Misrepresentations of Trans in American Mass Media (continued)
On the other hand, while mass media do perpetuate stereotypes, those involved in trans media are fully aware of how to catch the public's attention. For example, journalist Michelangelo Signorile, while working for the media committee of ACT UP confesses to purposefully exploiting himself and other AIDS patients in order to catch the mass media's attention. His strategies for rallying public support directly played to middle class America's emphasis on family values by featuring the pain and suffering AIDS can cause a family (Signorile 4-6). Therefore, some GLBT journalists, in part, help to perpetuate certain stereotypes in hopes of slowly breaking into the mainstream. This subversion, while supporting dominant ideology, attempts to use the system for its own advantage and in the end, after the movement has gained momentum, challenge contemporary gender ideology. However, this type of subversion often falls prey to the nature of the system, and becomes incorporated into the power structures that marginalize the trans community. It is a delicate balance that is difficult to maintain.
Nearly all popular expressions of trans are presented within a two-gender, heteronormative point of view that sees intersexuals as sickly. Medical news, both in medical journals and in the general press, constructs a picture of what constitutes the normal, healthy body. Trans individuals are portrayed as sick, unhappy beings that are consumed by thoughts of death from AIDS, fear of violence, and suicidal depressions (Jagosh 267). Entertainment media also adapts trans images to fit the illness model by promoting the stereotype of the asexual drag matron. These subsets of the mass media are only symptomatic of the larger problem of the lack of coverage of trans issues. For example, CBS and Gallup Polls ranging from the late '70's to the early '90's did not even include trans as an area of public concern worthy of taking a poll. The questions were limited to a two-sex model of gay and lesbian (Lewis 122). The mainstream media is clearly not concerned with taking the trans community seriously.
The current images of trans in American mass media are systematically limiting all expressions of trans in society by defining what is and is not an acceptable performance of one's gender. By implicitly demanding that all persons meet the strict physical requirements of belonging to one gender, the contemporary gender ideology manages to marginalize and essentialize trans persons, and anyone else who challenges the dominant gender assumptions in society.
Ultimately, the lack of trans images in American mass media is evidence of the vested interest the government and patriarchy have in marginalizing trans voices. First, the government's incentive for excluding discussions of gender border crossing is to secure a mechanism for controlling behavior. Since American is a capitalist economy, the government is responsible for ensuring a steady supply of consumers. In order to achieve this, sex must be limited to only heterosexual intercourse, which reproduces more consumers, and allows a nation to grow. Consequently, sex that does not promote population growth is threatening to the survival of the capitalist state. Since the heteronormative view of sex is based upon dualist notions of gender, those who cross those borders actively challenge the reproductive emphasis on sex, and in general, the capitalist ideology. This is evidenced by the fact that the American government still allows de facto and de jure discrimination to exist against the trans community. While the Equal Protection Clause and Title VII condemn discrimination on the basis of race or sex, it does not include sexual orientation and those who do not adapt to gender norms. For example, the restrictions placed on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the early 1990's explicitly blocked funding for artists who wished to challenge contemporary gender ideology (Zingo 3). More examples of human rights violations condoned in U.S. public policy include President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy and the Defense of Marriage Act (1996), which limited marriage to between a woman and a man (Zingo 61). However, these policies are not presented in the media as discriminatory and abusive, but moral and compassionate. Obviously, governmental concerns for maintaining the two-gender system override concerns for the protection of the GLBT community's basic human rights. This lack of concern is mirrored by the mass media's disregard of the trans community.
Additionally, the patriarchal structure of American society also has a vested interest in promoting contemporary gender ideology and marginalizing trans media. Standard American socialization dictates that anything that is different is automatically suspect. Members of the GLBT community are a direct threat to traditional gender roles, and patriarchy itself.
For example, female-to-males (F2M) are suspect because they threaten male privilege. Male-to-females (M2F) are suspect because they contradict the inherent superiority of men, and betray male privilege (Zingo 5). Janice Raymond points out that gender dissatisfaction has been medical zed in the form of breast implants and reproductive technology, both efforts to increase "femininity." However, "masculinity" is not as readily available, as evidenced by the extreme difficulty that F2M's have in finding medical assistance. This is due to the nature of patriarchy, with men at the top, controlling the distribution of resources, including the resources to become "masculine" (Green 124). Therefore, trans issues are systematically excluded from serious discussion in the mainstream mass media due to patriarchy's reliance on the existence of rigid gender categories.
