Welcome to #TransTuesday! Today’s topic is: REPRESENTATION. I didn’t plan to cover this aspect of trans rep in media first, but the most recent #LovecraftCountry episode has weighed heavily on me, so I figured this was the time.

This is going to be a bit sensitive, and I want it to be a discussion. But always remember that while questions are welcome, please accept the answers you’re given and always approach from an angle of compassion and kindness.

Forgive me if this ends up discombobulated, because I’d originally intended to talk about representation that was positive (for me), rather than having to first approach it from the opposite angle. Right now, representation of transgender people in media is still not great.

This will come as no surprise to those of you who aren’t cis straight white people, and especially cis straight white men, but for those of you in the latter category, here’s a very simple way to get the picture:

Quickly name the first ten cis white men who are lead chactacters in movie, tv, book, and comic franchises. Oho, so easy.

Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Luke Skywalker, Jean-Luc Picard, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Captain America, Thor, James Kirk…

And you can keep going for hours. The list is nearly endless. Okay, so now quickly name the first ten cis white women who are lead characters in franchises.

Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Rey, Kathryn Janeway, Lara Croft, (arguably) Princess Leia, Xena, Dana Scully, Ripley, Sarah Connor… I’m already starting to really have to dig through my memory.

Now try it for cis black men. Cis black women. Any cis people of color. For a lot of those you’re going to be lucky to get to FIVE. Now replace “cis” with “transgenger” or “non-binary” or even “gender non-conforming” and see if you can get to TWO.

What about if you look for people with disabilities and not just able-bodied folks? How many can you get to then?

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, because I want to get to the matter at hand. But you have to understand how unbelievably rare it still is for anyone who is not a cis straight white person, mostly cis straight white men, to see themselves reflected in media.

Even before I knew I was trans, representation was of paramount importance to me. It should be to EVERYONE.

You can draw a straight line from MLK convincing Nichelle Nichols to remain on the original Star Trek to Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space (who lists Nyota Uhura as a main inspiration).

Do a quick search for articles about all the women who went into STEM careers because they were directly inspired by Dana Scully on X-Files, it’s been written about a few times.

And it’s not that we can’t identify with cis straight white male characters, of course we can (and had to, because options were thin otherwise, for all of us). But by that same token cis straight white men can also identify with people who don’t look like them, can’t they?

I want to be sure you realize how important representation is. And how RARE it is for people in minority populations to see themselves on screen in any fashion. And a lot of the times we ARE seen on screen, it… doesn’t go great.

How many times are Black characters relegated to the best friend, the funny sidekick, the one who gives magical wise advice? How often are they the first to die in horror media, how often do they receive the least scenes and character development?

Others have spoken about that far better than I, a white trans lady, can. But I mention it here because now we’re getting into the point of this thread: episode 4 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country.

Lovecraft was a known racist. But this show, about, made by, and starring Black people, is reclaiming horror and genre stories in a way that is so, SO needed. On top of that it’s a lot of fun, really well made, and I adore the cast. Though I’m still upset about Uncle George.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

Here’s a brief set-up of the end of episode 4, if you don’t watch the show: our heroes enter a chamber to obtain a scroll with a spell they need, but find it clutched in the hand of a corpse. When they try to remove it, the corpse animates.

It eventually comes to be a living, speaking person of indigenous descent. I cannot speak to how well the indigenous representation of this character was handled, that’s for others to talk about. But I will bring it back up briefly at the end.

This character speaks in a language that is not subtitled, but the lead character Tic can understand the language, and sort of translates through the scene. So everything we have and know is filtered that way, which is fine.

Tic tells us this character is a “two-spirit”, which is a term used by some indigienous people to describe gay or transgender people (again, it’s up to those folks whether this term describes transgender people or not, that’s not for me to say).

Tic refers to this two-spirit individual as “she”, and assuming the show did not intend to have the character misgendered, I will also be calling her a “she” and taking that descriptor at face value.

This all comes right at the tail end of the episode, the two-spirit character was probably only around for ten or fifteen minutes tops. In that short time, there were four different things that left me feeling dehumanized.

I don’t believe any of this was done maliciously, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Let’s take them one at a time.

1: We’re given a full-frontal nude shot of the character, so we can see that she has breasts and also a penis and testicles. I have no problem with nudity, but here’s the issue. Upon seeing her, and as she starts speaking...

She tells Tic she’s a two-spirit (again, we only find this out from his translation). So… why did we need to see her completely naked? Did we see Tic completely naked in order to believe he was a man? Did we need to see Leti completely naked to know she’s a woman?

A key problem for anyone who falls outside the established societal gender binary (trans people, non-binary folks, people who are gender non-conforming) is so many people not believing we are who we SAY we are.

