Comments | crip_crit: Decent portrayal of transsexuality? ANYWHERE?

elettaria in crip_crit

Decent portrayal of transsexuality? ANYWHERE?

Feb 04, 2011 16:35

Is there anywhere on TV or film which can manage a decent portrayal of transsexuality? The ones I've seen have ranged from mediocre to downright awful. I suppose they do have a serious problem in that most people don't know much about it, and the little they know is likely to be horribly wrong, but the attempts at audience education always seem ( Read more... )

gender, gender dysphoria, csi, transsexuality

Comments 57

tammy_moore February 4 2011, 18:44:15 UTC

Hayley Cropper on Corrie? The character is handled well I think, although it would have been better if the show itself had cast a transexual actor.

elettaria February 4 2011, 18:47:02 UTC

Are there all that many transsexual actors around?

I don't watch Corrie so I have no idea what it's like. Tell me more?

tammy_moore February 4 2011, 20:27:56 UTC

I would assume there were at least a few? I don't know if the production company tried or not ( ... )

eustaciavye25 February 4 2011, 18:57:03 UTC

Ugh@your post. Please read Sandy Stone's "The 'Empire' Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto) and "You've Changed: Sex reassignment and Personal Identity" edited by Laurie J. Shrage--read these before you start talking about transsexuality as a medical condition (I especially recommend C. Jacob Hale's chapter).

elettaria February 4 2011, 20:18:20 UTC

I specifically said that gender dysphoria is a medical condition, not transsexuality, and the TV shows I've been talking about always deal with the gender dysphoria, mostly because they're making a big meal out of "ooh look, it's a man and then it's a woman!" (I can only think of one transman I've seen on TV, and of course he was the murderer.) This enormous focus on the medical aspect of transsexualism is one of the things that bothers me, especially since it's often done so badly. It really should be possible to make a film or TV episode about someone trans without referring to surgery.

eustaciavye25 February 5 2011, 08:40:03 UTC

The reason why I made that comment was because there are problems with the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the hegemonic force involved. People who want to transition are forced to fit their personal narratives into a specific set of diagnostic criteria and effectively declare themselves mentally ill, which interferes with personal agency and the respect afforded to the individual. That is why I recommend critical works examining the effects of medicalization and mental health frameworks. It is important to be critical of these ideological frameworks.

eustaciavye25 February 5 2011, 08:51:10 UTC

And yes, I meant Gender dysphoria, but the two are obviously connected.

Now, are you looking for tv shows that deal with gender dysphoria specifically? Or shows that offer positive representations of transsexual individuals? I can do some research to find some, but I don't have any to offer. The only character I can think of is the one from Ugly Betty. I am not quite sure what to make of that yet, but it wasn't terrible.

Thread 25

eustaciavye25 February 4 2011, 18:58:51 UTC

And I don't know about Television, but TransAmerica is good, and possibly Hedwig from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (but there are some serious problems with her character) and Marieta from 20 Centimeters. I am researching trans representation in film, but I left television off my list (for obvious reasons).

elettaria February 4 2011, 20:20:30 UTC

What are the obvious reasons?

I haven't seen the third film, but I've seen the first two and found them rather mixed. I've read quite a lot of criticism of both from the trans community. There was the stereotype of the transwoman who has been living as a woman for years but mysteriously hasn't worked out how to apply make-up properly yet, for instance, and the whole botched surgery thing with Hedwig upset a lot of people.

eustaciavye25 February 5 2011, 08:46:55 UTC

The obvious reason is that in my discipline we still do not examine television as a mainstay. There are problems with both films, especially Hedwig and the Angry Inch; however, after reading Sandy Stone's work I think those problems are actually quite significant. Before I read her work I found the botched surgery and several other issues (including the sexual abuse by the father) extremely offensive--I still do, but the botched surgery actually further disrupts the binaries between male and female and position Hedwig beyond gender divides so zie stands in a liminal space (historically, bodily, in terms of gender, geographically, etc . . .) and Stone insists that it is important for transsexuals not to pass and that a true discourse involves speaking from beyond the gendered binaries which are traditionally believed to be the only space in which discourse is made possible. The fact that Hedwig doesn't pass--refuses to pass and is unable to pass is significant. The film is definitely ambiguous and ambivalent in some disturbing ways ( ... )

elettaria February 5 2011, 21:36:42 UTC

I'm afraid that I didn't read the Stone quite as closely as it probably warranted, I was tired and have trouble with reading critical stuff now that my cognitive function is worse these days. Is she arguing that transsexuals shouldn't try to pass, or that there should be space for them to pass or not as they choose?

Thread 5

alias_sqbr February 4 2011, 21:42:12 UTC

I've heard trans people are on the whole pretty happy with the manga "Wandering Son", there's also an anime which is three episodes in and and can be watched for free (in Australia and the US at least) at Crunchy Roll. I quite like it myself, it's a sweet little story about a bunch of middle school kids and their relationships where some of them happen to be trans.

elettaria February 5 2011, 19:03:51 UTC

Oh yes, there was a rather nice set of short stories in graphic novel form I found online a while back, in which I think quite a few of the characters were trans and pretty much all were queer, and it was very well done as I recall. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called nor where I found it, I'm afraid, but it was about teenagers.

elettaria February 5 2011, 19:21:37 UTC

You know the Bechdel test? I'm trying to think of something similar for trans stuff. If this has been done before, let me know. Anyway, ideally a TV show/film should do the following (list composed off the top of my head when I'm sleepy, feel free to add things ( ... )

dwgism February 5 2011, 19:52:28 UTC

I've been thinking similar sorts of thoughts for the past couple of days about disability in film -- whether there are any films with a disabled lead where disability _isn't_ the focus of the film. Closest I can think of is 'A Very Long Engagement'.

elettaria February 5 2011, 21:02:05 UTC

I don't know that one, but I am now intrigued. Put up a post about it?

alicephilippa February 5 2011, 20:27:16 UTC

7. Use appropriate language

That though opens a can of worms. The trans community itself cannot agree definitions of words such as transgender. Is it an umbrella term that encompasses the whole community from the shy closeted cross-dresser to the long time post-operative trans woman/man? Is it just cross-dressing members of the trans community? Or is it trans women/men who are transitioning without medical supervision?

I've come across all three of those definitions recently, and it's no wonder that the TV and film makers have issues...

Thread 22