Due to the combination of governmental and patriarchal controls on the expressions of gender identity, the picture of the trans community that is communicated through the mass media is an extremely limited one. Lacking any substantial contact with the trans community, non-trans individuals turn to the mass media to construct an image of trans. The mass media characterizes trans by ashamed, tortured doctors, insurers who refuse to cover gender reassignment surgery, government officials denying a person the right to change his/her identity, and legal discrimination by employers (Green 121). The trans community falls prey to these generalizations, and suffers due to patriarchal, heteronormative assumptions in the mass media. Trans representations in popular media outlets are confined to an illness model, as evidenced by the asexual drag matron of American entertainment media and the scope of trans medical and political news, which stigmatized the trans community as sickly outsiders who must find his/her place in society as a male or female.
The second main aspect of trans media that I will discuss is the effect of the marginalization of trans voices on American society at large. These effects fall into three categories - society's view of public health concerns, society's acceptance of gender deviants, and ultimately, contemporary American gender ideology. First, the marginalization of trans voices in the media skews society's views of public health concerns. The mass media is the primary source of information on public health concerns in American society. Major disease outbreaks, new medical breakthroughs, and bioethical issues such as cloning, and nutrition dominate health news headlines. Sexual health is also important, but only in a limited framework. Reproductive concerns such as fertility, marriage, adoption, abortion, and pregnancy dominate sexual health news. Viagra, not the latest developments in sex reassignment hormone therapy, are the focus of major health media.
In limiting out trans sexual concerns, the mass media is implicitly telling the public that trans/queer health issues are not important. They are marginalized to the point of invisibility in the mainstream news media. However, is invisibility not the secret to "passing" in the trans community? The goal of crossing gender borders is to become the other gender, not to be forever trans. This creates a Catch-22 to being invisible.
While silence and invisibility may be the safer option, visibility is essential if [trans] are to acquire "the full rights of life" through the political process. By reaming in concealed, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgenderists risk political disempowerment through paralytic reactions that prevent them from engaging in any activity supportive of sex/gender outsiders. Individuals "in the closet" fearing "guilt by association" attempts to keep the door firmly shut and remain silent. As the level of intimidation, discrimination, and violence experienced by sex/gender outsiders increases, the number of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgenderists who are vocal and visible may shrink even further. Society's lack of respect for sex/gender outsiders and its toleration of the opprobrious treatment of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgenderists reinforces the disinclination of individuals to self-identify as members of a targeted group. It also serves as disincentive for individuals in other groups to join in coalitions with the sex/gender outsiders, since they may be mistaken for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgenderists and subjected to mistreatment. (Zingo 62)
Although the person is safe, and has achieved the transformation, his/her silence perpetuates the disempowerment and subordination of trans voices in the media, and in society. Only visibility can guarantee that the human rights of the trans community will be secure (Zingo 62). Trans public health concerns, beyond simply surgery or hormones, must be visible in the mass media if the trans community will ever achieve full legitimacy.
Furthermore, the marginalization of trans voices affects society's approval of gender deviants. This is manifested in regulating the acceptability of certain bodies. As discussed above, the emphasis on emergency surgery to assign gender ambiguous infants a gender highlights the importance of each body fitting into one of the two rigid gender categories. It is also manifested in the lack of coverage of the politics of gender border crossing. In order to gain mainstream support for a movement, it must have the support (or coverage) in the mass media. The Civil Rights Movement was able to force political change, only after it had started to receive national attention in the form of press coverage. Hate crimes against GLBT were largely ignored by the mass media (and consequently the government and society) until the horrific torture and murder of Matthew Shepard. In a nation as large and diverse as the U.S., it is necessary for trans voices to stand up and demand to be recognized by the mass media for the trans community to reclaim its humanity (Green 124). By transgressing gender boundaries, the GLBT community is the media taboo of our time. In the past, the taboos and stigmas attached drug abuse, infidelity, and alcoholism were eventually decreased due to increased media coverage (and consequently public dicsussion and acceptance) of persons who engaged in these activites (Signorile 81). The only means by which the general American public has to begin to understand the complexities of those who challenge contemporary gender ideology is to have those images available in the mass media.
The third and final effect of the marginalization of trans voices in the media is the general impact upon contemporary gender ideology. As discussed above, trans issues that do not fall back into stereotypical, socially acceptable roles are filtered out from discussion in the mass media due to patriarchy and the capitalist American government's vested interest in maintaining a rigid dualist gender framework. The impact is to validate and reify the current power structures that exist that silence voices that do not conform to contemporary gender ideology. As feminist Andrea Dworkin stated, "There is a tyranny that determines who cannot say anything, a tyranny in which people are kept from being able to say the most important things about what life is like for them" (Dworkin 169). Unless trans voices are allowed to fully represent themselves in the American mass media, the trans community will never achieve full status as humans who deserve equal treatment, regardless of gender identification.
