Transgender Children, Cisgender Parents, and the Management of Difference on TV
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From the Monster to the Kid Next Door: Transgender Children, Cisgender Parents, and the Management of Difference on TV As we rise up from the operating tables of our rebirth, we Alana Prochuk holds an MA in Cultural Studies and transsexuals are something more, something other, than Critical Theory from McMaster University, where she the creatures our makers intended us to be…Transsexual conducted the research for this paper. She recently embodiment, like the embodiment of the monster, places completed a two-year contract for WAVAW Rape Cri- its subject in an unassimilable, queer relationship to a Na- ture in which it must nevertheless exist. sis Centre as the coordinator of C.A.R.E. About Gen- -Susan Stryker (2006b, 248) dered Violence, an initiative at Vancouver Community College that aims to prevent gender-based violence (in- I was pretty impressed with the level of sophistication with cluding transphobic violence) and to enhance supports which they manipulated me on the talk show. But still, for survivors on campus. though, at least what I would hope…is that there would be things that would slip out of my mouth, you know, that would come through the cracks somehow that would Abstract give the audience…some glimmer of radical difference. I This article explores the recent surge in television repre- want to be the monster who’s speaking. I want to be the sentations of transgender children. In particular, it an- monster that is able to speak, you know, and articulate its monstrosity. alyzes episodes of The Tyra Show, Anderson, 20/20, Dr. -Susan Stryker (quoted in Gamson 1998, 165) Phil, and The Passionate Eye, arguing that these shows exploit the cultural symbolism of childhood to defuse Trans Kids on TV and the Projections of Symbolic the political challenge posed by trans subjectivity. Childhood Although transphobic culture often demeans Résumé gender-crossing subjects as monstrous (Stryker 2006b, Cet article explore l’augmentation récente de 245), trans academic and activist Susan Stryker (2006b) représentations d’enfants transgenres à la télévision. draws attention to monstrosity’s resistive power: its Plus particulièrement, il analyse des épisodes des ability to expose “the constructedness of the natural or- émissions The Tyra Show, Anderson, 20/20, Dr. Phil der” (254) and offer “a means for disidentification with et The Passionate Eye, faisant valoir que ces émissions compulsorily assigned subject positions” (253). Stryker exploitent le symbolisme culturel de l’enfance pour disputes the medico-scientific establishment’s self-po- neutraliser le défi politique posé par la transsubjectivité. sitioning as the author of transsexuality—the parent, as it were, to “naturalistically” reconstructed men and women—and celebrates the monster’s rebellion against its self-professed father. “In birthing my rage, / my rage has rebirthed me,” she writes (247), assuming responsi- bility for the genesis of her own subjectivity and rebuff- ing gender-normative culture’s appropriative parental claim. Whereas mainstream society often assumes that transgender subjects are uniquely constructed, unique- ly the sons and daughters of gendered social technolo- gies, Stryker insists that “the same anarchic Womb has birthed us [all]” (247). Thus, she posits a horizontal— albeit far from equitable—sibling relationship between trans and non-trans individuals, contesting the pater- Atlantis 36.2, 2014 36 www.msvu.ca/atlantis nalism with which gender-normative culture typically hood that descend from Rousseau (with his famous regards transgender subjects. pronouncement that “Man is born free; and everywhere When featured as a guest on several mid-nine- he is in chains”) and from the Romantic poetry of Blake ties talk shows about transsexuality, Stryker aimed to and Wordsworth (James, Jenks, and Prout 1998, 13). In- work around the programs’ structural constraints to nocence is tightly intertwined with helplessness, both convey self-possessed, self-articulating monstrosity. In in the tradition of idealized Romantic childhood and this paper, I argue that a recent TV programming trend in these shows’ treatment of trans issues. The children has further reduced opportunities for trans subjects to often appear to steal the show with their cuteness; how- embody the challenge of the “monster who’s speaking”: ever, as Lori Merish (1996) points out, “cuteness always talk shows and current affairs programs that increas- to some extent aestheticizes powerlessness” and “stages ingly feature young children as their primary transgen- …a need for adult care” (187). Thus, television’s turn to der spokespeople. Since 2007, a multitude of American younger and cuter trans subjects may be a strategy