Homosexual activists are applauding the rapidly increasing numbers of "transgender" characters and people on television, but they say there’s much more work to be done.
"Transgender" activists are pleased with the "small but increasingly visible group of transgender women on U.S. TV, as well as a growing number of actors in transgender roles on film and TV screens," but the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said this group is still "a community that is under-represented on television," Reuters reports.
The Reuters story points out that the new season of the CW network program America’s Next Top Model includes a 22-year-old transgender lassielad among the show’s fourteen contenders for the title honor, and that another such individual is competing on VH1’s I Want to Work for Diddy. This is in addition to the numerous transgender characters in series such as Dirty Sexy Money, Ugly Betty, and All My Children. (All three series are on ABC, widely acknowledged as the "gayest" TV network.)
Reuters quotes GLAAD spokesman Damon Romine as being very pleased with all the transgender types on TV these days:
"It is an exciting time. This is all really very new in the last two years or so that we are seeing transgender people in a new light," Romine told Reuters.
Despite all this apparently happy news, GLAAD still argues that people who are dissatisfied with their Y-chromosome allotment are underrepresented on TV, as noted earlier. Both GLAAD and other allied groups have continually argued that the U.S. culture as a whole does not pay enough attention to homosexual and transgender people.
The notion that transgender people are underrepresented in today’s U.S. culture is absolutely false. If you doubt that statement, just go to any internet search engine and type the word in. A world of information will greet you in all its glory.
In the Yahoo search engine, a search request for the word ‘transgender’ currently finds 40,200,000 citations, plus 293,415 images and 885 videos. That would seem sufficient for even the greediest consumer of such wares.
What’s more, the claim that transgender folk are underrepresented in the culture would be much less than tragic even if it were true.
The beauty of a cultural marketplace is that it allows people to find what they want and avoid what they don’t like, and the central fact of the Omniculture, as I’ve noted before, is that everything happens.
Hence, if there’s a market for something, it will happen. Thus the huge availability of stuff about transgender people on the Internet.
What bothers the homosexual activists, then, is not that transgender people aren’t appropriately represented in the culture as a whole, for they most certainly are getting plenty of attention. No, what bothers them is that the mass audiences aren’t clamoring for more transgender characters and stories and flocking to those intrepid artists who provide it.
Well, too bad.
Anthony: Your claim that I was rude, indeed “petulantly rude,” to the anonymous commenter is false, and demonstrably so, as is evident to anyone who reads the actual exchange above. I disagree with the anonymous commenter, and that is my right, much as you obviously despise other people’s right to an opinion.
Most importantly, you misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent my motives. To wit, you write:
“Tl;dr: it’s extremely difficult (socially, economically, physically, emotionally) being a transgender person. That’s probably why most of us off ourselves, which is another possible factor as to why there isn’t a stronger trans*/genderqueer community.”
My sympathies are in fact with transgender people. The fact that our society and culture actively encourage this mindset and practice that you yourself state is “extremely difficult” for an individual and which is so damaging that it causes, in your words, a majority to commit suicide, is to me an appalling elevation of destructive ideology over simple human sympathy. I don’t want any individual to be deluded into thinking that the only way to deal with disturbing thoughts is radical surgery and a complete change of identity. Yet as I noted in my article, transgender is far from being underrepresented in the culture. The culture instead, in its attempt to propagandize for the phenomenon, trivializes it.
I would welcome an honest discussion of the issue with both sides represented. At present, few people will discuss this matter honestly because of the very sort of unjustified and repugnant attack on their motives which is inevitably engaged in by individuals such as yourself.
I doubt that I’d be surprised, Anonymous. If you become more familiar with this site and the concept of the Omniculture, you will indeed see that to be true. Like Hawk in Alan Rudolph’s brilliant 1986 film Trouble in Mind., “nothing surprises me these days.”
In addition, it’s important to note that your claim is unprovable. If all the evidence is hidden, as you say, it can never be proven to exist. And very possibly it does not.
Karnick, you would be shocked the number of us out there. The problem is some of us choose to stay stealth about it. So “Most people will encounter many more transgendered people on television than in real life.” isn’t quite true. The fact is most of these people that “don’t”encounter us really do but they just don’t know it.
No, you’re wrong on all counts, anonymous commenter. The internet is part of the culture, and in fact a big and increasing sector of it, so, yes, it counts. And the fact that I could name five shows with transgendered people regularly featured in them (in positive ways in most instances, I would add) proves my point, given that transgendered people are a very small portion of the population. Most people will encounter many more transgendered people on television than in real life. To claim that as under-representation on television is absurd.
Karnick, please climb off your ‘trans*/genderqueer existences are finally being recognized by the media- ISN’T THAT ENOUGH FOR YOU PEOPLE??? NOW STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT YOUR PETTY OPPRESSION’ soapbox. No, we’re not going to be content with the scraps the media is tossing us. No, we are not dogs prepared to sit down and eat whatever ounce of ‘representation’ written, filmed, edited, censored, and eventually aired once non-trans people feel it’s safe enough for it’s non-trans audience. We are a subset of people much larger than most non-trans* people would feel comfortable believing.
Most people have never seen a trans person, huh? Oh, don’t kid yourself, you’ve seen them. At your job, school, the mall, out on the street, in that restaurant you like to go to when you’re feeling swanky, down at the auto repair shop plugging your flat- you may not have KNOWN they were trans, but I can almost guarantee you, you’ve crossed paths with one, if not more, tran*/genderqueer person/s. And you know what? You escaped unscathed, which is more than most trans* people can say after bumping into cis person on the street or in the ‘public’ restroom, catered specifically to non-trans* people.
The extremely realistic fear of sexual/physical assault and/or murder might in part explain why many trans* people prefer to be stealth/closeted and why there are not more openly transgender people (like Anonymous pointed out). The fact that trans* people must first fight to convince most non-trans* people that they are, indeed, human beings with feelings and triggers who deserve common decency and respect, before we can even begin to discuss (let alone work to resolve) trans* specific issues, could also be a factor.
Tl;dr: it’s extremely difficult (socially, economically, physically, emotionally) being a transgender person. That’s probably why most of us off ourselves, which is another possible factor as to why there isn’t a stronger trans*/genderqueer community. What the community (and individual trans*/genderqueer people) DON’T need is snarky ass articles like this, written by some cis man who is blissfully un-associated with our struggles. You are also petulantly rude to your trans* reader in the comments, which suggests you are either very young and by association juvenile, or very white, cis, male, and very stuck in your child ego state.
This article was presented in such a snarky and repugnant fashion. “Well, too bad.” ??? (You sound like a little child here!) And this statement just blew me away: “The notion that transgender people are underrepresented in today’s U.S. culture is absolutely false.”
There is a difference between the internet and TV, Karnick. Or didn’t you know that? There may be a lot of information and material on transgendered people on the internet, but NOT SO MUCH for television. You named four or five television shows that have have a transgendered person on it. You call that “numerous”? There is a SEVERE underrepresentation of trans people in television and media as a whole – and most of that representation shows us as nothing more than prostitutes or sex-workers getting murdered in the first ten minutes of CSI.
You also confuse homosexual activists with transgender activists. Nice one.
there is nothing wrong with being trnasgenered.
you do not know how many of us there are out here those of us who are male and want to be female and be able to be the right sex that we were suppose to ahve been born as there is nothing wrong with being a girl being a gilr is wonderful and i want to be one just like a lot of males do i want to be female i am tired of being mlae and want to be free and female!