The thought โBritish media has failed trans peopleโ pops into my head approximately 10 times a day. It's a hard thing to reconcile when youโre trans, British and trying to work your way up in the media. You could say, Iโm a little bit conflicted.ย
It really comes to the forefront for me when there is some kind of public discussion about our rights on TV, which inevitably leads to a big, messy discourse on the internet. I donโt want to seem like a broken record, because I feel like I harp on about this a lot, but Iโm really struggling to see a place for myself within it at the moment.ย (Besides, without broken records weโd never have discovered sampling, would we? I assume thatโs how it came about anyways, I dunno donโt think too hard about that analogy).ย Itโs just deeply troubling to me that our inclusion is still relegated to fleeting tokenism. Trans people are mainly seen on British television as reality TV subjects, a world which is already by its very nature othering but when a trans person is featured in, say, a dating show - their presence is other even to the others.ย
And when we actually are given some kind of opportunity to express ourselves publicly, we inflict a sort of self-imposed tokenism on ourselves because weโre conditioned to believe that society couldnโt handle us at our most legitimate. It suddenly becomes our job to yet again explain and justify ourselves to the โignorant publicโ. By the end of all that, there is no time left on the runtime for trans people to express anything original or interesting.ย
Iโm tired of feeling like Iโve missed out because one singular trans person has obtained an opportunity that I havenโt - which they probably totally deserve, and I probably donโt. I canโt dance, what do I care that I wasnโt picked for Strictly? But thatโs just how it feels when you know that the opportunities are in such scarcity. Trans people have been gaslit for decades to believe that we have no value, except as specimens of exploitative documentaries which poison and distort our truths. Then, predictably, this influences the way society then views us.ย
Almost every single piece of media ever created in this country about trans lives has been made by people who have no real clue about the truth of our experiences. For that reason, the entertainment industry has such a huge debt to pay for it. In my opinion, this can only be amended through years and years of reparative work to rebalance the scales and give us the opportunities to retell, reframe and reassemble our frankly tattered reputation. Iโm at the point now where I cannot enjoy anything I see on the screen, because all I think while Iโm watching something is: โthatโs another thing with not one singular trans person in itโ or โwow, they really tokenised us with that attempt at representationโ. Donโt get me wrong, some people in the industry are trying. They have good intentions, which mainly center around an attempt to portray us as โjust like everybody elseโ, which of course, in some ways - we are. But what it inevitably does is it relegates us to a position of victimhood and infantilizes us. It says to the viewer: Trans people are getting a lot of abuse right now, and we want to remind you that they donโt deserve it. Yes, thatโs better than nothing and has its heart in the right place - but itโs not what I want to watch. I want to watch things that are made by others like me and resonate with my experiences. Weโre so far away from it right now, and it makes me feel utter despair.ย
At the end of the day, โfeel-goodโ trans inclusion like the recent Married At First Sight gives the public something heartwarming to talk about for half a day, but itโs a plaster on a fractured skull when it comes to healing the damage the broadcast media itself has inflicted upon our community over the past four decades.ย
The British media has failed us, and at the moment at least - itโs not doing anything to make up for it.ย
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