“I’m Trans, But it’s Not a Big Part of Who I Am” by Kai Farr

From age 10, this sentence served as a contingency plan. God forbid anyone in my middle school uncovered the truth about me. It was backup if confronted with a yearbook photo from third grade or a gymnastics roster with my birth name on it. If disaster struck, at least I’d have something poised and simple to say. At its surface, it seemed like a great sentiment. My butch lesbian therapist and I worked on crafting it for weeks. We were trying to encapsulate the vibe of: Don’t let your gender identity dictate your entire identity! Don’t let it dull your sparkle! Be more than trans! Because, ultimately, being trans is bad, right? I mean, that’s what we were saying, wasn't it? Why would you highlight that part of yourself? Better to hide it. Better to transcend it… no pun intended. But if I couldn't even embrace that part of myself, how the hell was I going to expect others to accept it?

My complex relationship with my own transness consistently conflicted with my outward appearance of confidence and success. For all intents and purposes, I was extremely visible in my community. Top of my class, Student Council President, lead in the school plays, voted Most Likely to be President (yikes), Prom King, graduation keynote speaker… or, as my girlfriend lovingly says, a fucking try-hard. But I could never enjoy any of these triumphs. And I don’t remember ever being proud of myself for any of these accomplishments. Because any success I had was my own way of neutralizing my identity as a trans person. I was the first kid to transition in my school district, but I figured that with enough bright and shiny awards, I could hypnotize everyone into forgetting that pesky little piece of my past. My accolades were a direct “fuck you” to my transness, a way to prove to society--- mainly to myself--- that I refused to be a statistic of a suicidal and unemployable outcast. My outward ambition to be successful was not to celebrate my identity; it was to compensate for it. 

Trans Day of Visibility is celebrated on March 31st. I always struggle with this day, feeling like a fraud for celebrating something that I was so deeply ashamed of for so long. This year, my sentiments seemed to be shared by many members of the community. Right now, visibility is extremely vulnerable. And visibility without safety is nothing. To be seen as a trans person can feel like putting a target on one’s back. But right now, it is more important than ever for people like me to combat the rhetoric being spread about my community and reclaim the narrative. 

My focus in college was studying the intersection of Media and Gender Studies; basically, how our depictions of gender and biological sex onscreen dictate our perceptions of gender roles in real life, and vice versa. And, in today’s age, the media is even more prolific than even a decade ago. Our media dictates almost all of our understanding of the world. We are constantly inundated with the 24/7 news cycle, social media posts, advertisements, and narratives about every walk of life.

But how accurate are these depictions? Spoiler alert: they're not. Even in our seemingly woke era of edgy media, diverse characters, and unconventional storytelling, we are missing the mark when it comes to telling authentic trans narratives. Throughout my youth, I deeply felt the lack of positive trans representation in the media, and it directly influenced my feelings of shame about myself. I literally couldn’t see myself in the world. 

I could teach a whole college course on disrespectful depictions of minorities in film and television (hiiiii NYU hiiiiii Columbia), but for simplicity’s sake, let’s divide them into three main categories. First, we have villainization and victimization. In many crime television series and movies, trans people are positioned to be either the victims of violent crime or the perpetrators of it. Think of horror movies such as Psycho or The Silence of the Lambs, where the big reveal is that the killer likes to wear women’s clothes, and that is a central element to their immorality. Of course, they’re evil; they’re a man in heels. In terms of victims, think of Boys Don’t Cry, a movie that centers around the tragedy of being trans, and the gruesome violence you will inevitably face if you dare to live your truth. These depictions make it seem like violence is inevitable for trans people; we are doomed to either cause it or receive it. And it makes cis audiences fearful of trans bodies, as they’ve been conditioned to believe we have an inherent violence within us. 

The next form of inaccurate representation is trivialization, where transness and cross-dressing are made into a big joke. This is present in basically any comedy from the 90s, 2000s, and disturbingly prevalent well into the 2010s. Think Mrs. Doubtfire or She’s the Man. These comedies base their premise around the trickery of presenting as another gender and the ridiculousness of ever getting away with it. Even though neither of these characters were trans, it leaves viewers with a conflated sense that transness involves deception and keeping a secret, that we are trying to fool you all for our own benefit. Other examples, such as White Chicks and Big Momma’s House, just blatantly make men in dresses into punchlines. Crossdressing is the joke. But why is that funny? And why is it so normal for us to laugh at guys onscreen who put on more feminine clothes or makeup? It feels almost conditioned into us with the highly present trope of crossdressing as a gag in popular media; we feel compelled to laugh because we have seen it so many times used as the punchline of a scene. But this has real-world effects. I see it all the time as a camp counselor and babysitter, kids giggling at a male TV character trying to squeeze into a dress. I remember Robbie from Victorious was always made fun of for “basically being a girl.” This popular trope normalizes laughing and pointing at people who don’t abide by cisgender standards of identity, and if you’re taught this at a young age, just think how deeply ingrained it will be by the time you're an adult. And once you start looking for it, you’ll see how common it is. 

And the final, perhaps the most complex, of the group is rationalization. This is where a transgender character appears in media, and their trans identity is explained in detail by themselves or another character. Seems innocuous enough, right? I totally understand the importance of talking about being trans in movies and TV; it could be many viewers’ first experience actually seeing the story of a trans person depicted. And including a trans character at all is still pretty radical, so I don’t want to discredit these attempts at inclusivity. But the issue becomes when the trans character’s identity is their entire emotional arc, their transness is the cause of all their conflict, and they’re reduced to their gender identity. Suddenly, their story is minimized to their transness. 

This begs the question: who is this flattened, one-sided representation really for? The answer, overwhelmingly, is cisgender audiences. Even though this trans story may seem revolutionary or profound, it is being diluted and simplified in order to be easily digestible to cis audiences. While their cisgender co-stars get to have full and complete narratives, the trans characters now exist solely to justify transness, to justify their existence to a cisgender audience and a cisgender world. This reifies the power imbalance in everyday life, where trans people constantly feel the need to rationalize their identity, or, in my case, greatly minimize their transness for fear of being profiled or judged. If cis audiences only see trans characters onscreen being reduced to that one part of their identity, trans people in real life feel the need to counteract that stereotype by overcompensating in other departments. Trans people are dynamic, just like anyone else. That seems obvious enough, so why isn't that being shown onscreen? 

Accurate visibility matters, now more than ever. We have a record number of anti-trans laws being proposed, and murder rates of trans people continue to rise each year. We are moving backwards. Media can help. Not just to educate and normalize trans people to cis audiences, but because trans audiences deserve to see trans characters whose stories and lives depict nuance. We need to move beyond rationalizing trans stories and instead get to a point of trans empowerment onscreen. We need trans characters with depth. And to do that, we need people to support us, both community members and allies. Even if you’re not directly in the media industry, you hold the power to change these perceptions. Moving forward, I challenge you to be more aware of how these everyday media depictions of trans bodies impact society’s views of them. Having a trans character in a series who has a steady job and a loving family is a rarity in our media, even today. Not only does that impact how cisgender people view the community, but it also impacts how trans people view ourselves. 

We deserve to be represented as who we are: strong, successful, well-loved humans whose stories extend far beyond our gender identities. Because, yeah, being trans is a big part of who I am, but only because the world has decided to politicize my existence. I think about it every day because my safety is in jeopardy every day. But the more we normalize authentic and respectful trans representation in the media with nuance and depth, the more the trans community can feel confident in their diverse identities in everyday life.