Oh, GLAAD, how do you fumble.
So Glee wins a GLAAD award for
fair, accurate and inclusive representation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives in the media.
Just this past week, Glee featured one of the main characters calling a student “shemale”:
The thoroughly despicable, cartoonish Coach Sue is seen cutting a nerdy male student’s ponytail and utters “there, you no longer confuse me with your shemale looks”.
“She-males” is a term for male-to-female transgender people that often is used in the porn industry, and, when used to refer to someone who has transitioned from one gender to another, it suggests a negation of their gender identity. Many transgender people consider it pejorative. It is not normally used in polite company. It’s also often used by those who oppose non-discrimination laws, like ENDA, in raising the ghastly specter of trans people using the bathroom.
Good to know I can expect trans issues to be respected without having to grab someone and start yelling. Oh, and did GLAAD ever do anything about Keith Olbermann’s transphobic Ann Coulter joke a few months ago? Have they ever said a word to Stephen Colbert? I know GLAAD acts on some things, as I’ve received quick response on several lower profile matters, but it seems like some things are just not worth mentioning, at least when aimed at trans people.
What I also want to know are why slurs like “tranny” and “shemale” allowed on the air at all? Does anyone outside the trans community even acknowledge them as slurs?
I’m not talking about trans people who reclaim and identify with those words. There’s a difference between a member of a minority using a word with a painful history and members of the majority reifying that painful history.
Also, I realize Coach Sue is a villain. The quote above says she’s a terrible person. I’m talking about how they present her villainy. It’s not necessary for her to whip out slurs often associated with violence against a minority to prove her awfulness. Hell, nonconsensually cutting anyone’s hair is pretty traumatic in my opinion and doesn’t need a slur to emphasize it. Also, it’s a matter of standards – other slurs are, I believe, frowned upon if not outright forbidden, but anti-trans slurs are still used routinely on prime time television.
I stopped watching Glee due to its revolting ablism and its major fail at satire, and I do recall this character having made racist, anti-gay, religious, and ablist slurs as well, though not as graphic of slurs in my opinion. I feel that this show uses this character as a way to make bigoted jokes and have an excuse. Haha, we weren’t being racist, it was just the character making a racist joke that the audience is supposed to laugh at, hahaha.
“Also, it’s a matter of standards – other slurs are, I believe, frowned upon if not outright forbidden” We have a right to frown on statements and even boycott shows and networks, but I do not support the government being able to forbid what words can and cannot be used on television.
cat
18 Apr 10 at 1:46 am
The FCC already has guidelines for how to deal with obscenity and profanity on television. I am not talking about implementation of new rules, but asking why the rules are unevenly applied.
From that page,
Lisa Harney
18 Apr 10 at 1:52 am
Oh, apparently “shemale” is so jolly and friendly that it can be used on one of the ads to promote the show (much like Dirty Sexy Money used “tranny”). So you’re not talking a rare use of a slur for a dramatic point, this is just bog standard completely culturally acceptable transphobia.
queenemily
18 Apr 10 at 6:57 am
Yeah, you know that and I know that, but some of the commenters at Bilerico are more interested in making excuses.
Plus the whole thing was a joke post, but got much more attention than Jillian’s posts about ENDA.
Lisa Harney
18 Apr 10 at 7:00 am
I think that there is also something to be said about the teacher herself being a gender abomination. The actress who plays her is a lesbian, and is well known for playing lesbians, as in The L Word, and she talks in the show about having her ovaries removed. She’s also an athlete. I think she is there to make ridiculous the notion of strong women. But I also agree with what’s been said that she is there to make horrible jokes.
Stella
18 Apr 10 at 9:06 am
I wish GLAAD would get away from the ‘portrayals of the LGBT’ community’ schtick and just admit… this is a gay-themed show, this is a lesbian-themed show without the pretense that portrayal of one group is somehow equivalent to portraying the entire ‘coalition’.
Ryan Murphy has a poor track record of exploitive portrayals of trans characters in Nip/Tuck and the show he didn’t manage to sell (but may still get picked up) about a transwoman OBGYN (originally it was a sportswriter… he pretty much nicked the stories of Christine Daniels and then Marcie Bowers) alternately called ’4oz.’ (the weight of a penis… get it… penis… transwoman???!!!) and later “Pretty/Handsome”.
