Media image of transgendered evolves
A disgruntled playboy becomes a female fashion magazine editor. A rock star born biologically male finds her true self. A boy is scripted freely adding a pair of girl's shoes to accessorize his outfit.
Transgender people have become the new go-to characters on television shows including "Ugly Betty," "All My Children" and "The Riches." They also have become the topic of more news reports in recent months.
A Florida city manager is fired seemingly for disclosing his plans to have a sex-change operation. A male sports reporter in Los Angeles decides it's time everyone learns who she really is.
Falicity Hufman in Trans America
A sibling in the famous acting Arquette family has brought the struggles that a transgender person faces to the big screen in the documentary "Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother," which made its debut this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. The documentary follows other indie favorites, such as "Boys Don't Cry" and "Transamerica," to bring lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender stories to the forefront.
Fiction and reality have mixed to bring an increasing presence in the media of transgender people in the past six months. This is all positive for transgender individuals and society, say those who are active in the transgender community.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, partially credits the Internet and medical advancements with allowing people to express themselves physically. That outlet, she says, has created a domino effect.
"There's so many trans people out that more and more people do have trans people in their lives, and that's going to cause more trans people in the media," she says. "... When the entertainment media stories happen, they really have a dramatic impact. When they're done sympathetically, they make people feel safe and more willing to come out.
"When they're done maliciously, that has a chilling effect, makes people feel less willing. It's really that simple."
The country saw both sides in recent months when, in February and March, the Largo, Fla., city commission voted to fire Steve Stanton as the city manager after 14 years on the job. Commissioners have said it was Stanton's judgment and not his decision to have a sex-change operation to become Susan Ashley Stanton that cost him his job.
When Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner wrote a first-person story in April, formally coming out to readers and co-workers about what his life had been like and what it would turn into by becoming Christine Daniels, the reaction was mostly favorable, says Daniels. Since coming out in the article headlined "Old Mike, New Christine," Daniels has been inundated with supportive e-mails and phone calls, received a promotion and keeps a blog on the Times' Web site, latimesblogs.latimes.com/womaninprogress/.
"For some reason there's an acceptance or openness right now that wasn't there a year ago," Daniels says.
"One person who's known for doing an amazing job gets fired and another gets embraced," Keisling says. "Both of those stories really strike home because we now all know transgender people."
(Sarasota, Fla., city officials had named Stanton as one of six finalists for the Sarasota city manager position, but she didn't get the job.)
During the years that Daniels, 49, waited to come out, the Jerry Springer phenomenon, as she refers to it, where transgender people are portrayed as freak shows, caused her to grind her teeth in frustration. Daniels says so many people are closeted because of years of that kind of media portrayal.
But high-profile outings and more positively portrayed characters on television are all beginning to push the stigma aside, she says.
"It's just created a lot of discussion. There's a curiosity right now; it's opened the door for people. Between the e-mails I'm getting and the interview requests I'm getting, people want to know about this. I think that's what people can take away from 2007," Daniels says.
Damon Romine, the entertainment media director for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, agrees that increased visibility creates an increased acceptance, he said, of "a community which has been misunderstood and misrepresented for far too long."
Romine lists the real-life stories presented on news programs and documentaries, including "A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story" as avenues that make transgender stories real for everyone.
"This is breakthrough storytelling and really seems to just be the beginning," Romaine says.
Ryan Murphy, the creator of FX's "Nip/Tuck," is developing a new series for that cable network that will follow a male sportscaster and father's transition into a woman. The story is unrelated to Daniels' story. Fox and ABC also are developing shows that feature transgender characters, Romine says.
"There will never be acceptance of an issue without visibility, and it's these kinds of representations of the transgender community that will ultimately make the unfamiliar familiar," he says.
Jerimarie Liesegang, director of the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition, a transgender-civil-rights group, says the results of the media's progress in Connecticut are "to be seen." As director of the coalition, she conducts training sessions and works a lot with state legislators.
"We hear more and more people coming up to us [saying], 'We saw the "20/20" piece' or, 'Read the Newsweek article.' It influences them. They become more understanding," Liesegang says.
