Trans People Aren’t Novelties. We’re Normal.
I am sick to death of narratives that put our transitions under the microscope.
Stop putting our identities under the microsope.
This morning, I woke up and read the news that Jennifer Lopez produced a short film called Draw With Me, which documents the coming-out process of her nonbinary nibling (the gender-neutral alternative term for nephew/niece), Brendon. Most trans people and allies on my feed were really delighted by this very public vouching of support. Some spoke warmly about how this film would help educate people about trans issues and nonbinary identities. But the whole thing just left me feeling cold.
Jennifer Lopez Introduces Short Film About Her Trans Nibling, Brendon
Jennifer Lopez shared footage from new short film "Draw With Me" on Instagram this weekend. J.Lo explained that the…www.harpersbazaar.com
I’m sure JLO’s intentions are good. I’m sure her nibling and their family enthusiastically consented to being involved in the film. Yet I can’t help but be weary of trans 101 narratives, particularly ones that rely on documenting the private lives of kids. Trans people seem to be caught in an endless cycle of explaining ourselves to cis people, bearing our souls and sharing our struggles, then being treated once again as inexplicable the moment we’re done explaining.
Every time a piece of media is created to introduce the basic concept of trans people to the public consciousness, it reinforces just how far we really are from acceptance. Each time a story about a trans person focuses solely on their transness, and on making that transness understandable to others, I am reminded of how much cis people love approaching us as a novelty, and how reticent they are to just accept us as a mundane part of “normal” life.
And when it’s transgender minor who is presented to the public as an educational object in these ways, I can’t help but wonder how they’ll feel looking back on the process ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line. Will they feel accepted and embraced by such gestures? Or will they feel othered and used? Will Brendon be glad their story was used to improve the hearts and minds of cis people? Or will they wish they could have gone through the emotionally messy and vulnerable process of transition in private?
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Trans people exist. We aren’t rare. There are more of us than there are people who know how to code. Our numbers are growing. Our identities are valid and our worthiness is non-negotiable. These facts don’t care about the feelings of transphobes. We exist regardless of whether cis people understand us or are comfortable with us. Yet every time a cis ally tries to advocate for us by treating us as unusual and fascinating, they feed into the idea that we must be explained before we can be embraced.
We have done this dance dozens of times. We have had the Trans 101 conversation over and over again for years. There are a panoply of trans memoirs that introduce us to people, and explain our identities and lives: Jacob Tobia’s Sissy, Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness; Jeffrey Marsh’s How to Be You. There’s guides like Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook (published in 1998)and her follow-up My New Gender Workbook (published in 2013). There are dozens upon dozens of small pamphlets and zines created to explain basic trans terminology to befuddled family and friends. There’s dozens of picture book humanizing us to parents and children, like Jacob’s New Dress and Julián is a Mermaid.
On screen, there are trans reality shows like I Am Jazz and I Am Cait and Becoming Us. Notice how similar all these titles are. They’re all about introducing the subject’s identity to the viewer on the most basic level. These shows don’t document the life of a trans person who is interesting and complex on their own merits. They’re transition narratives crafted to appeal to those who know the very least about us. These shows are exploitation presented as education.
Trans people have appeared on TV as curiosities since at least the early 1990’s. People like Maury Povich, Oprah, and Sally Jesse Raphael introduced their viewers to dozens upon dozens of trans people over the years, treating them as equally bizarre and unheard-of every single time. These shows would devote whole hours to interrogating trans people about their identities, their bodies, their brains, and their childhood traumas, mining their lives for the maximum drama and human interest possible, only to promptly forget all that learning and begin with a completely blank and ignorant slate the next time one was presented as a freak on their show.
Today, trans people somehow still haven’t moved past needing to be explained and probed in these puerile, demeaning ways. I Am Jazz talks at length about a trans minor’s medical treatment and how hormone blockers have altered her body; I Am Cait explains trans identity in the most simplistic of terms. When trans woman and pop star Kim Petras’ transition was documented in a German documentary, the show’s title translated literally to “Man or Woman?”, dehumanizing her and calling her identity into question in one fell swoop.
