Trans folk are not just here for your entertainment
One of the joys of doing my research is that I get to chart interesting things and map out the history of those things. My research focuses on how trans rights are perceived by the media, and I am building a media dataset going back to at least 1997. One of the recurrent issues I am seeing with the media coverage of trans rights are the usual tropes of criminals, victims of crime, and entertainers being present in how trans folk are represented. Often the only positive coverage of trans people and the only interviews granted to trans people are if the trans person is either an actor, singer, musician, politician or sports person. Yes, the usual caveat that most folk in the media fall into the same categories, but unlike cisgender folk almost all of the reporters covering trans issues are themselves cisgender. This matters, because if the only trans folk shown in the media are exceptional in the eyes of the wider community, that exceptionalism gets transposed onto the rest of the trans community.
Kim Petras, Sam Smith, Elliot Page, and Liv Hewson are all interesting and in their own ways exceptional. Yet, their personal narratives are just the latest in a long line of trans narratives stretching back to the dawn of the printing press to ask mawkish questions about gender identity, personal history, and identity politics that are rarely, if ever, asked of cis folk. That the 2023 media has had diversity and trans awareness training does not stop older pictures being shown alongside a person’s current self, does not stop deadnaming, and does not stop proving into the inner psyche. To be publicly trans is to open yourself to the whole world on a level that must be exhausting.
But, you say, is it not that person’s own cross to bear for being such a public facing trans person? No, it should not be. Talent alone should stand on its own two feet without the need to pry into what is in a person’s head or pants. Yes, celebrity culture is very much vulture culture, we gleefully lap up any detain we can on people thrust into the headlines, yet trans identities are special kind of scourge that the media whips up.
This cuts across celebrity and criminal. Just this week the right wing press have splashed across the front pages stories about the first elected US trans politician, using language that harks back to the bad old days of red media journalism. To be trans and either a prisoner or on trial is to have the double ordeal of your identity being used against you and your body seen as a weapon against women. Crimes deserve to be punished, but there is a perverse entertainment for some sections of the media in the way they cover trans female prisoners.
There is no excuse for deadnaming, no excuse for dredging up a trans person’s past history unless they invite that into the conversation. Personally I have no issue talking about my past, but I draw the line at sharing images of my younger self and telling people my birth name. The media does not respect this, especially if the person is deemed less than worthy of respect or privacy. You cannot simply be a trans person alone in yourself, your history is the story, the narrative the press choses to tell is the narrative people will believe and relate to.
It is true that all celebrity is an artifice, with all lives in the spotlight curated and primped for the widest audience possible. What makes Kim Petras and Sam Smith palatable compared to April Ashley and Caroline Cosey is the distance of time and broader acceptance; yet, all four are still judges based on their gender identity above all else. Why was Kim marked out as a trans person first and a woman second? She transitioned around the same time I did, is as much a woman as any other woman, yet what the media sees is the trans sobriquet first and foremost. She is an entertainer, there to bring a spark of joy on your speakers, but all the media sees is a trans woman striving to push herself forward, devil dress and all.
When trans folk look for role models in sectors outside the entertainment industry there is precious little for them to grasp onto. Some media coverage of people like Pips Bunce and Lynn Conway show the workaday lives of most trans folk, yet the mundanity of existence has no excitement, will not generate clicks or newspaper sales. No TV show after the death of Haley Cropper has a mundane trans character. We are not all superstars, we are not all criminals, trans folk exist in the tapestry of the world when we are given the space to thrive. We are not just here to entertain or titillate you, we are here in the world enriching the communities we live in. Is it too much to ask for the mundane and everyday trans lives to be given a chance to shine, or are the trans lives that sell books, generate clicks, and draw viewers always going to be “exceptional”?
