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By: Gwen Smith
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STORIES ABOUT TRANS people are being covered at a staggering rate in this
era of 24-hour news stations and Web media, and hardly a day goes by where
some transgender-themed
article doesn’t pass my eyes.
One day last week I received three stories on a transgender divorce case,
five articles on a trial over trans bathroom rights, two reports of anti-trans
murders
and two articles on the Gwen Araujo murder case, among others.
Most weren’t bad, and I don’t want to play “P.C. cop,” so
I simply shrug off a large amount. But most of these stories do fall into the
same traps.
Recently, I was interviewed as part of a story for a Los Angeles television
station. For their “B” roll — those establishing shots of a person walking
into a room or doing some other meaningless task — they asked me if I
would go to the bathroom and apply my lipstick.
They seemed genuinely surprised when I declined, explaining that such an
image was not only insulting, but also overused in transgender coverage. Apparently,
they seemed to think they’d stumbled on a unique image.
With that in mind, I offer a list of dumb things the media do when covering
transgender stories:
FIRST OFF, A biggie: unnecessary use of birth names.
When Buddy Hackett and Bob Hope died, I did not see a single article that
referred to either man as Leslie “Bob” Hope or Lenny “Buddy Hackett” Hacker.
In what ways are their stories different from Gwen Araujo, who is still routinely
called by her birth name, or with “Gwen” in quotes?
The same could be said about the use of pronouns. I’ve seen examples
where post-operative transsexuals, who are otherwise legally and socially a
member
of their preferred gender, are referred to in the media by the pronouns applied
to them at birth.
Does it make sense to call a man “she” simply because he was once
called such?
Maybe this is to somehow show what the trans person “really” is,
as so many stories seem to paint a transgendered person as deceptive. Rather
than seeing the gender presentation as a natural outgrowth of self-identity,
it is viewed as some sort of façade.
The press tends to spend more time focusing on genitalia than self-identity,
making the same mistake doctors do when delivering a baby: making a blanket
assumption that gender is based solely on genitals.
TRANS PEOPLE SOMETIMES end up in the news for reasons completely outside
of their gender, yet the issue still ends up being brought up. Would a person’s
race be discussed in an article devoid of race-specific news, or a person’s
religion in an article not dealing with religion? If not, then why discuss if
a person is transgendered in a story that doesn’t address the topic?
That is why, if a non-trans woman were being interviewed, she wouldn’t
likely be filmed putting on her makeup. The image would have been a cheap stereotype,
something out of date by the ‘70s. Because I am a transgendered woman,
this image becomes the only thing I can be seen as: a stereotype of femininity.
The opposite also applies. Many female-to-male trans folks taped for TV news
are asked to pose while shaving or putting on a tie.
Otherwise, FTMs are largely invisible: The straight media is enchanted with
showing male-to-females, so much so that trans men are almost invisible in
news coverage.
In fact, the most common portrayal of transgendered life is of a male-to-female
sex worker.
Many of us may well be sex workers, but if you believed all you saw in the
media, any transgendered woman who wasn’t turning tricks would be an
aberration.
There is a reason for this, and it leads to my last point. In this era of
so much media, reporters need a “hook” to bring in the eyes and ears
they so desperately seek. Because of this, stories of transgendered people — not
matter how mundane — are “teased” with terms like “shocking” or “outrageous” with
the expertise of a side-show barker.
Even the language used by some in the media sounds like it came from the
world of the carney: “he/she” or “chick with a dick” come to
mind. It’s one thing if the person you are interviewing identifies as a “she-male,” and
quite another to use it as a blanket statement.
Of course, most of these can be boiled down to one issue: respect. If the
media would choose to show a little of that when covering transgendered stories,
then
my laundry list would be rendered irrelevant.
Gwen Smith is a San Francisco-based transgender activist
and can be reached
at gwen@gwensmith.com.
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