Catharsis

[Continued] “I wanted to tell you that, even though I know you might have meant that cis people might miss that point and remember the character as transgender besides the multiple statements that he is not. further I completely agree that it is humiliating to see how trans women are represented more like drag queens rather than women that were born with a male body. Dysphoria remains something most cis people can’t comprehend.. I hope acceptance will be more ‘mainstream’ in the future.”

Yeah, totally. I know that Buffalo Bill, in the universe of the story, is very pointedly NOT a trans woman, but here in the real world, it’s trans women’s asses that get a bite taken out of them for that character. I know that Norman Bates isn’t a trans woman, but I also know that when I came out to them, multiple members of my family told me that they were concerned that I was just trying to become my dead mother. Regardless of their identities or even the intentions of their creators, these characters are not only associated with trans women in popular consciousness, they are seen as representatives of trans women. Some of the most vitriolic things ever said to me have been couched in an assumption that all I do, all I am capable of as a trans woman, is sitting around in a basement playing with myself (because film and television have presented people with that image.) I, in fact, lay a HUGE amount of blame for the perception of trans women as inherently pathological and fetishistic on the irresponsible handling of gender diversity by Hollywood. If we give them a pass because the twisted characters they produce don’t identify as trans women, where does it end? Does Sean Young’s character in Ace Ventura count as a trans woman? I don’t know, but I do know that an entire warehouse full of cops threw up at the sight of her body and that a LOT of people thought that was really, really funny.