Sera Tucker Contributing Writer
The media is known for its lack of diversity in portraying men and women in gender roles, race, and economic background. However, it is even more rare to see any representation of transgender, genderqueer, or intersex people in our media. This is because of the social stigma placed upon those who do not fit cultural “norms”.
This stigma directly derivative of gender expectations in American culture. Even for cisgender people (those whose gender fits what they were assigned at birth) it is difficult to fit stereotypical ideals of femininity and masculinity. It becomes even more challenging for gender types that are not within these expectations.
The political debates that have occurred for decades because of these challenges paint the issue as more complicated than it is. There have always been more gender options than male or female. Being intersex, transgender, or genderqueer is praised in many other cultures. Two Spirit people were respected gender variant members in Native North American cultures before years of rapid colonization all but wiped out these societies. This only became a serious issue of debate within the past few centuries, as America and its media were heavily influenced by Christian ideals.
There has been the occasional movie about transgender women, usually portrayed as a joke, or tragic figure, and it is rare to see one centered on a transgender male. It is nearly nonexistent to see an actual transgender actor take on either of these roles. Hollywood tends to be only slightly concerned, if at all, with the accuracy of their portrayals.
This only seems like a minor issue when you forget about all of it’s aspects: extreme racial misrepresentation like minstrel shows, the cookie-cutter roles that are reserved for minorities, and the overall lack of gender/sexuality diversity in America’s programming.
Type-casting does more than misrepresent already marginalized groups, it destroys an opportunity that could have been taken to rewrite the wrongs of past performances. Perhaps by allowing trans actors/actresses to take on these roles, we may be able to see the stories of non-binary genders from a truthful perspective.