Gina
18 Apr 10 at 10:13 am
Actually, I wish GLAAD would actually be serious about portrayals of the LGBT community, and not reward shows that engage in transphobia.
Lisa Harney
18 Apr 10 at 4:13 pm
Glee is my Coke. In fact, it’s kind of like a Coke commercial.
But it’s not edgy, and it’s not progressive, and it’s not covering new territory beyond all the other edgy comedies on the airwaves.
Sue’s supposed to be a funny villain. She’s one of those characters who says what everyone else is supposedly thinking. When she makes slurs, you’re supposed to laugh at her and the targets, because you secretly feel the same way. I think it does contribute to the normalization of “shemale” and “tranny.”
piny
18 Apr 10 at 5:17 pm
…I didn’t know he was part of Nip/Tuck, though. Anyone involved in that show, except possibly La Mafia, but including Rosie O’Donnell, should be banned for life from any LGBT or media accolade.
piny
18 Apr 10 at 5:44 pm
I’d be happy for transphobic slurs to be used by villains IF THERE WERE SOME [SELF-CENSORED TIRADE OF EXTREME SWEARING] SEX AND GENDER DIVERSE MAIN CHARACTERS ON THE SHOW GIVING THOSE REMARKS RELEVANCE.
Lets see, the 3 rural Highschools i went to ranged from over 500 students to over 700 students, with 20+ students per classroom.
So using the smallest one thats an average of:
* 5+ Intersex students
* 1+ Transsexuals
* 5+ to 25 closeted MtF Crossdressers with maybe even one in every classroom.
More and more schools are having to deal with MtF gender expression as well as early transition.
We’ve had expulsions by schools for this. We’ve had a murder at school.
No making use of the slurs against us without including us and our issues.
With estimates of the MtF Crossdresser population at 2% to 10% of the male population there is a truly monumental lack of representation. The difficulties of a teenage crossdresser struggling with the Closet and Internalised Oppression belongs in EVERY school drama because it’s happening now in EVERY school.
Battybattybats
18 Apr 10 at 8:45 pm
Yeah, I don’t think it’s an either/or trade-off. You’re looking at two issues here, one of which is representation and one of which is the unbridled use of slurs against a particular minority, and specifically a slur that is primarily used against transsexual women.
Lisa Harney
18 Apr 10 at 9:01 pm
But they’re being conflated by the show’s media profile: depicting transphobia in an ironic context is the same as fighting transphobia and representing trans issues.
piny
18 Apr 10 at 9:03 pm
Does anyone outside the trans community even acknowledge them as slurs?
As far as I can tell? No, not really. It’s fucking disturbing.
Glee is a great example though, of all the slurs and marginalized groups it’s still ok to make fun of, they do that shit all the time, and usually through Sue. Basically…piny hit the nail on the head.
whatsername
18 Apr 10 at 9:04 pm
Fair point, Piny.
And I agree, whatsername. I’m not even defending Glee’s other stuff, just this one stood out because of the use one week and the award the next.
Lisa Harney
18 Apr 10 at 9:06 pm
I’m not saying you’re wrong, mind. They should be separate issues.
Piny
18 Apr 10 at 10:30 pm
Um folks.. consider this:
As the character called a shemale wasn’t trans the biggest problem is not that a derogatory word for Trans was used… but that ANY word for Trans was used in that scene!
Because that line is using being trans itself as a slur!
As i said before i’m happy to have an intentionally transphobic bad-person character using derogatory terms in fiction that includes trans characters and shows transphobia = bad trans = good.
But the lack of such character, the direction of a trans-term derogatory or not at a cis means that being Trans, being like Trans at all is the primary insult.
Isn’t that the biggest problem with the scene? And why it’s not two seperate issues at all? The lack of a trans character as its target but a cis one changes the context and therefore meaning of the insult profoundly. And if we replace the word shemale in that scene with any more accepted and respected trans identity term isn’t it still extremely offensive?
Battybattybats
19 Apr 10 at 7:17 am
“…I didn’t know he was part of Nip/Tuck, though. Anyone involved in that show, except possibly La Mafia, but including Rosie O’Donnell, should be banned for life from any LGBT or media accolade.”
