, the sources added.
“It’s sad and so unnecessary,” one source told Fox News Digital.
Neither Hesse nor The Washington Post responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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The Washington Post is set to reassign Monica Hesse from being the paper’s “gender columnist” after a piece she penned was killed by editors. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images; Dan Zak/The The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Hesse first joined The Post in 2007 as an intern for the Style team before becoming a Features general-assignment reporter until breaking ground as the paper’s “gender columnist.” In 2023, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her columns “convey[ing] the anger and dread that many Americans felt about losing their right to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.”
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Her gender-based commentary has also raised eyebrows among conservative critics over the years. In 2022, Hesse accused Florida’s parental rights legislation removing progressive gender ideology from the classroom of being “homophobic and transphobic bills cloaked in neutral language.”
In another piece, she defended drag queens reading books to children, insisting “Drag queens are not the ones sexualizing drag story hour.”
Washington Post gender columnist Monica Hesse has a history of raising eyebrows among conservative critics. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In 2023, Hesse accused critics of First Lady Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman of “sexism” for allowing their spouses to seek office despite their mental impairments.
“Attacking someone who is ill or elderly simply because they are ill or elderly is beyond the pale in our culture (for now, at least), even for those pundits whose flexible morals usually find a way to drain-snake around any barricades of decency,” Hesse wrote at the time. “But by placing blame on the wives, these commentators get to spread harmful messages against the president and senator while having plausible deniability against charges of ableism. The commentators are not — heavens, no — throwing mud at these poor men. They are merely scolding the women who should know better. It’s ableism, with a little sexism, as a treat.”
During the 2024 election cycle, Hesse defended Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz for putting tampons in boys restrooms in schools as Minnesota governor.
“Any boy who casually was like ‘Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it’ — that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites,” she wrote on X.
The Washington Post’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos previously signaled his paper would pivot towards the center while defending his decision to quash an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. ( SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
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The move by The Post to eliminate its “gender columnist” position could be seen as an ideological pivot to the center as the liberal paper adjusts to the return of President-elect Donald Trump.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Post who quashed his paper’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the election, alluded to making reforms in an op-ed defending the endorsement decision.
“Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose,” Bezos wrote in October. “Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”