for shows including 20/20 (“My Secret Self” 2007), Dr. Phil domesticating transgender difference. (“Gender Confused Kids” 2008), The Tyra Show (“We’re My paper performs a close reading of three Seven and Eight” 2010), The Rosie Show (“Season 1 Epi- television programs—20/20, Anderson, and The Tyra sode 26” 2011), Our America with Lisa Ling (“Transgen- Show—all of which superficially endorse transgender der Lives” 2011), and Anderson (“Children and Teens acceptance, but only by working to shrink the assertive Caught” 2011) have covered childhood gender transi- trans monster into an innocuous child. As counterex- tions. In Canada, too, CBC’s The Passionate Eyerecent - amples, I also explore two TV shows—Dr. Phil and The ly aired a documentary that “follows the lives of four Passionate Eye—which dramatize trans acceptance as a transgender children and the parents who have chosen controversy, rather than a liberal-humanist imperative to support them as they transition to the opposite sex” for compassionate cis adults. Although these shows vary (“Transgender Kids” 2012). Many of these programs are in the level of trans acceptance they promote, they all not overtly hostile to trans children; if anything, they imply that the only acceptable transgender child is one usually express concern for the well-being of their young who is reliant on cis adults’ compassion and unthreat- subjects. Yet, as I will argue, the shows’ paternalistic be- ening to their hegemony. In closing, I discuss the over- nevolence tends to undermine trans agency and politi- whelmingly hostile TV coverage of trans man Thomas cal power, or at least make these harder to recognize. Beatie’s pregnancy, suggesting that because transgender Because the figure of the child is invested with parents pose a potential challenge to cisgender domi- multi-layered cultural meaning, the young trans sub- nance, they are likely to face much harsher treatment in jects profiled on TV easily become vehicles for the cir- the media than either trans kids or cis parents. culation of ideas about power, naturalness, authentic- Before I elaborate this analysis, I would like to ity, and appropriate human development. To be sure, offer a few words of explanation about my project’s aims post-2007 North American talk shows, current affairs and my own position as researcher. While I often crit- programs, and TV documentaries often ascribe quite icize television’s near-exclusive focus on very conven- non-conventional meanings to trans bodies; their ador- tionally gendered trans girls and boys, my critique is able child guests bear little resemblance to the transsex- directed at the shows’ packaging of their guests’ expe- ual monsters of the mainstream pop cultural imagina- riences, not at those experiences themselves. Although tion. Yet, these shows’ superficially positive portrayals talk shows and current affairs programs “invite people of transgender people are underpinned by a deep val- to speak for themselves” (Gamson 1998, 17), there is no orization of gender conformity and constitute only a guarantee that the depictions emerging from the pro- subtler, gentler variation on the transphobic theme. For duction process will be congruent with interviewees’ example, the programs that openly advocate for trans self-understandings or intended messages. Like Joshua acceptance tend to argue that cross-gender identifica- Gamson (1998), then, I want to ask, “How do the medi- tion is an unavoidable and regrettable accident of birth. um and the genre structure the ‘voices’ that come out? They do so largely by invoking ideals of innocence and What sorts of speaking voices are available, and in what naturalness—two hallmarks of Western symbolic child- ways are they distorted?” (17). I have absolutely no in- Atlantis 36.2, 2014 37 www.msvu.ca/atlantis tention of disparaging the children themselves for being is that it overlooks systemic power differences, defines too normative in their gender expression, whatever that transphobia as an individual rather than a political and might mean. Numerous scholars, including Jay Prosser structural matter, and advances only an assimilationist (1998), Henry Rubin (1998), Viviane Namaste (2005), model of trans acceptance. and Patricia Elliot (2010), have refuted the assumption that trans individuals are under some special obligation The “Innocence” and “Naturalness” of Trans Chil- to demolish the gender binary. This demand has often dren, as Proclaimed by Cis Adults been articulated (implicitly, at least) by non-trans com- In order to build any case for trans acceptance— mentators who have appropriated transgender as a the- even a highly conditional one—television shows must oretically handy abstraction rather than recognizing it counter mainstream culture’s conviction that transgen- as a complex set of lived experiences.