This. And Ryan Murphy was the creator of both shows. I was skeptical about Glee from the beginning for this reason. Both shows have indulged in awful transphobic shit. And both shows depict nearly all of the women as hateful, manipulative caricatures. (The character of Emma Pillsbury may not be hateful, but her OCD is the butt of many cruel jokes.)
Kristin
20 Apr 10 at 5:26 am
Kristin,
From what I’ve read online of screencaps, posters, et cetera Glee has a serious problem with disability, ‘diversity’ awards not withstanding.
arrogantworm
20 Apr 10 at 6:13 am
Glee has massive disability fail, as I understand it.
It also had a pretty awful episode when one character found out his wife wasn’t really pregnant.
Lisa Harney
20 Apr 10 at 6:21 am
Yes, all of that. Glee does have massive disability fail.
Kristin
20 Apr 10 at 8:58 am
“It also had a pretty awful episode when one character found out his wife wasn’t really pregnant.”
I think she’s the one who most resembles the cartoonish characters on Nip/Tuck.
Kristin
20 Apr 10 at 8:59 am
I posted this a while ago, but if something is on air that is offensive and should NOT in any way be allowed on tv or to the general public, you can report this online to the FCC. If this is consistently reported, I have hope that the rest of the cis-dominated community will understand, and/or have no choice but to acknowledge it. I do not believe that removing slurs from tv is censoring either.
You may report this here with the time/date, and show/network.
http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm
Courtney
20 Apr 10 at 10:22 am
“Does anyone outside the trans community even acknowledge them as slurs?”
From my many discussions with cis people on the subject, all of my experience has told me that comprehensively, no, tranny and shemale are not seen as being insulting, and so it is OK for cispeople to call trans people that as it’s just ‘an abbreviation’ or ‘informal’. I’ve educated the people I’ve met who say that, and got a 50/50 split between ‘well if it’s insulting, that’s even better’ and ‘oh, I’ll stop using it then’.
Serenegoose
25 Apr 10 at 11:39 am
[...] ‘it’ as an insult is similar to using tranny and she-male as insults against cis-people. It is using the identities of people who aren’t either male or female as an insult and, in [...]
“It” « Chartreuse Flamethrower
9 May 10 at 1:15 am
And now, in an act of chutzpah*, Ryan Murphy is calling for a boycott of Newsweek (and basically for the head of gay associate editor Ramin Setoodeh for the article he wrote about gay actor’s playing straight roles:
http://www.jsyk.com/2010/05/13/glee-creator-ryan-murphy-has-jonathan-groffs-back/
http://www.queerty.com/glees-ryan-murphy-v-newsweeks-ramin-setoodeh-20100512/
http://lezgetreal.com/?p=33366
*audacity in Yiddish
gina
13 May 10 at 2:39 pm
hm. it read right as being part of a HS discussion of RHPS, but I wish Emma’s next line would have been “Mike, you know better than to use that word.” and then they could have easily moved into the rest of the plot.
Ryan Murphy is a west coast entertainment guy who happens to be gay who writes his gay male characters well and interactions with said gay male characters pretty well, but has no idea how to write any other character. the rest of the characters in the show, wpecially the females, are pretty much two or one dimentional and the whole plot (using the term loosely) is one dimentional as well.
I dont think I support the linking of T into GLB as a standard anyway, although I could certainly see why some people would. but Glee dosent do any particular thing really well, race, diability, gender – so I am not surprised they did this without thinking it thru
Laura
9 Nov 10 at 4:21 pm
Well, problems being:
* Racial slurs are generally unacceptable on prime time.
* Transphobic slurs are welcomed
* Ryan Murphy uses transphobic slurs
* GLAAD rewards him for being inclusive and for positive LGBT portrayals.
Only recently did GLAAD openly criticize Glee’s transphobia.
Lisa Harney
9 Nov 10 at 4:31 pm
Troll posts aren’t approved. Troll cissplaining is definitely not approved.
“Some of my best friends are trans and they agree with me” is not a valid argument. They’re not here in this conversation, and you do not even know my opinion on reclaiming those words.
You can’t reclaim tranny “with pride” if you are cis. I don’t care who your friends allegedly are.
Everything you said is wrong.
Lisa Harney
15 Nov 10 at 1:57 am