The media often facilitates the barriers in the way of tolerance of trans people in broader society, and sometimes are the barriers themselves.
One recent example is from Great Britain. Columnist Suzanne Moore wrote an article entitled Seeing Red: The Power Of Female Anger for the British newsmagazine The New Statesman speaking to how women were victims of Great Britain’s recession, and how many feminists were angry about it. Her piece however, used what she later called a “throwaway line” that read, “We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.”
A Twitter follower of Moore’s commented that that language was “shock transphobia,” and “Trans women deserve solidarity, not implicit shaming.” Moore responded on Twitter, stating “I don’t prioritize this f***ing lopping bits off your body over all else that is happening to women,” and “People can just f*** off really. Cut their d***s off and be more feminist than me. Good for them.”
Many trans people were far more upset about the follow-up Tweets than the apparent transphobia of her “throwaway line.”
What made the situation worse was a defense of Moore by columnist Julie Burchill for The Observer. In the piece entitled Transsexuals Should Cut It Out, Burchill slurred trans women as a class, using pejoratives and was threatening. The last paragraph read as follows:
“Shims, shemales, whatever you’re calling yourselves these days – don’t threaten or bully we lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging PhDs as you, but we’ve experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment, and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You really won’t like us when we’re angry.”
Shim and shemale are pejoratives in the same vein as fa**ot. The Observer took the Burchill piece down and apologized for publishing it at all.
And this wasn’t the only recent, intolerant media presentation of trans women. The SyFy Channel, an NBC Universal channel, has a series on it entitled Lost Girl. GLAAD described the first episode of the show’s season 3, shown first Jan. 14, this way:
“The episode introduced its villain of the week, a beautiful but sadistic and sexually abusive women’s prison warden and female leader of the Amazon women prison guards. The evil warden violates the inmates and secretly impregnates them to sell their babies.
“The climax of the plot twists when the warden is discovered to be an anatomically male ‘trickster’. The show’s heroine Bo “outs” the warden when she notices beard stubble during a kiss. When the men-hating prison guards forcefully grab the warden’s genitals, trans panic violence ensues. The amazon guards scream and attack the warden hand-to-hand and with night sticks, while the warden cries out, ‘My mother was an Amazon! I am one of you!’
“The guards beat the warden (off-screen) and leave her for dead.”
When the producers of the show apologized for the portrayal of the warden, stating in their apology statement:
“The warden in the premiere of season 3 is a character based off the mythological shape shifter known as the liderc. The warden was only intended to represent this mythic being. We did not intend this character to be seen as a transgender person, we apologize if the character was seen as such. We do hope that you accept that no comparison or discrimination toward the transgender community was intended by the depiction of this mythological character.”
A liderc; however, is a Hungarian mythical creature that is in one of three versions of this creature a shape shifter that can take on male form to be a woman’s lover. Interesting too, a liderc always has one goose foot. The character in the episode then would be a hybrid character of Hungarian and Amazon mythology: the writers and producers created their evil trans character from whole cloth.
The media can shape societal views of trans people as it has shaped societal views of other minority populations during the past decades. The media has a ways to go toward accurate reporting, commentating and storytelling about trans people’s lives.
Apologies are appreciated, but responsible media should get it right in the first place, and that would help trans people be better tolerated in society.
Personally, I think a bigger barrier to the “acceptance” of transgender people is the tendency of so many to fly off the handle and throw a fit at the slightest perceived insult. For example, demanding that a transgender character never be a “villain” would be a good example. If you want to be seen as a part of society, you have to take the good with the bad.
It sounds to me like it is something more than just acceptance that is being demanded here…
I also find it funny that this does not seem to be an issue for transsexuals, who transition and move on. It is only those who identify as transgender that seem to have these problems.
As I say, I am a woman, period.
To expect every TV producer to bend to the will of a group of nonconformists who don’t even want to assimilate into society makes for great comedy. Maybe there should be a TV show about a group of misfits who try to control what is on TV by complaining to the TV networks. The TV series could follow them through their lives as they complain about how their sliver of the margin of a subculture is persecuted and made fun of for the way they act and the way they dress.
I have to ask the author of this column if there is some reason the transgenders should be held above the rest of us, some reason I may not know about that makes transgenders somehow better than the rest of us in that they don’t or shouldn’t have to live life in it’s terms like the rest of us?
Do you transgenders want to be held in some kind of special status.
First you want to invade our spaces when your outward biology doesn’t match ours, now you want us to stop lampooning you and only use your kind in positive roles on TV shows, you want this kind of treatment?
You think your life sucks now, if you got your wishes you would be resented by every other group of people on the planet, including the handicapped, the fat, the religious right, gun owners, and every other group of people you can think of.
Grow up Autumn, and the rest of the transgender community, join the rest of us who have to live with everyone else on this planet.
The respect you earn is based on how you act as a group, it has always been that way.
PS for Autumn.
If Martin Luther King was alive today he would not support the GLBT movement, you quoting him hurts your credibility among those of us who were actually around and aware of what was going on back then.
Really “sd woman”? This publication is called LGBT Weekly — the T is visible and meant to be visible here at this publication.
So moving to other points of your comment: for consistency, are you arguing that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals should also just assimilate into society? Not be visible? Not stand up for antidiscrimination protections for their peers based on sexual orientation? You are arguing this for trans people and antidiscrimination protections based on gender identity and gender expression. Personally, I find that position to be a problematic point of view.