The United States mass media's blatant disregard for the accurate portrayal of the trans community and it's political, social, and medical concerns works to sustain the contemporary gender ideology that dictates that there are only two acceptable modes of gender expression - male or female. How then, can the trans community stop the vicious cycle of essentialization and marginalization of trans voices in the mass media?
As an alternative to the manner in which trans individuals are envisioned by the media in the status quo, the trans community should adopt a policy of "discourse interruptus" as demonstrated by the M2F author of the highly influential Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg. In 1993, while a guest on The Joan Rivers Show, Feinberg used a strategy of "discourse interruptus" in order to disrupt the therapist model the show had adopted. Feinberg stopped the lecturing and asked the trans person to speak freely about his/her experiences (Mackenzie 197). By utilizing the "discourse interruptus," the trans community can begin to critically examine gender on a national stage.
(T)ransgender studies is evolving into an expanding gender universe where ideas and images, many transproduced, are exploding our traditional ways of seeing, doing, and theorizing gender. This monumental interruption of conventional gender discourses, which include electronic representations, functions as a 'discourse interruptus' - the moment when dominant gender discourses and actions are interrupted by revolutionary discourses and actions that challenge us to rethink our current universe of gender. (Mackenzie 195)
The mass media has an essential role as the disseminator of information to the American public. Popular opinions cannot fully change regarding gender roles without positive reinforcement from the mass media. "Discourse interruptus" allows society to actively critique the systematic exclusion of individuals who do not conform to the contemporary gender ideology of two sexes.
The current gender paradigm in American society restricts gender expression to strict binaries of male/female. In the status quo, trans issues are not being accurately covered by the mass media, as most images ultimately adapt to stereotypes of gender transgressors as suffering from an illness in need of a cure. From entertainment to medical news, trans are not treated with the same regard as those who do not challenge limitations on gender identities. As with the intersexed infant, not yet able to open his/her eyes, who is rushed to the operation room for emergency gender assignment surgery, trans individuals are rushed into fully transitioning from one gender to another, both socially and physically. The sense of urgency is derived from the profound social, medical, and political rejection of those who do not fall into the category of male or female. As bell hooks explained in the liberated voice,
Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploits, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that make new life and growth possible. It is that act of speech, of 'talking back,' that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject. (Mackenzie 198)
Only when the trans community begins to "talk back" and model Leslie Feinberg's example of "discourse interruptus" within the American mainstream mass media can the trans community begin to rally substantial public support and begin to break down the contemporary gender ideology that oppresses those who cross the dangerous gender borders.
Bibliography
Bolin, Anne. In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage. South Hadley: Bergin & Garvey, 1988.
Dworkin, Andrea. "Remember, Resist, Do Not Comply." Life and Death: Unaplogetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women. New York: Free Press, 1997. (169-175)
Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon, 1988.
Jaygosh, Justin. "'O My God, My Kid is Gay!': The Effects of Religious Belief and Media Consumption on Parental Abilityto Accept a Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual Child." Sex, Religion, Media. Ed. Dane S. Claussen. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Jeffreys, Sheila. Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective. Malden: Blackwell, 2003.
Lewis, Gregory B. and Marc A. Rogers. "Does the Public Support Equal Rights?" Gays and Lesbians in the Democratic Process: Public Pocily, Public Opinion, and Political Representation. Ed. Ellen D. B. Riggle and Barry L. Tadlock. New York: Columbia UP, 1999.
More, Kate and Stephen Whittle, ed. Reclaiming Genders: Transsexual Grammars at the Fin de Siecle.
-Green, Jamison. "Look! No, Don't! The Visibilty Dilemma for Transsexual Men." More 117- 131.
-Mackenzie, Gordene O. "50 Billion Galaxies of Gender: Transgendering the Millennium." More 193 - 218.
MSNBC News. January 2004-April 2004. <http://www.MSNBC.com>
Newmark, Chayim Y. "Hermaphroditism." Medical Encyclopedia. 14 February 2002. 5 May 2004. <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/print/ency/article/001669.htm>
Signorile, Michelangelo. Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 2003.
Zingo, Martha T. Sex/Gender Outsiders, Hate Speech and Freedom of Expression: Can They Say That About Me?. Westport: Praeger, 1998.