Trans Rights - The Newest Civil Rights Movement

This week’s film, Disclosure, centered on the history and hardships that transgender persons have had in the United States. The film highlighted how media portrayals of the transgender community have changed since the 1920’s and the struggles that still remain to this day.

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Since the start of filmmaking, transgender people have been highlighted on the
screen but sadly as the butt of the joke. Used as jesters and deviants, comic relief, or as people who did not quite fit in, the transgender community was sidelined and in most of the United States, criminalized.

As the film described, transgender people in the media were often portrayed as villains or victims. Alfred Hitchcock often had the murderer in his story as a cross dressing person. Films like Silence of the Lambs, The Crying Game, and Dressed to Kill all have cross dressing characters who are the villains. The film brings to the forefront that because over 80% of Americans do not know a transgendered person, their only knowledge comes from movies or TV, and when you are portrayed as a victim or killer the human imagination only runs wild.

The film continues to explain how over time things have slowly started to “come around” for transgendered individuals by having more and more stories told and played by openly trans people. Of course, if you look at today’s headlines in newspapers one may not believe that progress has been made.

Transgender Against the Law

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Dating as far back as 1848, laws in the United States were enacted to keep “a person from appearing in public ‘in a dress not belonging to his or her sex’” (PBS). Oddly enough, one law was enacted in New York because it was becoming increasingly common for people to dress up to get out of paying taxes, not as a punishment for what we today call the LGBTQ+ Community. “The state originally intended the law to punish rural farmers, who had taken to dressing like Native Americans to fight off tax collectors” (Ryan). Sadly, “‘by the beginning of the 20[th] century, gender inappropriateness… was increasingly considered a sickness and public offense’” (Ryan). These laws only furthered the bigotry towards those who were different.

This is an ongoing problem in our society today, headlines like “Record number of bills look to restrict trans rights in the U.S.” and “Transgender runner CeCe Telfer is ruled ineligible to compete in US Olympic trials” only shows that there is a long road ahead. Yet on the opposite side of the coin, headlines like “New poll shows Americans overwhelmingly oppose anti-transgender laws” show that perhaps change is truly around the corner. I know that I personally have voted for people and given money to organizations that fight back against inequality in all forms. I have spoken my mind and even lost a job over my belief that no one should suffer discrimination. My personal solution is to keep speaking out, keep donating money, and to keep voting for people who hold the same values I do. I hope one day perhaps I can even be on the legal team for one of these organizations.

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Further Bias in Media

To be able to talk about other community's exclusion in media would require me to consume more media. I stay away from almost all network television shows, and I have not seen a new film since Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At home we do not have cable television and since our antenna gave out in 2018, we have not watched the few networks we were able to get with an antenna since. Even then, our TV was only ever on PBS and usually only for Nova, America’s Test Kitchen, or Nature.

I know though reading newspaper articles and headlines online about how the Academy Awards is always being labeled as whitewashed. This saddens me greatly, but because I do not even know the title of any of the films nominated. Nor have I spent money on tickets for a film, I really have no weight on what Hollywood is doing.

I can guess that people of color, native populations, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ are greatly underrepresented in media, but for concrete examples I would be simply guessing. I know that being a white woman this could come off as callous or privileged, but I do not consume normal media. My evenings are often spent playing puzzle games, gardening, or cooking.

Works Cited:

“Arresting Dress: A Timeline of Anti-Cross-Dressing Laws in the United States.” PBS News Hour Weekend, Public Broadcasting Service, 31 May 2015, www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/arresting-dress-timeline-anti-cross-dressing-laws-u-s.

Ryan, Hugh. “How Dressing in Drag Was Labeled a Crime in the 20th Century.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 25 June 2019, www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-drag-three-article-rule.