Kim Petras’ case is an instructive one. Like JLO’s nibling Brendon, Petras was a minor when her trans identity was presented to the world. She underwent hormone replacement therapy and gender confirmation surgery while in the public eye. Petras’ parents reportedly told her she had an obligation to be the public face of transness; she was fortunate to have an accepting family and access to affirming medical care, they reasoned, so she had to share that wealth by educating others. Her life was offered up on an altar, in exchange for helping a future generation of kids gain acceptance.
As an adult, Petras has walked away from that obligation. She’s open about being a trans woman, but says in interviews she doesn’t want that to be a central part of her public identity. She makes effervescent, sexy bubblegum pop about boys and jewelry and being an adorable badass; she’s not a objectified transgender child on a reality show anymore. It’s clear she wants fans to approach her the way they would any other artist.
I think Kim Petras has the exact right approach. When acceptance is promised to trans people as the reward for educating cis folks, it never winds up paying off. It just leaves the trans person othered and pushed to the side, never permitted to be as complex or frivolous or otherwise normal as they might like.
Cis people will never stop asking invasive questions about trans people’s genitals, sex lives, and brains. They’ll always feel entitled to the cute, heart-breaking stories of “how we knew” we were trans; they’ll always want to stare invasively at photos of our transition timelines. And as long as trans people keep being forced to capitulate to that expectation, we will never stop being perceived as sideshow freaks. It doesn’t matter that the sideshows have gotten a bit classier looking in recent years. They still keep us on the fringes, render our lives a subject worthy of debate.
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I’m certain JLO’s short film about her nibling will be less exploitative than many other trans-novelty narratives. She has a close relationship with the child the film is exploring; Brendon’s parents are already financially secure, so it’s not like their story is being used for simple monetary gain.
Yet the fact remains that Brendon is a minor, being asked to perform their transness for the world’s benefit, not their own. And they’re being asked to do this by trans-affirming relatives, who they probably feel deeply indebted to. I remember being newly out as nonbinary to my family and friends; I was so grateful for the smallest amount of recognition that I’d put up with all kinds of ignorance and invasiveness. And I came out as a self-sufficient adult in my late 20’s. I can’t imagine navigating that social and emotional minefield as a child, and doing so in a medium that millions of people will see.
Coming out as trans is a deeply vulnerable, confusing experience. Sometimes it takes years to figure out which identity fits you the best, which surgeries you want or don’t want, whether you want to be on hormones. Learning to be publicly trans is a long process. I needed months and months of practice to get comfortable correcting people who misgendered me. It seems fundamentally unjust to me that a trans child would have to live those awkward, uncomfortable first few years while under a massive microscope.
And that’s to say nothing of how painful it might be for Brendon to look back on the short film years later, and gaze at a version of themselves that might look nothing like the person they transition into. A few years into her own very public transition, Youtuber Natalie Wynn hid all of her older videos. When fans complained about the lost content, she explained that looking at old images of her pre-transition self was deeply painful and jarring. Wynn at least had control over her own image; trans kids on TV rarely have that option. Brendon will never have the ability to remove this film from the internet; because they are the publicly trans nibling of an internationally-recognized celebrity, they’ll never be able to disappear their transness from public view for their own safety or comfort. I don’t think a child can truly, meaningfully consent to a lifetime of being “out” to the entire world in this way. It’s hard even for an adult to grapple with it.
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At their heart, trans-as-novelty narratives are inherently regressive. They assume the average viewer is not yet up to speed on trans identities, and that trans people are obscure beings that exist on the edges of the social world. This is particularly damaging when the novel trans person being presented is a teenager or a kid. In even the most loving and careful of such portrayals, trans kids are still being reduced to their transness, and that transness is still being reduced to an oddity.
We need to stop feeding into this. We need to advocate for more than selfish interest in our lives and bodies. We must demand acceptance, and our allies need to commit to fighting for it — with no strings attached. We are not debatable objects. We’re not theoretical concepts. We exist. It’s cis people who need to get used to that.
Trans people are normal. Trans people are increasingly common. Trans people ought to be embraced as a regular part of daily life. We aren’t strange exceptions to the rule, nor are we captivating freaks. Our identities don’t require a documentary or reality TV series in order to understand any more than cis people’s do. So let’s stop with the trans-person-as-novelty narratives, and move on to depicting trans people in all our complexity and diversity.
An Injustice!
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