In stating…
…you are essentially arguing the “special rights” argument of the religious right: that sexual orientation and gender identity are “mutable” conditions instead of “immutable” conditions, and therefore deserve no protections. Again, I find that position to be a problematic point of view: ordinary equality demands more than assimilation. I should not have to give up my trans identity to be considered a woman: one can be a trans woman in the way one can be a black woman, a disabled woman, a woman veteran, etc. We are all more than just one aspect of our lives, and when we are discriminated against because of visible membership in minority population, the American thing to do is to not tolerate that kind of discrimination.
As for media articles where pejoratives are used against transgender people such as Burchill used: are you seriously arguing that’s acceptable behavior? I’d argue that’s as unconscionable behavior as using antigay pejoratives against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals.
As for scripted entertainment where the “trans panic” defense is used: I covered the Angie Zapata Hate Crime Murder Trial from the Greeley, Colorado courtroom. The murderer used a fire extinguisher to pound in the head of a transgender woman while she slept. She was hit by the fire extinguisher so many times that the doctors who performed the autopsy couldn’t tell how many times she was struck in the head. The murderer used the “trans panic” defense to defend his killing Angie Zapata. Hell yeah I’m going to argue that scripted media writers and producers shouldn’t use “trans panic” in their story lines in a way that shows it as acceptable behavior because that defense of murder is evil in the brick-and-mortar world. And hell yeah I’m going to argue that kind of scripting is transphobic because it dehumanizes trans people in explicitly arguing that trans people worthy of being killed just for being trans.
Lastly, Bayard Rustin argued in one of his essays in < a href:http://www.amazon.com/Time-Two-Crosses-Collected-Writings/dp/1573441740Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin that Dr. King would’ve come out in favor of gay rights had he lived longer. Rustin was a confident of MLK Jr., having organized the March On Washington. I trust Rustin’s assertion on the what MLK Jr. would’ve done regarding LGBT civil rights should King had lived longer over your assertion that he wouldn’t.
Nice try at sidestepping my issues by placing strew transmen in their place.
I made no mention of discrimination, I am fundamentally against discrimination on the basis of race religion sex sexual preference or orientation and gender identity or expression. You should go back and re read what I posted until reading comprehension kicks in if need be.
What I put ahead of everything else is my, and everyone’s (including sub culture groups) first amendment rights to free speech and freedom of religion. That includes your right to whine about and make yourself a fool over some silly TV show. People who live in the south who speak with a heave accent and are self taught are lampooned all the time, they take it in stride because they know they are much smarter than that and the people doing the lampooning need someone to feel superior to.
So I directly ask you again what is it that makes you believe you believe transgenders should be held above everyone else, to be untouchable in the media unless it is in a positive way?
I have personally seen you post things about religious groups I would never think of saying about any group regardless of how extreme I found their views. I have seen these over on Pam’s House Blend. After reading your commentaries for close to 8 years now I am suppose to believe that you somehow don’t think transgenders shouldn’t be untouchable?
Shouldn’t you set a good example for others?
Of the notable trans-straw women you brought into this discussion is Angie Zapata. While the murder of anybody is sad it does not apply to this discussion. How about I bring up the abuse a certain post op suffered under her employer who happened to be an employe of a former local GLBT newspaper. The abuser was a transgender woman, and it’s all documented. The woman in question chose to not to pursue charges, she was going to leave the state. I have lunch with this woman once a month, she has discussed the abuse in great detail and kept a journal of what happened. she has nothing to do with the transgender community due to the abuse she has suffered not only from that person but others simply for the crime of being post op and wanting to live a normal life. I only bring this up because one straw woman deserves another, and to prove you as a group you are not without fault.
What Rustin has to say is second hand information and his motives are not above reproach. You should do your homework Autumn the man is an opportunist and would do or say just about anything to curry the favor of a group that will listen to him.
So I ask again please answer the question.
what is it that makes you believe you believe transgenders should be held above everyone else, to be untouchable in the media unless it is in a positive way?
I have to agree with sd woman. Sandeen has effectively avoided answering the points raised, and has offer a large pile of straw instead. Transgender people choose to transgress society’s rules, and then complain when people use this as fodder for comedy.
And the bottom line is, no one, including Bayard Rustin, can say with certainty what King would have with regards to LGBT rights. It is wrong to co-opt him as an imaginary ally because of that. Relying on the questionable claims of someone, even if they were a close confidant, without actual proof of King’s views is, quite frankly, immoral. Many black leaders take a very dim view of LGBT rights, and many of those doing so were also close confidants of King.
It looks like the transgenders have made it to the big time.
Google
MOVIEBOB: Kristen Stewart’s Mom Made a Movie
Those who are oversensitive about how transgenders are portrayed in the media may have to up their anti-anxiety medication before looking at the trailor to this movie.
Sorry to break it to you guys and gals, you can’t stop them by overreacting to some silly TV show. The only way to stop this is to not live up to their expectations as you are doing by whining about a silly TV show.
Interesting trailer… Not a movie I would be that interested in, but from what I have heard, probably a bit more dead on than not. I do think that here in San Francisco they don’t mix gays and “transgender.” I do know, however, that they have a specific transgender section…thankfully, not from personal experience. A former co-worker did outreach there.
Fantastic analysis ! I am thankful for the details – Does anyone know if my assistant could possibly grab a fillable IRS 706 copy to work with ?