So many people want to know what’s between our legs, as if that’s something you’d ever ask a cis person. So many people feel we’re not “really” the gender we say we are if our genitalia doesn’t match their preconceived notions.

And it’s irrelevant anyway! Cis women may have their uterus removed. A cis man can lose his penis in an accident. Are they suddenly not women and men? C’mon.

And so here we have a character who says she’s a two-spirit, but the show still felt we had to SEE her naked body in order to believe her, when it has treated exactly zero of its cisgender characters that way.

So it felt to me as if they expected there was no way the audience could take this character at her word, believe that she was who she said she was, if we didn’t get a shot of her naked body on display.

2: When her corpse reanimates into a living being and we see her naked body, Tic asks her, “What ARE you?” This does come directly after a corpse has turned into a living person, so it’s very easy to believe that’s what was intended by the line. HOWEVER.

Transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming people have that kind of line thrown at us time and time and time again, as people who cannot easily discern our gender at first glance treat us like freaks (or worse).

There’s an absolutely awful thing called “trans panic” that perpetrators of violence against trans people have used as a defense for the violence they inflict upon us when discovering we’re trans. Please look up info on it (from reputable sources) if you’d like to learn more.

Trans panic isn’t real, it’s all bullshit, but its effects are something we have to deal with.

Suffice to say it falls into this category of treating us like freaks/objects of horror/grossness/ridicule. So even if intended to be about a reanimated corpse, the choice to have it be said to a trans character (who was chosen to be shown naked) is not great.

3: For magical reasons, something happens as they’re leaving this chamber and as the two-spirit character tries to speak, nothing but a high-pitched shriek escapes her lips. This scares everyone around her, and results in Tic punching her.

I haven’t gotten to this specific #TransTuesday post just yet, but an issue for many trans people, especially trans women who transition after puberty, is our voices. Hormone treatments don’t change a trans woman’s voice. If it already deepened, it’s stuck there.

Many can (and do) find help with voice therapy, but that’s about learning to control your voice to change the way it sounds. It’s difficult and a lot of work, and people go through it because it helps their dysphoria, or it helps them be more accepted in society, or both.

Please note Tic doesn’t ask her to stop talking, or even cover her mouth. A trans person with a feminine face opens her mouth, people around her are horrified by the sound it makes, and that’s justification for a cis man to punch her. In the face.

If you’re not familiar with the absolutely awful and prevalent trend of violence against trans people, particularly trans women, DOUBLE particularly trans women of color, please also look up some info (from reputable sources) and learn. It’s a very serious problem.

And this brings us right to 4: the very last shot of the episode is a cisgender man slitting the throat of the two-spirit character, presumably killing her.

No reason is given, though that’s probably coming. And on this show one character has already returned from the dead, so you can make the case that the character is perhaps not actually dead. Future episodes will tell. HOWEVER.

To make the last shot of your episode a shot of the actual slitting of the throat of a trans character is a *choice* that was made, in a society that already has a massive problem with violence against trans women.

And again, this is a trans woman of COLOR. How many indigenous characters can you name? How many of them are trans or non-binary or gender non-conforming?

So to introduce one, feel you have to show her body for us to believe her words, to ask her WHAT and not WHO she is, to use her voice as justification for violence, and then to choose to show us her throat getting cut open…

It left me hollow. It left me feeling like a husk whose only place in a story like this is as a victim.

And it hurt even more that it happened on Lovecraft Country, a show that’s so good and so important for subverting those EXACT same tropes as far too often visited upon Black characters.

I thought this was a show about not doing that sort of thing to people. Trans people, indigenous people, indigenous trans people are not freaks or objects of curiosity or just victims.

Imagine for a moment how an indigenous trans person watching that might feel, having literally no other mass media representation anywhere. How they went from unbridled joy to unbridled despair in the span of the last act of one episode.

If you’d like a more in-depth examination of exactly how our media has failed trans people, I’ve heard amazing things about the Disclosure documentary on Netflix. That’s what the entire thing’s about, and many trans people have spoken well of it.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it yet, though. Because I know what our representation has been… we’re the freaks, the butt of the joke, the victims. And seeing clips of that as trans people talk about what it has done to them…

It’s something I need to be in the right headspace to handle. But if you’re not trans, perhaps it will help you more than this thread was able to.

Again, I don’t believe any of this was done maliciously or with an anti-trans intent. I certainly hope not. But it perpetuates some very unfortunate things, and it made me feel less human simply for being who I am.

And I don’t think any human should ever have to feel that way after an episode of a tv show.

Tilly Bridges, end transmission.