One powerful result of media attention would have been the passage of a Connecticut state Senate bill that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. The state legislature did not pass the bill, but other states have passed similar laws.
Keisling says there shouldn't be a backlash to the momentum transgender people have in the media right now.
"Americans have had to relearn this human-rights thing and this diversity and acceptance thing over and over as a society," she says. "People start understanding not only are they here to stay, but they're us. We're all in this together."
What I Know Now About... Queer Youth
Every evening at Capitol Hill's Lambert House, queer youth gather for dinner, group meetings, or just to hang out with their friends. A few weeks ago, on a warmer than usual summer evening, the house was nearly full. Several kids played pool in the main room, others crowded around the dining room table to eat spaghetti, more were upstairs watching TV. Three kids at the boisterous drop-in center agreed to pull themselves away from their friends to talk about being young and queer.
Alexis Oppenheim, a transgendered 21-year-old girl, leads me out to the back porch to sit in the waning sun and discuss what she's learned since she first came out.
For starters, she says, it's hard to explain her identity to people. She was born male, came out as gay in the sixth grade ("I really liked guys," she explains), and called her parents when she was 19 to come out a second time--as a transgendered girl who no longer identified as gay. In other words, Alexis now considers herself a typical teenage girl who likes boys.
"It's hard knowing how to explain it to people," she says. At first, she didn't even know how to explain her identity to herself. Alexis grew up in Guam, and eventually moved to Oak Harbor, Washington. She didn't meet a single transgendered person in either place. When she moved to Seattle a few years ago and met other transgendered people, something clicked.
"The big city totally brought me out," she says. "I wish I could have come out a whole lot earlier." That said, she also dreams of moving back to a small town and living as a girl who doesn't have to explain herself at every turn.
Avery Porch had similar difficulties. He's also transgendered, came out twice, and has a hard time explaining his identity to other people. At 14, Avery, who was born female, came out as a lesbian. He was extremely butch, and found a group of accepting dyke friends who encouraged him to find a girlfriend. He tried, but it never quite fit. Though he was butcher than most of the dykes he hung out with, dating girls didn't seem like the right thing to do.
But a few years ago, it all came together. Avery came out as transgendered and gay--and lost all his dyke friends in the process. At 19, he started taking testosterone and had breast-removal surgery. Now nearly 21, Avery looks like a normal teenage boy: cropped blond hair, an eyebrow ring, jeans, and a snowboarding T-shirt.
He's looking for a boyfriend, but it's a challenge. He's learned he's not really accepted by gay men once they find out his transgender status, and most of the transgender community is much older than he is, so it's hard to find friends there. The only other gay male transsexual he knows is his best friend, and Avery doesn't want to date him.
Plus, because of his age, he's become something of a poster child for the transgender community. It's rare for someone as young as Avery to transition from one gender to another, which makes him the subject of interrogation at school, at Lambert House, and at home. He's found that many people, even queers, don't understand what it means to be transgendered.
"It's like the further you get from the G [in GLBT], the worse off you are," Avery says. And his transgender status tends to be the main thing people are interested in when they talk to him--they don't always find out that he loves baseball and Hot Wheels, was an intern at Lambert House, and plans to become either a nurse in child psychology or an adolescent-gender counselor. "Everything is secondary to my gender identity," he says with a sigh.
Tae, who doesn't want her last name used, is an 18-year-old staffer at Lambert House. Compared to Avery and Alexis, her coming out was fairly easy (though her grandmother kicked her out of the house, and her mother still has a hard time with it). She came out as lesbian to a high-school teacher a few years ago once she had figured herself out. Eventually, she saw a brochure for Lambert House and went to check it out. Now she's there almost every day of the week, helping organize activities and putting together the packed calendar of events. She's also the only out lesbian at her high school, and has learned that straight guys depend on her for tips on dating girls. "Just don't bullshit and don't lie," she tells them matter-of-factly.
While giving advice and organizing at Lambert House have been fun, Tae says she's learned that the biggest perk of being a gay teen is the parties. "The parties are off the hook!" she says between interruptions from other Lambert House kids who stop to gossip with her. "You don't have to really worry about who's around you--you just have fun. The whole gay community is all about fun."
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