Many minorities are given a day of awareness and visibility, and the transgender community is no exception. On March 31st, the trans community will celebrate the acceptance and challenges they have come across throughout time. It is a time to empower the trans community and fight cissexism and transphobia. It was created in 2010, by Rachel Crandall, the head of Transgender Michigan. Although the attention and recognition is appreciated on the day, this brings another issue into the spotlight: how are trans people represented during the other 364 days of the year?
Many would agree: when discussing the LGBT+ community, the lesbian and gay community often get the most media representation and acceptance amongst the majority of people. Even within the community, trans people are often ignored, or pushed to the side in regards to acceptance and negative stigma. While gays and lesbians have become the majority of queers, transgenders can’t be forgotten during the rest of the year. When discussing the issue of awareness and education during the majority of the year, transgender high schooler Jason Thompson from Kansas City reveals his take on it, saying that “people just don’t understand what being transgender means. There needs to be some sort of education when it comes to the LGBT+ community.”
Media portrayal is often the best way to encourage acceptance. Whether it’s through social media, or through popular culture, it’s the medium that reaches multiple generations in an instant. With the release of the movie The Danish Girl, the struggles of closeted transgenders are highlighted. The movie depicted a transgender woman as eager and willing for a sex reassignment surgery, and she ends up dying due to complications. Her tragic story is meant to show the real side of the struggle for acceptance, the all too real and unfortunate.
When compared to cisgendered and other queer people, transgenders are definitely not as common. However, GLAAD’s “Trans Images TV Report” shows that it is not the quantity of transgender individuals portrayed, yet rather the quality of the individual’s representation of the community as a whole. This is crucial, especially since shows such a Pretty Little Liars portray trans characters through a negative stigma (such as CeCe, the transgender ‘psychopath’.) TV shows such as I Am Cait, New Girls on the Block in April, TLC’s I Am Jazz and ABC Family’s Becoming Us have become popular due to the newfound curiosity and slowly-growing acceptance throughout popular culture. As Thompson says, “when the media does decide to draw attention to trans people, (which is not often) it seems to always be a completely transitioned woman. Trans guys and people who are mid-transition/ pre-transition aren’t represented.” This can definitely be seen in the list of popular transgender oriented shows.
On March 31th, be sure to celebrate the journey transgender individuals have gone through, and please remember, because the day after is April Fool’s: do not reveal someone’s gender identity if they haven’t chosen to do so yet! You may be putting them in harm’s way.
